As IF Times

link Fox News Personality Slammed for Mocking Rick Santorums Crazy Behavior After Babys Death Video – Hollywood Reporter.

It’s a sober measure of how far awry mainstream society has veered when we look at the standards of what is considered sane and what is considered crazy.  Rick Santorum is the latest Republican contender for the GOP leadership fight to emerge as an alternative to Mitt Romney for that role.  As expected, the left dominated media are scurrying to frame every Santorum position as being extreme.

Up to now, the many and numerous candidates have been run through the media gauntlet as they are scrutinized for any possible attribute, real or imagined, that would disqualify them to run and eventually serve as President.  In the absence of any genuine flaw, the default knock is to label their views as crazy or extreme.  Such was the fate of Michele Bachmann who recently withdrew her candidacy.  Obviously, being a professional tax attorney, serving 3 terms as a congresswoman including sitting on the National defense committee, raising 5 children of her own as well as 23 foster children makes her a loon. 

Santorum is the newest candidate to be painted as some kind of conservative nut now that his campaign appears to be gaining some traction.   When asked by Bill O’Reilly how he was going to respond when people try to label his views on marriage as extreme,  Santorum responded with what I think is the line of the year,  “Well I don’t happen to think that marriage between a man and a woman is extreme.” Well that’s just crazy talk!  

Santorum is known as a consistent defender of traditional values and has never wavered on that in the pursuit of votes.  While that may be endearing to a conservative base, the unwillingness to accede to the erosion of social values embraced by most of society today makes him an easy target for those, especially in media, who frame his values as extreme.  Apparently boys marrying boys and girls marrying girls is not extreme. 

As a group, the GOP contenders often cite the U.S. constitution as their guide for enacting any legislation, a reference that the Democrats seldom, if ever make.   Conservatives lean towards self sufficiency and hard work to create wealth and prosperity.  Liberals are partial to collectivism, the enhanced role of government and entitlements to distribute wealth and cap prosperity.  As Al Sharpton might say, conservatives want to make, liberals prefer to take.   Apparently to take from the productive to give to the non productive is not extreme.

As a group, liberals love to sing the siren song of equality of all peoples in a society but then balkanize them in order to pit one group against the other.  Everyone is equal except Blacks, Jews, Muslims, Hispanics, Asians, the young, the old, the handicapped, union members, women, vegetarians, pot smokers, drug addicts, rap stars and environmentalists.  Apart from special treatment for this small group, everyone else is equal.   Apparently, this is not extreme.

Every single candidate running for the Republican nomination has had more experience in real life activities in business and administration than the current resident in the White House.  That resident came from an isolated academic background, had a closet full to bursting with friends and supporters who have been exposed as avowed radical socialists, or criminals or both.  This however is not extreme.  

It’s better to disregard most of what the media frames as extreme.  Unless any of the GOP candidates have frozen corpses hidden in their basement freezers, any of them are vastly more suitable to hold office than the nutters the other side has to offer.  The next time a mouthpiece from the left appears on TV, turn down the sound and just watch the delivery.  Unfailingly, they’ll all have the appearance of just having been let out by the guards for their daily walk.  For progressives to label others nutty, they should at least minimize the antics of Alec, “let me finish my video game” Baldwin, or Michael “we are the 99%” Moore, or Al “we’re all gonna die” Gore, or Nancy “middle class” Pelosi, or Joe “we are not at war with the Taliban” Biden.   Apparently, that’s not extreme.

link Giant shrimp raises big concern as it invades the Gulf – Houston Chronicle.

A little while back, I wrote about a similar circumstance regarding the proliferation of king crabs in the Antarctica, http://asiftimes.com/2011/04/30/head-to-the-nearest-red-lobster/   Now, a bountiful bevy of jumbo shrimp has appeared in the Gulf of Mexico and people are wringing their hands over it.  These people have obviously never had juicy jumbo shrimp served in a spicy garlic sauce.  Why do people look pessimistically on everything?  In the old days, if a farmer had a bumper crop of something, it would be a reason to celebrate.  If a fisherman had a bounteous haul from the sea, he’d be thrilled.  Even monkeys would be excited to find excess bananas.

But not certain humans these days.  Anything out of the ‘normal’ means just another sign of the apocalypse.  It seems to me that pessimism has become high art in our present culture.  Even as man has evolved to the point that there really is no shortage of food anywhere in the world, especially not in western cultures, the professional doomsayers always have some spin on making eating a thing of angst.  These people would complain that water is not as wet as it used to be before industrialization.  They warn against eating too much of this, or drinking too much of that.  This is all fine if they kept to themselves, except that these professional pessimists find their way into government and their moaning finds its way into laws that affect the rest of us.

Just today, in the New York Times, an article was published warning of the dangers of excessive sodium intake.  The article goes on to champion the idea of legislating sodium inputs for food makers and providers.   Unless there are those who need birdcage liner, I attach the link here so no one has to spend money on buying the paper,  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/27/health/high-sodium-to-potassium-ratio-in-diet-is-a-major-heart-risk.html?_r=1

No one sees the irony of people pushing to make drugs like marijuana legal, which has little redeeming value and lots of socially undesirable ones, versus trying to regulate salt which does have redeeming social value, ie; making food taste good.

So here’s some advice to the pessimists and those that heed them as we wind up the end of 2011.  There’s a good chance we’re all going to die, eventually.  You may as well enjoy the time you have here in case the next place is not so fun.  I close with a quote sent to me by a friend, author unknown, which summarizes this best:

“Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate and wine in one hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming “WOO HOO what a ride!!”

Take the plastic off the couch, live a little.