How I find my Zen.

I love motorcyles. That's it, that's the perfect sentance. No more needs to be said. I should end this right now while it's still perfect. I don't think you win pulitizers for three word stories so I'll continue. Motorcycles are everything which are right and good in the world.

I look at a bike and I see sex. It's sleek, daring, growling and begging for adventure. It's everything that attracts me to bad women. Just like women, there's hardly a bike I wouldn't want to own or ride at least once. Ok, that was a little joke but it illustrates my point. Honestly though, you can make some comparisons. Bikes can be dangerous. Women can definitely be dangerous. You can treat both well, you can baby them, spend too much on them, devote your life too them, but one bad slip can leave you heartbroken or dead. Both can fill a void in your soul like nothing else can. Be without a good woman or lose one and a darkness will creep into your life that you can not lift unless she returns. Be without a bike too long and you'll gaze longingly at every bike that passes you on the road. Worse yet is when there's a beautiful woman on the back of that bike. Your only response is to sigh and wonder where you went wrong.

Bikes can heal. Whenever there is a bad spot in my life, my bike has been there for me. When a trusted employee, a girl I treated like my daughter, stole from my business and left me hurt and unsure, I went camping on my bike. The long ride and nights by the fire helped me to gain perspective. The Irish whiskey and PBRs had a different but still helpful effect as well.

When my wander lust became too much to bear, my bike took me through an 8000 mile ride through Mexico. Long rides in the desert cleared my thoughts. Technical riding in the twisties of the mountains forced me to focus until my instincts took over. My bike was an ambassador to the local people. Where are you from? How big is your bike? Is it fast? How do you like Mexico? These were the questions we were asked every time we got off our bikes. My bike introduced me to the Mexican people in a way I could not have done alone. (check out my blog from my ride, Motolocogringo)

Something happens on a very long ride that I can't find anywhere else. When riding your left with your own thoughts. You may have an ipod filling your head with 80s New Wave or ACDC but you can only focus on music for so long. Sooner or later your mind takes over and thoughts creep in. There doesn't seem to be reason, method or sequence they just come. On long rides virtually every thought, conversation or experience you've ever had enters your head. It's uncontrollable. Sometimes I'll smile when I think about my daughter playing in the rain when she was three. Other times I may feel shame over something I said unfairly to a girl in high school. Problems with work or relationships get mulled over time and time again until a solution works itself out, usually with me realizing I've been a slave to my ego and I should just let it go.
Thought after thought after thought come and go like subway cars in New York or like bad politicians in Detroit. The thoughts keep coming and you continue to solve problems until finally, you've solved every problem, you've seen every face in your data bank and have rehashed every conversation you've ever had a dozen times over, until there's nothing. Nothing else comes. Not the last argument you had with your wife, not global warning or your favorite boots your old dog chewed up five years ago, nothing. That's when you've done it. You're now part of the machine. The bike is a part of you. Fifty miles have dropped off and you realize you've been smiling for every one. This is my Zen. Some people find this place in different ways. But this is mine. I need this. I need this every so often like a computer needs to reboot when running slowly. I need to reboot.

Yes, I love motorcycles. I know they may one day kill me. But I'd die a slower and unhappier death without them. Watch for me on the roads. If one day I pass you with a wide grin on my mug, don't honk at me to grab my attention. Let me go. Leave me to that space in my mind that I can only find while riding my bike.

ends justify the means, part I

(Note: this piece will have several posts, this is part I

Republicans aren't bad people. The Republican party is a bad party. Seriously, the vast majority of Republicans are great people who love their country and contribute in some way to it's health. They work, raise families and are passionate about what they believe in. You won't find me saying what they believe in is necessarily bad. Much of the time it's a difference in opinion. The main thing wrong with individual Republicans is they have no spine. They have no guts or courage to stand up to those in their own party who corrupt, lie and cheat to further an agenda which is now so far to the right, Eisenhower would be considered an extreme liberal. Hell, by today's standards, Reagan would be a left center Democrat. The main thing wrong with Republicans as a party is they too, have no spine.

The Republican party is morally bankrupt and have been for at least 50 years. Your average Republican has stood by as bit by bit their souls, the part of you which knows right from wrong has been picked apart and devoured by those within the party who live by the motto "the ends justify the means". Or in other words, we will do whatever it takes to remain in power. We will oppose those things we know are in the best interest of our country as longs as we get reelected. We will lie, we will slander, we will oppress whole classes of people, we will wage war, we will terrify our own people, we will empower the rich at the expense of the working class and we will punish the poor, we will sell our souls to the devil because we know that once in power we will be able to shape this country and this world into our own choosing. This is what the Republican party does. The average Republican stands quiet and says nothing.

I use 50 years because this is the approximate date of the fight for the Civil Rights Act. Many could argue that their sins go much further back but I use this date because I believe it ties itself to the modern era of the GOP and to the current party. The Civil Rights Act and the movement which bears it's name, divided the country like no other issue since the civil war. The premise is simple, the no man should be denied equal rights and protections under the law for any reason, race included. This seems simple enough. It seems to be the honorable, humane way a country with the highest ideals should treat it's people, except the GOP didn't think so.

At the time of the Civil rights movement the South was a staunchly Democratic region. Poor white people in the South had always chosen the party that fought for them. This did not sit well with the GOP. They knew they were in trouble because blacks were flooding the Democratic party with new voters by the millions. Sinister elements in the GOP had an idea, "what if we could scare all them white folk in the South, by baiting them incessantly with race? We'll tell em' how scary black people are and remind them that black people vote Democratic". This was called the "Southern Strategy". This is not rumor or theory or urban legend, it is fact http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy. It is fact based upon Nixon appointees and their own accounts. From that moment on, the ugliest elements within the GOP have relentlessly pursued the "Southern Strategy" with great success. Today the South is the only real power base the GOP has left. Any normal person would find this to be abhorrent. I find it vile. But what about the average Republican? Have they stood up and said that this strategy is immoral? Maybe one or two, but as a whole they are silent. Remember, with the GOP, "the ends, justify the means".

The evil of Nixon couldn't be hidden for long. Evil like that is hard to hide, though many of those involved with the formulation of the "Southern Strategy" moved on into all the subsequent GOP administrations to include the former Vice President Dick (Sith Lord) Cheney.

Every single chance ever since the GOP has used race as a lever to divide our country along racial lines.

Era by era, GOP prez by GOP prez there are examples; Nixon, whose administration devised the Southern Plan. Reagan in large part rode into power on the wave of the Southern Strategy. George HW Bush used a convicted murderer, Willie Horton who was furloughed by Massachussetts' Governor Micheal Dukakis' administration, and later went on to rape a white woman, like a racial battle bugle to get elected to the White House. The bugle notes were clear, "Don't elect Mike Dukakis, he'll let other scary negros out of prison to rape your white women". Apologists will argue the campaign was about crime. Horseshit, it was about continually beating the race drum until white America was terrified of it's black neighbors. Katrina, wasn't George W Bush's fault. The aftermath was. Again, apologists can make up excuses and if were not a half century of calculated use of race you could almost give him a pass. Now, there is Shirley Sherrod, an honest and noble black woman who has been the victim of a lifetime of racism. She did not let that hate into heart though you could understand if she did. Her life was forever transformed because of a "the ends justifies the means" punk by the name of Adam Breitbart. He along with the assistance of Fox news followed by the rest of the brain dead national media, slandered this woman.

Additionally, the "Immigration debate" is just another way for rousing the ire of the same constituents the GOP uses in it's Southern Strategy. I find this particularly stupid considering that Hispanics will soon (if not already) make up the largest ethnic group in the U.S. Combined with all the other ethnic groups, they will be the majority in 20-40 years. This does not bode well for the GOP. In their defense, they will search and search until they find a way to divide Americans again just so Republicans can attain power.

To pretend for one moment that the GOP is not racist is to admit one of two things; 1. that you are ignorant or 2. that you are stupid.

This is not the point of this article. The point of this article is to highlight the apathy of the individual Republican. Like I stated at the beginning of this piece, most Republicans are good people, but their silence in the affairs of their party are damning in the same way people of regimes throughout history were silenced when their party terrorized or mistreated citizens of their own country. When, you Joe Republican do not stand up to your party or the media members acting on behalf of your party you are complicit just the same. When you sell your soul because you really wanted that tax break so you could upgrade your BMW from a 5 series to a 7, or when Joe Six Pack blindly follows the race baiting at the expense of his own well being, then you too are guilty. In the Republican party "the ends justify the means".

In part II, I'll outline more disturbing actions and policies the GOP has used, from war, slander, terrorizing it's own people to the assault on science and intellectualism all in an effort to remain in power.




(Reagan era, black poverty levels rose, do research. Bush, war on Iraq, dumbing of the GOP, attacks on science and smart folk. Current, racist attacks on Obama, tea party, sherrod, leadership silent while rabid rw attack dogs, defame)

more on the Southern Strategy; http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/13/AR2005071302342.html,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Atwater

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,399921,00.html

http://freepress.org/columns/display/3/2004/912

Hack job journalism and the gutless Obama Administration

I watched the video. There was a black woman speaking at a NAACP meeting about how she essentionally screwed a white farmer out of assistance while working at the USDA, because he was smug and she had the power to do so. I saw and admittedly I was dismayed. Dismayed because this is just the sort of fuel the right wing douchebag media salivates over. Sure enough Fix News picked up on it and bludgeoned it's brain dead viewers repeatedly with the story. In the on demand news world we live in the entire news galaxy was running the story. Yep, I watched the video and the coverage and believed it. I believed it because for some stupid ass reason I want to believe we can trust those who give us the news. Even those sexy porn star looking chicks on Fix News. But it wasn't true. It was all a lie. It was a lie and a good woman by the name of Shirley Sherrod was forced to resign her job.

The outright lying, slime fucks at Andrew Breitbart's biggoverment.com, manipulated the tape. They used the first half of her speech and omitted the part where she goes on to say that before she could screw the white farmer out of the help he needed, she realized that it wasn't about race it was about helping poor people, white or black. She went on to help that farmer save his farm. The farmer and his wife now say they would've lost the farm without Mrs. Sherrod's persistent help and have the highest praise for her.

So it was a lie. It was a manufactured story to discredit a black woman, the NAACP and the US Government. But for what possible reason could Breitbart and the Porn Stars working at Fix News have for slandering a good woman? To remind you that there is a black man in the White House. There is a black man leading this country and he's dishonest and immoral and he's bringing all the welfare cheating, drug dealing pimps and ho's with em'!

Don't believe me? Let me remind you who Breitbart is. Remember the ACORN scandal which turned out wasn't a scandal at all? That was Brietbart and his thugs. ACORN if you don't recall was a community activist organization, with mostly black staffers helping a mostly black community. President Obama was a volunteer much to the dismay of a racist Republican party. To refresh, the video showed two white people posing as a pimp (Breitbart's people) and his ho trying to get advice from an ACORN official on how to dupe the system and get free government assitance. The video was pretty damning. The official appears to be giving them advice on how to lie and break the law to get assistance just like white America thinks all poor people do. It wasn't until after congress voted to withhold federal funds from Acorn causing the community organizing group to shutdown that the whole video was released to the public. The video goes on to show that the official actually tells them that she can't help them. Additionally, police records show the official actually calls the police to report the incident. It was proven that the whole scandal was a sham but it was too late. The damage had been done. ACORN was no more and millions of American's trusted the media and were duped again. Adding insult to injury the media hardly covered the follow up part of the story which unraveled the made up scandal.

The rightwing blogging douchebags along with Fix News and their porn stars are making every attempt to foment racism against black people in this country. They do it openly, all the while the Republican leadership sits back and while smiling denies there is any racist agenda within the party. Guys like the orange skinned Boehner or facial boneless wonder McConnell can tell the public that they have an "open tent". To prove it they installed a clown by the name of Steele as party head. Their tent is open like a Klan rally is.

What I really want to know is, where's the accountability? I mean how can these news organizations or quasi-jornalistic/political blog sites invent news which is blatantly false and not face repercussions? Why is there no "truth in journalism" laws but there is in product advertising. I can't create a pill claiming it cures cancer and makes all fat men uncontrollably attractive to supermodels and then sell it, can I? No, I can't it's illegal. So why can these racist, puss filled, skin sacks get away with it over and over?

There is one more disturbing part of this story, the scared knee jerk reaction from the Obama administration. They had Sherrod fired before Glenn Beck could sob on camera. No investigation, no questions asked before they shit canned an honorable woman. Fucking cowards. Fucking cowards to grovel at the feet of these moraless ass monkeys. USDA cheif Vilsack has empty ballsacks and Obama needs to find the pair he rode into to town with.

I'm disgusted with myself for believing this bullshit. Disgusted that we allow such shitty journalism to exist and disgusted by the gutlessness of this administration. As for myself, I will never, never believe anything which comes from those goddless fucks again without concrete corraberation from many other new sources, ever again.

Salon article concerning Breitbart's lying ways; http://www.salon.com/news/andrew_breitbart/index.html?story=/opinion/conason/2010/07/21/acorn

The Life of Riley, if Riley was getting his ass kicked.

Some of you may have wondered where I've been. Actually, I doubt any of you have wondered that. The last couple of months have kind of sucked. I'm not one to bitch about my own problems, it's much more fun bitching about other peoples problems. So, I'm not going to bitch. I'm just gonna tell ya what happened and where I've been.

Sometime at the end of April uncontrollable events forced me to close my restaurant. We were only open two years. We did some good things and failed at others. Bottom line, between our own mistakes and the the economy taking a dump we couldn't continue to take losses. It's a shame. We built a beautiful space in an unorthodox location and just couldn't keep it going until the economy and public awareness turned around.

It's been hard. Closing took a lot out of me. I'm facing a mountain of debt that even God couldn't pay off. I owe vendors and most importantly I owe my staff. That part hurts the most. I'll live and deal with my personal debt but owing the people I work with is hard to deal with.

Closing a business has been similar to going through a divorce. There's a sense of loss and helplessness that compares to divorce. Anyone who's been through a divorce can tell you that it's sometimes hard to be in the same small town as their ex. That's been my feeling concerning the restaurant. So, I've decided a change of scenery is what's needed for me right now. For the last week or so, I've set up camp in Detroit, to lick my wounds. I know that sounds nuts, trading Traverse City for the D but it's what I need right now. I need the familiarity of the streets, restaurants and the negativity which is uniquely Detroit. I also need friends and family. The people that go back to your childhood who know how to pick you up or knock you down when the time is right.

I feel good. Really. I'm regaining my optimism and my confidence and I'm looking forward.

So that being said, I'm ready to continue writing. You can look forward to rants about politics, life's absurdities and my life in Detroit. One of the things I'm most excited about is writing about food. Detroit is filled with great food joints which deserve a word or two from a master eater.

In short, I'm back! Republicans flee in terror. Hypocrites cower with fear. Food lovers drool or be disgusted by what will surely be my best writing yet.