Neanderpundit

I am a pretty much average guy in a great number of ways, no different from millions of other people just like me. I make a good income, in the top 20% in this country, anyway. As much out of luck as skill, the choices i made that brought me here were mostly made on whim.

I will probably never be incredibly wealthy (cash wise), though I have already made a lot of money in my life. I will never be well educated, though I have hundreds and hundreds of hours of college credit, courses taken here and there just to acquire knowledge.

I don’t consider cash weath. I don’t consider education knowledge. Both of those things are poor currency compared to the only currency that matters: the relationships you develop with people. The friends I have now, I have had for all my life, and support me as I support them. Come through for me when I need it, call on me for help when they’re down. I get some grief from people I work with- “Why do you spend money on losers like that?” Those “losers” are worth more to me than six of you, lady.

Since I have begun to blog, I have developed relationships with some people who are already like longtime friends. My dearest, oldest friend Jenny. Frances Porretto, a man whose screeds still send me to the dictionary. Pascal, who in IM is one of the clearest thinkers I know. Broad, and Chou, and Leslie. Tammi. Joe, Grau and Contagion. Chris Byrne. Kim and Connie. And Dickl and Kelly- how on earth could I have left THEM out? THe list is incredible, and these are all incredible people. Some I’ve had the distinct pleasure to meet, others are in my future. Some, like Rob Smith, died before I had a chance to meet him. Some, like Vman, are on my short list of people I MUST meet, and soon.

I count my wealth in the people I know and respect, the ones I call friend. And I am a very wealthy man indeed.

Inspired by this beautiful post by someone who deserves to win the lottery next week.

If I may call him that

Is, like me, a little oddly constructed in La Cabeza.
Sometimes, for fear of not getting his thoughts out as coherently as he’d like, he worries and frets over posts for ages.

Yeah,right, like any of the rest of us are ever very clear or coherent.

Anyway, more and more lately, he nails it, and this is one of the times. Many of you may have heard shrillary yapping about the pardon of Libby. (who, incidentally, did nothing other than have varying recollections of an event- tell me you have never had that situation, and you’re a liar, plain and simple) I won’t link to a wav file of that, I won’t have her communist voice anywhere near my blog. Does she really think our memories are that short? The money quote in Pascals’s piece:

We are at war with pardons.
We have always been at war with pardons.
Strict enforcement is our friend.

Of course, back at the end of the Clinton Administration, this was the Democratic rant:

We are at war with merciless sentencing.
We have always been at war with merciless sentencing.
Pardons are our friend.

Won’t make any sense unless you’ve read “1984”. Which, if you haven’t, is a treatise on how socialism and communisim fuck up everything they touch. ( I know someone who actually believes that book is about Capitalism and Conservatism, can you believe that ignorance?)

Anyway. Read the whole thing. Pascal is fast becoming one of my favorite bloggers, with Francis and Kim and Steve. Now if he’d just post more.

Kim puts it better than I can, today: Go.

So many of us born here have no idea- and this is a good reminder what it’s all about.