Some of these people haven’t dated since they were teenagers, before the last major feminist movements. This brings with it some confusing moments that can get quite hostile. Some have been living alone for the last decade and are extremely independent. That’s a polite paraphrasing of “I don’t need no stinking man.” Some are still married and wanting to date while they’re separated and they’re used to a whole different world than the independents.
Some want only people with their same religions and political beliefs. If you can’t finish their sentences right up front, you’re a bad match. Religious versus spiritual? You may not want to go there. Things can get pretty hot. At least they normally self-identify so you can avoid that mess.

Some want to have an endless stream of emails and phone calls. Others want a face-to-face right away. If you push for an in person meeting, noting the alternatives lack of body language and facial expressions, some go with that right away and some run because you are too “forward.”

For your first meeting, commonly referred to as a “coffee drive by,” you’ll often wind up at Starbucks or the equivalent so your investment is low and your exit can be quick if things aren’t working with either of you. At the other end of the spectrum you have those who want to have dinner at the Ritz or possibly in Paris if it’s convenient. Too bad the Concorde is no longer flying.
Then you have those who won’t give you their phone number but ask for yours. You have those who get strange when you ask about their work like that’s too personal. There’s the group that contact you but live 76 miles away and they get offended because obviously they’re worth the drive: “You decide.” Well, hell, your profile was so good and the pictures were fine; we can just get married over the phone because, obviously you’re worth it. Skip the date and those time and car expenses. Just send the moving van for her. Let’s get ‘er done. Well, you decide to try it anyway and suggest that for the first time, you meet somewhere in the middle of this geographic epic of a journey. If they’re old school enough, they may be offended at that. The man should go to them. No compromise. No discussion. No date. Next person, please.

So do you open doors for the ladies? God only knows and He’s on shaky ground. Some get upset if you do and others if you don’t and there seem to be no “tells.” Do you buy their coffee or go Dutch? Usually it’s safe to buy but not always. Get there early and get yours. She’ll come and sit if she wants you to buy. If not she’ll go over and buy her own before she sits. It’s not about the money but the flogging if you’re wrong.

On to more personal things like where do you live? I’m not talking an address early on but if you say Atlanta is where you live, you may be anywhere from next door to sixty miles away. It does make a difference at least knowing the area I may want to frequent. I’m not looking to stalk but manage time and car expenses. Things are tough out there in this economy.

What about sex? All over the place from first date all the way to “well, maybe, if we get married.” Warning: some of these daters haven’t had sex other than alone in the last decade. This alone can make for interesting times. If you do make it that far, here’s a warning: things change when you get older. If you haven’t had a date since the elder Bush was in office, you might be a bit naïve here. Older guys may not always be as turgid or quick as a twenty year old. Older women may take a while to “be prepared” and might need some alternative techniques. It’s all good, just different. If you want what comes with a young stud, prepare to declare yourself a cougar and go fishing. Just don’t expect a lot of foreplay or stimulating conversation.

“Stubborn and set in their ways” can apply to both sexes. Sometimes when you’re older you lose flexibility in things other than your limbs. In some ways you may be too stiff but in the wrong parts. (There’s a pill for that).

With all of this said, there are few ways to meet people to date that brings more candidates and there are some good with the bad. I’ve given you some things to look for and possibly avoid but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t jump in. Just do it with a bit of caution and you might just find a good match. I did once before and am looking to do so again. Good hunting for all.

If you’re a Christian, a right-winger or much on the conservative side, you might think a couple of times about preserving that right to free speech very religiously. You’d be falling behind in the liberal England of these times.

Our freedom to disagree is being rapidly eroded. There are now more and more prohibited ideas. If you disagree with these “intellectuals,” you are some sort of phobe at best and perhaps stark raving mad.

Do you dare question the man-made global warming contingent? Are you not anti-capitalist? Are you not going “green” and helping save the environment? Do you still hold doors open for women? God help your soul for the verdicts are all in and anyone who dares disagree with the “consensus” must be, by definition, quite nuts.

Politically correct? Independent thought? Opinions that aren’t in vogue? Dare to dissent? Question an unchallengeable truth? Whose truth? The world is flat. The universe spins around us. Bloodletting will make us well. Dissension has made for many “improvements” in the truth over the centuries. Without it, we’d still be in the dark ages.

The left believes that its values represent not a point of view but virtue itself. Don’t get too comfy on the right side of things either. They also see the way, the truth and the light. Both views as opinions are wonderful but when you exclude all disagreement with them in an ostracizing fashion, all of civilization suffers. The other side is now automatically evil, mad and extreme. The views become almost religious movements and the believers are more than happy to try to do away with heresy. In the view of some, utopia may only be reached by their views and suppressing all others.

One of our foundations is the right to be heard. The police can’t just take you to jail and keep you there because they deem you’re guilty. You have a right to make your argument and present your evidence to a jury of your peers. Our “progressive” society these days are taking some of that away and presuming your guilt for the pure act of disagreeing with them. The right to free speech and dissent may be the cornerstone that we cannot afford to lose, maybe above all other freedoms. If we do lose it, we have lost our basic way of life and can no longer claim to be the last bastion of freedom.

For the record, I’m not religious, Muslim, feminist, Jewish, liberal or conservative. I’m one guy who has his own opinions and will not allow others to give me theirs. They can make their arguments and I’ll listen but I won’t be coerced. Will you? Come on. Disagree with me. I welcome it and would love to have a friendly, intelligent conversation about it. Is that still possible?

Show me.

For a while, it’s gotten harder and harder to distinguish between the parties. If you strip out the religious items that aren’t supposed to be part of our government, it might be down to which stem cells you can use before long. Or if you love Tea and the Constitution, which, of course we need to change now and then, as perfect as it is, was, according to the party in power.

Seems as though President Obama has been on a mission to hug the world and that is his foreign policy, well except for those pesky Israelis and Republicans, of course. I guess everyone needs someone to keep them grounded. It might be nice one day to see an article on CNN about our leader and people he didn’t agree with start out with some verb other than “slammed,” “blasted,” or “accused.” Not that the opposition is any less guilty.

It must be tough to hang out with the upper crust and still insist on taking their tax cuts away. The feelings must be frustrating when you’re selling hope and your opponents are selling fear, our leader’s words. And nobody is buying hope much anymore. You can only sell hope for so long without being able to deliver.

Jobs. Just a damn job. And then go fight your petty party battles and we might listen. Otherwise, we have more important things to think about. Like food and shelter.

Please note that we do not need to only make the unemployment numbers better or the number of jobs available to go up but we need to make some allowances and open some discussions on the changes that have happened to the very model of our economy. A few come to mind.

If you have been laid off in your 50s or 60s recently, you had better think about starting your own business or working for Wal-Mart if they’ll hire you. The chances are good that no one is going to hire you because everyone that’s getting hired now, with a few exceptions, are young, work cheap and have a year to five of experience.

The very young, those just out of school are also having a hard time. No one wants to train any more. No one seems to want to hire anyone with more experience than they have. They don’t want to pay high salaries but they are also using that as an excuse they can use when someone cries age discrimination. If the higher paid, older guys are willing to work for less, they still are not being hired. The thinking is that they’re just there long enough to find a higher paying job. Think again.

No one is hiring them at any rate of pay right now and probably for the foreseeable future. You think that taking care of older people was going to be a huge problem before? Wait until none of them are working any more, and not by their choice, and you younger guys start paying their way to live day-to-day and their medical. If I were you, I’d start finding something for the 60 and over crowd to do that is productive and allows them to pay their own way. That’s what they want and ultimately you’ll want that as well when you start paying their bills and don’t think you won’t.

The economy and businesses in the U.S. have for a long time now been extremely short-sighted. Make the quarter. Make the fiscal year. It’s close to time for that to bite us all in the butt. Who cares about training new talent or finding some experience or developing it when we might miss our numbers for the quarter?

A lot of the changes in the financial markets now are likely good ones but the crucial one may ultimately be to get everyone’s mindset off the short-term and on to long-term growth, stability and jobs. Right now, I’d love to see a big company with flat earnings if they are making a contribution and keeping their employees on the payroll. I don’t want to have to feed their kids. I’m afraid mine may be having to feed me at this rate.

So, President Obama, let’s think this one through a bit before simply throwing money at infrastructure and watching the numbers for the next quarter. Yes, I know, elections are coming. Do something that’s right and not just for reelections.

If I may remind you, in the finest of journalistic traditions, the news reported only the facts and generally confirmed by more than one source even then. Anything which was an opinion of the journal reporting, by any writer or editor, was clearly to be marked as editorial. If marked so, any opinion could be expressed that you could get past your editor. This line was not to be crossed. It was the way a reader could be sure to distinguish fact from opinion. Not only has that line repeatedly been crossed but done so subtlety that you must be looking hard for it to catch it.

Over the coming month, I’ll be pointing out some cnn transgressions as examples. You can find them most anywhere these days. In fact, if you know of an online news source where this isn’t the case, please comment here so I can check it out.

If you want an early example of this sort of behavior from cnn, simply read the reports of Israel maintaining their naval blockade. You’d think that Hamas and associated parties have become the saviors of the Middle East. You see, Israel is tired of receiving airborne rockets from Gaza so they want to keep weapons out of there which had been arriving by ship. If you want to send stuff to Gaza, you may but not directly without it being inspected at a designated port.

Now if this is truly humanitarian, why do the people on the ship care whether it goes in directly or through a port where it can be inspected? Is the cargo not what they say? Was the whole thing done for publicity? Have they only set up a scenario which with outstanding PR and help from the “news” media is yet another way to bash Israel? The early reports on the attempt to break the blockade today indicate that the ship will not allow the humanitarian materials bound for Gaza to be delivered if they can’t do it through the blockade. Israel told the world what would happen to ships trying to run the blockade. Did anyone have any doubt that they’d back it up? Am I missing something here?

Why isn’t cnn asking these questions of the people on the boats? Is it just not PC these days to question the purpose of activists or anyone claiming to be what they are not? It’s hard to listen to your rhetoric when your actions don’t match what you’re doing. If I missed it, please let me know. We need some facts, cnn, not emotion and posturing, especially when it appears to be biased.

By the way, I’m not Israeli or Jewish. Have the readers stopped thinking these days and just accept everything told them by an online “authority?” Are we afraid of reporting on certain groups now? If that happens, the press as we knew it is dead. The Israelis are not perfect but they do have the balls to back up what they say and I give them credit for that.

Now mind you, if we drill all areas of the coasts, east, west, Gulf and Alaska, the total haul would only be a bit over a million barrels a day. We currently use over 20 million barrels of oil a day in the U.S. It’s not like this is going to solve the energy problem or even seriously slow it down, though it might make a lot of money for the oil companies. Last month, the world produced 73 million barrels of crude oil a day. It’s not going to save you money either as oil is now a global commodity.

Just tourism in coastal areas generates over $60 billion dollars per year. That number may seriously be impacted with oil on the beaches. I won’t get into environmental — look at the economics. I lived in one of these areas for several years and it is a tremendous resource to the states and the nation, not to mention the many foreign visitors.

I’m a big fan of nature and the outdoors though you wouldn’t know me as a tree hugger. It blows me away that with what’s going on right now, at 5,000 barrels a day still dumping into the Gulf and no good way to stop it, that this percentage of people still are in favor of drilling there. Somewhere here there is a failure to communicate. Either I’m missing it or a lot of others are. The ignorance may not going away until the kids are playing in the sandy oil slicks. Go bathe a bird.

I guess I’ll go plant something or change a light bulb for a florescent. Jeez. How frustrating.

The Minerals Management Service reported 39 fires or explosions were reported offshore in the Gulf of Mexico in the first five months of 2009. That’s the latest statistics that are available.

As of April 16, 55 rigs were actively drilling in U.S. waters in the Gulf of Mexico, according to Baker Hughes, a company that provides rig counts for the petroleum industry. This is from CNN’s article. Do the math. 55 rigs, 39 fires or explosions, 5 months. That averages out to more than one per rig per year.

This isn’t speculation about the dangers of drilling in the Gulf, particularly doing so close to Florida beaches. Just the facts, ma’am. Read ‘em and figure it out for yourself.

Older workers are staying in the job market much longer. This is being blamed upon no longer having company-sponsored retirement plans but having to do their own, the dramatic decrease in the value of their retirement funds and the recession itself. It is also taking longer for older workers to find a job once they start looking than any other job group. This is according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Half of workers 55 or older are taking over 27 weeks to find a job and some are going as long as 40 weeks and beyond. Interestingly enough, the unemployment rate for older workers is lower than other groups, though it is at an all-time high, but it takes much longer for them to find employment once they lose it.

The unemployment rate for 16-24 year old workers has gotten to be as high as 19%, the highest on record for them.

These people have to eat, have shelter and often care for families. Why is this not one of our nation’s highest priorities? We have a huge national asset here wanting to contribute and they are being denied. Is it the case that the government had rather feed them, give them shelter or let them go homeless than to solve the problem? Why isn’t this a higher priority than reducing the number of nukes or even a health plan? How do you afford a health plan if you don’t have a job? This is pretty basic stuff, people.

I’m not looking to the government to fix everything but I am looking to them to at least stop screwing it up so private enterprise might have a shot at it. It’s criminal for our soldiers, older workers and our youth not to be able to get meaningful work.

It’s a shame that he can’t seem to finish up getting the economy going and jobs being created. An announcement came today that jobless claims had a large gain in the last reported numbers. Everyone’s been telling us that it’s getting better but sounds like not. The number of job openings seems to be growing but we’re still having layoffs and closings more than offsetting them. Maybe we should stay on this project for a while longer. Maybe that treaty with Russia isn’t as important at the moment. Maybe doing something about countries like Iran still moving toward having nuclear weapons is also more important, for us and Russia.

Hey, it’s a big job but no where are priorities likely to be anymore important than to our president. This one makes the headline news but both countries still have incredible overkill capabilities so have we gained much from this? Is it worth doing? Likely, yes. Should it be a high priority for us right now? Likely no.

We need work, Obama. Congress? There may be a lot of Congressmen looking for work soon so they should pay attention to the problem for their own self-interest…