Is there life after death?

Evidently, the proposition that there is life after death has been proven correct, at least when it comes to 1.8 million dead people.  They can still vote according to Pew Center Research. 

Your car and natural gas . . .

Should we convert vehicles to run on natural gas?  Here's an article on the subject.  Cars will run on natural gas, just fine.  But there are some significant problems with conversion, much of which is not actually technical but is political.

Of course, natural gas is abundant, and is therefore cheaper than gasoline, right?  On the other hand, gasoline would be a lot cheaper but for government perversion of the market, and how much do you want to bet that if natural gas were the automotive fuel of choice, government would screw that up, too. 

Because it isn't actually about fuel.  It's about who is the boss of you.

Super Bowl excitement . . .

. . . can overtake any one of us.  Even me.  I'm normally pretty balanced about the whole Super Bowl experience although I know that for many it is the main religious event of their year.  But this year, right after halftime, I got carried away and put an extra seed in the parakeet's cup.  

FBI agent says . . . My bad!. . . . .

The premier investigative agency in the whole wide world investigated themselves right  into the wrong apartment.  With a chainsaw.  And guns drawn.

They have a defense if the resident wants to file a tort claim.  The defense is that they are the government and you can't sue them unless they damn well feel like being sued, oh, and they said they were the FBI after they got inside and then they said, "oopsies," right after learning they were in the wrong place about a half hour after getting in.  And okay, so we'll buy you a new damn door 'cause we feel kinda bad about this.

Let's see, so they had an arrest warrant.  Assume for a moment they were even in the right place -- which they weren't, dammit -- how long does it take to determine that the guy they are looking for isn't in the apartment, when the only people in there are a kid and a female? 

On the other hand, if only there had been some kind of a clue, I'm pretty sure the premier investigative agency in the whole wide world coulda figured it out by the time the panel on the door with the apartment number on it was cut out of the door.  But there evidently weren't any clues around anywhere. 

Sometimes these things just happen in the never ending war against chemical happiness.  In a world where some people refuse to accept unhappiness when they can afford to do something about it, it is up to the government to discourage unearned happiness at gunpoint and with chainsaws if necessary.

There's going to be hell to pay when it occurs to the government bozos how much enjoyment there is in chocolate.

Thinning the herd . . .

Here's a woman who, for purposes of personal growth, health and wellness, let herself be "cooked to death."  This was at a personal growth seminar.  Ah, let's all jump onto the new age movement and free ourselves of the old prejudices of the dead past -- things like hygiene, and a sense that events can have predictable consequences.  Wonder how much personal growth the other participants in the seminar experienced, the ones who abide with the knowledge that this procedure just killed somebody?  I'm sure it was worth the price.  Which I believe was $18,000.00.

When you read of things like this, how can you not mock these people?

The secret code of stubble . . .

I think I'm noticing an increasing amount of two or three day whisker stubble on the male "leads" in commercials.  You know.  Shiney movie star teeth, a sweeet, sincere smile, charm out the wazoo, and stubble.  We have a little advertising trend going on. 

And I know that I'm seeing it more frequently on European pro golfers. 

What's stubble?  It means you've been too careless about your appearance to shave. 

But what is stubble when you've shaved your neck?  It means you want to look stubbly without the irritation of neck stubble scraping against your collar.  In other words, this is stubble that is part of an intentionally selected message.

What's the message?  The message is that the stubblee knows that you know he's a little bit of an airy spirit, and he hopes a little stubble will throw some confusion on the topic.

Does the stubble work as planned?  No.  It confirms the fey.  Either grow a full on beard or mustache, or shave.

Oh, and cheek stubble with a shaved neck, plus a shaved head? 

Bingo!

Well, Congressman Blumenauer . . .

Congressman Earl Blumenauer sent me a little expensively printed flier under his franking privilege (free postage.)  He claims Washington in broken, Wall Street gets all the breaks and the middle class is broke.  I call B.S.  I have to ask, well, just who should we hold responsible for breaking Washington if not our elected officials, the people who broke the damn thing in the first place?

I agree that our government is broken.  I’m not so sure about the congressman’s other propositions.  If the middle class is broke, well --  how can that be, if at the very same time Wall Street gets all the breaks, as Congressman Blumenauer asserts?  Most of the investment in public corporations, dollar for dollar, comes from the middle class, which is invested in Wall Street, both directly and indirectly through retirement plans which have professional management to invest in stocks and bonds.  And the middle class relies heavily on mutual funds, that is, stock investment managed by expert investment counsel, so it’s not as if the pros have a particularly large advantage over the middle class investor.  The middle class investor buys into retirement plans and mutual funds managed by those self-same pros.

Nah, it’s not Wall Street getting all the breaks.  It’s some of the corporate cronies who heavily support politicians who get the breaks.  It’s not capitalism that’s the problem; it is insider Washington’s crony capitalists who are the problem.

And that leads in to another point Congressman Blumenauer made, that is, that Congress needs to be reformed, to prohibit Congressman from “trading stocks based on information obtained on the job.” 

Let’s call this what it really is.  Congressional investment “information obtained on the job” is of two kinds: either tips about what stock to buy and sell supplied by insiders who expect and get favors from Congress in return, or else the Congressmen know what the market must do in response to the laws that congress passes.  In other words, a trading tip is a just a bribe, and passing legislation affecting the market to the profit of the voting Congressmen is basically market manipulation.  Both of these practices are illegal, and I’m unaware of any principal, legal, ethical, or moral, that would argue that congressmen should be immune to prosecution for such conduct.

And I note that Congressman Blumenauer reports that “after recent news of lawmaker involved in insider trading, I feel passionate about Members of Congress . . . trading stocks based on information obtained on the job.”  Congressman Blumenauer didn’t know about it before the news reports?  If he did, how come he wants to do something about it only now, after news reports?  He could have ratted out the bad guys at any time.  On the other hand, if he didn’t know about it, well, where’s he been all this time?

Congressman Blumenauer also wants to end the “flood of unaccountable corporate campaign spending that threatens the integrity of our political system.”  I agree that this is a problem, where a very few individuals have an outsized impact on the political process;  corporate boards and officers have access to large funds that can be used to influence legislation and governance.

I suspect that this was a circumstance that could not have been anticipated by the writers of the U.S. Constitution, whose view of the world encompassed personal wealth which was largely in land, and therefore illiquid and unavailable to match anything like the impact of enormous cash campaign contributions currently feeding into our mass media information machine.  But it seems to me that if the problem is that a few individuals who control large funds have an outsized political impact as compared to an individual voting citizen, then, we should muzzle all institutional campaign spending.  Muzzle corporations, unions, non-profits, and all institutional campaigning and political activity.   In other words, if “big money” is a problem, get rid of all the “big money,” not just the money from the current target for scapegoating, Wall Street.  If large corporate political influence was not anticipated in the U. S. Constitution, neither was the political influence enjoyed by large employee unions, or large ‘non-profits” such as the A.A.R.P., which flat didn’t exist in 1786.

The constitution can be amended.  How about, instead of “One man, one vote,” we make it “One man, one vote, one campaign contribution?”

When I started voting, over forty years ago, the normal situation was for a family to be supported by the job of one spouse.  Now, couples are frequently hard pressed to maintain a family lifestyle using the earnings of both spouses, and are flat out desperate if one of those spouses becomes unemployed, which is currently frequently the case.  And unemployment insurance is insufficient to make a lasting difference.  The economy is simply no longer such that families can be supported by the earnings of one spouse, alone, without supplementation either by the other spouse or by government hand out.

Yet through these same forty years I’ve been voting, I’ve heard politicians saying that they are going to Washington to protect people like me, to fight for me, to represent me, to support me.  Guess what?  I think one could safely say that the evidence is largely to the contrary – that politicians are selfishly motivated, and nothing else explains the last forty years of politics and the economic mess the country has been caught in.  Things got worse, not better over the last forty years.
 
And for every single troublesome campaign contribution or stock tip or corporate favor, there was always and unfailingly a smarmy, eager politician’s hand out to grasp it.

What’s necessary?  First, our political masters need to acknowledge, to themselves at very least, that they have screwed up wonderfully in the last forty years, taking the country down a road which led to what we’ve got, now, massive debt and stagnation at best.  Our government has overwhelmed the ability of the private sector to replace the energy and assets that government increasingly has gobbled up in programs owned by politicians who neither know nor want to know about the foreseeable consequences of their decisions.  I wonder how many of ‘em are familiar with or could explain the tragedy of the commons?  Yup.  It was the political leadership.  Nothing else will explain the current mess.  Some of our most respected politicians have screwed up the mightiest, probably out of the best of motives and the emptiest of heads.  Let’s acknowledge it and get on with rebuilding America.

I think that the next politician who can truly be a leader, irrespective of party or creed,  is the politician who will first, trust that the American people can and will lead the way out of the current mess if provided a fair, stable, and predictable body of laws and legal outcomes to work with (and providing our government doesn’t screw it up with an overburden of clumsy management in the hands of civil service oafs, and worse) and second, will see to it that the people get such laws and outcomes.  Such a politician would be able to lead a discussion to define exactly what is the proper role of government, what can and can’t the government do, and what should and shouldn’t a government do.

What’s government for?  I can tell you what government is not for.  Government is not something for politicians to use cynically to do anything they think might buy them a few more votes so that they and their cronies and fellow travelers can continue living large.  If government tries to do things it can’t do, or shouldn’t do, the doing of those things constitutes either a failure of government or a misappropriation of the energies of the electorate, or both, simultaneously.

After all, it was the politicians who declared that certain industries and businesses were “too big to fail,” not the electorate.  And it was government that handed out enormous amounts of cash to ventures that were “too big to fail,” not the people.  But it wasn’t government that generated the cash to bail out those that were “too big to fail.” Government spent money made by the electorate, and worse, spent money that has yet to be made by the electorate.  It wasn’t the voters who put us all in debt to pass out cash to the cronies running the outfits that were “too big to fail.”

Congressman Blumenauer, you say we should “prosecute the crooks who brought the economy down,” right?  You’ll find a whole gaggle of ‘em in the congressional offices all around you.

The Mayans who predicted the end of the world in the year 2012 weren't as smart as all that, after all . . .

Some people I know are concerned that we are now in the year 2012, which is the year that the Mayans predicted would be the end of the world.  That's right.  The Mayans were much advanced over all other stone-age cultures, ever, and so naturally they could predict the end of the world with precise reliability.  (I wonder what ever happened to the Mayans, anyhow?  All they left us is some riddles, some stone carvings, and the Mayan calendar of doom.)  The Mayan prediction of the end has been corroborated; I've been given to understand that the end time, right around now, is likewise foreseen by other advanced thinkers unhampered by limitations of algebra or physics.  So, don't make too many long range plans but let your heart be light.  Think of it this way.  When the catastrophe comes and goes next December, right after the election, you could say, "People said if I voted for Obama again, the world would be totally destroyed, and I did, and it was." 

But seriously.  Some people are actually worried about the imminence of the end of the world.  They should be assured that there's something we can do about it.

Did you see where our president figured out a way to do what he pleases despite the fact that Congress doesn't want to do what he pleases, when it pleases him to do it?  (He's decided that running on his record might be a problem, so he's going to run against a "do-nothing" Congress.)

The President wants one of his fellow travelers (look it up) to be kind of a consumer czar, but since Congress shows signs of not wanting to appoint his choice, the President made a "recess appointment" (look that up too), while the Senate is still technically not in recess.  And then, and this is the really cool sweet spot,  there was a concern that Congress wouldn't fund this scheme out of resentment over not being consulted as has traditionally and legally been required, thinking that without money, it wouldn't work.  But Obama came up with a sweet work-around.  Just have the Federal Reserve print more dollars to fund this dealio.  Money is just words on paper, anyway, so why not just print what you want.  It isn't as if there is a budget to bust, 'cause a do-nothing Congress hasn't got around to passing a budget for the last several years. 

So.  Let's use the same clever thinking to avoid the whole end of the world inconvenience.  Let's just scrap the calendar.  It doesn't have to be the the year 2012.  We can just come up with a new beginning date.  I say, let Congress pass a bill identifying the current year as year 1, O.E.  (Obama Era). 

Problem solved with a minimum of fuss and we can all get on with our lives without fearing the loss of anything other than our Constitutional liberties.  It's not the year 2012, anymore, and the Mayans, if there are any left, are just going to have to get over themselves.

We call it a feature, not a bug, and you would too if you weren't a 20th century unenlightened throwback . . .

Hey, Mazda people.  Locking and unlocking the doors remotely is nice, but I seldom - okay, never - need to roll down the car windows remotely by pushing a button on the ignition key.  But since you Mazda guys added that unneeded capability, I think at least one of you could have forecast that a paying customer might want the ability to roll the damn windows back up remotely, instead of running outside to get into the car to insert the damn ignition key into the damn steering column to put the damn windows back up, IN THE RAIN!!!, because the damn ignition key window-roll-down-button got pushed by a damned dime while the key was in my damn pocket with pocket change. Damn!  Which wouldn't have been important if you hadn't rigged the thing to roll the windows down in the rain in the first place, around here, where it rains.

And hey, Portland Political Masters.  I suppose that polyethelene grocery bags are things that pelicans might fatally eat, or polar bears might get their toes tangled in while doing whatever polars bears do when they aren't poking around being photographed for popular publications.  So I can suppose that such bags might pose a threat to the environment, as the environment didn't evolve capability of dealing with poly bags.  But I figure that pelicans will have to learn to deal with the challenges presented by the modern world, just as I do.  I mean, like all of my tribe I'm an omnivore but if I eat a plastic bag and it kills me, I pretty much deserve what I get.  Nothing I call food looks at all like a plastic grocery bag.  And those baby-poop brown paper bags beloved by the green weenies for their supposed recyclability begin to recycle themselves disastrously when I try to carry the damn wet things filled with groceries from the car to the front door, through the rain.  Oh, and for the record, poly gets recycled from and to water bottles, sporks, and carpet, kids' toys and even golf shirts.  The portion of brown paper bags that gets recycled requires a lot of energy to get the job done, but mostly paper bags just go into landfills to dissolve into sludge that even the organisms which usually dispose of old natural fibrous material won't touch.  Because brown paper doesn't resist moisture all that well.  And did I mention that it rains a lot around here?  Damn politicians.  Too bad looking, too untalented, too uneducated, too dull, and too arrogant to succeed at a real job, so they go into politics where their shortcomings are considered virtues within their respective parties.

And hey!  What's with toilets that cannot be relied upon to get the job done with only one flush?  C'mon.  Toilets were pretty much invented and perfected in the 1800's.  We have had for years the know-how to make a flush toilet that flushes and we have the know-how to deal with the product of the flush.  It all requires enough water, which we fortunately have in abundance as two-thirds of the surface of the earth is covered with water.  So what did the bright boys and girls hanging around the plenipotentiary government agencies do?  They decided that flush toilets used too much water per flush, so all new and replacement toilets must produce only miniature flushes.  Think of them as exquisite, bonsai toilets.  There must be a special politician/bureaucratic math that shows that two or three flushes to get the job done, uses less water than one sufficient flush.  Okay, I grant that there are locales where water is in short supply, as in the desert Southwest.  But throughout the rest of the counry we have water and here in the Northwest we have a too much.  Water falls out the sky whether needed or not, around here, and we have ponds, lakes, and rivers of the stuff.  The solution to the problem of insufficient water in desert lands to support working flush toilets isn't denying the rest of us toilets that work.  The solution lies in getting the people who want to live in the desert to pay what it costs to  furnish water there do what water can do, that is, flush their toilets.  And if they don't want to pay to import water, let them just poop in the dust of their back yard.  Hell, most of L.A. is so crappy already that dried up poop in the back yard probably wouldn't even be noticed.  For that matter, if poop in the back yard is offensive, let them poop into brown paper grocery bags.  Oh, and I bet there's more than one bidet in Los Angeles, located right next to a low flush toilet.  I say, if there isn't enough water to flush the toilets they should be required to use brown paper bags to cleanse themselves as punishment for the hypocricy of a low-flush toilet paired with a bidet.

And I say, who put such people as these in charge, who peddle windows that go down but not up, or idealogues who decree using brown paper bags in the rain, or who require that everybody acccept less effective technology? 

I won't lose sleep but . . .

I've been troubled by a lot of little things for some time.  Evidently, I miss some of the memos or I'm not in the circulation cue for the emails.  But things constantly come up that everybody else seems to have come to understand based on access to key information that has eluded me.  I've evidently arrived at that station in life where things pass me by.  How come everybody else seems to know these things?

For example, just who the hell are the Kardashians? 

Why does everybody seem to know who they are?  I've become familiar with some of them.  I know there is a Kim, and I think the rest of them are Kloe, Komet, Kupid, Donder and Blitzen, Dok, Sneezy and Dopey. 

Was there an original Kardashian, a product of some kosmic mutation which provided the inherited trait for which all Kardashians are now famous, whatever the hell that is? 

Does a Kardashian come out of hibernation every year, and if he sees his shadow we are going to have six more weeks of winter, so that we can plan for when to plant our spring crops?

If you are accepted as a Kardashian, do you have to pay annual dues, or is it a lifetime membership?  Is there an entrance exam, and if so, is there any math involved?

If I come into contact with a Kardashian, is it infectious?  Is simple handwashing enough or is there some more elaborate hygiene adviseable?  Once a Kardashian, can it be cured?

If lost in the woods, can you improve your chances of survival by rubbing two Kardashians together to make a toasty fire?

Should the Kardashians be admitted into the European Union, or the North Atlantic Treato Organization?

Have you noticed that the rise of the Kardashians in the public popular media corresponds with the continuous decline of home prices?  If the Kardashians stop doing whatever it is that they do, will the unemployment rate drop?

How much wood can a Kardashian chuck, if a Kardashian would chuck wood?


If I encounter a wild Kardashian, should I avoid making eye contact and slowly move to the side and away, or should I attempt to frighten the Kardashian by raising my harms up to appear as large as possible?   How do Kardashians mark their territory in the brush?  Who are these people? 

I'll need a clue -- even just a few brief words, like, "ancient warlike tribe of gold diggers," or, "like cherubim and seraphim," or "your new masters in the age of fear to come,"  or "sculpted silicone."

This is the prototypical WTF event!  The recent National Defense Authorization Act of 2011 authorizes the military to indefinitely detain a person they label a terrorist, without a trial.  No habeas corpus.  Doesn't matter if they are a U.S. citizen entitled under the U.S. Consitution to 4th amendment protections and habeas corpus.  The Senate has voted to screw that.

Was it just a few years ago that the professionally aggrieved were yelping about the detention of captured combatants being interrogated at Guatanamo?  Couldn't have been.  They wanted there to be trials in civil court.  But that was then, and this is now and there are some folks who think it might be neat to be able to lock up people who might appear to be terrorists by reason of their being critical of the government.

Of course, I, for one, welcome the activities of our new overlords and masters in Washington.

Destiny and the Ninety-nine percent. . . .

Saw a sign proclaiming membership in the 99%.  Right.  There's a way to distinguish yourself -- be exactly like everybody else, with no distinguishing features.  Unexceptional.  Common as dirt.  Interchangeable, dispensible, forgettable and inconsequential.  Like I said.  Unexceptional.

Now, being part of the 1%.  That would be something to talk about.

What happened to aspiration?  People used to hope and work and plan to improve themselves, and wanted their kids to "have a better life."   Observing that others were financially better off was seen as an indication of possibilities, not as evidence of injustice, as if somehow being wealthy was criminal, res ipsa loquitur.

The fact is, the social commentariat who've designed this "eat the rich", "the rich need to pay their fair share" nonsense, and this 99%/1% societal division are really telling you that any aspirations you may have are delusions, that in fact, you are fated to be -- nothing much.  Don't aspire to improve your lot; it can't be done.  Hope is not for such as us, because the rich have stolen it.  Your destiny is fixed, and you are looking at it right now.

So.  Your continued survival and safe membership in the 99% requires you to demand that more tax money be extracted from the people who still have it, so that it can be distributed to the corporations, unions, and cronies who fund election campaigns.

Hey folks.  It wasn't your wealth that was stolen by the rich.  What has been stolen is the belief that a person might become exceptional by application of the traditional middle class values  -  work, study, saving, planning, investing in the future.  Because if you don't believe that, if you don't believe you can make a difference, then there is no hope for you and you might as well sell your vote in exchange for fine sounding words empty of meaning, and settle in to life of relentless envy and unrewarding bitterness that comes with the conviction that the rich get richer and the game is rigged to keep poor people poor.

Welcome to the proletariat.

BING News

I noticed BING news posted a story and they labeled it "in depth."  Cool.  I wanted "in depth".   What I got was an obvious opinion from somebody who was emotionally involved with the story but without any information beyond her feelings.  I accept her feelings with some sympathy, but . . c'mon.  That's not "in depth" to me; I thought "in depth" would provide more information than just headline information.

What was more interesting is that BING just republishes news from other sources, and the source of the opinion that BING labeled "in depth," had actually clearly labeled the piece as "opinion."

So the question is, are the unidentified and untouchable BING editors instigators and enablers of the dumbing down of America, or are they in fact the result? 

How come Progressive Socialism hasn't actually progressed since the 1920's, anyway? . . .

Jane Fonda is complaining that QVC has taken down her segment because of her politics.

Good. 

Ain't it just dreadful when a soi disant heroine of the socialist movement is denied the financial benefits of capitalist marketing?

Pay no attention to that man behind the Social Security curtain . . .

The current AARP Bulletin published an opinion piece by James Roosevelt, Jr.,  the grandson of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.  Mr. Roosevelt is currently president of Tufts Associated Health Plans, Inc.

Mr. Roosevelt is of the opinion that worries that Social Security will run out of money are "utter distortions," the same sort of vicious foolishness that his grandfather had to endure when president.  He says that Social Security pays back 99 cents for every dollar collected.  He argues that Social Security is solvent because there is a positive balance of 2.6 trillion at the end of 2010, and a projected positive balance of 3.67 trillion at the end of 2022.  Why?  Because of interest to be earned.

Interest earned?  That's because money in the social security balance sheet isn't money.  It is debt, money that has been loaned to the federal government which is supposed to repay the money with interest. 

And how is the federal government doing?  It is currently spending $3.00 for every $2.00 it collects.  The other $1.00 it borrows.  The current federal debt, including money owed to Social Security, is 14 trillion and growing. 

So where is the cash that Social Security is going to pay out in the future going to come from?  It's going to come from future tax revenue.  In other words, we all have been paying money into Social Security once.  The government borrowed and spent it.  We'll pay again at tax time so the federal government can repay Social Security so that Social Security can return our 99 cents on the dollar.

Why it almost sounds as if there's some spinning of the facts, particularly in light of the unmentioned fact that Tufts Associated Health Plans, Mr. Roosevelt's employer, sells Medicare Advantage plans.

Top ten tips for new lawyer mentoring . . .

The Oregon State Bar, funded by generous and mandatory attorney dues and CLE purchases, has come up with yet another grand scheme.

It's new lawyer mentoring. 

Since newly graduated attorneys can't seem to find that big-bucks job they always assumed would be waiting for them at the end of the bar exam, many are choosing to go into practice solo as rank beginners.  But they don't quite know how to practice law because law school doesn't teach how to be a lawyer.  It teaches how to pass tests on the law, stressing retention over application.  (Except where the law school has a legal clinic intended to permit law professors to enjoy the illusion that they can practice real law.)  So, experienced attorneys, who won't or can't hire beginning lawyers, will nevertheless teach rookies the ropes, as it were.

Yeah, that's what I would want to do if I were an experienced attorney who was still practicing law.  I'd want to train up my competition for the same scarce client dollars. 

I'm not in practice now and I won't be asked to mentor anybody.  But if I was still in practice I'd want my new competition to keep the following top ten tips in mind. Yeah, that's the ticket. 

• Always address the judge by his first name.  Clients love insiders.
• No matter what, always pay your malpractice insurance premium unless you need to pay your bar bill instead.
• Develop a network of people who can refer clients to you, like hair dressers and cab drivers.  Pay them a cash "gift" for every paying sucker they send you.
• Find a bar close to your office where you can spend three or four hours every afternoon and evening, developing client contacts.  Run a tab if they let you.
• Once you've got the retainer, don't be in too much of a hurry to close the case.  You might screw things up and lots of times things just work themselves out if you let them.
• Get a gimmick to develop recognition.  Sure you'll look silly going to court in a batman costume, but client's love that sort of flash.
• Go ahead and commit to the most expensive office space there is.  The money will show up to pay for it.
• Don't be afraid to lie.  They expect it and will be disappointed if you don't.
• Use double entry book-keeping.  One book for you; the other for IRS
• Ethics are for suckers.

Hopes this helps

How to avoid going over budget . . .

The Democrats are in charge in the Senate.  Surely, they could get a budget passed because they have the votes.   But they haven't.  For the last two years!  They aren't even trying. 

Note that in recent years it's been Senators running for the presidency: Gore, Kerry, McCain, Obama. 

Really showing some leadership skills, there, guys.  Way to round up that budget problem.  What say you remind us of how you bravely resisted the urge to do your Constitutional duty to pass a budget the next time you need us to vote for you for anything.  Both parties!

So, this sucks . . .

So it looks like the much applauded, elusive mystery recovery isn't happening yet.  We keep getting all sorts of news about the state of the economy, all of it bad and all of it "unexpected."  Unemployment got worse, not better.  Industrial orders fell lower, not higher.  Confidence deflated, not grew.  Maybe there wasn't a recovery on the horizon, after all,despite pronouncements that things had turned around.  It's kind of like the Iraqi news spokesman for Saddam announcing that U.S. tanks were nowhere near Baghdad, as they were drag racing outside the ministry where he was.

Hope and change?  I haven't seen any of the hope part, and the change part really blows backwards.

I don't know if the situation is the result of incompetence or deliberate sabotage.  But I know it isn't simply bad luck.  There's deliberately selected policies at work.

The next revolution . . .

It occurs to me -- it's become a fairly commonplace and untested belief that we, here in the United States of America, have become too rich, too well-educated, too civilized, and just beyond that sort of thing, for there ever to be another civil war or revolutionary war or serious armed rebellion.  Not now, in the 21st century.  And certainly not with guns.  There will be no fighting to the death over politics here.  Our polity has grown beyond all that icky conflict.  It's no longer a matter of whether there should be a social preference for the ballot over the bullet.  The question now is whether it will be the ballot or the bribe that decides our collective situation.

And it occurs to me that if it is true that it is flat impossible to present a serious armed challenge to the government, then it is only a matter of when, and not if, the constitutional guaranteed limits on government becomes a mere historical fun fact, having no contemporary meaning at all.

Government is all about regulation, control, power, and the dependency of the governed on the government for whatever security the governed may get out of the deal.   People being what they are and government agencies being what they are, government involvement in one's everyday life will necessarily increase right up to whatever limits on its growth might exist.  Without at least the possible chance that government could be overthrown by force, there is no effective limit to the growth of government.  The government busies will always find it necessary for yet another regulation, yet one more punishment, another license to be obtained and another agency to be consulted, all for the so called common good.  They can't help themselves and it isn't reasonable to expect that they could ever resist the temptation, once the notion occurs to them.  Most of them do their job sincerely intending to provide a benefit when passing a new law or making a new regulation.  It's just that consequences are frequently unintended and unanticipated.  There is no "too much" built into our system of government as things now stand, and mistakes can and do happen frequently.

So, am I advocating armed rebellion?  Oh, for heavens sake of course not.  That would be horrible.  It's just that when armed rebellion truly becomes unthinkable -- then we've all lost the liberty that this country reached for in 1776.   

I simply think it would be healthier if we decide that rebellion is far from  necessary, for now, for the time being, and not that rebellion is totally unthinkable.  

Oh, and once in a while tar and feathers should be applied, simply for purposes of improving the breed, so to speak.

Today's question . . .

What kind and how good an education do you think you are going to get when your college instructors can't -- not won't but can't -- distinguish between ideology and information?  It's all the same to them.