The Happy Slave

Electing LEADERS?

2006-10-25T13:00:00.000-04:00

So, it's coming up, we're going to elect some of our leaders in a couple of weeks, right? WRONG. In America, we do not elect our leaders, we select our servants. Somewhere in our past, America has subscribed to a dangerous delusion, that our elected officials are our masters. We have allowed ourselves to become saddled with the most powerful monarchy and nobility that human history has ever seen. We are willing to give personal power to a president greater than that ever had by any titular Emperor of any empire. This lunacy must stop. We must stop treating our elected officials like public masters. They are and always have been public servants. It's time we started reminding them of this fact. Only slaves must immediately fall in line behind their masters. Only slaves must defer to their masters merely because they are the masters. Are we slaves? Are we worse than slaves--are we willing slaves? Are we the political heirs to the sycophants of the Roman imperial court or are we the political heirs to the Founding Fathers of the United States of America?

It's about time.

2006-10-25T08:09:00.000-04:00

Well, it's nice to hear that generals under President Johnson--I mean Bush--are saying that there is a chance we'll be reducing forces in Viet Nam--I mean Iraq--some time in the next two years. After all, US commanders have said things like ""We have reached an important point, when the end begins to come into view," and "Their casualties are going up at a rate they cannot sustain ... I see light at the end of the tunnel." It's not like any US general has ever said anything like that before in a conflict that was fumbled by politicians from the start. It's not like there has ever been any war wherein the US fighting personnel on the ground were hampered and hindered by administrative bungling, poor logistical support, and rear-echelon politicians who put their domestic agendas ahead of any thought of doing what was necessary to really get the job done and get it done conclusively. It's not like any other president from Texas ever betrayed the US military on the ground in self-serving attempts to score points with their home team supporters. Right? It's not like this has ever happened before.

EVERYBODY PANICCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC!

2006-09-20T08:03:00.000-04:00

Were you aware that fatty foods can be purchased in the USA? Oh, my sweet GOD IN HEAVEN!!!!!!! What a monstrous thing. But it's even worse than that. Fast food joints are selling really big hamburgers at low prices.

Call out the National Guard! It's time to stand people up against the wall and inflict some death for the social good! Call the governanny! Pass laws! The people must never be trusted, never under any circumstances, whatsoever, to make their own choices. The government must intervene! Government must immediately take dictatorial control of our diets. We cannot be trusted to think for ourselves. We must all immediately live in government-run camps where everything we eat, wear, read, and think is dictated to us for our own good!

There are times when I believe that society would be well served by a few good horse-whippings. First in line would be these busybodies and social nannies who get their nighties knotted over things like fatty foods. Either we are a society of adults or a society of slaves. I realize that dogmatic freaks (aka liberals and conservatives) want to live under dictators, but I would hope that the rest of us would rather have a free society.

Then I remember that I'm in the USA, land of the sissy, home of the whiner. Land where the governanny is supposed to take care of every little thing and keep us all safe from ourselves. There will be some busybody demanding that government "fix" this. There will be enough weaklings who won't stand up to keep government reined in that such measures will be enacted. I expect idiots (aka liberals) demanding that we all be "protected" from the threat of really big hamburgers. I expect other idiots (aka conservatives) to point fingers and denounce this while simultaneously pretending that they aren't every bit as unnecessarily meddlesome about other issues.

I would like to be wrong, but I remember when people used to laugh whenever someone said that, after tobacco was sufficiently demonized, they'd go after hamburgers, next.

Wait! There's more! The government has to dictate what we're allowed to eat at work, too.

Why have liberals gone down the toilet?

2006-09-18T09:49:00.000-04:00

A guy named Edsall recently wrote "Liberals by their very nature don't get as angry as conservatives do." This guy is a self-identified liberal. If he's right, that explains a great deal about the complete loss of credibility and moral focus that American liberalism has undergone. If he's wrong, then he still explains a great deal of the complete loss of credibility and moral focus that American liberalism has undergone.

At one time, American liberalism was hopping mad and damned proud of it! Right or wrong, at least American liberals had the courage to have some moral outrage and call it moral outrage. These days, according to liberal "intellectuals", liberals just are innately less capable of anger.

Can anyone else see what's wrong with such an attitude? If it's true, then it means that even liberals don't believe in their own causes, anymore. The fundamental fuel for politically-based anger is moral outrage. Whether it is justified or unjustified, it is the framing of political issues as moral issues that really puts fire in the belly. If Edsall's contention is false, then it means that liberals have abandoned morality in favor of mealy-mouthed hypocrisy.

American liberals used to have plenty of moral arguments to make. Indeed, if one goes back to the old-fashioned progressives, morality was the fundamental basis of their platform. Even the drug-fed leftists of the 1960s weren't afraid to see their causes as moral issues. Whether or not you agree with the details of liberal morality, at least liberals of earlier eras were willing to admit to the existence of morality.

Is Congress growing a pair?

2006-09-15T08:13:00.000-04:00

As we all know, for many years Congress has consented to be the rollover sweet-patootie backdoor buddy to the Presidency. This has gone on through several presidents, permitting imperial levels of power to be wielded by that office. Now it seems that the Senate--specifically Republicans in the Senate--have decided that it's been too many years playing step-and-fetch-it to one man. More on this later.

And watch the rats backpedal.

2006-09-08T17:37:00.000-04:00

On Thursday of this week, we all go to learn that the new guy hired to "clean up" Marion County's juvenile "justice" system got his master's degree from a diploma mill. However, the people who hired him thought nothing of it. Fraud didn't matter to them. As the paper put it:

"Troy was not hired on the basis of his master's degree. He was hired because he has a proven track record and experience with juveniles," said Court Administrator Ron Miller. "We don't believe it's a character issue, a moral issue or anything else. I think this is really a nonissue."

This is just more same-old same-old from the gang of crooks who run this county. There is no way at all that these corrupt and incompetent parasites would see a problem with hiring a guy who sports a fake college degree--almost no way. A mere day after defending their new hire, we learn that he's been given the boot:

“It is important to maintain the public confidence that has been established with recent detention reform efforts, and thus the basis for the decision,” said Robert Bingham, chief Marion County probation officer who has been acting director of the juvenile detention center. “The court offered Mr. Hoppes an opportunity to verify and substantiate this online coursework for the master's degree that he presented to us as part of his academic credentials. He was unable to do so.”

If I didn't live in this part of Indiana, I would find this comical. Instead, I see it as just another reason that the best way for us to improve our local government will involve throwing out every single current office-holder, be that person elected or appointed. They're all scum. They're all dirty. Not a one of them can be trusted.

Tar, feathers, a rail.

2006-09-05T14:30:00.000-04:00

"And daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I'm sorry my son, but you're too late in asking
Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away"

John Prine's words are every bit as relevant today as when he wrote them. Indy's little bit of "Paradise" has come thanks to a Carl Drummer, a crony of Julia Carson (our member in the US House of Representatives). It seems that he has decided to build a tavern in the Julia Carson Federal Building. The tavern has already been built, without any permits being issued, without any public hearings. In addition, the city park has already been demolished without the tiniest bit of public hearing on the process. Instead, the parks department quietly granted a lease. Mind you, our mayor and city council are of the same political party as Julia Carson and her little pet--the tavernkeeper-to-be. Tar, feathers, a rail, a LONG rail, is called for here. The Ohio River is plenty wide and deep to handle a large number of elected officials.

Or, if you're not up for such a vigorous statement, there is going to be another meeting on the matter on October Fourth. Show up.

Advance Indiana has a lot more detail on it than I've got the patience to write.

Israel's anti-terror policy WORKS.

2006-08-27T21:36:00.000-04:00

Well, we have proof that the Israeli approach to terrorism works, and it's proof straight from the head of Hezbollah. He has flat-out admitted that, if he had known how Israel would have responded, he would never have ordered the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers. Think about that. A lifetime committed terrorist, who has vowed to oversee the destruction of Israel, has publically admitted to having wished he had not taken a provocative action against the target of his hatred. When was the last time one of those scumballs ever said that about the USA? This simply underscores the plain truth. Some swine simply only understand force, not the little drips and drops we tend to hand out as Americans, but hard-core, no-holds-barred, no kid gloves Israeli levels of force. We are in a life-and-death struggle with and enemy that has already shown it will stop at nothing. Israel has learned this and acts accordingly. Israel gets results.

Matter resolved

2006-08-21T15:11:00.000-04:00

The matter regarding my son's school placement has been resolved. Our educational bureaucracy at times even manages to obstruct itself.

"Education" for the convenience of the bureaucracy

2006-08-15T11:30:00.000-04:00

We receive a letter a month or two ago stating that we have the option to have our eldest son sent to a different middle school because the school he is in (the worst middle school in the district, by the way), has managed to flop standards two years running. We decide to go for it and put in our request. We made the mistake of sending it via US mail, so I ended up FAXing in another copy of the request.

Okay, so over the phone, I'm told that School B is full in 7th grade, so he'll have to go to School A. No problem, so long as it isn't school F-. School A is a better school. Anyway, A few weeks later, I call the school district to ask if my son has been transferred to School A. He hasn't, but they do the necessary transfer on the spot. Then I get notice from district transportation. He's still scheduled to be transported to School F-.

So, I get on the horn to the district's transportation office. First, they say they'll call me back that day. They don't. So I call them back the next day. Then, they say they'll call me back the day after. They don't--instead, I get a call from a high-ranking administrator (basically, the guy in charge of all scheduling).

He tells me that the district cannot send my son to School A, because it would cost them a hundred dollars a day to get him there. Under No Child Left Behind, a student who gets an in-district transfer because his previous school is such a stinkeroo as to not even meet those minimal standards has to be transported at school district expense. However, the school district does get to pick the non-flopping school.

So, after some somewhat terse statements on my part regarding the absurdity of being told that School B was impossible but now School B is mandatory, we agreed to send the boy to School B. Everything's set, right?

The first thing that any parent needs to learn about public school systems is that they are of the bureaucracy, by the bureaucracy, and for the bureaucracy. My eldest was brought in for class registration, and he even got the two electives he wanted. Then, after we thought it was all finally handled for the year, we got a phone call. It seems that, even after the administrator told me (and I'm quoting) "We'll have to make room.", the 7th grade at School B is full, so he can't attend school B. However, we were already told that he couldn't attend School A, because it would cost the school district too much. We weren't told what the only alternative would be, but I don't need to be told that I'm at a sewage plant to smell what's going on.

So, I left a phone message with said ranking administrator, and now I'm waiting. We'll see just how this little dog and pony show plays out. This is not a situation of us just dropping in on school B, unannounced. I had spoken with "Director" of the administrative department that handles all these issues, and I had accepted his statement regarding where my son would attend. He said "School B", and I took his word for it. Now that things come down to the wire, we're told by a bureaucrat that attendance at "School B" is not possible--they're "full".

We'll see how this pans out.

More stupid politician tricks!

2006-07-27T11:03:00.000-04:00

Note that I've edited this post a bit—the edit is at the end, but I'm keeping the inflammatory start. It is what I originally wrote, after all.

There are times when I'm happy to sit back and let politicians be morons. There are times when I just don't get irked. It even amuses me. One of these times has occurred. The neofascist Council of Chicago has passed an ordinance requiring a minimum wage of $10.00 an hour plus $3.00/hour worth of fringies. This is the same lunatic, hardcore totalitarian council with a member that is trying to outlaw french fries, in case you forgot. Of course, as is to be expected, it is infested with Democrats.

But, as I said, this time, it doesn't annoy me. Yes, I think it's stupid, but it's not infuriating, its funny. I hope that Hizzona Junior signs the darn legislation, or even better, that he vetoes it and the veto is overriden. I want Chicago to impose a $10.00 per hour minimum wage on itself. I want Chicago to suffer the consequences, and I want the rest of the country to see what happens afterwards.

Me, I don't live in Chicago, I haven't even visited the town in years, although I do admit to some affection for the waterfront and the Cubs. So I hope this ordinance passes, I hope it is enforced, and I will be greatly amused at the results.

Added on my lunch break. I should say that, for all I know, I could be wrong, this might work out. If so, then that would also be a good thing. If Chicago flushes itself down the toilet, then this only proves me right. If Chicago actually pulls off a hat trick, then this is a significant enough change from the status quo to be worth further investigation. I still think they'll suffer for it. I only hope the court challenges fail. This law should be allowed to inflict its full effect on Chicago, for good or for ill. We all stand to learn a lot from it one way or another.

The priviliged press vs. the truth

2006-07-26T16:20:00.000-04:00

It's not often that I say much about other blogs, but one has caught my eye enough to merit comment. The Indianapolis Star has a section called "Expresso", which is used by the newspaper's staff as a bully pulpit. For the most part, it isn't too bad, but recently, one Star writer decided to use it to dishonestly cheer for some pretty stupid laws. Indiana, in some attempt to give the illusion of "doing something" about homemade methamphetamine, decided to pass restrictions on cold tablets worthy of the most totalitarian of police states. Recently, a national report was released indicating an overall drop in methamphetamine use in the workplace. Now enter the dishonest Indy Star employee. First, she mentioned the report. Okay. Then she mentioned testimony by our "drug czar" that methamphetamine abuse is declining. Now is where Beth Murphy ceases being a reporter and, instead, becomes a well-paid liar. She all but flatly states that the decline in nationwide methamphetamine abuse is due to Indiana's draconian cold tablet law.

I looked at the report and read the testimony. Nowhere in the report is there a head-to-head comparison between Indiana and states that do not have a similar law nor laws. Likewise, our "dug czar" did not mention the state of Indiana in his testimony. Nevertheless, Ms. Murphy decided that she would misrepresent these two events as directly reporting conditions in Indiana. It is possible for methamphetamine abuse in Indiana to actually increase while it decreases nationwide. I doubt that it has. However, I also doubt that methamphetamine abuse has decreased in Indiana at rates significantly faster than seen in states without our stupid cold pill law. But truth and honesty appear mean nothing to Ms. Murphy—she just wants to foist her government–worshipping, enslve the people agenda, and she's happy to use her priviliged position at the Indianapolis Star to do so, no matter how much much the truth has to be stretched.

Idealists make bad leaders

2006-07-18T09:32:00.000-04:00

Those of us who have not turned politics into a religion are not at all surprised at what is happening right now in the Middle East. But for totalitarian cultists, the only response to failure is to indulge in the mental disease of "harder–faster", as my old fencing master used to put it. What I mean by harder–faster is to respond to failure by merely repeating the exact same failed act, but just do it harder and faster. Then it must work, since there is no way that your dearly–held political dogmas could ever be wrong–headed and outright delusional. According to political cultists, the only way to get a failed policy to work is to just do it over and over. In other words, indulge in mental illness—do the same thing over and over and expect different results.

Today, the current crop of cultists in charge are proving that dogmatic politics and mental illness are pretty much the same thing. As George Will mentions, radical voices are calling for the USA to start yet another war. This time, the lunatics are gunning for Iran.

Yes, Iran has a nasty government, indeed it's exactly the sort of theocratic nightmare that we would have, ourselves, if certain self–appointed arbiters of public morality had their way. Yes, Iran does sponsor terrorism, probably worldwide. Yes, Iran's pet yap–dog, Hezbollah, is currently trying its best to ignite a general war in the Middle East. Nevertheless, none of that is grounds for insisting upon starting a third land war in some of the most rugged and hostile territory on the planet.

As Mr. Will aptly points out, "…the U.S. military has enough on its plate in the deteriorating wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which both border Iran. …containment, although of uncertain success, did work against Stalin and his successors, and might be preferable to a war against a nation much larger and more formidable than Iraq. …if Bashar Assad's regime does not fall after the Weekly Standard's hoped-for third war, with Iran, does the magazine [Weekly Standard] hope for a fourth?"

I'd say that the neo–Soviets who now call for war with Iran probably do hope for a fourth war, and a fifth, and a sixth—even more. War is an excellent way to distract ordinary Americans, who are pretty patriotic people, from realizing just how much of our Founder–recognized liberties are being stolen from us in the name of "security".

The only ways we could, even in theory, mount a credible assault upon Iran are to either institute a universal military draft, which would guarantee that whomever happened to be in the Oval Office would not be there after the next election, or that his hand–picked successor would never get elected, or to remove all our forces from every other garrison and theater. In other words, we would have to hand Afghanistan back to the Taliban and hand Iraq back to the Ba'ath Party. As things now stand, we are already so badly undermanned in Afghanistan that the Taliban is taking part of it back. Afghanistan wasn't even really a county, and we're losing it back to the Taliban.

Iraq was a compete administrative and military mess, and we are still stuck there without any real pacification. Imagine what Iran will be like, a country with fairly widespread support for an elected (if rigged election) government, a well–trained, and well–equipped army that does not spend most of its time in suppressing its own population, and complete access to all of its cash reserves and the world's oil markets, which it can use to buy all the weapons it wants. Where will we get the manpower?

There comes a time when we need to stand up and tell the idealists and academic politicians to shut their damned mouths an let people who have actually lived in the real world run things for a while.

The life police will arrest Mr. Brown soon.

2006-07-11T07:56:00.000-04:00

Looks like food übergeek Alton Brown will now be blacklisted by the nasty little fascists who want to save us all from ourselves. In an astonishing rebellion from our current stupid trend of suing McDonald's for somehow forcing everybody to be fat, AB has spoken out.

In a stunning move, he has put his entire career on the line by actually stating that food does not jump down our throats and force us to eat it! It is now only a matter of time before totalitarian freaks leap up to denounce him for daring to say that we actually should take responsibility for our own eating habits instead of whining about how some foods or restaurants have "forced" us to be fat. If I can't fit into my pants, it's not because some clown held me down and force-fed me. It's because I decided to refuse to exercise a little wit and willpower.

Of course, it's a sin to call for good sense and personal restraint.

Hatred for mothers.

2006-06-20T13:11:00.000-04:00

Okay, I admit to supposedly being a noncombatant in these "mommy wars", but what is with some of these psychotics? Isn't part of the whole "feminism" schtick a claim that women should be "empowered" to make their own choices? Ah, but that's just it, establishment feminism is not a political philosophy, it's a religious cult. Like all cults, its heart is dogmatics and tyranny, not actual enlightened political action. According to the establishment of academia-dominated feminism, women should be "free" but only "free" to agree with the totalitarian party line. I'm glad to see that some people understand that the entire anti-mother party line of feminism is a load of rotting rubbish. Yes, there is an enormous burden on working mothers. But psychotic cultists like Linda Hirshman start sounding like the most retrogressive of hardcore chauvinist pigs when they start blaming the mothers for workplace discrimination against them. What next? Is she going to start saying that rape victims "brought it all on themselves"? Hirshman's bizarre claims about women who choose to be stay-at-home mothers are without limit or sanity. As far as she is concerned, stay-at-home mothers should never have bothered with a good university education. Evidently, Hirshman believes that an educated mother is pretty much worthless to her children. Evidently, Hirshman believes that there is no such thing as grass-roots political or community activity. Evidently, Hirshman is a perfect example of the out-of-touch, elitist, ivory-tower cultist who likes to pretend to be "enlightened" or "progressive". And I'm not the only person to say it.

Before anyone's knee-jerk tendencies take over, I am not claiming that political cultism is necessarily a "liberal" or "leftist" trait, although cultish feminism certainly is a flaw of the Left. I was blessed to meet and get to know some decidedly left-wing women in my life who likewise made the free choice to be stay-at-home mothers, and they were punished for it by their alleged "sisters", even as they raised the new generation of leftists.

And, truth be told, I've got a personal axe to grind in this matter. During my decade spent in Ithaca, New York, I got to witness her suffer through the way that "enlightened" people treated her for daring to not adhere to their bigoted little worldviews. At least one good thing did come of that--I got to see that liberals are no less prone to prejudice and narrow-mindedness than are conservatives. They're just snootier about rationalizing it. What's really sad are the mothers who are so heavily indoctrinated that they run the risk of alienating themselves from their own daughters when those daughters "fail" to make the "politically correct" decision about their lives. Freedom to choose must be free to not agree with some establishment pseudo-progressive dogma or it is not freedom at all.

Cutting your own throat.

2006-06-13T11:56:00.000-04:00

In their quest to appease everyone, the Democratic party has finally reached the point wherein they are going to have to cut off one hand to please the other. For the longest time, the Democrats have built their base on the promise of universal employment, or at very least higher-quality employment for people who aren't already rich. To do this, their foundation relied heavily upon our various unions. But now times are changing. Globalization has made the place of American workers more perilous than before. The Democrats are already heavily culpable for this in their most egregious betrayal of their core base--it's also known as "NAFTA". Whether or not NAFTA is a good idea in and of itself is another matter, but the plain truth is that the Democratic party, under the leadership of Mr. Clinton, decided to piss on their largest source of support and tell them that it was raining.

Once that stone got rolling, it's only gained speed. I'm not one to argue that freer trade is a bad thing, I'm just saying that the Democrats have mounted a vicious and merciless assault upon the very source of the lion's share of their grass-roots workers and even funding. For decades, the liberal/leftist "jobs for all" merry-go-round has ridden on the backs of American capitalism. That ride is now being shut down, and people are beginning to notice it.

So far, so good, all the Democrats have to do is just figure out some sort of "New New Deal", like Dionne suggests. But, oopsie! Yes, I said "oopsie". The Democrats have given themselves a sick and twisted household that would strike even the magnificent Slats Grobnik dumb.

In an effort to appease the social leftists who have come to use politics as a substitute for therapy, the Democratic party has hitched its wagon to what it pretends is immigration "reform", but their "reform" would essentially give immigrants an advantage in direct competition against the low-skilled and semi-skilled union labor that had been the backbone of the Democratic party.

If it weren't my own country, I'd just stand back and laugh, but I can't. We all know that Mr. Bush and his neo-Soviet policies have managed to alienate enough people in this country to potentially hand Congress back to the Democrats. And we have a Democratic party leadership that is willing to execute their most solid and ardent historical base merely in the name of scoring a few points on the cocktail party circuit.

Who wants to give me enough money to run for office? I promise that there simply is no way for me to screw anything up worse, even if I blow it all on slow horses, fast women, and fine liquor.

Race war?

2006-06-10T19:58:00.000-04:00

For those of you outside of Indianapolis, an entire family of seven was murdered recently. They were killed "execution style", men, women, and children. The arrested suspects were both black. Now, here's the twist, the victims weren't Anglos. It was a Hispanic family. But it isn't ending with that. It looks like somebody is looking to keep things stirred up. From my complete outsider perspective, I'm actually surprised it's taking this long for this much trouble to start. There is a great deal of anti-Hispanic feeling among Blacks in Indianapolis, and I've heard talk that verges upon racist among some Blacks when they talk about Hispanics in our town. Indeed, even a few African-American elected officials from Indianapolis, if spoken to in private, are quite happy to denounce any and all "Mexicans". I'm sure that the hostility is not unknown to its targets. The neighborhood in which the murders occurred is notorious for lax police coverage. The heat of the Indiana summer hasn't even started for 2006...

Democrat == Fascist

2006-06-08T15:57:00.000-04:00

Democrats are fascists. Want proof? Here's some proof: Big-time Democrat Alderman of Chicago wants to ban french fries throughout the city. Democrats are fascists, nothing but a bunch of goose-stepping fascists. They need to stop lying about it and admit that they only reason they hate George W. Bush is that he's just being more successful at it than they are.

Damned lies, statistics, and gasoline prices

2006-06-06T09:49:00.000-04:00

Once again, we have seen claims trotted out about the cost of gasoline in "real dollars". As always, the "conclusion" is that gasoline is still super-cheap. As we already know, figures don't lie, but liars do figure. I have often wondered why it is that these claims invariably reach back more than 70 years for comparison. The reason is simple: You have to go back that far for the magic trick to work. But what happens if, instead of the typical storytelling, we instead look at the price of gasoline in terms of hours of work? After all, that is what really matters. Even if the price of something remains the same in terms of "constant dollars", it's still more expensive if you take home even less in "constant dollars" than you used to. What really matters to real Americans is how much time they have to work to be able to afford something.

My own data hasn't been force-fed to me by a political pressure group. I had to go out and get it from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, so I didn't get it going back all the way to 1920. Instead, I had to make do with the average price of unleaded gasoline since 1976 and the average hourly wage for non-management workers (the backbone and soul of America). A little fourth grade math, and I get the number of minutes we have had to work for a gallon of gas, every month, since 1976. This is what really matters to ordinary people who don't get fat salary contracts. How much of my life do I have to give away just to get a gallon of gas?

The highest point since 1976 was in 1981, when we had to work over 11 minutes per gallon of gas. This was the worst part of an all-time high period from 1979-1986, when average Americans had to work more than 8 minutes per gallon of gas, with no relief. This was followed by a long period from 1986 to 2004, when we had to work 6-7 minutes per gallon.

Starting in 2004, everything went up fast, with no sign of relief. In September of 2005, we almost hit the all-time high mark, again. We had a very brief drop at the end of 2005, and now it's moving back up, just as fast as last year.

Ten to twelve minutes a gallon might not sound like much, but if you have a 20-gallon tank (like some popular vehicles currently do) that means every fill-up has cost you more than three hours of your life.

Remember that these numbers do not consider little things like income tax, which makes every hour we work that much less rewarding. If we factor those in, what we end up with is a tankful costs an American worker up to half a day's work--or more, and it looks like the price in terms of how much of our lives go out our exhaust pipes will only go up.

They are simply not human.

2006-05-27T07:38:00.000-04:00

Okay, this pretty much proves it. There are people out there who simply do not deserve to be treated like human beings. Anybody who can wave around that "religion of peace" crap with a straight face these days is, at very best, in serious need of psychiatric medication. When was the last time Christian fundamentalists shot somebody for wearing a pair of shorts? Where are the "peaceful" Muslims who have volunteered to hunt their own animals down like the pigs they are? We're not dealing with competent human beings. These people simply cannot be treated as if they are adults.

Guests are not family!

2006-05-23T07:37:00.000-04:00

Folks, do we really want to permananently institute an official set of second-class residents? It's bad enough that we're drowning in illegals, but the solution to the plague is not to make them essentially permanent nobodies. If we must embrace this flood, we must embrace them all as potential citizens. If you want to live and work in the USA on a long-term basis, do so as a citizen, not as a permanent foreigner. We do not need a legally-enshrined group of permanent outsiders. What we already have is bad enough. Gastarbeiter policies in Europe have ended up producing an entrenced group of people who do not consider themselves to have any loyalty to the countries in which they were born. We do not need to set up a policy to encourage more Mexicans in America. If we are to survive as the USA, we have to set up policies that encourage the Mexicans to become Americans.

Four philosophies of life.

2006-03-30T10:09:00.000-05:00

I think I have found yet another way to classify people. Don't know if it's valid, but I'd say it might be thought-provoking. Here's how it runs: Oppose abortion, oppose executions: Value the sanctity of all life, even lives most would judge unworthy. Oppose abortion, favor executions: Value the protection of innocents. Favor abortion, favor executions: Value convenience for individuals and society. Favor abortion, oppose executions: Want the innocent to die and want murderers and child rapists to live. Do they value anything at all?

Color the Federal Government "Fascist"

2006-03-23T12:10:00.000-05:00

Okay, here's a new one for the record books, and one that will really get all the hardcore political cultists in a tizzy. There is this meat packer, Creekstone Farms. Now, Creekstone Farms does some business with Asian markets. In a free-market country, there's no problem with that, right? To keep their Asian customers happy, Creekstone Farms wants to voluntarily test all their carcasses for mad cow disease (bovine spongiform encephalopathy). From my Libertarian standpoint, this is just hunky-dory. To add or maintain value to their product, a producer is choosing to have this product certified. This should bother nobody--at least nobody who isn't a lunatic or a screaming fascist, right?

So, of course, this means that the US government is bothered by it. The jackbooted thugs of the USDA have decreed that Creekstone must not implement such testing of its products. (Okay, jackboots probably aren't worn by the vast majority of USDA employees, and they're just "pencil-necked busybodies", but I have so wanted to say "jackbooted thugs", lately.) This is nothing but flat-out fascist meddling. A manufacture desires to pay for extra safety certification of its product. The nanny state prohibits it. Think about that. The USDA is prohibiting a company from voluntarily certifying its products at a level higher than the government-required minimum.

The megacorporate meatpackers agree with the USDA. There should not be testing on all carcasses. However, until now, their argument was that there should not be mandatory testing on all carcasses. Now, the argument is that voluntary testing should be prohibited. Why would the USDA do this? It's the Golden Rule--he with the gold makes the rules. Megacorporate meatpackers have relied on the basic fungibility of meat on the US market. "Fungibility" means that one piece of meat at a given USDA grade is pretty much interchangeable with any other piece of meat at a given USDA grade. For the most part, our food supply is fungible--at least if you look at the outlets of the megacorporate meatpackers and their megacorporate food retail outlets.

I had no personal problem with this so long as there was still choice around for those of us who wanted to pay for it. That's how a free market works. Quality is encouraged by the possibility of profit. However, we are abandoning the free market in the USA and replacing it with a plutocratic alliance of megacorporation and government. This alliance does not, under any circumstances, want some upstart company with a product that might be perceived as superior to the run-of-the-mill plutocrats' mass-market swill. It will use its power to squash any attempt to beat the system, if it is permitted to.

If we let this stand, what will happen next? If it really is illegal in this country for a meatpacker to certify its products at a higher leven than the government minimum requirement, what other standards of excellence will become illegal. We might laugh at the following prospect: Private schools prohibited from certifying their educational outcomes as superior to those of government-run schools. Sound ridiculous? It used to be "ridiculous" when opponents of "tobacco lawsuits" said that the next step would be for fat people to sue McDonalds--that would never happen in a million years, right?

Cooper makes an admission.

2006-03-21T15:14:00.000-05:00

Well, it looks like Anderson Cooper has slipped up and told the truth: "I've never, not even once, seen a story spiked because the victim was not attractive enough or the wrong race. But I've seen plenty of stories fall by the wayside, pushed down and out of the show, because a consensus develops that says, "You know, I don't think our viewers are very interested in this case." Of course, many of us have known for quite a long time that all the large commercial "news" outlets have no actual reporters nor editors, just different ranks of infopimps. Like good little infopimps, they pander. Too bad they think that being an infopimp is the same as being a journalist.

Scoring the cards some more.

2006-03-15T08:03:00.000-05:00

The various political "scorecards" (see my recent frothing, below) are very often the product of a single person or small group. As I have been recently reminded, this means that there are very limited resources at play, here. I propose the following:

Those of us who want to give a portrayal of our US government on some kind of "freedom scorecard" might do well to form alliances and share the effort. Ideally, there would be enough of us so that each person would only have to worry about a single state. It is far easier to comb through the votes for one state's worth of Congresscritters than it is for the whole Congress.

Second, there needs to be a set of specific, evenly-applied criteria for selecting "critical" votes and this should reflect several approaches to the question of "freedom". As a romantic, I'm of the opinion that Liberty is something larger than can be fully understood by any single mind. As a biologist, I'm a fan of the "more traits" school of taxonomy. These principles would reduce individual bias. Thus, a broad variety of people would be preferred. However, this also means that participants must understand that, in the real world, dogmatic purity must often be set aside to actually do anything even remotely useful.

Third, both "snapshot" (single year) and "career" scorecards are useful. Each shows something different. Fortunately, as "snapshots" are compiled, "careers" would become easier to track. While an elected official's overall attitudes show up in a career card, annual snapshot cards are far more useful in reflecting which specific stimuli produce which specific responses in a given legislator. Who can be directed (or panicked)? Who sticks by his guns, no matter what (even if it's irrational)?

Therefore, I am going to stick my neck out and volunteer my time to form a voluntary association with no funding and no resources. However, I do have a preliminary protocol.

Use a Nolan-style dual criteria of "Economic Freedom" and "Personal Freedom".

Define a "pro-liberty/pro-freedom" position that we are all able to stick to, even if it disagrees with our ideas of "justice", "fairness", "social equity", or other confounding issues.
This position will guide our evaluation of the various Congressional votes.

Define the "critical roll-call votes" for a session of congress, starting with the current session or the most recent completed session.

There will be no less than 21 votes in each of the two areas, and the number of votes considered will not be divisible by two or five.

This is just a gimmick to avoid "on-the-line" classifications, which are annoying to calculate.

Each vote will be explicitly associated with our position guidelines.
Each vote option will be associated with one of four values: -10, 0, +10, and "na".

The -10 score will be for the vote option that opposes "greater liberty".
The 0 score will be for "abstain", or absence of a seated official.
The +10 score will be for the vote option that is in accord with our "liberty" standards
The "na" score will be for those officials who had not yet been seated by the time of the vote.

Volunteers will allot the various states among themselves, ideally having a roughly equal number of total Representatives and Senators for each volunteer.
Each volunteer will take the Representatives and Senators for the appropriate state (or states) and tally the roll-call votes according to the positions in our guidelines, then report back the scores.
Scores shall be available to all members and the public, by some fairly convenient means. Portrayal and analysis will be at the option of individual members. That is, aside from the "Nolan-style" criteria, there will be no "official presentation". Individuals will be free to spin this all they want.

That's my proposal. Does anyone want to call my bluff, or shall I keep merrily hurling the "partisan shill" charge to all and sundry?

Political "Scorecards"--just another spin gimmick.

2006-03-14T16:36:00.000-05:00

I noticed today that Steven Gordon on Hammer of Truth has mentioned that a "scorecard" was issued for the US Senate. The conclusion of this scorecard was that, or so it claims, Democrats are far, far, oodly-doodly-woodly more libertarian than are Republicans. Well, this was a bit of a surprise to me, until I noticed that this "scorecard" was a product of Freedom Democrats.

Okay, so a group of Democrats says that the Democrats are all nice and liberty-loving while the Republicans are just as icky as can be. I've no doubt that many other blogs are now breathlessly (and mindlessly) reporting this "scorecard" as Gospel truth. That's the nature of these little bits of propaganda, and that's what "Senate scorecards" usually are. They are propaganda pieces. Remember, this was not produced by an independent person or institution. It was a product of a card-carrying member of the Democratic Party who at least seems to have enough sense to realize that a police state might not be the best of all possible worlds.

In other words, a Democrat has defined a Good Thing (liberty) and then concluded that Democrats are better at the Good Thing than are Republicans. Knee-jerk, cult-like Democrats will now gush over how "obvious" the "conclusion" is while knee-jerk, cult-like Republicans will gush over how "wrong" it has to be. I'm just all around suspicious when it comes to any member of any party nattering on about how good they are and how bad The Enemy is. I want to check things out. However, instead of just critiquing the methods and presumptions that went into this particular "Score Card", I rememberd that there is a group of Republicans who also like to claim that they're "libertarian" at heart.

The Republican Liberty Caucus just happens to have their own "Liberty Index", and with a little digging you can get hold of the specifics for both the Liberty Index and the Freedom Democrats' Senate Scorecard. The first thing that should hit you square in the face is that the "key" votes look like they've been severely cherry-picked by both sides. I'm of the opinion that this severely altered the outcome and very well may have been done to produce the specific desired result. The Republican index restricts itself to 20 "personal" and 20 "economic" votes, all taken in 2005. The Democrat scorecard has 15 "social" and 15 "econonomy" votes, but in each of their categories, the Democrat scorecard sees fit to use two votes from 2003 and four from 2004. This is highly questionable. Even more questionable is that the Democrat scorecard only lists 14 of the 15 "social" votes it counted--at least when I consulted the web site. What is really interesting is how little overlap there is in the two lists, even though I could make a case for nearly every member of both lists to have been included in some sort of "Liberty Scorecard". Oddly enough, whenever the Democrat list mentioned a bill meant to rein in spending in a field particularly favored by our President, it was absent on the Republican list. Likewise, votes on the Republican list that appeared to me to be important regarding liberty issues were absent on the Democrat.

In short: The books were cooked, and we really can't trust either of these sources on their own. A strong indicator of this is what we might see if we juxtapose the two "scorecards" on each other. It just so happens that the Democrats used a Nolan Chart while the Republicans used a modified Nolan Chart. Since I like the finer nuancing of the Republican version (which still preserves the old Nolan boundaries), I have mapped both surveys together onto a single chart:

Okay, Red is for Republican Senators, Blue is for Democrats. Solid squares represent a same-party evaluation, hollow squares are cross-party evaluation. To quote Saint Gomer of Pyle: Surprise! Surprise! Surprise! Republicans think that other Republicans adore liberty and that Democrats are all a bunch of little dictators. Likewise, contrariwise.

So here we have it, a group of Liberty-loving Democrats are ready to tell the world that the Democratic party is our last, best hope from the tyrannical schemes of the vile Republicans. Simultaneously, a group of Liberty-loving Republicans are ready to tell the world that the Republican party is our last, best hope from the tyrannical schemes of the vile Democrats. I don't need to smell ammonia to tell when someone's taking a leak down my leg and telling me it's rain.

These "liberty" or "freedom" scams within the two major parties very well may just be that--scams, if we're lucky. The more likely scenario is far worse. Both of these groups are probably quite convinced, quite dogmatically convinced, that they truly do represent the only way to achieve liberty and that anyone who won't toe their party line is irrational, deluded, or evil. I have no doubt that most of these people truly do feel emotional affection for our tradition of individual liberty, but they still also insist upon party loyalty first, last, and always.

Of course, these two conflicting charts can make me wonder, what would happen were the ratings to be combined? I decided to treat each of these partisan political factions as fundamentally "equal". Both cherry-pick their samples and both miraculously cast themselves as guarding liberty against the supreme totalitarians of the other party. Thus, I just averaged the scores. If you have the least bit of scientific training, you should be cringing right now, but I wanted to see what the model would look like if we did a simple "pos on both your houses" and threw the two dogmatic views right in with each other. The results were, at very least, amusing, as you can see for yourself:

I'd say that this is a pretty interesting turn of affairs. The Republican and Democrat jingoistic views of each other essentially cancel each other out! What is even more interesting is that, when giving Republican and Democrat evaluations equal weight, the Democrats are, as a group, distinctively "Liberal". In addition, they have the only "Statist" Senators and the sole "Authoritarian" turns out to be a Democrat.

Likewise, and remember, we are giving a Democrat source equal weight to a Republican source, Republicans turn out to dominate the "Centrist" spot in the US Senate. There are a few "Enterprisers" and "Conservatives" among them, but nobody who would qualify as "Right-Wing" or "Authoritarian". No Republicans make it as "Libertarian" on this particular chart--the "Enterprisers" would be "weak Libertarians" on more traditional charts.

The funny thing is that, unlike all the "Ooh-oh, WOW! response that the Freedom Democrat chart seems to be producing in parts of bloggieland, this "unified" chart actually poses no real surprises. The US Senate turns out to be pretty bland. Most Democrats turn out to be liberal, with a few extremists. Republicans (remember, this is Senate Republicans, not House of Representative Republicans) are mostly moderate, with a few libertarian-leaners and conservatives.

But who wants to hear that the Senate is pretty much what it's been for a long time? Political wonks want warfare. They want people at each others throats. Reason is their worst enemy, and a public informed of all sides of a question their worst nightmare.

Guess who grew a pair.

2006-03-10T11:51:00.000-05:00

Evidently, there are a few Europeans left who have not had their entire spinal columns surgically removed. As of today, the European Union has told the new Palestinian government that Hamas had better change its tune if it wants to keep riding the gravy train. From what I had seen from Europe in the last few decades, this has come as a complete surprise to me, a very pleasant surprise, but a complete one. For decades, Europeans have adopted a quite mindless, knee-jerk support for anyone and everyone who hated Israel, the more violently, the better. In essence, they had become nothing but the blindly reflexive opposite of the Christian Zionist Amen Corner we have here in the USA.

Likewise, the severely shameful kowtowing of European leaders to terrorist religious fanatics over a few stupid cartoons certainly would lead a reasonable person to presume that Europe had simply decided to blithely go along with whatever Islamic extremism wants to do.

But maybe there still is hope for Eurpean civilization. Perhaps Europe has remembered that, in order to remain civilized, one must sometimes stand up to barbarians. We can only hope that this is the case, that Europe's strong words will be accompanied by strong acts.

Laws you don't like.

2006-03-07T07:27:00.000-05:00

South Dakota has just banned pretty much all abortions. Some people will be tickled pink and some will be just a teeny bit cross. A similar bill was recently proposed in my own state's General Assembly, and we Hoosiers weren't exactly unanimously behind it.

I have no doubt that the opponents of the new South Dakota law and many who oppose the Indiana bill will say that they should never have been permitted to be mentioned in legislatures in the first place. Attitudes like that only prove how much hatred there is for democracy there is in this country. People in America only favor any sort of representative or democratic process when it guarantees the outcomes they want. When they aren't so sure of the outcome, they try to circumvent our democratic and representative mechanisms.

These enemies of democracy love to claim that, once an issue has been ruled on by a specific supreme court, the matter is "settled" for all time. This attitude is completely at opposition to any sort of representative democratic republic. Yes, it is the duty of the US Supreme Court to reconcile our overly complicated body of laws. However, history has shown that even the supreme court does not consider itself to be infallible. Were that not the case, then Plessy v. Ferguson would have remained the final statement on educational segregation. Brown v. Board of Education of Maryland never could have happened. Likewise, the Supreme Court actually upheld slavery, most famously in Dredd Scott v. Sandford, until such time as the Constitution was amended via the Congress and several state legislatures to abolish the practice.

My point in going through such a summary is that the US Supreme Court is not a divinely-ordained body, instituted to infallibly and permanently determine all matters of dispute in the USA. At most, it ought to be a body to determine whether or not a given law is in accord with the general body of law in our country, resting ultimately upon the US Constitution. Unfortunately, my parents' generation has managed to convince itself into believing that the court actually is supposed to have divine powers, and many in my own generation share the unfortunate delusion.

The impulse is easy to understand. Real democratic processes are messy and scary. You actually have to deal with peopl who don't agree with you, and this is something that a tiny-minded dogmatic cannot tolerate. It is much safer and more reassuring to leave the matter up to a small board of "experts" and keep silly things like state legislatures out of the picture.

Unfortunately, these attitudes only play into the hands of anyone and everyone who would deny us all our fundamental liberties, whether they are on the "right" or on the "left". Use of courts to "permanently" decide all matters of dispute by one side of the political spectrum lulls the entire population into accepting this method as the first recourse. It inevitably leads to the exact same process being adopted by the "other side". At that point, the actual acts of a legislature become irrelevant. Instead, all efforts are expended on "packing" the courts. The current outraged of the "left" over our "right-wing" Supreme Court is a direct result of the "right" merely embracing the judicial hijinks of the "left". Indeed, this very attitude has been embraced by those people who used to be most opposed to "judicial activism". The pro-life faction of our country is now looking for a "big test case" to "settle" the matter in exactly the way they used to denounce Roe v. Wade.

While the function of the courts in reconciling law is indispensible, it should not become a replacement for the proper acts of the legislature. Legislative action, for all its dirt and flaws, is good for our country for two reasons. First, it requires us to actually hear what the "other side" has to say. This is a very painful experience for those people who adhere to a political religion. It is the breath of life for those of us who truly accept the fundamental premise of representative democratic governments.

The moment that any issue is prohibited from consideration in the legislative bodies is the moment that we lose a fundamental portion of our political liberty. At times, this liberty may mean that a legislature makes a mistake. This is a risk inherent in the democratic process, but the consensus had been that this is a risk worth taking. If asked whether or not it is better to risk stupid or bad laws or surrender all of my freedom to a board of lifetime-appointed "experts", I will take the risk. What is enacted by a legislature is far more easily reversed by a legislature than the pseudoholy writs issued from a now-overly revered judiciary.

Finally, prohibiting access to the legislatures to even the most pernicious of issues is a threat to the fabric of society. Like it or not, abortion does not seem to be all that popular in South Dakota, given that the entire state only has one abortion clinic. Whether or not abortion ought to be legal, this does mean that the issue ought to be at very least aired in that particular state's legislature. Crushing all political debate--and political debate must extend into the legislatures--only forces the issue into other means of expression. When any group feels that it cannot be heard in the legislatures, it is far more likely to resort to violence.

So, what is my take-home message? Am I going to say the South Dakota legislature was right or wrong in what it did? Am I going to use this law to stump for pro-life or pro-choice? Which side was I spending all this time just winding you up for? I'm not going to make it so easy on anyone who reads this. The abortion issue is so emotionally laden that it would be far too easy for someone to simply ignore fundamental issues of law, liberty, and separation of powers in the quest to get a particular "side" enforced upon the rest of the country. A civilized individual will put aside the most cherished emotional convictions for the sake of civil society in general. If that means submitting heated issues to the flawed processes of legislative deliberation, then that is what is required.

Get into the game.

2006-03-06T13:34:00.000-05:00

I'm going to break (again) my one-post-per-day rule to say something that's pretty important to me. Contribute to political campaigns or parties. I know it sounds pretty stupid. After all, we pretty much presume that it's all owned by big pressure groups or their "527" proxies. But that might not be the case. Even though both of the major parties pretty much want to shut down free speech when it comes to elections, it turns out that there are more of us little people making contributions than ever before. So, for once, I'm going to tell people to join a trend. Do some thinking, and if any candidate really seems worthwhile, find his or her web site and make a contribution. If nothing else, it will tell that particular party that at least one ordinary person actually matters.

The thing about school vouchers.

2006-03-06T11:13:00.000-05:00

On the face of it school vouchers sound like a good idea. They simultaneously manage to do everything. They redistribute wealth (makes liberals happy) and give "school choice" to families (makes conservatives happy). But here's the little fly in this ointment. It's still money that gets filtered through taxation, which means that it magically gets transformed into "government funding". Why does this little legal fiction matter? If a school accepts any form of "government funding" it has implicitly agreed to government control.

It's true that this particular case outcome would please conservatives, but if we can step away from the mere accidents of the case and examine the fundamental underlying issue. So long as some sort of "Constitutional" rationalization can be found, there is no legal recourse for a school to refuse to comply with any government order that is tied to continuing to accept government funding.

I'm not in the least bit outraged about this as such. After all, it is a fair trade, if you want to get a ladle-full from the Gravy Train, you have to let the conductor seat you as he wishes. It is a crude sort of justice. Likewise, if you want to be free from government interference, you have to forego handouts from said goverment. What this means, and it's very well established in the courts at both state and federal levels, is that any sort of government "funding" can be legally used as an inducement to force schools to implement or refuse to implement certain policies, programs, or curriculum measures.

I'm sure you can follow where this can lead. The progression would go like this. First, a voucher program is implemented. Once it becomes sufficiently popular that "private" schools are completely dependent upon vouchers to survive, the government will start imposing "standards". "Private" schools run by a church could face prohibition on teaching religion and a requirement to teach Darwinism. If they refused, the government could say "Okay, you are a private school, but we just won't let you use our vouchers." Now, the school is in a quandry: They have allowed themselves to become addicted to the vouchers. They can either now obey their new masters or quit, cold turkey. We know which is going to be more likely.

While vouchers might be a useful short-term measure, we cannot look at them as a true solution to our educational problems. They make it too easy to simply export all the problems we have in our public schools to the "private" educational sector, with the added flaw that the "private" sector would still have the illusion of not being under government control. Instead, they would be state schools by proxy. Vouchers really should be considered to be equivalent to a crash kit. They might be useful to get the patient stable, but they won't fix the underlying problem. We have a rot at the root of our society, and I don't think that it's been properly diagnosed.

Are you in a political party or a political religion?

2006-03-03T10:46:00.000-05:00

The next time you start to make a political point or express a political attitude, consider the following question: Are you expressing your adherence to a political party or your adherence to a political religion? I have had some idea of the existence of political religions for some time, but I didn't know that someone else had already figured out that these monsters exist. I look around at the "left" and the "right", and I do not see political theories or philosophies, I see political religions.

Politics has become a religion in the USA, and I do not mean that religion has come to dominate politics. I mean that politics has taken the place of religion, on both the "left" and the "right". Most "right"-leaning politics has co-opted many of the symbols of Christianity, but the reality is that these are merely used as a way to cloak the underlying political religion in an aura of respectability for the intended target audience. The "left" political religion doesn't use the explicit language of a specific faith, which might make it all the more dangerous, especially to its own "worshippers", since they are more easily able to delude themselves into believing that they are operating under "reason" and not "dogma".

But that's not the point of this essay, the point is to ask us all to examine ourselves and figure out if we are doing politics or worshipping at the altars of competing political religions. Thus, I have dug up some traits that seem to be considered indicative of a political religion. Does your political group adhere to them, do you? This is not meant to be a comprehensive list, nor is it a "safe checklist". A group can still be a political religion even if it doesn't adhere to each and every trait on the list.

I see the two major parties (Democrat and Republican) in the USA strongly adopting all of these traits. Likewise, I see most self-identified Democrats and Republicans as adhering to all of them. All of the "right" and "left" pretty much lives in this territory, full time. However, as I've hinted before, this absolves the "third parties" and "independents" of nothing. More than a few Libertarians are well-described by the traits of a political religion, as are at least some elements of authority within the Libertarian party as a formal organization. The same is true of "third parties" like the Greens and the majority of explicitly "left", "right", "racial", and other such parties. In essence, it's like political religion is a contagious mental illness--nobody is immune. Thus, the best defense is to be aware of the symptoms and try to clean out the infection when we see signs of it in ourselves.

The traits are as follows:

Sharp distinction of a group deemed not like us and demonization of the not like us. The definition of the “not like us” depends on agreeing with specific political beliefs, membership in an “enemy” political party, or agreement with a specific set of social goals.
A strong, hierarchical organization (e.g., county parties report to state parties, which report to the national committee. Authority flows downward from the national committee and the local parties are expected to toe the line.)
A coherent belief system that is supposed to be reflected in all aspects of life. One is expected to adhere to a specific set of social assumptions to be a “true” member of the party. There is a strong emphasis on purity of beliefs.
The ultimate aim is to completely transform the country into a “better place”, be that a “haven of tolerance”, the “New Jerusalem”, or any other idealized state of existence.
Members and followers believe that their ideology is “natural” or inherently “obvious”, thus anyone who does not accept the ideology must be “blind”, “evil”, “deluded”, or “misled”.
Unwillingness to accept possibility that ones own party is in risk of becoming or actualy might already be a political religion.
Genuine desire on the part of members and followers to convert others to “the cause”.
Willingness to place ends over means. It would be acceptable, for example to greatly restrict freedom of speech in order to foster greater “tolerance” or promote greater “security”.
Belief that the goals of the party will inevitably triump. Anyone who opposes the ideology merely opposes the great weight of “history”, the “inevitable progress of humanity”, the “will of God for our county”, or some similar immutable force.

Do we want Great Men to lead us?

2006-03-01T13:28:00.000-05:00

Is George W. Bush a Great Man? Is John Kerry a Great Man? Was Bill Clinton a Great Man? If you say "yes" to any of the above, what does it say about you in light of the following remarkably true observations?

The worst form of slavery is that which is called Caesarism, or the choice of some bold or brilliant man as despot because he is suitable. For that means that men choose a representative, not because he represents them, but because he does not.... Men trust an ordinary man because they trust themselves. But men trust a great man because they do not trust themselves. And hence the worship of great men always appears in times of weakness and cowardice; we never hear of great men until the time when all other men are small.

A fellow named Chesterton wrote that some time back, and he's pretty much spot-on, as far as I'm concerned. These days, we are awash in miserable little anklebiters, desperate to follow a Great Man and horribly offended if we don't blindly worship their personal Great Man. It's time we did away with Great Men and instead concentrated on making all men great.

What does this mean? It means that we all have to stop turning our minds over to other people, for one thing. It means that we must admit that even leaders we admire very well just might pull some severely bone-headed moves. It means that we must stop letting politics be a substitute for religion. Likewise, it means that we must stop seeking a new Christ in the person of any particular politicians or group of politicians. Yes, I used the term "Christ" intentionally. It means "anointed one", "chosen one", or even "one who has the calling" (to be metaphorical).

This is what I have seen all Presidential candidates portrayed as in the last several elections, and it has gotten worse and worse. Both the major parties present their respective Christs to the American people, but that's not the real crime. The real crime is that the American people don't tell the two parties to shove their political Christs back up their party backsides.

Why do we do this? In part, it's because so many of us really do believe that we are, individually, nothing but grease-spots--or in need of a promotion to even be a fully-fledged grease-spot. I've watched a lot of people in my life, and the assistant grease-spots of humanity are actually few and far between. The vast majority of us are nowhere near as stupid as we get told we are. We do not need to look to a political party Christ to save us from the world, ourselves, or whomever it is that a given party deems to be the devil. We need to start looking to ourselves for our solutions, not looking for Great Men to dictate solutions to us.

Got me good threads.

2006-02-27T18:41:00.000-05:00

As a break from my tedious political drivel, I'm going to talk about new suits. I bought me a few last week. Now, that's no big deal for some of you, but the last time I got a suit, they were always three-piece, and anybody who wanted to look good had a double vent. I consented to two-piecers, but I insisted on two buttons instead of three. I've never been rail-thin, and you've got to be rail-thin to look good in those Italianate three-button suits. Nothing wrong with Italianate suits, they can look pretty darn good on the right guy, but I'm not that guy. This time, I broke with family "tradition" and got wool instead of "blend" or (even worse) 100% synthetic--from a clothier, even paid for tailoring. Now, as you'd guess, I had to go with bigger measurements after many moons, but I was floored at what measurements had to be bigger. My waist hadn't changed since freshman college, but my chest went up four inches! I guess moving heavy things every weekend pays off. My neck also went up two inches--so there are some tradeoffs.

The Stuck on Stupid State

2006-02-23T07:59:00.000-05:00

There is a state in our union that so very often produces bizarre stories and stupid behavior that a weird news story site has given it its own special category. I refer, of course, to the state of Florida. Once again, Florida proves that it is stuck on stupid. In an effort to deal with the housing bubble, the idiots in the Senility State have decided to give handouts to everybody who makes less than about $70,000 per year. Let's think about that. We have a housing bubble, home prices are obscenely inflated. What is the government's "solution"? Hand out money to keep the prices inflated! This program ultimately will only help real-estate speculators and similar fatcats. A market so excessively high needs to crash now, because it will eventually crash, no matter what the government does. If it crashes later, it will be worse than if it crashes now. Government handout scams for "affordable housing" will only prolong the illness and make things far worse when the inevitable crash happens. What "should" government do? Government should let the market determine. If an area is too expensive for the middle income family to live in (see below on "middle income"), then middle income families have every right to go somewhere affordable. It's part of that whole "freedom of movement" right we have. Now, as for what constitutes "middle income", a lot of geeks (especially, unfortunately, Libertarian geeks) are severely out of touch when it comes to evaluating income levels. Here's a dose of reality: According to the US Census, the "median" (that's "middle" for those of you who can't handle simple statistics) US household income is around $44,000 per year. That's gross income, by the way. Of course, the "exact middle" is not too broad, so let's say that "middle income" is the income of the "middle third" of the population. It's a rational category. So, what would we get if we use this? "Lower income" (the lowest 1/3 of the population) would be $0 to $27.5k, "middle income" would be $27.5k to $65k. Everybody above $65k would, by impartial and objective mathematic criteria, be upper income. It's simple math--if you have the income of the highest 1/3 of the population, you are "upper"--on a three-tier system. So you out-of-touch wastrels who whine about how you just "can't get buy" on less than $100k only show the extent of your lack of thrift. Feel free to whine to me about how "hard" your lives are. Those of us familiar with the real world will give you all the sympathy you deserve. What does it say about our attitudes when we have decided the best way to deal with a mass market (housing) that has priced itself out of the reach of 2/3 of the population requires government subsidies? Think about that. I predict that most of you won't think at all about the matter. If idle speculators wish to price themselves out of the market, they deserve to lose their investments.

Callahans not welcome on Yahoo

2006-02-21T09:29:00.000-05:00

Once again, we get proof that some people really need to get outside once in a while. Verizon has deemed the name "Callahan" to be unacceptable. Why did they do this? Because "Callahan" has the letter combination "allah" in it! Hardcore compugeeks (I'm of the softcore variety, myself--I have these things called "children" and a "wife" who even speaks to me) really shouldn't try their hand at social engineering, it only reveals how utterly inept they are at real life. Yes, it's technically Yahoo doing this, but Verizon owns Yahoo, so Verizon is ultimately responsible for Yahoo's policies. Note that names like "allchristiansmustdie" are perfectly okay with Verizon. So are names like "killeveryarab", "hitlerismylord", "aryanpower4evah", "wipeoutniggaz", "slaughterthosejews", "nuke_dem_jews", and many others. However, anything containing "Callahan" is prohibited. I guess Verizon hates Irishmen.

Putting my foot further in.

2006-02-20T16:56:00.000-05:00

Well, I'm putting my foot further in. Can someone explain to me how it is that a taxation system will reduce EVERYBODY'S tax bill and still remain revenue-neutral? "Fair Tax" is a shell game, a scam, a con-job designed to delude the dogmatic and fantasists while distracting from the fact that its proponents have done nothing at all serious about cutting spending. "Fair Tax" is nothing but rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. How many times does this have to be said before it sinks in? I don't give a Flying Vonnegut about whether or not something might or might not be part of an "anarcho-capitalist" pie-in-the-sky political fantasy. From my standpoint, it's pretty much the same-old same-old. Connected fat-cats get their built-in exemption ("investment properties"); the proposed system has built-in social engineering ("investment properties"); and nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, as in nothing at all is built in for mandatory spending cuts. How long are people going to blindly let these "Fair Tax" shills piddle down their legs and tell them it's raining? Cut spending first. Until I see some massive spending cuts coming from the people who natter on about "Fair Tax", I will not believe a single claim they make about it. Something is up. It promises to be too much for too many people. It's too slick to trust. It's a floor wax and a dessert topping!

Fair taxes vs. "Fair Tax".

2006-02-16T15:11:00.000-05:00

Okay, I'm going to do it. I'm going to alienate the few remaining totalitarian Libertarians who aren't already burning me in effigy. I do not like Fair Tax. There, I said it, and I said it in public. I don't like it, I just don't like it. It stinks. The Mises Institute explains it all better on many levels than I could, with one exception. In addition to all the problems mentioned for the Fair Tax and inherent in any consumption tax in general, the "Fair Tax" has an inherent unfairness built into it. It exempts properties used for "investment" purposes. Where one exemption is permitted, another will be permitted, and the exemptions will be stretched. Once again, government will shift tax burdens around until we're as bad or worse off than before. Likewise any tax exemption is merely a form of social engineering, and how could any libertarian of any stripe approve of social engineering on the part of government? Finally, Fair Tax and all similar proposals are foredoomed if they are meant to fix the economic drain that is our government. None of these proposals have any sort of mandatory spending cuts built in. All Fair Tax does is redesign how the money is extorted from people. In other words, Fair Tax is ultimately rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Not only will it turn out to be useless, but it will be a deadly distraction from actually dealing with the real problem, out-of-control and bloated government.

RealID is a free pass for terrorists.

2006-02-12T11:07:00.000-05:00

Remember how RealID was sneaked in through the back door? Remember what the hardcore Soviet-style totalitarians who wanted to implement it said it would do? It would magically make us all "safer" by requiring RFID in all drivers licenses in the USA. Well, guess what! As usual, when dealing with totalitarian goons, they were nothing but a pack of liars. It is possible to "sniff" and CLONE a RFID tag! And "security" chips can be cloned, too! That's right. Running around with all of these RFID-based identifications will make it EASIER for terrorists to pass themselves off in the USA, now. Thank you, George W. Bush and your merry band of neosoviets. You have made us even more vulnerable to terrorism by your police-state tactics. Now, we can be even worse than East Germany. Hooray for the Republican party for being a bunch of freedom-hating anti-Americans and backing it, and hooray for the Democratic party for being too cowardly to fight it.

More Muhammedy goodness!

2006-02-03T15:01:00.000-05:00

Somebody's got a good site over the whole Muhammed cartoon kerfuffle. Y'know, I used to be ashamed of some of my fellow rednecks, then I learned more about the rest of the world. Today, all rednecks can hold their heads up high for their cosmopolitan attitudes and sophisticated enlightenment by comparison.

Looney? I didn't know the meaning of loonie!

2006-02-03T14:46:00.000-05:00

Okay, I have to admit it, but I hate admitting it. I actually agree with Neal Boortz. This is just scary, but it's not nearly as scary as the hardcore, totalitarian, dirka-dirka fascist response of "the Muslim world" to nothing but a few stupid cartoons. Dear dimwitted religious fanatics: Get some clues and get some lives worth living. Great day in the morning! Blasphemies get committed against Christianity far worse than this. There was one dimwit that did a "portrait" of the Blessed Virgin Mary with a big piece of elephant poo as part of her body! And let us not ignore this little "gem", shall we? Have Roman Catholics or the Orthodox Christians marched out by the thousands into the streets demanding that the government "punish" these guys? Did Catholic gunmen violate the museums in question the way Muslim gunmen assaulted an EU consulate? Have multiple Catholic hierarchs stated that no apology would be enough, but that the governments of the USA and the UK must "punish" not only the artists but the museums that "published" their works? No and no, again no and no. Of course not. That's because, whatever flaws we might have, most of us "high-church" style Christians at least understand the basic fundamentals of this little thing called "civilization". Y'know, Muslims used to be really good at the whole "civilization" thing, too--even better than Europeans. What happened? How'd they lose any and all sophistication or cosmopolitanism and turn into a bunch of narrow-minded, chanting, gun-toting religious bigots? So, if any Muslims read this, prove me wrong. State flat-out that, even if it might be blasphemous, in a modern, civilized country, artists have the legal right to be blasphemous and newspapers the legal right to publish blasphemy, even if you hate it to the core of your being. Prove me wrong. Flat out state, as a Muslim, that you believe there should be no punishment, whatsoever to the artists or newspaper for these cartoons. State, flat-out and without equivocation (that's "weasel words" for the Kentuckians in the audience) that, even though the cartoons are offensive and maybe even downright nasty, there is no legitimate call for using violence in response, it is completely wrong to use violence in response, there is absolutely NO JUSTIFICATION, WHATSOEVER, for the overblown and hyperbolic response of "the Muslim world" to just a handful of stupid cartoons. I lay down my gauntlet. No Muslim will identify himself as such and meet this challenge, because to do so would require being an enlightened individual who truly believed in basic and fundamental liberties.

Democrat = Republican = LOONIES!

2006-01-30T15:01:00.000-05:00

I tend to like to actually add commentary to a link that I post, but this one just about speaks for itself. It turns out that conservatives and liberals are completely and thoroughly irrational. There's no surprise to me on that one. No doubt this will get no more mention in the press, especially since it repudiated a deeply-cherished bigotry of the left. (Other studies have long since repudiated many bigotries of the right.)

Get the fox out of the henhouse.

2006-01-11T10:35:00.000-05:00

Sometimes, tired old proverbs really do make sense. Some of them are so truthful that they exist in many languages. Machts nicht den Bock zum Gärtner! is one of them. It translates as "Don't make the goat the gardner." Our own version is "Don't let the fox guard the henhouse." We all know what that means. A goat as gardener or fox in charge of a henhouse will just set up the rules to devour everything, leaving the owner with nothing. For nearly two centuries, the fox has been in charge of the Hoosier henhouse and the goat has been tearing up our garden.

I am talking, of course, about gerrymandering. Indiana politicians love the 1800s. It was the era of biggest patronage, biggest spoils system hiring, and biggest political machine hijinks. Boss Tweed was an upstanding, honest, and purely transparent citizen with a strong social conscience by comparison. Indiana has one of the worst arrangements of state legislature elective districts in the country. Non-competitive districting destroys democratic institutions. It tells people who aren't part of the party machine that they simply do not matter. Set-aside districts guarantee that elected officials never have to actually listen to the people. So long as the borders are drawn with enough corruption, the blind partisan vote will keep them in office.

So, why am I bothering to complain about this now? Much to my surprise, the Indiana General Assembly House of Representatives has actually decided to enter the 20th century only five years after the 21st century began. A bill has been floated by the majority party to take redistricting out of the hands of the legislators and give it to a commission. The best part is that it would make using political data for redistricting purposes a felony. It's high time that Indiana stopped pretending that the year was 1831. It's quite telling that it's the Democratic party that is opposing this measure the most vehemently.

Evidently, Democrats are of the opinion that districting would be bad for them if it isn't don on the basis of special priviliges and set-asides. However, the Republicans in the state senate aren't much better. Any Hoosier who happens to read this should contact your state senator and state representative and let those creatures know, in no uncertain terms, that it is time for Indiana to stop pretending that it's 1831. It's time for Indiana to have open and competitive elections, not priviliged set-aside districts that gurantee a corrupt or incompetent incumbent a lifetime term. If you have any feelings for Indiana other than blind hatred, you will agree that a change like this is a long time coming. Specifically, contact your state senator and state representative and tell them that you want Indiana brought into the 20th century before the 21st century is over. Competitive districts produce responsive legislators. Non-competitive districts produce government of, by, and for entrenched anti-public interests.

The glory of socialized medicine

2005-12-19T16:56:00.000-05:00

Chalk up another victory for socialized medicine! I'm sure that we can all look forward to medical care of equal quality once the nanny-staters get their way with us all.

Link Restoration

2005-12-19T11:54:00.000-05:00

Links will be restored as soon as I've the time. I switched formats and only noticed after the fact that the new format does not have any provision for links built in.

Remember when "conservative" had SOMETHING to do with morality?

2005-12-13T11:34:00.000-05:00

Well, golly and goshamighty, it looks like some well-known Bushusuru has just been forced out of his job. That's right, the infamous Diebold CEO who promised to "deliver Ohio" (illegally) to Bush le fils is now severely under fire on matters of securities fraud/insider trading and mismanagement of elections in Georgia and--wait for it--Ohio. When I was but a simple Hoosier lad, I was taught by my conservative grandparents and conservative great-grandparents that, whatever flaws our beliefs might have, the one thing that would set us off politically is that we chose to adhere to old-fashioned moral values. These included simple honesty. Evidently, simple honesty is no longer acceptable among what passes for "conservativism". I've no doubt that the barking dogs of the right have already started their spin control, trying to explain away everything that has happened in connection with Diebold. The plain truth is that a culture of corruption has entrenched itself within the corridors of both our business world and government. George Will has aptly pointed out that the Republican Party has abandoned conservativism. What has taken its place is jingoistic theocratism. Republicans have replaced conservative political philosophy with reactionary political religiousity--and I'm not just talking about the religious proclivities of individual Republicans. What the Republicans have done is a symptom of what infects so many of the political groups of this day. They have ceased being a political party and become a political religion. Dogmatism has replaced philosophy. Both major political parties are guilty of this, as are many "alternative" parties. When a political party becomes a political religion, we have opened ourselves up to tyranny. When one is in a political religion, nothing is ever actually immoral in the the service of that religion. This is why we have things like the Killian memos. Democrats saw nothing wrong with forging documents that "proved" what they already believed. After all, they did so in a higher cause. Even when pushed to the wall, high priests of that particular political cult, like Dan Rather, insisted that, even if the memos were fraudulent, they should still be accepted because what they said agreed witht heir personal political dogmas. But that merely makes the Democrats and their hangers-on no different than the Republicans. Backroom deals with Enron, more and more signs of vote fraud and/or misappropriations of federal funds, it all adds up to one thing. We have replaced honest politics with a form of religion. So long as one is in the "correct" party, one cannot commit an immoral act, and the only immoral act left is to disagree with the "correct" party. Forge memos? Diddle with elections? Who cares? It's for a Greater Cause, right? If we keep this up, we will flush our Republic down the toilet. We will give ourselves a tyranny far more oppressive than any previously known, one that will be all the worse because it will encroach by degrees, carefully numbing us with little concessions to personal comfort. We will have enslaved ourselves, and deservedly so. PS: Libertarians and Greens, I've not forgotten you--you two indulge in some of the worst excesses of political religiousity.

"Thou shalt not remonstrate"

2005-12-09T08:14:00.000-05:00

Off the bat, I'm in agreement that forced annexation into Fishers is something that's flat-out wrong in our political tradition. Yes, it's been done a lot, but Jim Crow and slavery used to be done a lot, too. However, that being said, I do have to put up a question: What is the history of the non-remonstrance clauses in the covenants for properties around Geist? Were they actively concealed from the current owners, or were the current owners merely too lazy or stupid to read the full covenants before purchase? When I bought my house, I went over all the documents with a flea comb. It's a little thing called "due diligence". If the current residents in the area threatened with annexation didn't bother to check for covenant restrictions upon purchase, then they really just dug their own hole--they merely reap what they sow. Opposing forced annexation on solid political philosophy grounds is one thing, but the selfsame political philosophy that would oppose forced annexation likewise invariably says that poor people have to "stand on their own feet" and should not look to the governanny to keep them safe from themselves. Now that it's rich people who might have voluntarily bought a pig in a poke, there's a hue and cry over "thou shalt not remonstrate" covenants. If these covenants were concealed from the current owners or the owners were told that these covenants had no enforceability, then a valid argument could be made that they are inherently invalid. However, if the current owners had every reasonable opportunity to discover covenants, there was no concealment, then the covenants should stand--or does "self-reliance" and "take the consequences of your actions" not apply to Geist residents? Are morality and American social virtues only to be practiced by the poor?

We already tried it, okay?

2005-11-18T11:26:00.000-05:00

(This piece has also been published, in a somewhat different form, on 90ways.com.)

"But Maaaaaaaaa! All the cool kids are doing it!" That's the sign of a kid who has a lot of growing up to do. Funny enough, it's also the only argument that was ever made in favor of Indiana adopting Daylight Saving Time. As so many of us think we "know", Indiana "changes time zones" twice a year. Of course, any non-cretin knows better. Indiana never changes time zones. No state in the Union changes time zones. What Indiana does is not officially observe Daylight Saving Time (DST). Of course, that isn't even true. Parts of Indiana near Louisville and parts near Chicago do observe DST (and there's that chunk in the southwest that even most Hoosiers can't remember). The parts in the southeast do Eastern Standard and Daylight times while the parts in the northwest and southwest observe Central Standard and Daylight times.

But that's going to change. Now, in a feeble mystical ritual, Indiana's state legislature has voted to adopt DST. The chief cultists assure us that it will magically guarantee prosperity and greatness to the Hoosier state. We will overtake all others in education and economic power. Yes, that's pretty much what was promised—in a politically appropriate weasel-word fashion, of course. We can't have accountability for elected officials, after all. The way it was done was an act of political diddling that could leave interns shuddering for years, but I'll get to that a little later. First, I'll explain how Indiana ran its affairs.

The parts of the state that do not screw around with their clocks twice a year are thought to not observe DST, and the law says that they don't observe DST—they're all officially on Eastern Standard Time all year around, so that's technically correct, but you've got to remember that this is the USA. This is the same country that has legally proclaimed that tomatoes are not fruits and legally considered the majority of its Black inhabitants to only be 3/5 a human being for nearly a century. In other words, legal technicality in the USA doesn't always match up with good sense, or even the faintest grasp on reality.

In 1949, Indiana officially put itself onto the Central zone. This included observing CST—although that wasn't enforced on counties that didn't want to play along. This kind of sensibly hands-off approach for government is exactly the sort of thing that gives busybodies and nanny-staters massive bed-wetting episodes, so it was not allowed to continue. The long and short of it is that, by 1966, the majority of the state had decided that Central Daylight Time all year around was the best time for Indiana. It was the zone choice that actually fit the scientifically-determined position of the sun at noontime, after all. However, when the country's time zones were nationally standardized in the Uniform Time Act, Indiana was changed to the Eastern Zone, even though its more appropriate time zone is Central. This was to accommodate Hoosiers. It was no skin off the coasters' noses at the time—although they started having appropriate hissy fits about it soon enough. Since the law permits a state to exempt itself from DST, Indiana, for the most part, did so. But to keep everything nice and official (can't be on the "special" time all year-round, can we?), Indiana was moved to EST, which is equivalent to CDT.

Now just why would we want such a thing? Contrary to the dimwitted blathering of ignorant coasters (as if non-ignorant coast-dwellers aren't vanishingly rare), it was not because Indiana had never been on DST and was "too backwards" to accept it. Quite the contrary, we had tried it and we did not like it. Why this might be true is painfully obvious to anyone with at least three firing cerebral neurons.

In an Indiana forced into the Eastern zone, sunrise stinks on ice. All winter long, Indiana wakes up to pitch darkness. That's right, since we're in the Eastern Standard zone, we have little sunlight for winter mornings. We drive to work in snow, wind, sleet, and near darkness. It is a testament to the power of caffeine that the Hoosier state has not died on the drive to work—Juan Valdez, we salute you! If we were in the Central Standard zone in winter, it might be better, at least we might get the glimmer of a dawn in morning, but the drive home would be in inky blackness. So we split the difference. In other words, winter on CST would be no picnic.

Summer on EDT would also stink in Indiana. Ignorant coast dwellers natter on and on about "long summer evenings". The Clue Fairy is here, and he's got an extra two-by-four for you: Indiana already has long summer evenings. There are parts of this state where sunset is around 8:30 pm in the summer without observing EDT. Put that an hour later, and it's goodbye to fireworks in summer—or at least any you could bring the kids to. It's hard enough getting children to bed at a reasonable hour in summer here, already.

So, that's why we are where we are—or where we were. And the reason I went through all of that is in the rather vain hope that someone will actually abandon dearly held prejudices about Hoosiers and why we've done what we've done. I want to be understood when I tell you what it is (soon to be was) like in Indiana—why we liked how we do (did) things.

What is it like not diddling our clocks twice a year? Didn't we get confused? Didn't we get lost? I must say, that this, among all other things, was the damnably funniest thing we ever heard about our way of keeping time. Over and over, idiots kept bleating about how stupid we were for not changing our clocks twice a year when they were the ones who were too damned stupid to figure out how we did things. We knew the drill. Once a year Chicago changed to be with us. Once a year Ohio and points east changed to be with us. No muss, no fuss, no dirty yellow buildup. We never felt like we suffered for not being just like everybody else—blind conformism is so sad, wouldn't you say? Indeed, we had a bit of smugness that we were bright enough to realize that we didn't need to screw up our clocks twice a year in order to survive.

And it's not like clock-screwing was a great thing for everybody. I lived for nearly a decade in Ithaca, New York. Not a single person there liked dinking around with the whole clock adjustment stupidity. They all went along with it, but only because it was legally mandated. Even the crazy people on the Commons couldn't be convinced that it was a good idea. Nobody liked it—everybody hated it. But the sheeple went along, because their Masters had dictated it. And that was it—the only reason that people switched to DST in spring was because everybody else did it. Like Berk Breathed once wrote: "If many people do a stupid thing, it is still a stupid thing." (And it is a stupid thing, switching to DST kills people, every year, and the difference is not "made up" when we switch back to standard time)

But in Indiana, we had it good. It's not as if ignoring DST killed our state's economy—that got axed when Detroit shipped its parts manufacturing entirely out of the country decades ago. It didn't stop FedEx from building its second-largest hub in Indianapolis. It didn't stop the Indy 500 from being the Biggest Spectacle in Racing (Tony George did that all on his own). No, Indiana managed to do okay without having to do stupid things with our clocks twice a year. And it's not as if non-observance of DST is equivalent to being culturally backwards—Japan doesn't do DST, after all.

The only people who were seriously upset were self-styled coastal "sophisticates" and those few pathetic Hoosiers who built their whole lives around what other people thought of us.

Okay, there was one other group—TV networks. Back in 1969, the Big Three actually sued the federal government for not enforcing DST on Indiana. You see, they were too lazy and stupid to tolerate any sort of broadcast time diversity. Well, the upshot of that was that most of Indiana was allowed to wiggle around that for a while, but the broadcast networks never forgot, and ever since have been major lobbyists for forcing all of Indiana to adopt DST. This is important.

So, for decades, we were living as we lived, doing not too badly at all. Riley Children's Hospital managed to be a world-class research facility without DST. Purdue University turned out engineers and astronauts without DST. The Kinsey Institute remained a center of human sexuality research without DST.

But some people cannot leave well enough alone. They noticed that Indiana had fallen far behind in general education. It never occurred to them that it might be because of our antiquated administrative system (our Commissioner of Public Education is elected, as a member of a political party). They noticed that our state was not attracting jobs. It never occurred to them that it might be because state government is still putting most of its effort into attracting low-skill heavy manufacturing to the state as our primary means of generating wealth. They noticed that Indiana has a brain drain. It never occurred to them that this is what happens when you make education a political post and put all your resources into attracting heavy industry over everything else. Nope, they decided that all of our problems were because Indiana didn't observe Daylight Saving Time.

So they started a crusade. They had extremely rich allies in all the network TV affiliates across the state, who were very careful to couch all the coverage to only favor DST. These advocates had tried several times under the previously elected governor (O'Bannon) but never made it through the General Assembly (GA). Finally, though, the DST-at-any-cost cultists hit on a perfect formula: Flat-out dishonesty.

Indiana's previous governor had died while in office, and his successor was as dynamic as a Jim Nabors album. The new guy (Daniels) was swept in on a rack of promises, and one of them was Daylight Saving Time, but only if the state as a whole wanted it. In other words, he'd have it brought to a vote and not do it as some kind of back-handed political move. Okay, fair enough. Hoosiers are willing to let any crazy old bill be debated and voted on. We even considered changing the value of pi before good sense returned to our legislators. But people who expected a fair representative shake were sadly fooled.

The original bill to bring about DST for Indiana was killed by means of a procedural act. In Indiana if a quorum is not present, bills cannot be brought to the floor for a vote in the GA. On top of this, the GA has a hardwired adjournment date between the two annual sessions. If a bill is not officially brought to the floor by this date, it is officially dead. It cannot be re-entered until the next year. This is to protect the voice of the minority party (the year this bill came up, it was Democrats) against a tyrannical majority (Republicans that year). The year before the bill to impose DST was put up, the Republicans had been in the minority and had used this tactic. The Democrats decided that turnabout was fair play.

The DST bill was not popular, and a lot of Republicans weren't too happy about voting for it, so they were relieved that it was dead, but GA leadership had a few tricks worthy of a Best Little Whorehouse governor.

In the resumption of the session, another bill was stripped of all of its content—every single line was taken out of it—and the text of the DST bill was read into it! To top it off, the Speaker of the House in Indiana then violated procedural rules in a way that only Gilbert and Sullivan once would have attempted to make sure that no messy little "deadlines" got in the way of ramming this one through. So at the end of it, the bill got passed by a very slim majority, and that only after a lot of backroom promises were made. Then it was signed and all the promises were forgotten.

You see, one of those promises was that, whatever would happen, all of Indiana would be on one time zone, forever and ever, amen. This was one of the things that sold Hoosiers on the bill—we'd no longer have to worry about close relatives living in the same state being on a different time zone. Gary to Indy to Richmond would all observe one time, as one state, and a wink and a nudge told us that, even though it would stink in winter, at least we'd have a nice, sane summer, just like we always have—on CDT. No such luck. Instead, the liar in the mansion deftly dodged the matter, refusing to petition the Department of Transportation to put us onto a single time zone. Since Transportation would rather not have to re-draw its maps, that means that most of Indiana will end up doing EST/EDT, a time zone that only pleases TV executives and some pathetic lickspittles who get wet at the idea of being just like New York. It means that the ordinary Hoosier, who liked the old system just fine, who knew that we had already tried DST, thank you very much, and it didn't work for us, it meant that ordinary people would once again get screwed by the system.

Now, David Crooks, a Democrat from Washington, IN, is trying to get a referendum on the ballot for the people to pick the time zone. He stands little chance of success. Indiana legislators do not like public input. They set aside "safe" districts and have no limit on special interest campaign spending. Nuvo—a weekly newspaper in Indianapolis—did an in-depth article on Indiana campaign funding. Only one legislator in office had majority funding from individual contributors. Otherwise, Democrat or Republican, it's all heavy special interest donations, very often from the same interests to both sides.

But that's not the punch line. The real nut-punch line is that it won't matter that Indiana adopts DST. Over and over, I heard the DST cultists hoot on. Adopting DST would improve Indiana's business. Adopting DST would improve Indiana's communications, and for them, the most important thing of all, adopting DST would improve Indiana's image. In other words, it all boiled down to one thing—Indiana had to do it because all the cool kids were already doing it. This, more than anything, proved that the supporters of DST were talking out their asses. As anybody who knows anything knows, when the dork tries to dress like the cool kids, talk like the cool kids, and act like the cool kids, the cool kids know it means that he's an even bigger dork than they thought he was.

In your ear, Nanny, in your ear.

2005-10-06T16:23:00.000-05:00

I'm certain that the popular press is going to do its best to ignore or discredit the following (I was wrong, but only slightly--one day of mention and now it's ignored.), but it seems that somebody has found a way to accurately predict the chance of obesity in children in the USA. A paper titled "Body mass index in elementary school children, metropolitan area food prices and food outlet density" recently came out in the journal Public Health. If you can't read the whole thing, I'll give you the gist of it: Some number crunchers decided to just look at a whole bunch of factors and see how they compared to the weight gain of about 7,000 kids in the USA, starting in kindergarten and going up to 3rd grade. They looked at race, family income, family education, grocery stores, convenience stores, how many fast food places were around the kids in each of their neighborhoods, and--here's the important bit--they looked at the prices of meat, dairy, fruits & vegetables, and fast food. Why's that the important bit? Here's the kicker: The following factors were found to be the most important in how much weight (measured by Body Mass Index) the kids gained. Number one was already being fat. Fat kids at four/five years old are even fatter at eight/nine. Number two was being black. Sad fact, but the numbers seem to work out that way. This might have something to do with diet for that specific sub-group, but the study wasn't quite that comprehensive. Number three was not having ignorant parents. Kids whose parents had at least bachelors degrees gained less weight than kids whose parents didn't. (Yes, Virginia, they did adjust for differences in income--there was no connection between income level and fatitude.) Factor four was being a girl. Girls gained more weight faster than did boys at that age. Number five was the first non-social group and non-genetic factor that had any serious effect. And what was number five, you might ask? The more expensive fruits and vegetables are, the fatter the kids are. Fast food, meat, and dairy prices had no significant effect. Fast food availability had no significant effect. All those blithering idiot nannies who moan and whine about how Ronald McDonald is forcing people to be fat can take a flying you-know-what at the moon! Oddly enough, this is something I've suspected for a good, long time. I've had to live on a limited income from time to time, and what's the first foodstuff that I curtail buying when money gets tight? Fresh fruit and vegetables--it's very expensive when you're worried about even being able to fill a belly at all in the first place. When the option comes down allocating money to feed the kids so they aren't ready to cry from hunger or give them so little total food that they're still begging for more, mac-and-cheese beats carrots and kale. (Chop one onion and cut two/three peeled carrots into small pieces. Wash about a pound of kale--remove the stems and cut stems into same size pieces as carrots. Cut leaves into roughly one-inch wide strips. Sautee onions, carrots, and stems in a little butter or olive oil for about five minutes. Add leaves cover pot, turn down heat. Cook until done, which depends on how crispy you like your kale. Serve with salt, black pepper, and vinegar.) Of course, I've no doubt that some nanny will come around and cook up a bunch of fake nonsense, comparing the price of boutique veggies with boutique meat, and presuming that a single perusal of their ultra-exclusive supermarket aisle is better than a four-year longitudinal study involving over 7,000 subjects, but nannies are stupid like that.

The most pathetic of all possible losers.

2005-09-30T17:25:00.000-05:00

I have figured out what constitutes the most pathetic of all possible losers. This sort of waste of DNA goes beyond the most vomit-sodden wino and even ranks below network news anchors and ambulance-chasing attorneys on the scumbag scale. I refer to that lowest of the low, the "geographic troll". A geographic troll has moved away from some locale or another, but is still so obsessed with cult-like hatred for his or her previous home that said troll haunts message boards of newspapers, TV stations, or other things attached to the old locale. Why does the geographic troll do this? The geographic troll does this specifically to badmouth the old home. I have tried, more than once, to imagine anything more pathetic and laughable, but I've yet to figure out anything that could be sadder. What could be worse than to not only hate a previous home but to obsess on it to the level wherein one feels the need to tell everyone still living there how horrible it and they all are?

My big mouth

2005-09-27T16:33:00.000-05:00

Given that I'm usually a day late and a dollar short, I've finally started a weblog (no, I will not use the word "blog", just to be contrary). Maybe that'll mean the womenfolk in my life will have to stop listening to nearly as much grumbling...