By Ben Tomkins

This had better be the one and only time I have to write about spreading butt cheeks in a publically distributed forum.  I do get paid for this, but there is no known way to argue that it’s not OK for the state to force me to get naked, bend over, pull up my ballsack like Michael Jackson and cough while someone shoves a flashlight and a jeweler’s eye within three inches of my ass without having to visualize it while I’m compiling this sentence.

I suppose what offends me the most about the Supreme Court validating a federal law that enables our police to engage in purely discretionary non-contact strip searches of each and every person who is arrested — regardless of the charge — is the fact that the justices on the bench are about the last people on earth who will be arrested for anything.  It’s a bit like Rush Limbaugh bellowing over the airwaves that only scummy people do drugs when he’d never do anything like that because he’s rich and white.  Oh, wait, yes he would, and let me tell you – that chubby bigot would take a lot of strip-searching too.

Now I don’t disagree with the majority opinion in principle, in that it must be accepted that gang members and various other people living on the edge of desperation may very well bring contraband into the prison system for a variety of reasons, and do so by inserting it into various spectacular parts of their body.  I absolutely put the safety of our law enforcement agents first and foremost over any one individual’s right to keep their clothes on.  As Justice Anthony M. Kennedy put it in the majority decision, “courts are in no position to second-guess the judgments of correctional officials who must consider not only the possibility of smuggled weapons and drugs, but also public health and information about gang affiliations. Every detainee who will be admitted to the general population may be required to undergo a close visual inspection while undressed.”

What bothers me is the “may” part of the argument.  If the courts required that everyone be subjected to a strip search I would much more easily accept a generalized mandate.  You go to jail, it’s just what happens.  You aren’t special.  However, when we start to talk about discretion and the judgment of law enforcement officers when it comes to something as tenuous and cherished as the 2nd Amendment, I think the law is ridiculously overripe for abuses.

One of the major justifications given by Justice Kennedy is the importance of searching gang members who may be trying to smuggle weapons, drugs, information, etc. to other gang members inside the prison.  Sure.  I get it.  But how does one identify a gang member?  Why, the same way one identifies an illegal immigrant in Arizona.  By the shoes, the shirt, the tattoos and the general appearance of the individual.  Of course, there are many other reasons to suspect someone is a gang member and strip-search them.

For instance, individuals who irritate law enforcement officials by questioning their judgment are typically associated with the Crips.  A lot of people don’t know that.  Hell, my own grandfather, who was arrested for drunk driving when he crashed his car into a tree, may very well be hiding a shiv in his butthole because he refused to answer any of the police officer’s questions in a timely fashion.  Reasonable as it was to assume my grandfather had been drinking, God rest his soul, he happened to have had a stroke.

Look, I’m not saying our police don’t need to protect themselves, but I’m entirely uncomfortable with the idea that these searches can be conducted on a purely discretionary basis.  Either make it mandatory or don’t do it at all.  The temptation to use strip searches as punitive measures for minor annoyances is far too great.

Benjamin Tompkins is a violinist, teacher, journalist, and critically acclaimed composer currently living in Denver, Colo. He hates stupidity, and generally believes that the volume of one’s voice is inversely proportional to one’s knowledge of the issue. Reach Ben Tompkins at BenTompkins@DaytonCityPaper.com.

By Ben Tomkins

The lasting value of the declaration of intent by the Dayton police department and prominent members of the Dayton community will prove to be as valuable as the signers choose to make it.  That’s about all I have to say about this particular aspect of the topic.  Either they’ll take it as a license for community initiative or they won’t.

That said, I can’t imagine how this could possibly be construed as bad unless you went with some crackpot BS like “any deal citizens make with a corrupt government that steals our tax dollars with the threat of violence is inherently awful.”  I mean, if you view a young man’s tragic suicide as an opportunity to bitch about the contents of your wallet, well, I guess that’s as far as you go.

As for those of us who live on Earth, individuals who see this as hot air and no action are sorely missing the point and the opportunity.  This declaration is not so much about physical alterations of the city of Dayton’s policies as it is an acknowledgement that the police and the black community need to speak openly about their relationship.   Whether one views the case of Kylen English as police engaging in racial misconduct or a 20-year-old kid who committed suicide after fighting with his girlfriend, that perspective is grounded in experience.

Look, I don’t get police brutality from this, and it’s not because I’m white.  I just don’t see it.  The girlfriend thing makes much more sense to me.   But the fact that a black person who reads the same story feels tremendous frustration and anger well up inside them doesn’t mean those feelings aren’t rooted in something.   Whether it’s real or residual, the imagery of this case is far more compelling and evocative than its significance as a particular incident.

That is absolutely worth talking about, and I guarantee there are truths and misconceptions on both sides of the aisle.  Here, I’ll prove it to you.  I worked security with a retired Cleveland Heights detective, and he told me the following story:

“Me and my partner took a domestic violence call once.  These are always the worst, because everybody’s crazy and you’re just getting in the middle of it.  Sure enough, we get to the apartment and this dude is beating the shit out of his girlfriend.  So we go to arrest him, and all of a sudden she comes running out of the bedroom screaming, “You can’t take my man,” and shoots me in the elbow!  My partner pulls out his gun and blows her away.  Can you believe that?  She calls us to arrest this guy, and when we do she shoots me.  Crazy bitch.”

By the way, what color was everyone?  I have to be honest here, without any thought at all I pictured the guy and his girlfriend as black.  Sorry, I did.  But you know what, I told my black friend the same story and he pictured the cops as white.

Isn’t that ridiculous?  Neither of us knows anyone’s skin color.   But even more revealing than that, I also never told my friend if I was asking about the perps or the cops.

Ooooh … those are deep waters.   In the absence of information, I (white) psychologically perceived the situation from the perspective of the police, and he (black) viewed it from the perspective of the tenants.  That is fundamentally warped.

Clearly, the color of our skins and the subsequent life experiences we have had has led us down vastly different psychological orientations to the law.  And my friend isn’t under socioeconomic pressure either.  He’s rich as hell compared to me and our subconscious still plays these games. The fact that we found this hilarious made us both feel much more evolved than our previous thoughts may have led us to believe.  Then we got Chipotle and talked about how much Tebow sucks.  See?  If you are willing to talk you can overcome anything.

If marriage counseling has taught me anything, it’s that the only way for things to improve is to talk when it’s really, really hard.  If we want any kind of progress, we have to break down the barrier of anger and resentment erected by our petty egos and acknowledge that the other side may not be what we think they are.  That both sides agree the time has come to readdress the black community’s relationship with the police is both laudable and progressive.  I hope it moves forward and the police and the citizens of Dayton come closer together.  Will it happen?  Who knows?  That depends on people.

Benjamin Tompkins is a violinist, teacher, journalist, and critically acclaimed composer currently living in Denver, Colo. He hates stupidity, and generally believes that the volume of one’s voice is inversely proportional to one’s knowledge of the issue. Reach Ben Tompkins at BenTompkins@DaytonCityPaper.com.

By Ben Tomkins

We are wired to search for reasons behind unthinkable things, and when satisfactory reasons don’t present themselves, we are wired to manufacture reasons from the best available information.

In many ways blame is nothing more than a crude tool for absolving ourselves from the difficulties of dealing with the unknowable and the unthinkable.  When we symbolically pile our sins upon a goat and drive it out of town with a stick it grants us a sort of grotesquely dismissive empowerment over the great struggle of our ego and our conscience.

A seemingly normal high school boy in Chardon has randomly shot and killed his classmates for no rational, logical reason, short of his own warped psyche.  These are terrible events and the greater the terror, the more extreme the need to answer the question: “Why?”

It’s only been seven days, but let’s blame government-run schools.  We don’t like the government anyway, and it would be easy to construct a hypothetical series of relationships that supports the admittedly shaky foundations of our misguided worldview and say “I told you so.”  It allows us to experience the feeling of being right, and to distinguish ourselves and our choices from those of the thing we blame.  It indulges our grandiose belief that we are intellectually superior and have inside knowledge of what’s really going on in the world.

It is well established by psychological and physiological studies that our brains are wired to release dopamine when we hear things we already agree with, and become repelled by thoughts that create dissonance with our understanding of our world.  As evidence, I point no further than the glee with which members of the Westboro Baptist Church announced their intention (thankfully unfulfilled) to protest the funerals of the Chardon victims as confirmation that God is angry with America for not agreeing with their religious beliefs.

Now I can choose to agree with your assessment that the government is at fault, or I can disagree.  Either way, the simple act of agreeing or disagreeing has not moved us any closer to the truth of the matter.  We’ve just decided to believe something because it feels good and cuts off our responsibility to deal with the greater difficulty that is the “why” question.

Without understanding the “why,” you are in no position to ascribe blame.  It’s been seven days …

If we pursue the “why” question, we find that it goes on and on.  We must be prepared for the reality that there may not be a satisfactory answer, or no answer at all, save the speculation into the mind of a crazed individual.  Consider the Columbine shootings from 1999.  Every possible reason we can think of has proved to be unsatisfactory for answering the ultimate “why.”  Video games, bullying, antidepressants, goth culture — even taken as a whole it fails to fully or even significantly explain what would cause two otherwise normal teenagers to bring guns and pipe bombs into their school and kill a bunch of their classmates.  The “why” is locked deep inside.

All we can know for sure is that at some point during the depression, angst, stress, pressure and pain of being a teenager with an underdeveloped rational thinking center in their brain, they were able to answer their own “why” question by blaming the institution of Columbine and the students and faculty therein.  In the absence of serious intervention from parents and friends and the privacy of the internet, their rooms, their journals, their circle of friends and their own minds, they bought a goat, piled their sins upon it, and drove it out of the city with automatic weapons before sending themselves to the place where the final “why” is answered.

The answers simply aren’t going to come because we give ourselves license to ascribe blame.  We will have to dig deeply, and think long and hard about the circumstances of the individual, the group, and the world to find any lasting satisfaction as to why the Chardon shooting occurred.  Columbine happened almost 13 years ago.  Chardon was seven days ago.  To begin ascribing blame would be the ultimate failing of personal pride and willful ignorance.  Worse, it relegates the shootings to the realm of the unknowable, and we will remain blind to the inevitable warning signs and circumstances that allow these things to take place.

To close this out, I work with a lot of families, and although I don’t have any kids myself I have become acutely aware of the tremendous pressures and difficulties facing every single parent, regardless of economic means or social status.  None of them is worried they’re going to actively mess up their kids.  They’re worried they’re going to mess up their kids through their own ignorance and flaws.  They are frightened they will ruin their kids, and not know “why” until it’s too late.

I know great parents whose kids are alcoholics, autistic, depressed, relationship disasters, criminals and every single one of their parents lies awake at night, staring into the blackness and wondering if they shouldn’t have immunized their child, or sent them to boarding school, or drank less, or whatever.  It’s awful.  Most of them will only be able to partially answer these questions over a lifetime of thinking, and it’s barely enough to allow them to continue on.  What I do know is that the answer is almost never to blame themselves for things they didn’t or couldn’t know.  There is no truth in it, and no peace.

— God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference   

Benjamin Tompkins is a violinist, teacher, journalist, and critically acclaimed composer currently living in Denver, Colo. He hates stupidity, and generally believes that the volume of one’s voice is inversely proportional to one’s knowledge of the issue. Reach Ben Tompkins at BenTompkins@DaytonCityPaper.com.

Make no mistake about it, Jerry Quarry was an excellent fighter with a great chin.  He fought Ali, Frazier, and Floyd Patterson (the first man to recapture the heavyweight title after losing it), all of them  twice, and Ken Norton on about two weeks notice.  He is generally regarded as the creme de la creme of the non-Ali/Frazier/Foreman.  Quarry’s downfall was his tendancy to cut horribly and easily.  He is severely cut in almost all his big fights, and this generally led to early stoppages.  Quite a shame really.  We’ll never know what he was fully capable of. 

2.  Joe Frazier vs Bob Foster

Bob Foster is one of the greatest Light Heavyweight champions of all time, and in any other era his attempts to with the heavyweight title would almost surely have ended in victory.  The problem is, he had to fight Frazier and Ali to do so.  The knockout against Frazier is notable in that the knockout comes directly from the power and effectiveness of Frazier’s favorite combination:  Left hook to the body and left hook to the head.  On a side note, Foster also fought Mike Quarry, Jerry Quarry’s brother. 

3.  Frazier vs Ellis

Hehe.  This is how you destroy a man…I think I already mentioned this one.

4.  Frazier vs. Ali I

The classic of all classics.  This is what happens when two men at the highest level fight until someone literally cracks.  Rightfully considered on of the greatest fights of all time, and I did say “fights”, not “heavyweight fights.  What I love about this fight, beyond just the particulars of how great a contest it is by history’s two most interesting fighters, is that it highlights just how bad the division is now.  When you watch these two, note the speed, punch output, the skills, the chins, you realize what a heavyweight fight has the potential to look like.   

5. Ali-Frazier III

This is the deepest one.  Two men who hated each other, past their prime, fighting for personal reasons…and a million bucks.  This ruined Ali and Frazier alike, and both of them came close to death.  I’ll spare explanation for a future post.  Watch it.

It is a common misconception that heavyweights are slow, plodding, thudding punchers who have little or no regard for defense because they are unable to move quickly or effectively due to their size.  This is true – for the crappy ones.    It’s sad that the general public of today regards as normal what is, in historical context, simply a lack of skills, conditioning, and general athleticism.  What generally has separated the best fighters of recent years from the rest of the pack is that they are performing on a level that meets the MINIMUM standard of excellence which would allow you to compete in some capacity in the Golden Era.  What most people today think of when they see a heavyweight fight is generally one of three things:

1.  Squishy, unconditioned athletes who are boxing because they can’t play football. 

2.  Marginally skilled guys who have little speed and even less dedication to boxing as a craft.

3.  The Klitschkos, who, I’m sorry, wouldn’t have done very well in the Golden Age in their present condition.  Perhaps the honing steel of better competition would have driven them to new heights, but taking apart a list of boxers who are old, fat, or mediocre hardly qualifies you as great. 

Now don’t get me wrong, there have been some great fighters in recent years.  Here they are: 

Mike Tyson:  Again, what a great heavyweight fighter “should” look like – fast, skilled, and deadly.  How do I think he would have competed in the golden era?  Well, it’s hard to say.  If Cus D’Amato would have lived another twenty years Tyson may very well have kept his head together.  One unavoidable reality about Tyson is that he lost  a step after about 5 or 6 rounds, and Frazier, Foreman, Ali, Norton, and several other guys would have almost certainly plumbed those depths.  I think all of them can beat a prime Tyson by weathering the initial storm.

Larry Holmes:   The most underrated fighter in history.  Larry Holmes is the quintessential example of a Golden Era fighter fighting the next generation.  Total, unmitigated dominance through handspeed, skills, power, and the thing most lacking today:  the will to compete.  Where did this all come from?  He was Ali’s sparring partner for years.  His fight with Norton is a classic from top to bottom, and a display of courage and desire which is basically never seen today by overpaid, underskilled fighters who want a paycheck.  Holmes was beaten by Tyson, but he was 38 and long past his prime.  And he almost made it past the first few rounds, through a gutty display of…skills and willpower.  Mark my words, a prime Holmes beats a prime Tyson any day of the week. 

Lennox Lewis: Lewis is one of only two heavyweights to defeat every man he ever faced in the ring.  Well, at least once.  The big Brit was actually Canadian, but he too was an Olympic gold medalist who brought speed, power and great skills to the ring.  What’s great about Lewis is that you clearly see a man who is head and shoulders above the rest of a dwindling era, but he still had a number of contenders worth fighting.  In the most famous fight of Vitali Klitschko’s career, he lost to a 38 year old Lennox Lewis who was terribly out of shape because he was originally going to fight a bum (Some say Vitali paid the guy off to step aside so he could get Lewis while he was out of shape), and Lewis turned his face into hamburger.  Vitali had a good first few rounds, but Lewis found a way to get through it and got the stoppage.  For the record, no matter what anyone says, Vitali was cracking at the end of that fight too…

Riddick Bowe:   Yeah, I know.  He sucked for a decent amount of his later career.  However, in his prime he showed all the heart, skills, and handspeed that you could ever want from a champion.  His three fights with Holyfield are the stuff of legend, but they ruined him as a fighter.  You know what the worst part about having a good chin is?  You are inclined to take too many good shots because you can…

Frank Bruno:  Only a brief champion, but he fought everybody and made a good show of it.  Plus, he’s ripped as hell.  He and Lennox Lewis fought the first all-Brit heavyweight title fight in something like a billion years.

Evander Holyfield:  The Real Deal.  This man could fight.  His only problem is that he was a bit small for the modern heavyweight division, but he always went after everyone, always gave it his best effort, and hell, he kicked Mike Tyson’s ass twice.  Granted the second one was because Tyson bit off his ear, but it was going to be the same fight as the first anyway.  That fight, incidentally, takes away from Tyson’s laurels in my book because you see exactly what happens when he got hurt or frustrated in the ring – Tyson quit.  That’s a recipe for disaster in the Golden Age.  And speaking of great fights, the Holyfield/Bowe Trilogy demonstrates that modern, epic heavyweight fights are still there to be watched.

Ike Ibeabuchi:  Never heard of him, huh?  This guys’ the sleeper in the bunch, and he was a goddamned monster.  Undefeated in his short career, he was well known for completely obliterating his opposition.  He probably would have been champion some day, and even defeated David Tua and Chris Byrd rather handily, the latter with an explosive bolo punch.  The only problem was that he was completely crazy.  No literally.  I won’t get into particulars, but let’s just say he was severely bipolar and deemed unfit to stand trial for beating the hell out of several women including his wife.  He’s in a mental institution somewhere, probably doped to the gills on tranquilizers and drooling his way through endless episodes of Antique Roadshow.

The Klitschko Brothers:  Hey, I give it up to them.  They are by far the best of the era, and unless things change, they will probably be fighting well into their fifties.  Or at least until they get bored.  Nobody can beat them, nobody will beat them, and until a new crop of heavyweights comes along, that’s the end of the story.  They worst part is, not only are they dominant, they are incredibly boring.  More than anything, that’s what’s killing the heavyweight division.  They refuse to engage in an exciting style that flattens their opponents.  Rather, they seem content to squeak through lopsided decision after lopsided decision, methodically controlling and picking at their opponents, with no more flash than a ladyfinger, and when they actually do get a knockout it’s never in exciting fashion.  Rather, it’s a run-of-the-mill punch that just happens to connect flush on an opponent who’s been done for the last seven rounds and they’ve been too lazy to take the f-ck out.  *Yawn* 

Listen, Thomas Hearns put it best.  He said that, regardless of how he feels, regardless of what happens to him in the ring, he has an obligation to entertain the crowd.  I’m not saying dance and blow kisses.  I mean, fight as hard as he can.  If he can take a guy out in one round, then by god it’s going to be an exciting one round.  This question, incidentally, came on the heels of being asked about losing the war with Marvin Hagler and if he thought it would have been different had {Hearns} not broken his right hand in round one.  Hearns simply responded that it didn’t matter if his hand was broken, he had an obligation to go out there and fight as well as he possibly could, and if that meant getting knocked out then the crowd got its money’s worth. 

Someone please staple this to new heavyweight fighters’ foreheads, please.

Now of those 37 fights, Frazier actually only lost to two men:  Ali and Foreman, each twice.  Everyone else he fought he beat, almost exclusively by a destructive knockout (27 KO’s).  Now during this era, the heavyweight division was so deep that all of the first and many of the second tier contenders were easily good enough to be champions today.  When he beat Ali to become the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world in 1971, he was without question the greatest fighter alive at that time, and already one of the best to ever live.  The Draw against one Jumbo Cummings is unremarkable.  Frazier had come back to the ring in 1981 after retiring in ’76.  Whatever.  Good times.  Of the four losses, several things need to be said.

The two against Foreman were more than just the inevitability of Frazier having to fight a man who was simply too big and too strong – Frazier almost exclusively fought bigger men by definition.  Joe Bugner was 6’4”, as tall as Foreman, and he beat him fairly easily.  Ali was 6’3”, and so was Bob Foster, and Frazier KO’d Foster within two rounds.  When one looks at the Foreman fights, as one should with any fighter, one must always look through the context of history.  Foreman isn’t just a big, powerful man in a sport of size and power.  Foreman is the big powerful man in the history of the sport.  He is in his own right a legend of the ring, and two-time heavyweight champion of the world, and this is over two separate careers separated by ten years.  If you want to see some destruction, watch virtually any Foreman fight from the first half of his career.  Literally, any of them.  I mean, we’re talking taking all the contenders from what is dubbed “the Golden Age of Heavyweight Boxing” and punching them around the ring as if they were made of Play-Doh.  Here are some examples of particularly egregious ass-whippings:

Foreman vs:

Chuck Wepner - TKO 3 (The Chuck Wepner on whom the Rocky movies are based, except Rocky is actually based on Joe Frazier injected into Chuck’s white-ass body…)

George Chuvalo – TKO 3 (Chuvalo was never knocked down despite fighting Foreman, Ali, Frazier, Terrell, Ellis, Bonavena, Patterson, and a whole host of other fighters)         

Joe Frazier I – TKO 2 (It’s not that fun to watch for me, but it happened)

Ken Norton – KO 2 (This is the dude who broke Ali’s jaw in the first fight and fought the greatest 15th round of all time against Larry Holmes.  He made it two rounds…)

Gerry Cooney – KO 2 (Definitely need to see this one.  Cooney is the guy who ended Norton’s career.  He fought Foreman when Foreman was f-king 41, and the KO is almost as brutal as Cooney’s KO of Norton.  I’ve never seen a guy freeze in mid air and go straight down like that)

Ron Lyle – KO 5 (Possibly one of the most entertaining fights of all time.  This is post Ali, and there are about 50 knockdowns on both sides.  The famous call is “Foreman goes down, Foreman is down, Foreman is…LYLE IS DOWN, LYLE’S IN TROUBLE, LYLE IS READY TO…FOREMAN IS DOWN! IT’S ALL…LYLE’S IN TROUBLE! LYLE’S READY TO GO!!)

and of course, 

Micheal Moorer - KO 10 (Foreman regains the heavyweight championship of the world with a late KO.  Age:  45.  When a pundit was asked if this was a greater achievement than Nicklaus winning the Masters at 46, he replied, “no one was hitting Nicklaus…) 

So you see, the man it took to beat Joe Frazier twice was a man who would go on to become one of the greatest heavyweight champions of all time, and himself an Olympic gold medalist.  I’m talking up there with Ali, Dempsey, Jack Johnson, Joe Lewis, Marciano, etc.  Probably the greatest big man of all time. 

And of course, the only other man to defeat Frazier was possibly the greatest Heavyweight of all time.  Muhammad Ali.  And Ali only beat him on the second try…

You’ve heard the phrase that “styles make fights.”  This is precisely what made the three Ali-Frazier fights the greatest trilogy of all time, in all divisions.  Frazier is the quintessential brawler, and Ali the quintessential boxer.  They both had skills on the highest level, they both won Olympic gold (Ali 60 Rome, Frazier 64 Tokyo, Foreman 68 in Mexico City)  and in 1971 they were both undefeated and had legitimate claims to the heavyweight championship of the world.  Ali was of course stripped 3 years earlier for failure to be inducted into the service, and Frazier had destroyed (I mean destroyed) Jimmy Ellis in a box off to determine the new champion.  In the end, Frazier proved too much for Ali, wearing him down until finally knocking him down in the 15^th with a famous long left hook.  Ali did absolutely everything he possibly could, and Frazier’s pressure was still too hot.  By the end, Ali’s jaw was grotesquely swollen, and the punch that actually knocked him down was so hard it would have probably killed anyone but an Ali. 

The second fight was not that great.  Neither man was champion, and though Ali won a decision it literally could have gone either way.  The third fight is, well, probably the most brutal fight in the history of the division.  Watch it.  By the end, Frazier’s eyes were so swollen that he couldn’t see, and Ali could barely stand up from pain and exhaustion.  Eddie Futch, Frazier’s trainer, stopped the fight in between the 14^th and 15^th rounds because Frazier was fighting blind and both guys were so gone that one of them would likely be killed.  Frazier actually wanted to keep fighting, which leads us to the final point I want to make.

Frazier was a fighter beyond a great fighter.  He had a few of those rare things that only a once or twice in a lifetime legends have if you’re lucky.  The only two men who ever beat him also had these things to varying degrees, and it’s why that division at that time is considered the greatest ever.

  The thing that defined Joe Frazier more than any single attribute was his will. All the coming forward, the pressure, the grinding power, all of that was nothing more than a reflection of a man who had greater force of will in the ring than perhaps any man who ever lived, and as it so happened Joe Frazier would be a fighter.  Yes, he had some great wins, but it is in his losses that Frazier actually shows the limitlessness of his greatness. 

In the first Foreman fight, Frazier was knocked down six times before the ref stopped the fight.  That’s right.  Usually a Foreman opponent got two before he was dead, and that was if he was lucky.  Frazier got knocked down six times and kept getting up until the ref had to stop it.  By the fourth or fifth one, Foreman began imploring the ref to stop the fight because, according to Foreman, “I knew, I just knew I was going to have to kill this guy to stop him.  If I knocked him down, he was going to keep getting up until I actually killed him.”  Think about that for a second.  Think of the courage and the will power it takes to get knocked down by a George Foreman, one of the hardest hitters in the history of the sport, and - forget about getting up a  second and third time -  what about the fifth? That as much as anything defines Frazier, who said of that loss “people say to me, ‘Man Joe, you got knocked down in that fight more times than any heavyweight in history!’  I say to them, ‘yeah, but I got up more times than any of ‘em ever did too.”

Wow.

Now regarding the fights with Ali.  I’m willing to discount the second one for two reasons.  The first is that it really was that close.  The second will become clear.  In the third fight, both men took more punishment that almost anyone ever has.  The only reason Ali won that fight is because Frazier’s trainer literally wouldn’t let his man walk out into the boxing ring completely blind.  You hear that?  Frazier was going to walk into the 15^th round to fight one of the greatest fighters of all time completely blind.   But if you watch the tape, it looks as though Frazier could still see out of his left eye.  So why did Futch stop the fight? Because he knew something that only Frazier and he knew at the time.

Frazier was blind in his left eye.

At some point in his career after the first Ali fight Frazier developed a cataract in his left eye that made him effectively blind in that eye.  He and Futch hid this fact from the boxing commission for years until well after he had retired.  In fact, his eye was gone by the time he fought Ali the second time, and by the third fight with Ali it was completely done. 

Think about that for a second.  He fought Ali twice with one eye, which makes it very, very difficult to judge depth – kind of important in a boxing, and Ali barely squeaked by both times.  Personally, I believe that, had Frazier had two good eyes in the second and particularly the third fight, he would have probably beaten Ali both times.  Almost without question he would have outlasted Ali and probably killed him in the third fight, but we will thankfully never know.  Ali himself said after that fight, in a moment of deference and humility amidst years of racial and personal abuse he heaped upon Frazier, that Joe Frazier could have beaten anyone in the world that night next to himself, and maintained for the rest of his career that Frazier was the toughest man he ever fought. 

As for the second Foreman fight, it likely would have turned out the same was as the first, although Frazier did markedly better until a special contact lens he had put in to help with the fight was knocked out.

So there you have it.  Joe Frazier – legend.  One of the greatest fighters of his generation and of all time.  The man who fought George Foreman and Muhammad Ali blind in one eye.  A great heavyweight champion, finally passing out of the realm of blood and pain.  We’re all going to miss you Joe.  You gave us everything and asked nothing in return.

The great tragedy of his career is not in his losses or his bad blood with Ali.  The great shame is that he never truly got the recognition he deserved because of the shadow of Ali.  Right now in Philadelphia, there is a statue of Rocky Balboa in front of the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum where Stallone ran in the movie’s most iconic scene.  There is no statue of Joe Frazier anywhere in the city.  But it’s not Stallone who ran those steps for real, it was Joe Frazier who literally jogged up and down them to train for the great fights he gave us.  It wasn’t Rocky who pounded away on carcasses, but Joe Frazier, when he worked in a slaughter house to make ends meet.  Ironically, the namesake who gave so much inspiration to Joe Frazier at the beginning of his life is the same as the one who stole his fame towards the end

If history has taught us anything, it’s that death has a funny way of beatifying.  We can finally take full stock of the man, and in this reflection we find more than we ever imagined.  .  Perhaps our country wants white heroes or movie stars, but for me, I’m talking the real McCoy.  This hero is no myth or story, this hero is real.  A great man, a great fighter, a legend.

Don’t believe me?  Go back through this post and see how many other legends I had to name just to describe him. 

Give Frazier his statue.  We need our kids to see it and ask us who he was.

It was said by the great Archie Moore that Joe Frazier is the only man to imitate the style of Henry Armstrong.  What the hell does that mean?  Most people don’t even know who Henry Armstrong is.  Well, to understand this is to understand how to use your natural physiology to turn a disadvantage into an advantage in the ring.  As I said, Frazier was a comparatively short, stocky man for a heavyweight.  He routinely gave up three or four inches in height and more than a few lbs in weight as a result.  Unable to jab on the outside because of his shorter reach (which, incidentally, was shortened even more when his famous left hand was permanently crooked after an accident as a teenager), and always having to punch up at his opponents, Frazier molded his style on three main principles:

1.  If you can’t stay outside, come forward.  Constantly.  This meant that, if he was going to make it, he was going to have to be able to condition himself to wade through punches and constantly pressure his opponents by cutting off the ring to get inside on their chest so he could go to work.  It is an amazing thing to watch a Frazier fight with this in mind.  Watch his initial title fight against Jimmy Ellis, another Angelo Dundee fighter and a great boxer in his own right.  Frazier literally never takes a step back.  Moreover, he is constantly in Ellis’s chest, grinding away, never giving him a break or a breather, forcing him to fight Frazier’s fight by sheer force of will.  To fight Smokin’ Joe was to know that he would dictate the pace.  It was already decided.  That is a HUGE psychological advantage, because going in Frazier’s opponents already knew they were out of control.  Worse than that, to keep him off of you your only option was to fight by moving backwards, lest you recklessly decide to stand in and trade.  (The track record of fighters who made this misguided decision is, well…disappointing) I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to throw punches while stepping backward, but it’s about the most anti-physiology thing you can do.  Most of a boxer’s power comes not from his arms but from the leverage of his legs moving all his weight forward as the punch is thrown.  You can’t do that moving backwards.  All you can throw are arm punches, which have basically no power and as a result are completely ineffective.            

2.    If you’re too short to punch over your opponent’s gloves, make him drop them.  There’s two ways to do this, and Frazier did both brilliantly.   The first is simple.  Go to the body.  Frazier was a murderous body puncher.  Absolutely destructive.  It is said that Joe Frazier’s left hand was responsible for more damaged livers and kidneys than any other punch in boxing, and to take a Frazier left hand to the midsection was to be pissing blood for a week.  Ask Ali.  After the third Frazier fight, his doctor Ferdie Pacheco said that he helped Ali strip off his trunks and kidney pads to look him over.  Apparently, invisible to the crowd, were two giant hematomas on the soft tissue below his ribs from Frazier’s body punishment.  That fight was the beginning of the breakdown of Ali’s kidneys over the next 10 years.  The other organ in that area, the liver, is inconveniently located on the lower right side of the body under two or three dangling ribs which are not connected to the sternum.  In recent years the so-called “liver shot” KO has received national attention, as it is the one true body blow that can, with a single well-placed shot, end a fight.  This shot is often, but not exclusively, accompanied by several broken ribs, but that’s merely incidental.  The liver is a very delicate organ, and severe trauma is EXCRUCIATINGLY PAINFUL due to the blood vessels, bile, and the fact that it’s pretty soft.  Some examples:  Hatton-Castillo: 4 ribs, Roy Jones Jr. – Virgil Hill:  2 ribs, Hopkins-DeLaHoya, Ward-Gatti I, rd. 9 (watch this whole fight by the way - one of the greatest ever.), Lewis vs. Schmelling II: no broken ribs, but Schmelling is doubled over like a Jacob’s ladder before being pounded into the canvas like a fence post.  The list goes on and on.  I’ll cut it off, but in regards to Frazier consider the following.  His left hook is the stuff of legend, and I’ll talk about it soon.  Trust me.  But of all the fighters to have a powerful left hook, I can imagine nothing more frightening that a short bulldog of a fighter built like a fire plug who’s body is perfectly made for the task of wading into your chest and delivering a physiologically ideally leveraged punch directly into your liver over, and over, and over… 

Now the second part of all this is what Moore was referencing when he said Frazier was the only man to imitate the style of Henry Armstrong.  Armstrong was a lower weight fighter who peaked at welterweight (147), and fought approximately 175 times from ’31-’45.  He won 150 of them, and at one time held world titles in 3 divisions simultaneously when there were no in-between divisions and only one belt.  He should have won the forth but he got a draw nobody thought was a draw.  Anyway, Armstrong is generally ranked somewhere between 4-2 on the list of greatest fighters of  all time, usually second behind the great Sugar Ray Robinson.  What is unique about Armstrong’s style is that he made exceptional use of the duck in defense.  Now generally the duck is used far less that a slip (slightly moving side to side to avoid punches), blocking, or stepping away, because ducking takes far more energy, time, and motion.  So why did Armstrong do this?  Simple.  When a fighter ducks, you have to punch down to hit him.  That takes your hands away from your face.  That’s when you walked into a f-cking windmill of punches aimed at your head when your hands were down.

Frazier was perfectly built for this.  As he moved forward, Frazier was constantly ducking and weaving to avoid the varied assortment of blows that his desperate opponents would fling in his direction to slow him and keep him off of them.  When you watch a Frazier fight, particularly the first Ali fight, it’s clear.  Why did he have to get inside?  He was too damn short.  What’s the solution?  Get even shorter.  Now his opponents are desperately trying to fend of a target that’s often coming in at the level of their belly button and well inside the range of their punches.  So what happens when they throw a right hand straight down at Frazier?

3.  The left f-king hand.  Oh my god.  There have certainly been many people who hit harder than Frazier – Shavers, Tyson, Foreman, Liston – but these guys did business by overwhelming an opponent with only semi-controlled power.  The danger and destruction of Joe Frazier is the same kind of thing we’d see 20 years later from the right hand of Thomas Hearns.  Not only was his left hand strong, but it was accurate.  Accuracy scores points.  Power scores knockdowns.  Both of those things together are terrifying. 

 Frazier had many, many ways of delivering the left hand, and almost none of them were jabs.  Why?  Because a buzz saw only works if you get it on a board.  Everything about Frazier was about getting inside and firing the shotgun point blank where it was a sure thing.  As soon as that bell rang, here’s what happened:  Duck, step, duck, step, BOOM.  Repeat.  Now what if you refused to cooperate and kept your hands high?  So much the better.  Frazier would walk inside anyway and deliver the left hand to the body until you couldn’t take it any more and dropped to protect your body.  Now you’re even worse off than you were before, because that left hand is going upstairs and your body hurts to much to do anything about it.  Plus you’re going to be urinating pure blood for a month.  The best combination in boxing according to Joe Frazier?  Left hook to the body, left hook to the head. 

Now one of the things I find most appealing about Joe Frazier is that he also had what is known as a ”long left hook”.  This is the punch that floored Ali in the 15th in Ali/Frazier I.  This punch is comparatively rare in boxing for several reasons.  First, a hook derives its power from the fact that it is thrown tightly and compactly up close so it strikes perpendicular to your opponent’s chin.  (The chin is the perfect knockout punch because the jaw is a loose bone, and a perfect shot to the chin not only spins the head around but the vibrations from the shot rattle the jawbone and as a result the brain.)  The left hook capitalized off the tight leveraging of torque generated by rotation of the torso and front leg, so the farther back you go the less power you generally have.  Worse than that, the punch has to travel farther and tends to loop, which makes it much easier to avoid and leaves you open for straight counters down the middle.  Ordinarily, throwing this kind of punch against a straight, crisp puncher is a perfectly lovely way to get knocked the f-ck out.

Not for Frazier.  Again, physiology is everything here.  Frazier carried most of his power in his legs due to his stocky build.  By crouching down to duck, Frazier was essentially coiling a giant spring.  Then, when you followed him down with a punch, he would simultaneously rise up with all that power in his legs and deliver a murderous left hook that would travel the full length of his arm, connecting with deadly accuracy to your vulnerable chin.  (Are you starting to get a sense of why this man was so dangerous?  Everything about his style and body naturally contributed to your destruction.  Even while defending with the duck,  the defense which traditionally lends itself least to offense, he was actually loading up the left with the maximum possible power.  Terrifying)  I’ve never seen it, but according to many sources a Joe Frazier left hook was fully capable of lifting a 150 lb. heavy bag up high enough to dislodge it from the chains.

Now what all this adds up to:  The relentless pressure, the defense, and the powerful left hand, was a fight pattern that would repeat itself with grim determinism against every opponent he faced.  Frazier would walk out, bobbing and weaving, straight into your chest.  He would begin firing those deadly left hooks and right hands at you from all angles until the ref broke up the clinch, at which point Frazier would tap his gloves as if to say “here it comes again, boy” and go right back to business.   The pressure must have been immense.  Imagine having to fight a short, fire hydrantof a man with the skills and reflexes of an Olympic gold medalist, the speed of a welterweight, and hitting you with gloves that felt like they were filled with old locks and frozen meat, inconveniently forcing you to fight in a space no bigger than a phone booth.  At this distance he has all the advantages and you have none. The range has taken away all your power, negated all the boxing skills you developed in the gym, and on top of that he’s conditioned like a racehorse and has a chin like a cold war bunker.  You get no breaks save the one minute between rounds, no time to think, no time to feel him out, and all the while he’s raining down a varied and diverse assortment of the most painful body and head shots you’ve ever experienced.  Shots that break bones and alter speech patterns.  Any punches you are able to throw when you mercifully get a little space are going to be singular events with no hope of follow up, and even then you’re going to be fighting off your heels and throwing punches with no power.  “Smokin’” was the perfect nickname for it, because it must have felt exactly like trying to stop a slowly advancing freight train by pummeling it with a rolled up newspaper.  Eventually you’re going to end up with your back against the wall, and it’s going to run you over.

Watching this fight is like watching a tree get chopped down with a blunt sledgehammer.  Rarely do you see someone take such a sustained and powerful assault in the ring.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V06uSWDRhvk

 - To Ali, shortly before Ali/Frazier I

To see the present Frazier bought for Ali, click below and look for :27.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLWYnTFz9PE

His total commitment to his sport manifested itself not only in his successes in the ring, but in the way he fought.  A comparatively small man for a heavyweight, much less a champion, Frazier was only 5’11 1/2” in an era which saw a Foreman at 6’4” and Ali at 6’3” and each well over 200 lbs, Frazier became a rare fighter with a rare technique.  He is one of the rare fighters who never took a step back, never quit, never overlooked an opponent, and brought best effort to every single exchange.  I’m reminded of a story I heard about another Joe, Joe DiMaggio when he was at the tail end of his career in the 50′s.  Joe hit a routine grounder to third and ran it out all the way to first.  On the way back to the dugout, a teammate stopped him and asked, “Hey Joe, why are you running those out?  You don’t have to prove anything anymore”  Joe replied, “There’s some kid up in those stands who’s only going to see me play just this once.  He’s going to see Joe DiMaggio run that grounder out.” 

They just don’t come like that very often.

Joe grew up in South Carolina to a bootlegger father.  Desperately poor, his early life is literally the stuff of Americana.  He worked on a corn farm in the poor south in the 50′s, and every now and again his father made liquor out of the corn they harvested to sell for extra money.  Fight night in the Frazier household was the highlight of the week, and as the Fraziers had the only black and white TV any of the other black farmers had any hope of watching, that’s where the party was.

This is where Frazier’s life changed forever.  The 50′s was a high time for boxing, and another small man, Rocky Marciano, dominated the heavyweight division.  Joe and Rocky had many things in common:  both were under 6 ft tall, and both had a powerful punch.  For Joe the left, although he didn’t’ know it yet, and for the Rock, of course, the Suzie-Q right hand.  But something else about the Rock’s style in the ring must have made an impact on Frazier as well.  Relentlessness.  Relentlessness in the face of adversity.  Rocky Marciano was beloved not only as a great champion, but for his indominable will in the ring.  No matter what, he kept coming forward.  Look to fights like those against Ezzard Charles and Jersey Joe Walcott, and you see a Marciano who continued on past the point of sanity to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.  Well behind on points against Walcott, he knocked an in-control Joe out with perhaps the hardest punch ever landed in the ring to score a late KO.  For all I know Walcott is still dangling off that ring rope by his left arm like a wet towel.  Against Charles, we see Marciano’s nose torn wide open in an unusual cut -  split from bottom to top along the nostril so much so that a one can see space between the cut a full inch up his nose.  And yet, the result was the same:  W Marciano:  KO.

That’s the lesson a young, poor black boy in South Carolina learns from the likes of Marciano and DiMaggio.  No matter where you come from,  if you take it all the way, never lack in courage, always accept the challenge with your best effort, you might just get out of there.  So often in life we find ourselves facing fights from grounds we cannot possibly hope to hold.  Race, poverty, the wealth and connections of others - all of these things conspire to beat down the unfortunate despite his efforts.  This is the great and magical offering of the sporting field.  Though the odds are long, when you step into that ring on onto that field, for one brief moment you alone control your destiny.  The value of your skills and hard work will be tested – you have a true chance. 

This lesson took Joe Frazier from Beufort, SC, to Philadelphia, four times to the national Golden Gloves title, all the way to Tokyo in ’64 and Olympic Gold, and finally to the pinnacle of sporting achievement:  The heavyweight championship of the world.  For a black man in the 60′s, that’s even better than President.  It was less painful and it paid better.

That’s why our heroes have so much responsibility, and why PED’s and loaded gloves are such a travesty against humanity.  Sure, Barry Bonds hit 762 home runs, but he did so by cheating.  He took that chance at redemption for another poor sharecropper’s son or bootlegger’s nephew and sacrificed it on the alter of his own ego.  It destroys the example of the common man and the dream that you can have your chance to grab that ball and show the world you can pitch.  In a world of rich and poor, black and white, first and third world, these cheaters destroy the only sanctified symbol of the value of individual worth:  The level playing field. 

Those like Babe Ruth who acheive greatness on this level playing field become icons.  If this person is also a great human being, the icon become a hero.   It’s why, for me, the Jack Nicklaus will always stand above the Tiger Woods regardless of any final career numbers.  They are the total package – the great knights in sports.  We cherish them because when the great sportsman is is also the great man, he reminds us not just of what can be done, but to remember to look for those things in ourselves. 

Joe Frazier is one of those.

For the rest of the story, check out parts 2 and 3.

Newt F-king Gingrich.

That’s right.  I said it.  He sounded like an old guy who doesn’t want to fart around any more with lying about and ignoring  the realities of governance.  Plus, compared to Rick Perry, Ron Paul (seriously, most of this man’s ideas are crap.  I’ll take all-comers on that one), and Michele “If you say Obama enough you’re bound to get some mindless fools to vote for you” Bachmann, Gingrich actually had some reasonable and common sense thinking about the issues.  Besides, he also had the stones to tell a bunch of people in Nevada that according to scientists Yucca Mountain is apparently the best site in the US to store nuclear waste. (cue populist responses about states rights and whatever from the other candidates looking to cash in on a denial of reality)  I give Newt full on balls-up credit for being the first Republican to EVER use the word “scientist” in reference to a substantiation of facts in the history of the spoken word.

And don’t get me wrong, I heard a lot of stuff on that panel that I thought was totally ridiculous nonsense.  Things like, “Let’s build a double-walled fence all the way across the border with lights and cameras and s-t.”  Are you actually serious?  Really… come on.  Listen, I don’t know much, but I do know this:  The Great Wall of China was designed to keep Mongols out of China.  Hadrian’s Wall was designed to keep Scots out of England.  The Berlin Wall was designed to keep East Germans out of West Germany.  The Walls of Jericho were designed to keep Jews out of Jericho, and my fence is designed to keep people from throwing s-t in my yard.  All of these walls have failed.  Catastrophically.  Generally with severe social implications.  Hell, arguably the most successful walls ever built were the Walls of Troy, and eventually the Greeks built a giant wooden horse and wandered on in anyway.  Mark my words:  There is no fortification ever built in the history of the universe that wasn’t beatable with a combination of willpower and time.  None. And if there’s one thing that people (that’s right, I called illegal immigrants ’people’) coming here illegally have, it’s willpower and time.   Even if we spend the next 15 years building a giant fiscal black hole of a wall, with all the trappings of 21st century cutting edge technology, eventually immigrants will defeat it with a technology from the dawn of human civilization:  tunnel underneath it, set fire to the supports, collapse it into a sinkhole, and come spilling through like a broken dam.

Now tickled as I am that we had a Republican debate in which the words “abortion” and “gay marriage” didn’t really come up, what did come up was the debt and fiscal responsibility.  As one would hope.  Personally I found the argument about taxes fascinating.  My favorite quote was Bitchele Mockman’s “Everybody should pay something even if it’s a dollar.”  Boy that s-t sounds good, doesn’t it?  Everyone should pay something, and we all hate people who get something for nothing, don’t we?

Except that we’re only talking about INCOME taxes…  Poor people pay plenty of taxes.  Lots.  Gas tax for starters.  That’s a lot.  Also, sales tax.  Sure it’s a state tax, but in case you haven’t noticed, that’s a hell of a lot.  Then there’s Social Security Tax, Medicaid, property taxes, gas tax, school levys, bonds, all that s-t.  Frankly, income tax is about the only tax they don’t pay because THEY DON’T MAKE ANY MONEY. That’s like bitching at people who avoid gas taxes by riding a bike.  Besides, think about collecting $1 for 120 million people.  First off, if they e-file you’re already down to $0.65.  Secondly, if they simply refuse to pay it will cost you at least $5 of effort to track them down and you’d lose all that cash for the effort.  Look, the bottom line is, when you break down Michele Bachmann’s tax policies you come up with:

1.  Make a flat tax which in effect gives rich people a massive tax cut

2.  Tax the s-t out of the poor.

3.  Get rid of immigrants. (who incidentally pay social security, medicaid, and payroll taxes despite never taking advantage of SS or medicaid, or the Bill of Rights)

Awesome.  And do keep in mind this is a woman who, barely five minutes later, was giving an emotional pep-talk to poor single mothers about how she supports them and they need to “hang in there” in tough economic times.  Yeah, good job Michele.  They’re going to need all the faith in the world when President Fem-Skeletor is sucking their boobs dry for federal sustenance while their babies go without.  That right there is the kind of idiotic thinking that can only come from a Fundamentalist.

Now again I have to give credit where it’s due.  Hermann Cain.  9-9-9.  An actual tangible proposal.  Granted, having concrete ideas is usually the kiss of death at this stage of a Presidential bid, but whatever.  Now of all my personal criticisma of 9-9-9, of all the stuff I heard in the debate, the dumbest thing I heard BAR NONE came from the mouth which sits beneath the perfectly quaffed hair of Mitt Romney.  His response to Hermann Cain’s statement that the federal sales taxes are in addition to state sales taxes:

Mitt:  I’m going to be getting a bushel basket full of apples and oranges because I’m going to be paying both taxes, and the people of the state of Nevada don’t want to pay both taxes. ”

Well, duh.  Nobody wants to pay taxes.  That’s the point.  Cain’s going to drop their income taxes off like a lemming diving into the sea, and all Romney wants to talk about is paying a bit more in Sales Tax.  A) what a whiner, and B) for a bunch of people bitching about how income taxes are unfair, what better way to level the playing field that through sales tax?  If you have lots of money and buy lots of stuff, you pay more taxes.  If you have less cash and buy less, you pay less taxes.  Everybody pays proportionally.  Personally, that sounds pretty good to me, and everyone except Sarah palin will be paying less income tax than they ever have.  Oh, and here’s Romney’s plan by the way:

Romney: Nerf nerf nrfnr frnfrnefrfenerrrr…..(big smile, perfect hair)

I do have to give Romney credit though, he did call Rick Perry out on his s-t about illegal immigration.  Poor Rick.  He’s the only guy in the world who seems to understand that stopping illegal immigrants from coming here is not only impossible, but our economy needs them.  Texas needs them.  That’s why he’s perceived as soft – when you have to actually govern reality has a funny way of tempering polarized ideology.  How else do you think goods stay internationally competitive and dirt cheap for the rest of us?  Let’s not kid ourselves.  If you like cheap fruit, vegetables, and having your lawn watered and houses built on the cheap, you are pro illegal immigration.  Bitch all you want about the free market and unfair labor practices, if Americans wanted those jobs they could have them provided they are willing to work at competitive wages.  And as Milton Friedman said, “People vote with their feet.”  I see lots of people walking into this country to work, not one of you leaving for opportunities abroad, and yet everyone seems to be able to afford a Big Mac and cheap Wal-Mart corn on the cob.  Have cake, eat too.

I guess in closing, I’d like to say that the most hilarius thing I saw all night was the pervasive belief that the solution to big corporations making tons of money on the backs of unbenefitted slave wages and deregulated industries engaging in dangerous fiscal practices in order to make a quick buck before everything collapses…

is tax cuts for the rich and deregulating businesses.  The same s-t that got us here in the first place.  Now I’ve heard trickle-down economics change monikers to things like “the free market” and “deregulation” the same way Creationism is now “intelligent design”.  If you listen to Clinton back in 92, trickle-down economics was a joke, and I’d further suggest to you that Bill Clinton was one of the most economically successful presidents in the last fifty years.  Hell, in 96 he ran on the platform of “I kick ass at running economies.”  I don’t know much, but if you run on that you will win every time.  That’s why we were all able to waste 2000 on things like abortion and gay marriage – the biggest issue in front of our country’s face was how to swallow a big presidential dick.

Now it’s true that slashing regulations and corporate taxes will create many, many jobs, but stop and think about what kind of jobs will be created by unregulated corporate machines who are free to suck every last penny of profit out of an ununionized workforce.

tick – tock -tick – tock -  oh…shit.

That’s right.  That kind of economy doesn’t create GOOD jobs, it creates s-t go-nowhere jobs that leaves citizens working in the same conditions as the poor Chinese who work 18 hr days in factories and get paid just enough cash to buy a cubical in the ass district of Beijing and will never be able to improve their lot.  Yes lots of people will have jobs, but they will be permanently relegated to a slave class in a highly stratified society.  Massive deregulation doesn’t create reasonable wages.  It creates a dramatically more stratified society, and if you don’t believe me then go read Milton Friedman’s work where he espouses exactly this kind of system and says we ought to eliminate the minimum wage and workers should to be thankful to have a s-t job because objectively it’s better than no job.  That’s a HORRIBLE attitude to take…unless you run the company.

And now the Republicans are right back to it except even worse this time.  Instead of talking about 35% or 40% taxes on the rich, they’re bitching about how anything more than 9% is social injustice.  Except for Ron Paul who pretty much stands up there and actually says that he doesn’t think our Congressmen should be doing anything.  How f-ked up is that?  Ron Paul is running for president on the platform of “Elect me to do a job I don’t believe should exists so I can figure out how to do as little as possible.”  Look dude, I expect my politicians to age 4 years for every one of mine, even if it’s just by looking worried all the time.  I want my politicians to drink Maalox from the bottle and chain smoke themselves until they look like a strip of cured pork belly in a neck tie because of all the s-t they stress over trying to do their job the best they possibly can.  And you want me to elect you on a platform of occupying a chair simply so some other motivated person can’t sit there and actually do anything?  Kiss my white ass Ron.

I guess the writing was on the wall for all this.  When you frame a panel of candidates with the two pillars of Rick Santorum and Michele Bachman, whatever’s the middle is probably just variations on a s-t sandwich.  Oh, and Rick Santorum actually did OK too, oddly enough.  Mostly because all he did is openly point out how everyone else is blatantly lying or, like Mitt Romney, editing later editions of their books to make it look like they never wanted the health care initiative.  Hey, I’m frankly disgusted that Mitt Romney, who clearly helped to put the bill together and did something very similar in his own state, is backing off of it now.  Popular or not, you’d think he could easily point to how much people in his state actually like it and that he’s proud of the work he did in Massachusetts.  Seriously, what the f-k’s wrong with wanting socialized health care anyway?  Socialist policies aren’t all bad, many of them are good.  We have socialized roads, parks, public buildings, fire departments, police, etc.  Hell, we even have socialize justice for christ sakes.  What you don’t think our judges get paychecks?  What’s sick, is that if people would just get over the idea of the word “socialized”, we could probably have passed a law that was much simpler and reasonable because we wouldn’t have had to bitch and argue about specifics so much.

Anyway, I’m going to end it here, but I highly recommend getting on Youtube and checking out the debate even if you are a liberal.  Every once in a while someone says something that’s worthy of reasonable consideration and strutiny.  That’s what makes this all interesting.  The possibility of new ideas.