Curmudgeonly & Skeptical

Radical Profiling

   Boston Globe columnist Charles Stein, writing about the resurgence of the stock market, evidently felt it necessary to temper his enthusiasm by comparing capitalism to something akin to baby rape.

"It is a good bet that no one running for president -- not even President Bush -- will make a speech applauding the strong corporate profits that have been reported lately. The phrase "fatter profits" conjures up an image of a greedy chief executive stuffing his pockets, perhaps illegally. But the truth is the earnings numbers are good news and important news -- not just for chief executives and investors, but for the rest of us."

    If "fatter profits" is a dirty phrase to any of you, perhaps you need to take this test, Radical Profiling:  You Know You Are a Leftist If...

By:  Marc Levin, Esq. Associate Editor Austin Review -You believe John Ashcroft poses a greater danger to America than Osama bin Laden -You think President Bush lied to the nation, but his predecessor did not. -You believe President Bush is too dumb to be President and Arnold Schwarzenegger is too dumb to be Governor of California, but the Dixie Chicks, Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin, Babs Streisand, Eddie Vedder, and Jeanine Garofalo are foreign policy experts. -You are enraged by the so-called mistreatment of Muslim prisoners at Guantanamo Bay who have gained weight while dining on their specially prepared Koran-approved meals, but believe the world should have stood idly by while Saddam Hussein filled mass graves. -You support racial, ethnic, and sexual diversity, but oppose the adoption of non-discriminatory hiring practices to ensure ideological diversity on university faculties. -You supported making rhetoric about human rights central to US foreign policy under Jimmy Carter, but oppose actually taking action to make human rights a reality under George W. Bush. -You believe that trial lawyers taking 33 to 40 percent of a plaintiff's recovery in lawsuits is just about right, but the federal government taking this amount of our income in taxes is not nearly enough. -You believe Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong Il, and Yasser Arafat were fairly and democratically elected, but President Bush was not. -You root for prisoners when they escape from our oppressive prisons, but oppose allowing poor children to escape from failing public schools. -You believe all conservatives are racist, but do not think minorities can ever succeed without affirmative action. -You believe that being the former Governor of a New England state with 608,827 people is more than adequate experience to qualify someone to be President in 2004, but being the Governor of a Southwestern state with 21,325,018 people was wholly inadequate in 2000. -You agree with Toni Morrison that President Clinton was "the first black President," but didn't criticize Al Sharpton for recently labeling President Bush a "gang leader." -You believe we could finally get some truth out of the Pentagon if only Don Rumsfeld would resign and Mohammed Al-Sahhaf was named as his replacement. -You believe evangelical Christians are destroying America, but don't feel threatened by the radical Wahabbi sect that is perverting Islam. -You have found where the right to an abortion is written in the Constitution, but cannot find where the Constitution provides for a right to bear arms. -Your car sports the bumper sticker saying that "it will be a great day when our schools have all the money they need and the military has to hold bake sales," but oppose allowing the U.S. military to set up volunteer recruitment tables on college campuses because of their "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. -You believe President Bush is an environmental criminal for poisoning the water with arsenic, but have never complained about Saddam Hussein's devastating Iraq and Kuwait's environment through setting intentional oil well fires and committing genocide against the Marsh Arabs by draining their wetlands. -You support campus speech codes that ban pick-up lines and amorous gazes, but never spoke out against President Clinton's physical sexual harassment in the White House. -You can't decide which is worse: the Patriot Act or the Patriot Missile. -You support unlimited appeals for convicted criminals, but believe it is undemocratic for Californians to reverse their earlier mistake of electing Gray Davis. -You believe U.S. exports of genetically-modified foods pose a greater threat to African nations than corrupt dictators like Zimbabwe's Mugabe. -You believe welfare is a fundamental human right, but workfare is a human rights violation. -You believe religion is a scourge on our society, but that we will all be saved if we only have our consciousness sufficiently raised so that we become one with Mother Nature and share your faith that global warming will kill us all. If the above has successfully profiled you, congratulations, as you have won a one-way ticket to Paris aboard the U.S.S.R. Michael Moore.  Your ticket will be held at the nearest Dennis Kucinich for President rally.  Matricular consular cards issued by foreign governments will be gladly accepted as identification.

Posted by pecksnif at October 19, 2003 08:07 AM | TrackBack