Do You Have A Better Way?

Penny Wise

2011-12-14T07:16:00.002-05:00

Did you see the story on the national news last night about about presidential dollar coins? It seems that dollar bills are a losing proposition for taxpayers. Paper dollars wear out quickly and have to be printed more than any other paper money. The U.S. Mint will spend $5.5 bilion dollars in the next 30 years... just to print dollar bills. To save money, we could all use dollar coins. There are millions of them already minted, sitting in storage, waiting for us to get off our collective asses.

So we can all do ourselves a favor by using them. The next time you go to the bank, ask for a roll of dollar coins. The teller will look at you like you're crazy, but it can be your way to save the government, and yourself, some money.

Where is the REAL National News?

2011-03-30T08:38:00.002-04:00

Both ABC and NBC news had news stories last night and this morning about how babies have a code and talk to each other in babel. How interesting.

Global warming threatens the entire world... the Federal deficit is trillions of dollars... Christians are being slaughtered like pigs in half a dozen countries around the world... and we get a story about baby babel?

It would be nice if the evening news tried just a little bit harder to tell us about what is important to us all.

Where are you?

2011-01-17T06:42:00.002-05:00

Gotta gripe;
I have been carrying an old Army buddy's name and SSN around for many years. I wanted to look him up, but he has a common name, and was from Texas. Lots of people with have his name in Texas. So I tracked his marriage down in Ancestry.com. I found divorce too. I had his wife's maiden and middle name and so looked her up on the internet.

Well...I thought I was half way home from there. They had a child together and so I thought for sure he would be in contact with her. I called her...three times and left a message. Nothing. I wrote a letter and included a self addressed envelope, my e-mail address and phone number...nothing. FINALLY she answered the phone on my fourth try. She seemed surprised I was so persistent. I guess she figured I couldn't take a hint huh? Strangely, she turned out not to be his ex-wife. Same first, middle, maiden, and married name....and it wasn't her. Who would have thought?

Then I tried using My Army buddy's SSN. I found him in a little town outside of Dallas, TX. I got his address from the internet and wrote a letter, explaining who I was and that we were in the Army together. I asked him to contact me I included my address, phone number, e-mail address AGAIN. Nothing. You would think he owed me money or something. (He doesn't.)

I do family history research sometimes. I tracked down three different people who were distantly related to me and contacted them. I left a message on one's answering machine. Nothing. I left a message on Facebook for the other two. Nothing.

Are our lives really that busy?

Crazy Air Fares!

2010-10-27T10:47:00.002-04:00

I checked this morning...and I couldn't believe it. I can fly from Florida to Atlanta for $59 on AirTran. That's a darn good price. I was planning on driving, but thought what the heck, I can fly. Then I checked on getting to my further destination once I arrived in Atlanta...$55 to ride in the airport shuttle.

I couldn't believe it. I can fly 700 miles for the same price as driving across town.

Maybe someone can explain?

Nightly News View

2009-11-20T08:51:00.003-05:00

I've noticed something annoying about TV news. It is of course visual, and in the case of the national news there seems to be a bit of laziness when it comes to making the news interesting. NBC, for example, can't simply have a talking head telling you what is important, they have to SHOW you what they are talking about. Specifically, I'm talking about the little video's they run over the reporter on the scenes voice.

I noticed the video laziness when the economic meltdown started; someone went to a Michigan employment office and took video of the people standing in line. For the next three weeks we were treated to the same video, of the same people, standing in the same line, at the same agency every time the news anchor had a story about unemployment.

Lately, with Obama in Asia, the news has been concentrating on the balance of trade with China and the United States and how the Chinese manipulate their currency at the expense of the rest of the world. Every night for the last week we have been shown the same video of the same woman counting the same stack of Chinese currency in the same bill counting machine. The photo is from NBC.com.

And oh, oh, the sheets of paper money being printed at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing; every time the deficit is mentioned or some other reference to money is made....out comes the same video of the paper money.

If you mix the overuse of these canned shots with the habit the news has of making anyone they are about to interview do a quick walk toward the camera and then past the camera; it makes the news pretty predictable and boring.
Wait; I have lost my memory when it comes to the news, I forgot that the real reason they do the news is for ratings and money. Someone in the news section of the major networks may care about freedom of the press, but for the most part I think they just want to make more money.

On another news note; I see that congress is trying to pass a law to protect news reporters who refuse to reveal their sources. This effort is being made after some reporter revealed classified information and the government rightly wanted to prosecute who leaked the info. They subpoenaed the reporter to testify about who gave her the information; "Don't ask me" is what the reporter says, "go figure it out for yourself." So far as I know, the court has sided with the government.

I have a suggestion for all reporters; Don't print information that is obviously classified. You might get somebody killed. I think printing information that clearly exposes our military or national secrets could be considered treasonous. The public does NOT have a right to know when or how we fight our nations enemies, not when the lives of our servicemen and women are hanging in the balance.

Galaxy Quest!

2009-09-02T10:18:00.007-04:00

On October 31st, I was paging through last months copy of Sky and Telescope, which I had checked out of the Southshore Library. I have always had a passing interest in astronomy; even taking an introductory astronomy course in college.

I read an article about the “Voorwoop” object, that was first seen by a Dutch school teacher doing classifications of galaxies for the “Galaxy Zoo” project. In a bit of bilingual redundancy, voorwoop is Dutch for “object.” Anyway, I was curious to know how a simple school teacher found this celestial object of interest. What was the Galaxy Zoo Project anyway?

I googled the Galaxy Zoo name and found a web site appropriately addressed as www.galaxyzoo.org. In the same spirit as the SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) website, http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/ allows you to download and analyze radio signals collected from space, Galaxy Zoo shows you pictures of galaxies to classify as either; smooth, round, almost round, cigar shaped, spiral, non-spiral and so on.

If this sounds dull, I can assure you it is not. I registered at the site, logged on and started classifying galaxies. On more than one occasion I was left open-mouthed and speechless as a picture of two spiral galaxies colliding or a screen filled with bright greens and reds with a yellow galaxy in the center filled my computer screen.

If you want to feel small and insignificant, and at the same time amazed, this is one way to do it.

The Galaxy Zoo website contains over one million digital images of galaxies, which were captured by a robotic telescope during the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Only one quarter of the sky has been surveyed by Sloan. Let that sink in a moment.

We live on the planet Earth, which orbits a star we call “the sun,” which is located part way out on a spiral arm of our galaxy, the Milky Way. The Milky Way Galaxy is estimated to contain 100 billion stars. One quarter of the sky surveyed by Sloan found one million galaxies. One can therefore calculate that there are approximately 4 million galaxies in the visible universe, with 100 billion stars in each galaxy (more or less).

All I can think of to say about all that is; My God.

The North Korean Rescue Mission

2009-08-26T09:44:00.000-04:00

Bill, Al here. How are ya big guy?

Okay, I guess. How are you?

I’ll get right to the point Bill; I’ve got two of my best reporters in a North Korean prison. Only you can get them out. Are you up to a rescue mission?

Well, I don’t know, Al. Hillary has me on a short leash. She’s pretty mad at me for tripping her in the State Department garage; she broke her elbow you know. I told her it was an accident but she doesn’t believe me.

Was it an accident?

“No, but… well yeah I guess so. She just pisses me off. She ran for president for crying out loud. That was MY job! Now she’s the Secretary of State. CRAP! Anyway, she said no upstaging her EVER. So here I am watching “The Young and the Restless.” I guess the answer is no, I can’t rescue anybody today.”

Bill, did I mention my imprisoned reporters were two good-looking Chinese women who haven’t seen their husbands in about six months?”

“I’m feeling their pain Al. I’m your man. When do I leave?”

“Right away. I’ll send a plane to pick you up. Get it in gear Bill, and good luck!”

Twenty four hours later;

“ Kim Ill ole buddy, I want to thank you on nobody’s behalf but my own, for letting those two chicks go. Why were you messing around with two Asian-American chicks anyway? I thought you liked short blondes.

“Dammit Crinton, my name is Kim Jung Irl. Kim is my rast name ar-right? I ought to have you emascurated for insurting me rike dat.”

“Too late pal, Hillary beat you to ‘em. Heh-heh.
By the way, would you like a cigar? It’s from my personal collection. Take a whiff.”

Are you crazy? No way. Why don’t you take those two broads and get out of here?

“Good idea Jung. I’ll just be going then. By the way, I like what you’ve done with your hair, it makes you look taller. Of course it could be those platform shoes you’re wearing. Are you going discoing later? Heh-heh.”

“Just for that Crinton, I fire another missile! Now get the hair out of here before I change my mind! I can’t berieve I asked for you. Next time I ask for Hirrary!”

“Whoa, that’s hitting below the belt, Kimmy. Come along now, you lovely ladies; to the limo we go.”

“Mr. President Clinton sir, thank you so much for getting us out of that hellhole of a prison. I don’t know how we can ever thank you.”

“I can think of a few ways. How about a spring roll? Heh-heh.”

“That’s not very funny sir.”

“Two women in prison, at hard labor, getting all dirty and having to clean up later. Oh yeah, I can picture you two together, suffering in a cold prison shower. Hey-hey. Did they abuse you?”

“No sir.”

“Well, we’ll see what we can do about that!”

“But Mr. President…”

“No butts. Speaking of butts, where are yours? You two are way too skinny. What were you munching on in there?”

“Sir?”

“Never mind. Miss Lingus, you can sit next to me over here. Miss Lee, you can sit up front with my Secret Service detail.”

“Miss Lingus, did anyone ever tell you that you look just like Lucy Liu?”

“Oh man. Yes sir, I hear that all the time. By the way, my name is Laura Ling not Lingus.

“Oh yeah baby! That just rolls off your tongue doesn’t it? Laura Ling, Laura Ling, Laura Ling! Heh-heh. I got your name confused with something else. Heh-heh.”

“You are one excited man Mr. President. Please calm yourself!”

“It shows huh? Listen Lucy, I haven’t climbed Mt. Hillary since I was governor. I’m looking for mountains a little farther from home now, if you know what I mean. I even brought some climbing gear.”

“Well you are NOT climbing me buster!”

“How about some sightseeing then? Before we head to the airport, why don’t I show you around my-ole-wang!”

“What did you just say?”

“Uh oh, I said why don’t I show you around Pyongyang.”

“I think I’ve seen and heard quite enough already Mr. President.”

“Please call me Bubba; and you haven’t heard anything yet. Just wait until you hear me play the har-Monica. I brought one along. See, you just put it to your lips like this, blow gently and I make the most beautiful music…”

“You are weirding me out Bubba. Just stay away from me.”

“I was a Rhodes scholar you know.”

“What did they teach you?”

“Music appreciation.”
“Hey, do you think my white hair makes me look like Phil Donahue?”

“Sir, we’ve arrived at the plane.”

“Oh good, we’re here. Okay, you two, let’s get on board. Ladies first; get up those steps to freedom. Backfield in motion, yeah, five yard penalty. Heh-heh.”

“Hey, wait a minute Lucy, what’s the hurry? There’s something I’ve always wanted to know about Chinese women. Wait a minute, can I at least show you around the cock pit?”

Flight attendants prepare for take off and cross check.

“Mr. President, you need to be seated and fasten your belts.”

“You mean fasten my seat belt, don’t you?”

“No sir, fasten your belts; your seat belt and your trouser belt, and your fly is open as well.”

“Well thanks for noticing honey. You know, you sure are pretty. What’s your name?”

“Just call me Miss. This is going to be a long flight home sir, just relax.”

“Okay. I like really strong women. Did you know I was a Rhodes scholar?”

“Oh brother, here we go again.”

“Do you think my white hair makes me look like Phil Donahue?

“Your hair makes you look very distinguished, sir. Just sit back now, and enjoy the flight.”

“Distinguished huh? Whatever you say, honey. Hey Miss, would you fasten my seat belt for me?
Hey, where ya going, a little help here!”

The two flight attendants are talking to each other.
“The two women journalists have locked themselves in the lavatories and are refusing to come out; shouldn’t we ask them to come out and be seated for take off?”
“No, leave them where they are, they’re safer there than out here.”

Flight attendants assume your positions for take off.

“Oh Yeah, taking off position! Yeah, that’s the ticket. Hillary, eat my dust.”

Vile People

2009-08-06T10:23:00.002-04:00

Twice over the last year, people have stopped by my blog to leave their short, but profane, version of "drop dead."

I hope they feel better after performing the blog visiting equivalent of ringing the doorbell and running away before anybody can answer.

Please do your parents a big favor, give back all the money they spent on your education; they were cheated.
You can do yourself a favor too, don't waste your time on blog surfing if you aren't mentally up to the task.

The Management

Cheap Bike Light!

2009-02-22T09:48:00.004-05:00

I've been riding in the early morning dark and have found a few lane reflectors and rocks under my tires. It was a little disconcerting. I started looking for a generator powered bike light.

All I found was Chinese made cheap stuff on Amazon.com. Well, how about Walmart. More cheap stuff, and the cheap stuff is expensive. Chuckle! Why do they use AAA batteries? The batteries will be dead in a week. I needed something better.

I did some Google searches and found there were patents for bike lights, but did not see any good lights. If the lights were good, they were $100+. For a bike light? I paid $50 for my one speed bike, so I didn't need a light that costs as much or more than the bike.

I put my thinking cap on and thunk. Ka-bing! I had an idea!

I went to Home Depot and found a dual D-cell flashlight package. It came with four D batteries and two plastic flashlights. Next I went to the plumbing department and got two stainless steel screw clamps, that were big enough to go over my handlebars and the flashlight body.

Voila! Cheap light.

Total cost $5.29. Thank You very much!

Auto Rail in Bedford Nova Scotia Has Bummed me out!

2008-10-28T14:27:00.000-04:00

All,
Auto Rail might be someplace you want to avoid if you are shipping a car from Canada to Florida. Please read the following letter I sent to them recently.

Dear Mr. Giovanetti;

I am writing to bring something to your attention. I hope that you can change a bad impression I have acquired after contracting with Auto Rail.

In late July and early August, after visiting your office and meeting you and others regarding shipping my car to Florida from Bedford, I chose to use Auto Rail to ship my 2001 Ford Taurus to Tampa Florida. The information I was given was that it would take approximately 8 to 12 days to complete the move.

I turned my car over to your office on August 25th. At that time I was told the car would probably be picked up by a driver later in the week.

On August 29th, I called to see how the transfer was going. I was told my car would be moving across the border on September 2nd.
I was scheduled to leave Canada on September 2nd and had hoped to still be in Canada and able to contact the U.S. Customs office at the border, in case there were difficulties.

I left Canada by plane, somewhat confident that my car would be moving across the border at about the same time I was.

I called about September 4th to see if the move across the border had gone well, and to find out where the car was along the route to Florida. The person I spoke to said “I have no idea” when I asked where my car was. I asked if there was someone who might “have an idea” that I could speak to. I was placed on hold for a time. When they returned to the phone, it was explained to me that “the dispatcher was not answering the phone” and they had left a message for him. They further said that when the dispatcher called back and they found out anything they would call me back. I was not called back.

The next day I called again to inquire as to the location of my car. I spoke to a different lady who was willing to help. She said she would check on my car and call me back. Four hours later, after no call back, I called again to see if anything had been discovered. The same lady who answered previously told me the phones had been shut down and she was unable to call anyone. She was behind on all of her work but would try to find out something. If she found out anything she would call me back. Again, I was not called back.

On September 8th, I believe, I called again to check on the whereabouts of my car. I was starting to wonder if perhaps it had been stolen. I was told the car was still somewhere in New Brunswick waiting for a few more cars to make a bigger load. They weren’t sure what day it would be crossing the border.

During the week of the September 8th, I was moving my belongings into my new address in Florida and so let the week go by without calling your office.

Around September 12th, a message was left for me from a lady in your office saying that your office had no valid delivery address in Florida. I had left a map and address as well as names and phone numbers when I left the car at your office two weeks prior. I immediately called your office to inform the person of the correct delivery address. I reminded them of the map I had provided. They remembered there was a map in the file and apologized.

On September 15th, I believe, I called to check once more to on the car. GOOD NEWS! The car had crossed the border without any Customs difficulties and was now in Massachusetts. The lady I spoke to told me my car would be in Tampa by the end of the week! This was certainly good news.

I contacted the Ford dealership in Brandon, Florida to advise them to be on the lookout for my car, which should be arriving before the end of the week. They were happy to help me and said they would call me when it arrived

On Friday, September 19th, after not hearing from Auto Rail or Brandon Ford, I called your office to check once again. I was told my car was now in New Jersey. I was momentarily speechless. New Jersey? I asked. “I know” was the reply.

On Tuesday, September 23rd I called Auto Rail and was told my car would definitely be in Tampa on Wednesday or Thursday of the same week.

On Friday September 26th, I was called by Brandon Ford and told my car had arrived the night before. I went and claimed my car. I was not called by your office.
I found the car to be in good condition except for some personal trash left inside by whoever had driven it during the transfer.

It was apparent, by the empty manila envelope I found in the car, that the release by U.S. Customs was gained by utilizing the duplicate documentation I had placed in the car. I had done this in case the originals documents I had given your office were lost or not available.
I had been assured by your agents that the originals documents for release, which I had provided your office, would be attached to the waybill and would definitely be given to U.S. Customs when the car crossed the border.
Fortunately for me, these were the documents that were used for entry and release purposes.

In all, the car took 31 days to travel 3,258 kms. That translates to an average speed of about four and a half kilometers and hour. That is about the same speed of a person walking.

I believe you would agree that what I experienced, during the time my car was in transit, was extraordinary. I would hope it was also unprecedented.

I had given a great deal of money to Auto Rail to move my car, in a timely manner, to Florida. The move was certainly not done in a timely manner. I spent a great deal more money because I was without the use of my car.
In consideration of all the aforementioned, I believe it reasonable to ask you for a partial refund of the contract price; twenty five per cent is the amount I am asking to be refunded.

I look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Thomas W. Scott

His Reply to me;

Subject: Re: Problems with my car transfer to Florida

HiDebbie in our claims dept will review.TksGerryCc. Chrissy
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device.

I waited a month and got no answer. I sent another message...
Gerry,
It has been another month.
Can you please tell me what the status of the review is?
TW Scott

His answer and then mine....

Subject: Re: Problems with my car transfer to Florida

No statusThere is no opportunity for a claim..Sorry
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

I was hoping it would not come to that, but I imagined it would. Why would you want to do the right thing if it costs you money, right?
I'll be sure to recommend your company to all my associates who have time and money to burn.

Thomas Scott

New Big Bopper?

2008-06-18T02:55:00.002-04:00

Just a short note;
Is it just me or does anyone else get the urge to say "SHAMA-LAMMA-DING-DONG" every time the name OBAMA is spoken?

God Bless our World War Veterans

2008-06-05T03:13:00.002-04:00

I used to live in Charlotte, North Carolina. I worked at the Charlotte airport with a man named Paul Joseph Manley Sr. He was a United States Marine who served in World War Two and was on Iwo Jima. He stayed in the Marines after that war and later saw service in the Korean War as well as Viet Nam.

Every time I saw him I shook his hand.
Every time.
Every time YOU see him, you should do the same. How do you express your gratitude for a lifetime of service to our country? Somebody tried to say thanks and made a song of it "Before You Go" on YouTube; here is a link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6A393E3wF-o

Go and watch, then find a World War Veteran and thank them for their service, they won't be around much longer. They need to hear it now.

Obama Wins in South Carolina. Another Victory for Racial Harmony or Not?

2008-01-27T03:18:00.000-05:00

I just read a Washington Post story that said nearly 80% of African-American voters voted for Obama and over 70% of Caucasian voters voted for Clinton. The article also went on to say that because exit polls showed that whites would be happy with Obama as a presidential nominee and African-Americans would be happy with Clinton, that some racial unity had been achieved. And oh, oh, I can't believe they said it but yes they said it; The Dallas Morning News on-line headline is; Barack Obama's South Carolina win rejiggers race
click on the headline to see it for yourself. Hey guys, you can't use words like "rejigger" when someone who might be called a rejigger is running for President. They phone must be ringing off the hook in the newsroom about now. Dummies.

Back to the title subject of this editorial.
I must be missing something here. Caucasoids mainly voted for Caucasoids and the hyphenated Americans mainly voted for the half Caucasoid guy who looks more African than European. That's supposed to mean we have progressed from the racist dark ages?

Some have mentioned the fact that Obama lacks experience and well Clinton, uh, lacks experience. At least if Hillary becomes president, Bill will be there to show her where to sign.
Wouldn't you like to be a fly on the wall if Hillary' is in the Oval office and Bill comes in for some reminiscing? The crockery would be flying.

What Do Miami's Lights in 1942 and Passports in 2008 Have in Common? M-O-N-E-Y !

2008-01-21T02:15:00.000-05:00

I am reading a book called “The Two-Ocean War”. It tells the history of the U.S. Navy during World War 2. I have discovered some interesting parallels from events then and now.
In 1942 there was much disagreement among the Allies about how to prosecute the war, such as which front and what tactics to use. Much the same discussions as concerns Iraq and Afghanistan now. How long do we stay, how much money do we spend, how many men do we use. How much should each country contribute?

In Afghanistan, our NATO allies, for the most part, are unwilling to pay the political price of doing what is right and helping to stabilize Afghanistan. Canada and Britain, our staunchest allies, are having problems deciding whether to follow through to the end. Europeans have almost always been "Johnny come lately's" in facing down tyrants and fascism, until forced to face reality. If you don’t shove the Europeans too hard and just use small constant pressure, you can move them right off a cliff, while they continue eating their cheese and drinking their wine until they hit bottom.

Most of Europe wants to sit in the shade while America, Canada and Britain do the heavy lifting. European governments are simply lukewarm to the idea of using troops to stabilize Afghanistan. They send some troops, but not to the areas they could be used best. They don't want to see coffins draped with THEIR countries flag on the front page of their home newspapers. (And by the way, American newspapers were really pissed at not being able to take pictures of every coffin of every U.S. service member killed in Iraq. Those pictures, of course, would be front page news every day if the media had their way.) Those pictures would turn the public against the politicians who support the war against terror and make it harder to be re-elected.

Here, I am reminded of a cartoon I saw once; A politician is standing in front of a mob carrying torches and signs and looking very angry. The politician has his hands up as if stopping the crowd and he is saying "Tell Me Where You're Going and I'll Lead You!"

The media cooperates with the defeatist politicians, or is it the other way around. In America "defeatist" is spelled D-E-M-O-C-R-A-T. (Even decorated Viet Nam veteran former Marine Congressmen. They make me sick just thinking about them.)

Each and every death is faithfully reported, on the front page if possible. The death is tallied, chronicled, examined, investigated, discussed, and cried over. If the dead soldier had a pregnant wife or a newborn he had not yet seen, then all the better to crank up the weeping machine. Let’s all cry on each other’s shoulder over the terrible loss and wring our hands as if the death of one soldier is the greatest tragedy mankind has ever suffered. By the way, how many people were killed in World War 2? Anybody want to guess? Anybody know? Anybody care?

For those of you who may not know, soldiers are WARRIORS. They are also volunteers. They train to find, engage and kill the enemy. Soldiers know, if they have a brain, that their work is dangerous and sometimes fatal. They do it to protect the rest of us from threats that almost all of us would not have the guts to face. A picture of a Policeman comes to mind. They do it for us, you and me. I am humbled by the thought they do this for me without my asking them to.
I DO mourn their deaths. I honor their sacrifice and will fight to make sure their sacrifice is never forgotten. One should remember they are warriors and warriors are sometimes killed in battle. That is just the way it is. Innocent civilians are also killed in the battles. This is also just the way it is. Innocent’s being killed is to be avoided if possible, but not at all costs.

I am a former soldier. As soldiers, we were taught that in our line of work the levels of importance were; accomplishment of the mission, then the welfare of your men. Depending on the importance of the mission, the welfare of the men may not even be a consideration. Your men may have to be sacrificed for the accomplishment of the mission. A horrible tenet, but one that has helped us win almost all the wars America has fought. (At least the ones we weren't fighting with one hand tied behind our back.)

We should not go into a war with the goal of just defending ourselves. No war was ever won simply by being on the defense. You must attack. When you attack, people die. It is an ugly, ugly business to fight a war. We do it too quickly and too often, but we should never be afraid to fight. If we go into a fight, we should fight to win. “To the victor go the spoils”. In Iraq and Afghanistan, the spoils are freedom, democracy and all the rights of free men.

On to another subject.
Border Security.

I found another parallel from World War 2.
Recently, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, announced plans to phase in the requirement for proof of citizenship for persons attempting to enter the United States at land border ports of entry.

The reaction from the public, mainly business people, was as expected. Claims of over-reaction, un-necessary, extra cost for travelers, delays at the border, profit losses and other sorts of economic woes are waiting to land on us because these new rules are to be adopted.

The parallel from World War 2;
In early 1942, when the German submarines were sinking a merchant ship every day along our eastern seaboard, the War Department attempted to implement a blackout to turn off the lights along the coast line. These coastal lights were silhouetting our ships against the shore making them easy to spot by the German submarines. Many ships were being lost. At the mention of the required blackout, there was a cry that went out all along the coast. “You’re ruining our tourist season”, “Killing my profits”, “It’s unworkable” were all heard. People wrote and called their congressmen to try to get the blackout plan stopped. In the end, the blackout was instituted, but it took months to get it in place past all the political wrangling. During this time, hundreds of our merchant sailors died and hundreds of thousands of tons of our merchant ships were sent to the bottom of the ocean because business owners along the east coast did not want to lose profits.

“To hell with national security, what about my money”?
Oh, how we love our money.

As stupid and hard-headed as we were in World War 2, we still managed to win. I hope we are not more stupid now than we were then.

Winter Carbon Monoxide Rituals Resume

2006-12-18T03:57:00.000-05:00

Each winter, the well meaning morons of the world gather in their unelectrified homes to pay homage to the days of old. They make tribute to their ancestors; people who cooked their food on open fires inside their tents and mud huts. These ancestors were hardy people who could evidently breathe carbon monoxide from the cooking fires without killing themselves. Modern man seems unable to repeat this feat as evidenced by the news that hundreds across the northwest have been sickened after BRINGING THEIR BARBECUE GRILLS INSIDE TO HELP THEM KEEP WARM!.
Is there not some test we should be giving people to identify these idiots and prevent them from breeding? EVERY SINGLE YEAR someone brings in the barbecue grill and kills his family.

Maybe barbecue grills should come with instructions which invite people to start the fire in the grill outside, wrap a blanket around your head and the grill and then count to 1,000. If you are still alive after that, and you have not cooked your head, then it is okay for you to bring the grill inside to heat your house. Otherwise, your family will be too busy with your funeral arrangements to allow themselves to be killed by your stupidity.

Quit School, Knock Up Your Girlfriend and Enjoy Being Poor

2006-12-14T17:41:00.000-05:00

“Countless studies have shown that children raised in a two-parent family are less likely to be raised in poverty, less likely to do drugs, less likely to be criminals later in life, and more likely to graduate from and do well in school. Married people tend to take care of themselves better and live longer. They typically eat better, have more settled lives with less stress and fewer risky habits, monitor each other’s health, and are quicker to seek medical attention for problems that arise. Married people, particularly those with children, seem to be motivated to save and invest more for the future and to live longer to enjoy their savings and their children’s future. Out-of-wedlock births increase the national incidence of: lowered health for newborns; retarded cognitive, and especially verbal, development of young children; lowered educational achievement; lowered job attainment as young adults; increased behavioral problems; lowered impulse control (aggression and sexual behavior); and increased anti-social development. It’s been said you need only do three things in this country to avoid poverty: finish high school, marry before having a child and marry after the age of 20. Among those who follow such advice, only 8% are poor, while 79% of those who do not are poor. The consequences of this trend are crime rates higher than they should be, graduation rates lower than they should be and a treasury depleted in the name of trying to solve both problems by throwing more money at them. No culture can remain healthy with illegitimacy rates like these. And it is simply impossible to understate the socially catastrophic consequences of America’s crisis of illegitimacy. The family is still the best department of health, education and welfare ever invented.” —Investor’s Business Daily

Many soldiers Views Different From Politicians

2006-11-06T06:09:00.001-05:00

I just read about soldiers, who were interviewed at their bases in Iraq, saying that we should stay the course and see it through in Iraq. I read it here. All I can say is "amen brother". One said it would be "an extreme betrayal" to leave now. After so many American and Iraqi lives lost, have we got the guts to see it through? I doubt it. If the democrats take control of Congress, we will see the beginning of the "Iraqi-mization" to coin a word. This will be done in the same way we cut and ran in Viet Nam. It won't look like running at first, there will be ceremonies where we will turn over control of our bases to the Iraqi Army and police. They will lower the US flag and raise the Iraqi flag. The camera's will be capturing it all. After we are out of sight they will dismantle the buildings, roll up the barbed wire and sell it for scrap. The wood will be used to build cousin Omar's new house. I saw the Vietnamese version of this when I was in Viet Nam in 1972. We had turned over control of a base called "BearCat" to the Vietnamese forces. BearCat had the largest helipad in the world at the time. It was amazing to see how fast the Vietnamese Army worked. They had 2 1/2 ton trucks going back and forth non-stop. In about a weeks time, they had completely disassembled the base. They dismantled the perimeter defensive bunkers; taking the wooden beams and emptying the sandbags. Nothing was left behind. The telephone poles were pulled out of the ground and the wire was rolled up to use again. It was really quite impressive, and a little sickening. The time. The money. The lives. The young men of our generation giving of themselves at the request or order of their government. Uncle Sam now tossing in the towel.
The Iraqi's will try to cut and run too, but of course they can't run as fast or as far as we can. Since the war has been a big mistake anyway, and was set up to fail from the beginning, it will all have been an expensive tragic mistake due to the incompetence of the current president. Does that sound about right?
How did we get to this place?
I just read a very enlightening piece. I submit it for your consideration here;

The Press at War
What ever happened to patriotic reporters?
BY JAMES Q. WILSON
Monday, November 6, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST

We are told by careful pollsters that half of the American people believe that American troops should be brought home from Iraq immediately. This news discourages supporters of our efforts there. Not me, though: I am relieved. Given press coverage of our efforts in Iraq, I am surprised that 90% of the public do not want us out right now.
Between Jan. 1 and Sept. 30, 2005, nearly 1,400 stories appeared on the ABC, CBS and NBC evening news. More than half focused on the costs and problems of the war, four times as many as those that discussed the successes. About 40% of the stories reported terrorist attacks; scarcely any reported the triumphs of American soldiers and Marines. The few positive stories about progress in Iraq were just a small fraction of all the broadcasts.
When the Center for Media and Public Affairs made a nonpartisan evaluation of network news broadcasts, it found that during the active war against Saddam Hussein, 51% of the reports about the conflict were negative. Six months after the land battle ended, 77% were negative; in the 2004 general election, 89% were negative; by the spring of 2006, 94% were negative. This decline in media support was much faster than during Korea or Vietnam.
Naturally, some of the hostile commentary reflects the nature of reporting. When every news outlet struggles to grab and hold an audience, no one should be surprised that this competition leads journalists to emphasize bloody events. To some degree, the press covers Iraq in much the same way that it covers America: it highlights conflict, shootings, bombings, hurricanes, tornadoes, and corruption.

But the war coverage does not reflect merely an interest in conflict. People who oppose the entire war on terror run much of the national press, and they go to great lengths to make waging it difficult. Thus the New York Times ran a front-page story about President Bush's allowing, without court warrants, electronic monitoring of phone calls between overseas terrorists and people inside the U.S. On the heels of this, the Times reported that the FBI had been conducting a top-secret program to monitor radiation levels around U.S. Muslim sites, including mosques. And then both the New York Times and Los Angeles Times ran stories about America's effort to monitor foreign banking transactions in order to frustrate terrorist plans. The revelation of this secret effort followed five years after the New York Times urged, in an editorial, that precisely such a program be started.
Virtually every government official consulted on these matters urged that the press not run the stories because they endangered secret and important tasks. They ran them anyway. The media suggested that the National Security Agency surveillance might be illegal, but since we do not know exactly what kind of surveillance is undertaken, we cannot be clear about its legal basis. No one should assume that the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act requires the president to obtain warrants from the special FISA court before he can monitor foreign intelligence contacts. Though the Supreme Court has never decided this issue, the lower federal courts, almost without exception, have held that "the Executive Branch need not always obtain a warrant for foreign intelligence surveillance."
Nor is it obvious that FISA defines all of the president's authority. Two assistant attorneys general have argued that when the president believes that a statute unconstitutionally limits his powers, he has the right not to obey it unless the Supreme Court directs him otherwise. This action would be proper even if the president had signed into law the bill limiting his authority. I know, you are thinking, That is just what the current Justice Department would say. In fact, these opinions were written in the Clinton administration by assistant attorneys general Walter Dellinger and Randolph Moss.
The president may have such power either because it inheres in his position as commander in chief or because Congress passed a law authorizing him to use "all necessary and appropriate force" against nations or people that directed or aided the attack of 9/11. Surveillance without warrants may be just such an "appropriate force." In any event, presidents before George W. Bush have issued executive orders authorizing searches without warrants, and Jamie Gorelick, once Bill Clinton's deputy attorney general and later a member of the 9/11 Commission, said that physical searches may be done without a court order in foreign intelligence cases. Such searches might well have prevented new terrorist attacks; if they are blocked in the future, no doubt we will see a demand for a new commission charged with criticizing the president for failing to prevent an attack.
In August 2006, when the British arrested the conspirators in the plot to blow up commercial aircraft in flight, evidence suggested that two leads to them were money transactions that began in Pakistan and American intercepts of their electronic chatter. Unfortunately, the New York Times and the ACLU were not able to prevent the British from learning these things. But they would have tried to prevent them if they had been based in London.

Suppose the current media posture about American military and security activities had been in effect during World War II. It is easy to imagine that happening. In the 1930s, after all, the well-connected America First Committee had been arguing for years about the need for America to stay out of "Europe's wars." Aware of these popular views, the House extended the draft by only a one-vote margin in 1941. Women dressed in black crowded the entrance to the Senate, arguing against extending the draft. Several hundred students at Harvard and Yale, including future Yale leader Kingman Brewster and future American president Gerald Ford, signed statements saying that they would never go to war. Everything was in place for a media attack on the Second World War. Here is how it might have sounded if today's customs were in effect:
December 1941. Though the press supports America's going to war against Japan after Pearl Harbor, several editorials want to know why we didn't prevent the attack by selling Japan more oil. Others criticize us for going to war with two nations that had never attacked us, Germany and Italy.
October 1942. The New York Times runs an exclusive story about the British effort to decipher German messages at a hidden site at Bletchley Park in England. One op-ed writer criticizes this move, quoting Henry Stimson's statement that gentlemen do not read one another's mail. Because the Bletchley Park code-cracking helped us find German submarines before they attacked, successful U-boat attacks increased once the Germans, knowing of the program, changed their code.
January 1943. After President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill call for the unconditional surrender of the Axis powers, several newspapers criticize them for having closed the door to a negotiated settlement. The press quotes several senators complaining that the unconditional surrender policy would harm the peace process.
May 1943. A big-city newspaper reveals the existence of the Manhattan Project and its effort to build atomic weapons. In these stories, several distinguished scientists lament the creation of such a terrible weapon. After Gen. Leslie Groves testifies before a congressional committee, the press lambastes him for wasting money, ignoring scientific opinion, and imperiling the environment by building plants at Hanford and Oak Ridge.
December 1944. The German counterattack against the Allies in the Ardennes yields heavy American losses in the Battle of the Bulge. The press gives splashy coverage to the Democratic National Committee chairman's assertion that the war cannot be won. A member of the House, a former Marine, urges that our troops be sent to Okinawa.
August 1945. After President Truman authorizes dropping the atomic bomb on Japan, many newspapers urge his impeachment.

Thankfully, though, the press did not cover World War II the way it covered Vietnam and has covered Iraq. What caused this profound change? Like many liberals and conservatives, I believe that our Vietnam experience created new media attitudes that have continued down to the present. During that war, some reporters began their coverage supportive of the struggle, but that view did not last long. Many people will recall the CBS television program, narrated by Morley Safer, about U.S. Marines using cigarette lighters to torch huts in Cam Ne in 1965. Many will remember the picture of a South Vietnamese officer shooting a captured Viet Cong through the head. Hardly anyone can forget the My Lai story that ran for about a year after a journalist reported that American troops had killed many residents of that village.
Undoubtedly, similar events occurred in World War II, but the press didn't cover them. In Vietnam, however, key reporters thought that the Cam Ne story was splendid. David Halberstam said that it "legitimized pessimistic reporting" and would show that "there was something terribly wrong going on out there." The film, he wrote, shattered American "innocence" and raised questions about "who we were."
The changes came to a head in January 1968, when Communist forces during the Tet holiday launched a major attack on South Vietnamese cities. According to virtually every competent observer, these forces met a sharp defeat, but American press accounts described Tet instead as a major communist victory. Washington Post reporter Peter Braestrup later published a book in which he explained the failure of the press to report the Tet offensive accurately. His summary: "Rarely has contemporary crisis-journalism turned out, in retrospect, to have veered so widely from reality."
Even as the facts became clearer, the press did not correct its false report that the North Vietnamese had won. When NBC News producer Robert Northshield was asked at the end of 1968 whether the network should put on a news show indicating that American and South Vietnamese troops had won, he rejected the idea, because Tet was already "established in the public's mind as a defeat, and therefore it was an American defeat."
In the opinion of Mr. Braestrup, the news failure resulted not from ideology but from economic and managerial constraints on the press--and in his view it had no material effect on American public opinion.
Others do not share his view. When Douglas Kinnard questioned more than 100 American generals who served in Vietnam, 92% said that newspaper coverage was often irresponsible or disruptive, and 96% said that television coverage on balance lacked context and was sensational or counterproductive.
An analysis of CBS's Vietnam coverage in 1972 and 1973 supports their views. The Institute for American Strategy found that, of about 800 references to American policy and behavior, 81% were critical. Of 164 references to North Vietnamese policy and behavior, 57% were supportive. Another study, by a scholar skeptical about the extent of media influence, showed that televised editorial comments before Tet were favorable to our presence by a ratio of 4 to 1; after Tet, they were 2 to 1 against the American government's policy.
Opinion polls taken in 1968 suggest that before the press reports on the Tet offensive, 28% of the public identified themselves as doves; by March, after the offensive was over, 42% said they were doves.
Sociologist James D. Wright directly measured the impact of press coverage by comparing the support for the war among white people of various social classes who read newspapers and news magazines with the support found among those who did not look at these periodicals very much. By 1968, when most newsmagazines and newspapers had changed from supporting the war to opposing it, backing for the war collapsed among upper-middle-class readers of news stories, from about two-thirds who supported it in 1964 to about one-third who supported it in 1968. Strikingly, opinion did not shift much among working-class voters, no matter whether they read these press accounts or not. Affluent people who read the press apparently have more changeable opinions than ordinary folks. Public opinion may not have changed much, but elite opinion changed greatly.

There are countless explanations for why the media produced so many stories skeptical of or hostile to the American military involvement in Vietnam. But many of these explanations are largely myths.
First myth. Media technology had changed. Vietnam was the first war in which television was available to a mass audience, and, as both critics and admirers of TV unite in saying, television brings the war home in often unsettling graphic images. But the Second World War also brought the struggle home through PathÃ© and Movietone newsreels shown in thousands of theaters nationwide at a time when Americans went to the movies remarkably often. Moreover, television accounts between 1962 and 1968 were not critical of the American effort in Vietnam, and public support for the war then actually increased.
Second myth. The war in Vietnam was conducted without censorship. As a result, the press, with trivial exceptions, could report anything it wanted. Moreover, the absence of a formal declaration of war made it possible for several Americans, including important journalists, to travel to Hanoi, where they made statements about conditions there that often parroted the North Vietnamese party line. But the censorship rules in the Second World War and in Korea, jointly devised by the press and the government, aimed at precluding premature disclosure of military secrets, such as the location of specific combat units and plans for military attacks. The media problem in Vietnam was not the disclosure of secrets but the conveying of an attitude.
Third myth. The press did not report military matters with adequate intelligence and context because few, if any, journalists had any military training. But that has always been the case. One veteran reporter, S.L.A. Marshall, put the real difference this way: once upon a time, "the American correspondent . . . was an American first, a correspondent second." But in Vietnam, that attitude shifted. An older journalist in Vietnam, who had covered the Second World War, lamented the bitter divisions among the reporters in Saigon, where there were "two camps": "those who wanted to win the war and those who wanted to lose it." The new reporters filed exciting, irreverent copy, which made it to the front pages; the veteran reporters' copy ended up buried way in back.

In place of these three myths, we should consider three much more plausible explanations: the first is the weak and ambivalent political leadership that American presidents brought to Vietnam; the second is the existence in the country of a vocal radical movement; and the third is the change that has occurred in the control of media organizations.
First, Presidents Kennedy and Johnson both wanted to avoid losing Vietnam without waging a major war in Asia. Kennedy tried to deny that Americans were fighting. A cable that his administration sent in 1962 instructed diplomats and soldiers never to imply to reporters any "all-out U.S. involvement." Other messages stressed that "this is not a U.S. war." When David Halberstam of the New York Times wrote stories criticizing the South Vietnamese government, Kennedy tried to have him fired because he was calling attention to a war that we did not want to admit we were fighting.
Johnson was willing to say that we were fighting, but without any cost and with rosy prospects for an early victory. He sought to avoid losing by contradictory efforts to appease doves (by bombing halts and peace feelers), satisfy hawks (with more troops and more bombing), and control the tactical details of the war from the Oval Office. After the Cam Ne report from Morley Safer, Johnson called the head of CBS and berated him in language I will not repeat here.
When Richard Nixon became president, he wanted to end the war by pulling out American troops, and he did so. None of the three presidents wanted to win, but all wanted to report "progress." All three administrations instructed military commanders always to report gains and rely on suspect body counts as a way of measuring progress. The press quickly understood that they could not trust politicians and high-level military officers.
Second, unlike either World War II or the Korean conflict, there was a radical peace movement in America, much of it growing out of the New Left. There has been domestic opposition to most of our wars (Karlyn Bowman and I have estimated the size of the "peace party" to be about one-fifth of the electorate), but to this latent public resistance was added a broad critique of American society that opposed the war as not only wrong as policy but immoral and genocidal--and, to college students, a threat to their exemption from the draft. Famous opponents of the war traveled to Hanoi to report on North Vietnam. Attorney General Ramsey Clark said that there was neither crime nor internal conflict there. Father Daniel Berrigan described the North Vietnamese people as having a "naive faith in human goodness." Author Mary McCarthy said these folks had "grace" because they lacked any sense of "alienation."
I repeated for the Iraq War the analysis that Professor Wright had done of the impact of the media on public opinion during the Vietnam War. Using 2004 poll data, I found a similar effect: Americans who rarely watched television news about the 2004 political campaign were much more supportive of the war in Iraq than were those who watched a great deal of TV news. And the falloff in support was greatest for those with a college education.
Third, control of the press had shifted away from owners and publishers to editors and reporters. During the Spanish-American War, the sensationalist press, led by Joseph Pulitzer's New York World and St. Louis Post-Dispatch, William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal, and Joseph Medill's Chicago Tribune all actively supported the war. Hearst felt, perhaps accurately, that he had helped cause it. His New York paper printed this headline: "How Do You Like the Journal's War?" Even the New York Times supported the Spanish-American War, editorializing that the Anti-Imperialist League was treasonable and later that the Filipinos "have chosen a bloody way to demonstrate their incapacity for self-government."
Today, strong owners are almost all gone. When Henry Luce died, Time magazine's support for an assertive American foreign policy died with him. William Paley had worked hard to make CBS a supporter of the Vietnam War, but he could not prevent Walter Cronkite from making his famous statement, on the evening news show of Feb. 19, 1968, that the war had become a "stalemate" that had to be ended, and so we must "negotiate." On hearing these remarks, President Johnson decided that the country would no longer support the war and that he should not run for reelection. Over three decades later, Mr. Cronkite made the same mistake: We must, he said, get out of Iraq now.
There are still some family owners, such as the Sulzbergers, who exercise control over their newspapers, but they have moved politically left. Ken Auletta has described Arthur Sulzberger Jr., publisher of the New York Times, as a man who has "leaned to the left," but "leaned" understates the matter. Mr. Sulzberger was a passionate opponent of the war in Vietnam and was arrested more than once at protest rallies. When he became publisher in 1997, he chose the liberal Howell Raines to control the editorial page and make it, Mr. Sulzberger said, a "more assertive, populist page."
Other media companies, once run by their founders and principal owners, are now run by professional managers who report to directors interested in profits, not policy. Policy is the province of the editors and reporters, who are governed by their personal views, many of them acquired not by having once covered the police beat but from a college education. By 1978, 93% of the top reporters and editors had college degrees.

These three factors worked in concert and have carried down to the present. The ambivalent political leadership of three presidents during Vietnam made the press distrust American leaders, even when, as during the Iraq War, political leadership has been strong. The New Left movement in the 1960s and 1970s slowly abandoned many of its slogans but left its legacy in much of the press and Democratic Party elites. The emergence of journalism as a craft independent of corporate owners reinforced these trends. As one journalist wrote, reporters "had come to reject the idea that they were in any sense part of the American 'team.' " This development happened slowly in Vietnam. Journalists reported most events favorably for the American side from August 1965 to January 1968, but that attitude began shifting with press coverage of Sen. J. William Fulbright's hostile Senate hearings and climaxed with the Tet offensive in January 1968. Thereafter, reporters and editors increasingly shared a distrust of government officials, an inclination to look for coverups, and a willingness to believe that the government acted out of bad motives.
A watershed of the new attitude is the New York Times's coverage of the Pentagon papers in 1971. These documents, prepared by high officials under the direction of Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, were leaked to the Times by a former State Department staffer, Daniel Ellsberg. The Times wrote major stories, supposedly based on the leaked documents, summarizing the history of our Vietnam involvement.
Journalist Edward Jay Epstein has shown that in crucial respects, the Times coverage was at odds with what the documents actually said. The lead of the Times story was that in 1964 the Johnson administration reached a consensus to bomb North Vietnam at a time when the president was publicly saying that he would not bomb the north. In fact, the Pentagon papers actually said that, in 1964, the White House had rejected the idea of bombing the north. The Times went on to assert that American forces had deliberately provoked the alleged attacks on its ships in the Gulf of Tonkin to justify a congressional resolution supporting our war efforts. In fact, the Pentagon papers said the opposite: there was no evidence that we had provoked whatever attacks may have occurred.
In short, a key newspaper said that politicians had manipulated us into a war by means of deception. This claim, wrong as it was, was part of a chain of reporting and editorializing that helped convince upper-middle-class Americans that the government could not be trusted.
Reporters and editors today are overwhelmingly liberal politically, as studies of the attitudes of key members of the press have repeatedly shown. Should you doubt these findings, recall the statement of Daniel Okrent, then the public editor at the New York Times. Under the headline, "Is the New York times a Liberal Newspaper?," Mr. Okrent's first sentence was, "Of course it is."
What has been at issue is whether media politics affects media writing. Certainly, that began to happen noticeably in the Vietnam years. And thereafter, the press could still support an American war waged by a Democratic president. In 1992, for example, newspapers denounced President George H.W. Bush for having ignored the creation of concentration camps in Bosnia, and they later supported President Clinton when he ordered bombing raids there and in Kosovo. When one strike killed some innocent refugees, the New York Times said that it would be a "tragedy" to "slacken the bombardment." These air attacks violated what passes for international law (under the U.N. Charter, people can only go to war for immediate self-defense or under U.N. authorization). But these supposedly "illegal" air raids did not prevent Times support. Today, by contrast, the Times criticizes our Guantanamo Bay detention camp for being in violation of "international law."
But in the Vietnam era, an important restraint on sectarian partisanship still operated: the mass media catered to a mass audience and hence had an economic interest in appealing to as broad a public as possible. Today, however, we are in the midst of a fierce competition among media outlets, with newspapers trying, not very successfully, to survive against 24/7 TV and radio news coverage and the Internet. As a consequence of this struggle, radio, magazines, and newspapers are engaged in niche marketing, seeking to mobilize not a broad market but a specialized one, either liberal or conservative.
Economics reinforces this partisan orientation. Prof. James Hamilton has shown that television networks take older viewers for granted but struggle hard to attract high-spending younger ones. Regular viewers tend to be older, male, and conservative, while marginal ones are likely to be younger, female, and liberal. Thus the financial interest that radio and television stations have in attracting these marginal younger listeners and viewers reinforces their ideological interest in catering to a more liberal audience.
Focusing ever more sharply on the mostly bicoastal, mostly liberal elites, and with their more conservative audience lost to Fox News or Rush Limbaugh, mainstream outlets like the New York Times have become more nakedly partisan. And in the Iraq War, they have kept up a drumbeat of negativity that has had a big effect on elite and public opinion alike. Thanks to the power of these media organs, reduced but still enormous, many Americans are coming to see the Iraq War as Vietnam redux.

Most of what I have said here is common knowledge. But it is common knowledge about a new period in American journalistic history. Once, powerful press owners dictated what their papers would print, sometimes irresponsibly. But that era of partisan and circulation-building distortions was not replaced by a commitment to objective journalism; it was replaced by a deep suspicion of the American government. That suspicion, fueled in part by the Vietnam and Watergate controversies, means that the government, especially if it is a conservative one, is surrounded by journalists who doubt almost all it says. One obvious result is that since World War II there have been few reports of military heroes; indeed, there have been scarcely any reports of military victories.
This change in the media is not a transitory one that will give way to a return to the support of our military when it fights. Journalism, like so much scholarship, now dwells in a postmodern age in which truth is hard to find and statements merely serve someone's interests.
The mainstream media's adversarial stance, both here and abroad, means that whenever a foreign enemy challenges us, he will know that his objective will be to win the battle not on some faraway bit of land but among the people who determine what we read and watch. We won the Second World War in Europe and Japan, but we lost in Vietnam and are in danger of losing in Iraq and Lebanon in the newspapers, magazines and television programs we enjoy.
Mr. Wilson, formerly a professor at Harvard and at UCLA, now lectures at Pepperdine University. Among his recent books are The Moral Sense and The Marriage Problem. This article, adapted from a Manhattan Institute lecture, appears in the Autumn issue of City Journal.

Oh Boy!, More Bad News From Iraq!

2006-07-03T08:14:00.000-04:00

I watched the CBS Early Show news by accident this morning. Col. Mitch Mitchell and Harry Smith were discussing the case of the US Army soldiers accused of raping an Iraqi woman and then killing and setting fire to her and her family. They were discussing the "facts" of the case. Supposedly these facts are the kind that need to be leaked to the press from "un-named sources". There was a certain satisfaction in the tone of the story. The kind of satisfaction that comes from reporting stories of church officials molesting boys or babies being drowned by their mothers. There is extra special treatment for stories like that. Here is a link to it if you want to read it yourself.

You know, a long time ago a very wise person told me that life is like a river; we are on the bank of the river. We watch the water and see all kinds of unkindness going by; murder, rape, war, famine. But what is truly important and lasting is what is going on in the houses of the people living next to the water. Inside these houses are men and women who love each other. They raise their children and care for their neighbors. They pay their taxes, serve their countries and go to work faithfully every day. THAT you rarely read about in the paper.

Let's NOT Bring the Troops Home From Iraq, HUH?

2006-02-06T07:45:00.000-05:00

Did anyone see this yo-yo on the NBC evening news before the State of the Union address?

Paraphrased, he said "Polls have shown that more than 40% Americans said they want to bring the troops home"

As opposed to what? Leaving them there forever? How about bringing them home before the job is finished and cheapening the sacrifices that so many have made up to now?

What a bunch of crap. What was the question exactly that was asked of those polled?

The "Milestone" Death Count

2005-10-26T06:08:00.000-04:00

Yea! We finally have the number the media have all been waiting to give us.......drum roll please.......2,000 dead American soldiers!
Now we can breathe again.
That is a number to remember. It's hard to believe America sacrificed hundreds of thousands of our servicemen's lives on the altar of freedom sixty five years ago. A lot of the men who served then are still alive now. I wonder what they would have to say if asked about the sacrifice made now by these 2,000 to save so many?
Not worth it?
I doubt you'd hear that answer.

I have a friend who is a Blackhawk helicopter pilot in Iraq. He and many other Iraq war veterans tell me the same thing; the truth is not getting out.
If you watch TV and get most of your news from there, then it is a dark picture that comes out of Iraq. Do some searching and find out what goes on in Iraq besides roadside bombings.

How about some other numbers?
How many new schools are opening in Iraq? Here is a hint.
How many hospitals or other projects? Here is another hint.

I hope that those of you reading this will ask yourself this;
Is there ANYTHING, besides protecting the lives of your family members, that you would consider important enough to die for? To kill for?
If you answered no, then go sit with the sheep and wait to be slaughtered.

Bush's Scripted Iraq Show?

2005-10-14T08:29:00.000-04:00

Kelly O'Donnell on NBC this morning suggested that "eyebrows were raised" because before the video call by Bush to Iraq yesterday, a White House aide made suggestions about their answers "according to the script". The soldiers practiced their answers before the president asked them any questions. According to O'Donnell "this distracts from the news about the vote for the new Iraqi constitution".

Imagine that; the media trying to distract us from the good news in Iraq by suggesting that the soldiers were told what to say.

The very idea.

Idiot News Nightly Views

2005-07-21T07:55:00.000-04:00

Have you noticed how the national news has become just another half hour of "entertainment" news?

It rained heavily in Houston last week and so the national news decided to cover the event even though Michael Jackson wasn't there and it wasn't happening in New York City. Anyway, the camera gave us a close-up of a round faced black woman sitting behind the steering wheel of a car asking us the thought provoking question; "WHEY ALL DAT WAHTUH COME FROM?"
I suppose there was a shortage of skinny red-necks with missing teeth, that they usually interview, so they waved down a motorist for a quick quote for our amusement.

Sort of reminds me of the video clip I saw recently of comic talk show host Steve Allen asking people on the street if they could ever vote for a politician who was an "admitted heterosexual". Of course they said no. It's just for entertainment.

I think instead of the "Nightly News" they ought to start calling it the "Nightly Views"

Marine found not guilty. NBC Knows Better.

2005-05-06T08:04:00.000-04:00

The Marine who killed the wounded Iraqi feigning death in the mosque in Fallujah has been found not guilty of any wrongdoing.
Good.
A wounded man can kill you as easily as one who isn’t wounded. Up close, when you least expect it.
The national news sees it differently. Wednesday night NBC news showed the nation the video clip of the Marine shooting the wounded man. Of course it was too graphic to show the whole thing, they warned us. They froze the picture and played the audio instead.
But just the same, they love showing that kind of stuff. As if to say, "The Marine has been acquitted but we know better", just take a look for yourself and be as outraged as we are.
At the same time this story is playing out, you have the soldiers of Abu Gharib fame being tried by the military for their misdeeds. What a wonderful convergence of events.
It’s a media feeding frenzy.
Let’s see those pictures of the naked Iraqi’s with their heads in sand bags one more time. Maybe somebody missed it the last 200 times they showed it.
But you know, I missed the video of Nicholas Berg getting his head cut off by Zarqawi. Can I see that one again? Has anybody got a video of the Iraqi police recruits being suicide bombed? How about that Irish woman being shot in the head after spending her life helping needy Iraqi’s? What happened to those video? I guess the answer is that bad guys doing bad things is not news. We expect that from them.
Good guys doing bad things is REAL news. You don't expect it from them, unless they are congressmen. I just read a great quote from Teddy Roosevelt about roll call in the Senate; when they call their name, they don't know whether to say "present" or "guilty". That another story.
Does the media think Iraq is some type of police SWAT raid or something?
In war, people get hurt. This is a surprise to media types. They imagine only soldiers get hurt. For the first few months of the insurgency, they would report that 15 civilians were killed by U.S. troops. Never mind that the civilians were carrying rocket propelled grenadees and AK-47's. They were civilians and that implied that they had been killed by some mistake of American tropps.
Another flash for those media types; not only do people get hurt, in war, they die. In the heat of the moment, all kinds of crap happens. You shoot people who are trying to surrender. You shoot people who are just in the wrong place at the wrong time. You shoot completely innocent people, like the Italian agent at the check point. You even shoot your fellow soldiers. You can even shoot yourself sometimes. All by mistake. You don’t plan for it to happen. It just happens.
Frankly, it's like CAREFULLY having a plane crash. The rules try and make chaos and mayhem a gentlemanly sport. This son of a bitch, who 10 minutes ago was trying to blow your head off, is now wounded and the rules call for us to stop trying to kill him. Maybe he isn’t tired of trying to kill ME yet. But the rules say this calls for a time out. Okay, TIME OUT!, everybody stop shooting, this guy doesn’t want to play war anymore. I just spent 50 rounds of ammo taking down the asshole that shot my best friend in the face. Now I’ll bandage his wounds, MEDIVAC him to the nearest military aid station and spend the next month or so nursing him back to health. Then we can sit down quietly and discuss the error of his ways.
Yeah, maybe I will be merciful. But more likely, I’ll let him bleed out and then toss him in the dead pile with the others.
Sorry, but I would sacrifice the lives of a hundred wounded "insurgents" to save the life of one Marine or Soldier.

Let’s talk a little about the Geneva Convention.
There has been a lot of talk about how we are not treating our prisoners correctly under the Geneva Convention. Mainly this talk is coming from Capitol Hill. Do you know what the Geneva Convention says you can do to people in an occupied country who are resisting military control? In rebellion as it were? It says they can be executed. Not tossed in jail to be led around on a dog leash or have fake electric wires put on their fingers. Nothing unusual can happen to them. No, they can be taken out and shot.
Let’s try and adhere to ALL the rules of the Geneva Convention. Let’s treat them mercifully and if they still resist… well, then treat them mercifully.
When do we start?

The Terrorist Islamic Republic of Iraq?

2005-03-22T00:07:00.000-05:00

I hate to ask, but is there any reason the new democratically elected government of Iraq could not democratically decide to become a state sponsor for terrorism?
From recent articles I have seen about elected Iraqi officials working to undermine the democratic process, one could see the endless possibilities to gum up the works with "elected" radicals.

We'll Miss You David

2005-03-18T08:02:00.000-05:00

David Grey Wilhelm is gone.
Killed for his truck. Killed for his truck.
An exceptionally good man is dead. His wife and family grieve.
Evil men live on. I don’t understand it.
It makes me sad. It makes me angry. It makes me thankful that the next person David’s murderer talked to, a single mother, talked to him about God.
She told him he had value, that God’s Son had given his life for him out of love. That meant he was worth much more than he had thought possible. The killer gave himself up without hurting anyone else.
Why didn’t somebody tell that rapist, that murderer, that man God loves as much as he loves you and me, that God loved him before he went on his killing spree?
If he had given David a chance, I know David would have told him. Maybe David did try to tell him. Maybe the killer’s heart was so hard that gentle words could not reach him.
We will never know.
Now the tributes have been made. The tears have been shed. More tears will be shed.
I’m proud to say I knew him. I wish I had known him better. Now that he is gone, it is apparent to all of us what a special person he was.
What made him so special?
Who made him so special?
His parents did certainly. His creator had an even bigger hand in who he was. I believe what made David special was his faith in God. He lived as the Bible tries to teach the rest of us to live, to become like Jesus. Gentle, loving, caring, giving, respectful, compassionate, helpful, are just a few of the things that Jesus was; and how David was.
I pray that there are more parents raising more men like David.
We need men like David.
Now, more than ever.

Why Don't Arizona Farmers Grow Lettuce in Mexico?

2005-03-13T06:56:00.000-05:00

Lettuce growers in Arizona are being annoyed by the Border Patrol. It seems the Border Patrol is arresting and deporting the undocumented Mexican workers coming to Arizona to pick lettuce.
After about a hundred years of using undocumented workers to harvest lettuce, and paying them a pittance to do it, the lettuce growers say they have no way of determining which worker has false documents. The growers say they would not hire them if they believed they were in the country illegally.

Who do they think they're kidding?

The growers make more profit using illegal workers. They illegal workers don't give the bosses any trouble either; cooperate or I'll turn you in to the Border Patrol.
Why doesn't the U.S. Government prosecute employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers? See the next paragraph for the answer.

Our government goes to a lot of trouble to make it LOOK like we want to stop illegal immigrants. In fact, they know that big business, especially agribusiness, drives our policies on immigration. Government policy is pretty much whatever Congress allows, and what Congress allows is what doesn't irritate the big campaign donors.
End of that story. But stay tuned for the coming story on how someone in the government is going to be held responsible for letting those bad, bad terrorists into the country from Mexico.

Here is a novel idea. Grow the lettuce in Mexico and the workers wouldn't have to sneak in to the country to pick it. NAFTA and all that!

California Gerrymandering and New Ideas

2005-03-12T08:46:00.000-05:00

California Gov. AHNOLD is about to take a ballot initiative to the people concerning gerrymandering.
Gerrymandering in California is nothing new. It's been happening around the country since the country began. Remember the recent debacle in Texas when the Democrats ran off to Oklahoma to keep from being defeated in voting on the new districts? What a joke.
There was a district in North Carolina that looked like someone had opened the doors of a car and driven down I-85 to create it. Following the beach for about 200 miles made the district that started all the fuss in California.
Why can't voting districts be made out of groups of two or three cities or counties without one party trying to get a leg up on the other by manipulating voting districts?
Maybe what we really need is a third political party. (Not something like Ross Perot tried to start. I can't believe I voted for him. That giant sucking sound turned out to be him pulling out of the race.)
We can call the new party the "Green America Party" (blue states plus red states make green. Clever huh?). We will simply ask a third of all the Senators and Representatives to switch to the new party for the good of the country. (Of course they could volunteer to join it they wanted.) The party would ideally be comprised of left-leaning Republicans and right-leaning Democrats (if any can be found to own up to that designation).
I have more ideas.
How about the losing presidential candidate becoming the vice president? Oh I like that idea. Talk about compromise.
Here's another; make Congress vote on each subject in a bill individually. No more attaching the pork barrel expenditure to the bill funding the Blind Orphans Minority Inner City Health Clinics. Imagine, if you will, the announcement from the Speaker of the House;
OKAY, ALL IN FAVOR OF $30 MILLION FOR CONSTRUCTION OF A MUSEUM FOR THE HISTORY OF CAT BREEDING IN ALASKA, RAISE YOUR HAND!
Yeah, this could happen.

Clinton's "Heart" Surgery

2005-03-11T06:40:00.000-05:00

Doctors have operated on former President Clinton to remove the scar tissue around his heart. The previous heart bypass surgery was successful in routing the arteries and veins around the source of his pain; his groin.
Seriously, I am glad the operation went well and he can continue to live a full and productive life.

Italian Money Helps Kill Americans and Iraqis

2005-03-09T06:28:00.000-05:00

There is a rumor going around that the Italian government gained release of their kidnapped journalist by paying $5,000,000 in ransom money to the kidnappers. Rumor also is that this wasn't the first time a deal was made.

If these rumors turn out to be true, and I believe they probably are, then this ransom money has and will undoubtedly go to support the insurgency being waged against Coalition Forces, Iraqi Forces and the Iraqi people. Many are dead and are going to die because of weapons of war this ransom money will pays for.

Short term gain. Long term pain.

An Italian Secret Service Agent was killed by mistake. The whole of Italy is in mourning. Italy blames the war-mongering Americans for killing him while unsuccessfully trying to murder the woman he was escorting. Since American policy is not to negotiate with terrorists, the Italian logic is that if Italians negotiate with terrorists the Americans will kill you. Outrage by twisted logic.

Where is the outrage by the Italian public over the collusion by their government with the terrorists? That one agent's death is NOTHING compared to the number of people that have died and are going to die because the Italian government wanted the political mileage to be gained by her release.
Political mileage paid for, not simply with cash, but with blood.

Social Security and the Democratic Wall

2005-03-07T19:14:00.000-05:00

Social Security is not out of money yet, but one day it will be. Would you rather pay me now or pay me later?

Pay me later of course.

Democratic stonewalling, plus ads by AARP and other groups, are confusing the issue. Confusion is all the DNC can hope for. Why are they trying to stop the Presidents Social Security reform plan?
Well maybe because of genuine doubt as to whether the problem is urgent. I think a larger part of what motivates Democrats is: It's the Presidents plan. They would have liked to have thought of it.They are against it because the President is for it. By God, we couldn't kick him out of the White House, so we'll try to trip him up and stall him any way we can. Let's not let anything stand in our way of our monkey-wrenching either. Maybe we'll filibuster in the Senate and delay the appointment of Bush's nominations for the Federal bench too. Never mind that the Constitution doesn't not allow for filibuster in this area. I wish somebody would take that issue to the Supreme Court.

This brings to mind another reform program nobody wanted. Welfare reform.

That reform wasn't necessary either it you believed what the Dem's were saying. Remember? It's mean and it's going to destroy families. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it working? Aren't there fewer people on welfare in the states that were allowed to change welfare "entitlements"?
Are working people better of than people on welfare?
Isn't Social Security worth saving too?

What's So Bad about Teachers Having Sex with Their Students?

2005-03-05T17:45:00.000-05:00

Every teenage boy I know (including me when I was a teenager) would be glad to have sex with his female teacher.(If she met the proper guidelines of weight in proportion to height and age). Teenage girls would giggle at the idea for a while, but they could be persuaded with the right amount of class credits.

Let's be realistic about this.
Schools administrators have been asking teenagers to practice safe sex and passing out condoms to the young people of America. Let's not rely on nature and hormones to show these little amateurs the basics of sex.
I say practice makes perfect. Sex education classes can only go so far. Those classes just show a few films and talk, talk, talk. Better to leave it to an expert to prepare these young people for the real world. Most big city high schools have overflow trailers on campus. Bring in a few more house trailers as "Love Lairs" and have a study period everyone will be grateful for.

Level the playing field!
It's really unfair to let these teen agers have ALL the teen age sex while the rest of us are left out. If we oldsters were included it couldn't be called teen age sex, but never mind about that.
There are even state laws against adults having sex with minors! Some Federal laws too.
Can you believe it?
Adults teach these kids in all their other classes right? Why not sex?
I propose that a dedicated cadre of horny, unsatisfied, middle-aged men and women volunteers get involved with the schools in their districts and show this kids the ropes, as it were. Background checks and blood tests would be performed to identify teachers with unsatisfied partners or STD's. These "questionable" instructors" would have to undergo remedial training and medical treatment.

Apparently the minors in some states are more sexually "ready" for instruction than minors in other sates; as evidenced by the various ages of consent.
Age of Consent in the United States, by state.
AS OF AUGUST 6,1994
Alabama........16
Alaska.........16
Arizona........18
Arkansas.......16
California.....18
Colorado.......16
Connecticut....16
D.C............16
Delaware.......12 Now that's a progressive state! Details; A child who has not yet reached his or her sixteenth birthday is deemed unable to consent to a sexual act with a person more than 4 years older than said child. Children who have not yet reached their twelfth birthday are deemed unable to consent to a sexual act under any circumstances.
Florida........18
Georgia........14
Hawaii.........16
Idaho..........18
Illinois.......16
Indiana........16
Iowa...........14
Kansas.........16
Kentucky.......14 [1]
Louisiana......17
Maine..........14
Maryland.......16
Massachusetts..18
Michigan.......16
Minnesota......16
Mississippi....18 [2]
Missouri.......16
Montana........16
Nebraska.......16
Nevada.........16
New Hampshire..16
New Jersey.....16
New Mexico.....13
New York.......17
North Carolina.16
North Dakota...18
Ohio...........16
Oklahoma.......18
Oregon.........18
Pennsylvania...14
Rhode Island...16
South Carolina.16
South Dakota...16
Tennessee......18
Texas..........17
Utah...........14
Vermont........15
Virginia.......16
Washington.....18
West Virginia..16
Wisconsin......18
Wyoming........18
FOOTNOTES:[1] Age 16 if the man is 21 or older.[2] If the female is over 12, the statute applies only to virgins.

Think about this; teenagers are ten times more likely to have an accident compared to an adult. Adults could help prevent accidents.
Accidents cause people!

I hope you realize I am just kidding! Have a nice day!

Utah Discovers Illegal Aliens Have A Right to Hide

2005-03-05T17:24:00.000-05:00

This just in;
Illegal aliens living in Utah are being discriminated against by taking away their driving licenses. I think the key word here would be ILLEGAL. I would have more sympathy for their plight if they had entered the country legally.

According to Leo Bravo, director of Hispanic Center of Cache Valley, legal and otherwise; the new law just passed by the Utah legislature, which would replace driver's licenses previously issued to illegal aliens with "driving privilege" cards, is equivalent to the marking of the Jews(with yellow stars is assume) by the Nazis. Read the story here.

Leo, I have toured the concentration camp at Dachau and believe me, you owe every Jew an apology. NOTHING could ever equal what the Nazi's did to the Jews. Well maybe what some middle eastern terrorists would like to do, but I doubt it.

My Two Cents on Homosexuality and Religion

2005-03-01T08:20:00.000-05:00

Here is my take on the situation.
First, this is assuming you believe in God to begin with. If you don't believe in God, then the sky, or the pit, is the limit.

For those that believe homosexuality is not sinful and believe in God, I think the logic goes something like this;
All things are from God. God is good.
Ergo, homosexuality is from God, and good.

God made Satan and his angels. Does this mean that Satan's behavior is acceptable by God?
I don't think so.
Why did God create Satan in a way that allowed him to make a decision God didn't like?
God allowed Satan and his angels to make choices. They chose to be self serving instead of serving God and disobedient instead of God serving and obedient. God found this unacceptable. Satan and his angels paid the price for their decision by being cast out of Heaven.
I don't fully understand how this was part of God's plan, but I believe that it was.

I believe people, like angels, are allowed to make choices too. We, like Satan and his angels, will someday be judged for the choices we have made.

Concerning Choices.

I have read the research theorizing that homosexuality is due in large part to genetic predisposition. I agree that the majority of homosexuals are in this category.

Whether or not the genetic code directs someone to be homosexual or heterosexual, they still must make a choice to follow that path. The choice to follow heterosexual urges is easier to follow culturally because it is more acceptable. There is no social stigma attached to heterosexual urges unless the are completely unrestrained.
Homosexual urges are another matter. The culture is battling this out right now. Is it acceptable and moral or vice versa? I believe the urge does not justify the act when it goes contrary to what the Bible teaches. I understand there are differences of opinion about the authenticity of the Bible and the existence of God. For my discussion, I will compare the Biblical to the world view.

I am approaching this issue with the belief that God would not ask of us what would be impossible for us to give. He asks us to choose to be holy and to repent from our sinful behavior. The sin is in the embracing of our sinful desires. This is not limited to homosexual behavior.
Not embracing or acting on our sinful desires may make some uncomfortable, but there is always a choice to be made. We choose the time, the place, the partner and then act. Not acting on sinful desires will be difficult, but it is possible with our effort and God's help. A member of my church recently addressed the congregation about his being rescued from the homosexual lifestyle by the intervention of the Holy Spirit. It can be done.

My opinion here is that we are all guilty of most of the prohibitions taught in the Bible. Either by thought or deed, we are guilty. We have thought about it, or done it, or both.
The fact of genetic predisposition makes it easy to say that someone just can't help it. If a person is coded genetically to be a homosexual, then to some extent they are able to rationalize their behavior by saying I am not responsible for my actions. God made me this way. He wants me to be this way. I don't have a choice. Therefore society has no right to say my behavior is wrong. If it is not wrong, then there should be no discrimination against me. Sexual orientation has been elevated to the same legal status as physical disability or ethnicity. We have laws that prohibit treating people negatively because of these states of being.

What does the Bible say about homosexuality?
You will find several verses that say that God considers homosexuality to be an abomination. It also says that people who engage in such behavior will not inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. It also mentions that fornicators will not inherit the Kingdom of Heaven either. To state it simply, sex outside of marriage, with an unrepentant heart, will leave you standing at the station when the last train pulls away.

The Fairness Requirement

Some enlightened critics of these Bible verses have an explanation that nullifies what the Bible teaches.

There are standards of fairness that God must adhere to.
Since it would be unfair for God to keep people from going to heaven because they;
Are having sex with members of the same sex, or
Are having sex with someone other than their spouse, or
Are people who are really good people but are not Christians,
The Bible must be wrong.

How can the infallible Word of God be wrong?
The critics have an explanation here too.
It isn't God's Word. God didn't write it. Men wrote it. Maybe they were inspired by God, maybe they weren't. Who is to say? Me. You. Them.
Not only that, men decided what books to put in the Bible to begin with. They didn't put in anything that would disagree with their own notions about God. Talk about stacking the deck.
So I have as much right to interpret these teachings as any of the fathers of the early church. I am not obliged to follow any directions that can not be shown to have come directly from the mouth of God directly to me. (Especially if it does not agree with what I think is correct.)

There is some good stuff in the Bible that it is positive to believe in. I can take the good stuff and leave the bad stuff. The bad stuff is anything that tries to convict me or make me change my ways.
It's Cafeteria Style Christianity.

Here are some examples.(Try to have a sense of humor okay?)
Loving your neighbor as yourself?
Good idea! Well maybe. I love myself a lot. I might have some love left over for my neighbor.

Forgiving all my sins?
This is great, a bill that doesn't have a "due by" date. A get out of jail free card! God understands that I can't help it.

Not covet my neighbors wife?
Have you seen her? What a horseface! That's an easy one. Besides, I'm a homosexual and I don't covet her anyway.

Judge not lest ye be judged?
This is one of the best ones. This means I can do anything I want and you should have NOTHING to say about it. Wonderful idea! (Actually it is a little bit different than they way it is interpreted by most folks. It depends on whether one is inside or outside the church)

Though shalt not steal?
Well, God didn't write the tax code. The LORD giveth and the IRS taketh away. I'm claiming everything I'm entitled to and every other deduction I think the IRS won't verify.

Thou shalt not kill?
I don't like confrontation. Can someone explain why did God sent the Israelites to kill the inhabitants of the promised land? Now that REALLY was not fair. David killed Goliath. Very confusing, but I like it anyhow.

Thou shalt have no other Gods before Me?
As long as we can agree.

Pursuit of Happiness Vs. Freedom of Religion

I agree that people should not be discriminated against for whom they choose to love.
I also think that people have a right to protect their family from what they consider to be immoral influences.
If, in the pursuit of freedom of religion, people choose not to have their children exposed to homosexuals as teachers, cub scout den masters or pastors of churches, how should they go about doing that? Withdraw from society? Convert to Islam and move to Saudi Arabia?

Michael Jackson's Trial Unfair?

2005-02-28T08:46:00.000-05:00

I was watching C-SPAN Saturday night. There was a program about Black Unity.
Jesse Jackson suggested something was unfair about not having black people on the jury in Michael Jackson's trial.
"Can you imagine if Robert Blake's murder trial only had black people on the jury?" Jackson asked.

I could imagine it. Am I naive?

Are we to believe, as Jackson suggests, that Black people are only going to get a fair trial by having Black jurors participate in deliberating their guilt or innocence?
Is it proper then to assume that Black people would be incapable of making an unbiased verdict on a white person?
Wouldn't that logic require that for true justice Black defendants only have Black juries and White defendants only have White jurors?

We Need A National Identity Card

2005-02-21T08:11:00.000-05:00

Why do so many people get upset at the idea of a national I.D. program?
If you are willing to commit a felony, you can acquire a birth certificate (not your own) fill out the passport application, send it in with the birth certificate (and some money) and in a few weeks you will receive a U.S. Passport in the name of your new identity. You can do something similar for a drivers license or an state identity card.

For some reason, our governments has never passed laws requiring that birth records and death records be matched up. Just doing that would keep a lot of identity fraud from occurring. Wouldn't it be nice to know that the man who just applied for a passport died three years ago?

I suppose the government is treating this problem the same way they treated the problem of counterfeit currency. In the fake money fix, they simply hired more Secret Service Agents to track down the counterfeiters. The idea was to let people counterfeit and then try and catch them. It's cheaper to do it that way instead of redesigning the currency to make it harder too counterfeit. (Which they ended up doing anyway).

If you had the birth and death records matched, and added your social security number along with your picture and fingerprint, you would have a national I.D. card as well as proof of citizenship. Put all that in a national database, and you have a pretty good identity card.

Some critics say this would be an invasion of privacy. Privacy to do what? Privacy to be an identity thief? Privacy to be a illegal alien?

Laying the Groundwork for Our War with Iran

2005-02-18T07:44:00.000-05:00

In the February 17, 2005 Wall Street Journal is an article by David Cloud entitled
"U.S. Cites Iran Threat in Key Strait, Tehran Is Believed to Be Able to Stall Shipping Out of Gulf Waterway"
The article quotes Vice Admiral Lowell Jacoby, the head if the Defense Intelligence Agency, as saying that the Iranians could briefly close the strait of Hormuz by using a combination of naval, air and ground forces.

He is not alone in that belief. Porter Goss, the head of the CIA and Thomas Fingar as State Department Intelligence chief also agree with Jacoby.
If the accessment is accurate, it means the Iranians can mess with our oil supply. If you really want to make Uncle Sam mad, all you have to do is take a poke at his oil supply.

It seems to me that revealing this information now is laying the groundwork for attacking Iran at some point in the future. The U.S. may be able to avoid it, and I hope we can. If the Iranians head down the road that leads to nuclear weapons, combined with the threat of closing the Strait of Hormuz I hate to think of what might happen next.

To be sure, the U.S military has it's hands full in Iraq right now. But someday soon the U.S. will be less involved with the daily security actions that are bogging our forces down.
The primary benefit of disengaging in Iraq (oh heck, you can imagine all the benefits of that). The secondary benefit to an improving security situation in Iraq is that we will have our ground forces standing on Iran's doorstep. If we keep them there for an extended length of time, we could do much to dissuade the Iranians from exerting any leverage against the present balance of power. (The present balance of power being Israel and United States versus the rest of the Arab world.)

In the meantime, the EU is about to muddy the waters, as they are so good at doing. The EU wants to use the "carrot and the carrot" approach to get the Iranians to stop looking for their own A-bomb. (If the Russians and French could figure out a way to do it without getting caught, they would sell the Iranians one of their own A-bombs.) For those of you unfamiliar with the carrot and carrot approach, one carrot(trade) would be for the Iranians, and the other carrot(oil) would be for the Europeans.

Apparently, the EU seeks to involve the Iranians with improved trade and in that way get the Iranians to fall so much in love with Belgian chocolate and French cheese they would never want to threaten their new love affair by doing something stupid. (Like putting a nuke on a missile and sending it into Tel Aviv.)
The best part for the EU is that they get the chance to pull the same smoke and mirrors act they pulled with Saddam and his oil for food program. You can bet the information and equiptment for nuclear development would come flooding into Iran after this new Iran/EU detente is fully established.

Then it would be deja vu all over again when we want to put a stop to Iran threatening our national interests. I can just see Condi Rice, or her equivalent, standing before the UN Security Council and showing the evidence to the Germans and the French and Russians, who have no economic interest in listening.

It doesn't help matters that the Russians have helped the Iranians build a nuclear reactor at Bushehr. The Germans were actually supposed to build it back in the 1970's. Now the outside is German and the inside is designed by the Russians.

The latest on this from the Associated Press is that the Russinas are going to make the Iranians promise to give back all the spent fuel rods so they (the Iranians) can't extract the plutonium from the rods and make weapons out of it. How about this quote from Russian president Putin;
"The spread of nuclear weapons on the planet does not aid security, it does not strengthen security. The latest steps from Iran confirm that Iran does not intend to produce nuclear weapons and we will continue to develop relations in all spheres, including the peaceful use of nuclear energy,".

Can somebody explain why a country, that is sitting on 125.8 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, needs nuclear reactors if they aren't pursuing a weapons
program?

I think we have been down this road before. Can you say Iraq?

Homosexuality, Descrimination and Religion

2005-02-17T11:36:00.000-05:00

I got this e-mail from my nephew a couple of days ago. It was so well written, on both sides of the discussion, I thought I would pass it on.

Dr. Dobson;
Why are the rest of us out here, the non evangelicals, supposed to be tolerant of your group, when it is obvious that you have no tolerance for others? We are tolerant because of a little thing called "religious freedom", guaranteed in the Bill of Rights....oh, I forgot, you don't believe in that particular document.There is a second half of the bible....it's called the New Testament. That is where Jesus can be found...you know, the Son of God, the one who loved all people, regardless of what they were or represented. Gay is not a "lifestyle choice". Who would choose life as a pariah? Fundamentally, a gay person is born that way, just as a child with Mental Retardation is born with that developmental disability. Perhaps, people are just born without tolerance, as well. Jesus would have accepted them, too. While it is clear that this is a letter of complaint, I am testing your wisdom. I would like an answer as to why we should collectively be tolerant of intolerant people, especially those who sell themselves as Christians to make a buck when there is nothing Christ-like in their attitudes.I'll close with a suggestion. If you want the government out of your churches (i.e.: gay marriage or abortion), perhaps the churches should get out of government. Is your need to tell everyone else how to live dictated from the Bible, or just your own inner fear that Heaven won't have enough white Americans within it's gates? I wouldn't mind a well-reasoned answer to that question, as well.
Eagerly awaiting your reply,
Matthew A. Scott

Thank you for your e-mail to Dr. Dobson, Matthew. Being unable at present to reply personally, he has asked me to respond. I'm pleased to have this opportunity to answer your message on his behalf.It was good of you to take the time to share your belief that "a gay person is born that way." While we value your feedback, your correspondence leads us to conclude that you have significantly misunderstood Dr. Dobson’s criticism of the We Are Family Foundation’s promotion of homosexuality under the guise of “tolerance.” It’s our pleasure to have the opportunity to respond to the accusation that Dr. Dobson and Focus on the Family are “intolerant” toward homosexuals or any other group of fellow human beings.In our society, there is a great deal of confusion over the definition of the word “tolerance.” Some argue that to be tolerant means that we must not only be respectful and compassionate to all people, but we also must unreservedly sanction and embrace any behavior or lifestyle. In contrast, we maintain that it is possible to live out the first part of this definition, reject the second part, and still be “tolerant.” Allow us to explain our reasoning on this point.We believe that tolerance is properly understood as the manner in which we interact with others; namely, it is shown by demonstrating an attitude of respect. Tolerant people do not engage in name-calling or express falsehoods designed to undermine another’s dignity. Rather, they manifest civility and do not harbor personal animosity toward those with whom they disagree.We believe, however, that people are not intolerant for holding that certain ideas are wrong while others are right and that some acts are immoral while others are moral. Many point to Christ’s interaction with the woman caught in adultery as evidence of His tolerance. Indeed, this passage does show Him exhibiting great compassion and love for this woman. And yet, His final words to her were “Go now and leave your life of sin” (John 8:11). Was Jesus displaying intolerance because he told the woman to stop living a “life of sin”? No, He illustrated true love, caring enough for the woman’s welfare to call her to leave her destructive lifestyle.We at Focus on the Family must do the same if we are to follow Christ’s example. There can be no doubt that the Scriptures prohibit homosexuality as a viable option for the expression of human sexuality (1 Corinthians 6:9-10, Romans 1:26-27). Jesus Himself adequately addressed this subject when He said, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?” (Matthew 19:4-5; quoting from Genesis 1:27, 2:24) This is the Bible’s most complete and definitive statement of God’s design for marriage and human sexuality. To suggest that conveying these truths to others is synonymous with hating homosexuals is ludicrous, particularly given the fact that, whether one accepts the Bible’s authority on the matter or not, it is irrefutable that the gay lifestyle is filled with psychological, emotional, and medical risks.Having said all of this, it should now be apparent that Dr. Dobson’s issue with the We Are Family Foundation’s efforts to promote “tolerance and diversity” is NOT that their materials might lead children to treat homosexuals with courtesy and respect. We suggest you read his February 2005 newsletter to understand the real reasons for his concern over the We Are Family Foundation’s agenda. It can be accessed at http://www.family.org/docstudy/newsletters/a0035339.cfm; Finally, because it is difficult to adequately convey the breadth of our perspective on homosexuality by e-mail, we’d be pleased to send you a complimentary set of booklets that explain our views in greater detail. If you’d be interested in receiving them, simply send a return e-mail with your name and mailing address and ask for item code XY289.Additional online articles may be found at the following link:http://www.family.org/cforum/fosi/homosexuality/ We hope this response has clarified our point of view on this matter. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch if we can be of further assistance, Matthew. Grace and peace to you!
Tessa Camp
Focus on the Family

Dear Folks,Although I was not swayed by your arguments on the subject, I am pleased with the thoroughness of your reply. I still firmly believe that tolerance as you define is incorrect. When people request tolerance, they are not asking for a person to "sanction or embrace any behavior or lifestyle". They are asking only that they be accepted as equal and valid humans, and not be discriminated against.Certain behaviors are intolerable in society. Murder or pedophilia are perfect examples. There is no proof that "the gay lifestyle is filled with psychological, emotional and medical risks". "Psychological and emotional" risks within homosexuals could be defined more practically within the context of sociology, in terms of how gays are unaccepted sociologically. As for medical risks, AIDS only seems to take a pass on heterosexual males, and homosexual women. Heterosexual females and homosexual males face approximately the same risk, medically, from AIDS.I do understand that love can be shown by asking of someone else to show respect for themselves. Your reply indicates that you equate a homosexual person to a woman "caught in adultery". Adultery as a sin connotes an action taking place, and a choice that can be made, not an unchangeable state of existence. Homosexuals have no choice. They are gay, just as I am straight, because of how God made them. It is not a question of telling someone to, "stop living a life of sin". It is not "sin" to live in the state of being that God creates for each of us individually. Finally, it is not enough just to treat someone with "courtesy and respect". My ex-stepmother told me once to call a black person "Sir, because that's what they like". Considering the words that she used to describe African Americans, the "courtesy and respect" she intended me to show was very hollow indeed. Most people who are in disadvantaged states of existence, sociologically, such as blacks, quadriplegics, the developmentally disabled, and homosexuals are not asking for that kind of courtesy and respect. They just want the simple human dignity of being accepted as equals.
Sincerely,
Matthew A. Scott

Thanks for writing again, Matthew, and for explaining your position in greater detail. In response, we'd like to direct you to a selection of articles that further clarify our perspective on homosexuality and why we do not believe it's something over which individuals have no choice:http://www.family.org/cforum/fosi/homosexuality/ Thanks, again, for taking the time to write. Although specific disagreement remains, know that the effort you’ve invested in opening a dialogue with us is much appreciated. God’s grace and peace to you in the days ahead.
Tessa Camp
Focus on the Family

Grateful to be protected by American Soldiers

2005-01-29T06:55:00.000-05:00

I just wanted to say a few words about what I feel for my brothers and sisters serving in the military.

First, I'm biased. I am an Army Viet Nam veteran. I know a little of what it's like to be in the position that many of my fellow soldiers are in. I call them MY fellow soldiers because I really feel that they are my brothers and sisters. I don't care what branch of service they are serving in. We share common experiences. We share common feelings for what we have been through.

Second, I know that when you're up to your neck in crap, it's difficult to remember that the reason you are in that position is for someone else's gain. All you know at the time is that it's crap, it stinks, and you want to get out of it.

Having the benefit of over thirty years of "aging", allows me to dull some of my memories, shake off some of the crap that still clings to me, and see things in a more enlightened way. At least I hope I've been enlightened.

This I say to all of you who are in harms way;
I pray for you every day. I pray for angels to be all around you, protecting you.
I pray for you to have skill in battle.
I pray for your minds to be protected from the awful things you have to see.
I pray for your families to be comforted by the Holy Spirit, and to have their worries put to rest.
I pray for you all to be brought closer to God, so that if you are lost to us , you will next awaken in His presence.
I pray that this war will be over soon, and you will all be home safely with your families.

No matter what the outcome of all this fighting, your sacrifice has been worthwhile. You will have "run the good race".

One more thing; NEVER be ashamed of your service.

God Bless you all.

A Conspiracy within a Conspiracy

2005-01-27T06:29:00.000-05:00

I had heard about the subject of an HIV/AIDS conspiracy from some friends at work. I had no idea it was so popularly believed.

See the story from MSNBC here.

But you see, those who believe the conspiracy theories are thinking too simply. Those of us who really know how evil white people are, know that what is really going on is that the government didn't introduce the virus, they introduced the conspiracy theory.
The theory was to keep black people suspicious of the motivations of white people. (An altogether good suspicion to have).
That suspicion would help keep us(black AND white) from seeing each other as members of the same human family who have to be responsible for our own actions or inaction.

Did I just contradict myself? THEY knew I was going to say that.

Since President Bush Declared an End to Major Combat.....

2005-01-26T18:01:00.000-05:00

Remember when, before the presidential election, every night on the evening news the reporter used to follow the casualty figures from Iraq with something like;
"and that's the 149th soldier to be killed in Iraq SINCE PRESIDENT BUSH DECLARED AN END TO MAJOR COMBAT".

Whatever happened to that?
Why don't I hear them say that anymore? It's not any less true now than it was then. So what was behind it?
I believe it's was because when they were saying it, they were hoping to influence people's vote for president. Since it is too late for that now, there is no need to say it anymore.

It still appears that the casualties are reported with some degree of senasationalism.

Take today's news for example.
By combining the number killed in a helicopter crash in western Iraq with the number killed in ambushes in eastern Iraq, the news vultures are able to say;
"the single deadliest day for U.S. forces since the war in Iraq began nearly two years ago, defense officials said".(that from the Washington Post)

While I'm at it, I'll add a comment about "time", the way news people use it.
I think it's amusing to hear a news person say something like; "that is the largest increase in unemployment figures in nearly two DECADES!"
Now I know they hope to make two decades sound like it's a hundred years. Maybe it would sound even longer if they said "almost a thousand weeks" next time.

Women vs Men; Natural Abilities

2005-01-23T15:22:00.000-05:00

I saw that the President of Harvard made some comments about women and natural ability which got him in some hot water.

Why is it okay to take notice of the innate differences in men and women's behavior, but not okay to suggest that we might have different learning abilities? Political correctness?

And oh my gosh, this story just in based on a study from a the University of California at Irvine.

I think I'll rest my case.

ACLU and Religion

2005-01-23T14:54:00.000-05:00

Hey boys and girls, this from the ACLU website;
"The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment prohibits government from encouraging or promoting ("establishing") religion in any way. That's why we don't have an official religion of the United States. This means that the government may not give financial support to any religion. That's why many school voucher programs violate the Establishment Clause -- because they give taxpayers' money to schools that promote religion."

Here is what the Constitution actually says about that:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

I think the key here is "CONGRESS shall make no law", and "or prohibiting the free exercise thereof".

In our upside down world, my right to freely exercise my religious beliefs is held hostage by the liberal judge's interpretation of what constitutes Congressional legislation.

By the way, is it okay for school teachers to discuss Buddha? Is that religious establishment that is prohibited too, or is it just Christian religion that is prohibited?

Peggy Noonan; Too Much God?

2005-01-23T14:29:00.000-05:00

I read a Wall Street Journal commentary by Noonan in which she was complaining that there was "way too much God" in President Bush's inaugural speech.

Way too much God. I don't see how you can have too much God in anything. God and Presidents; I hope we have more like George Washington.

Would she ever have written a piece about "Too little God?"

Speaking of too little God; we removed God from the public classroom, how do you like the results?

Why Do They Do That in Sports?

2005-01-23T14:12:00.000-05:00

Baseball:
Why does the team that hits a baseball out of play (out of the park) get a point for that? Wouldn't the game be more exciting if the ball stayed in play?

And after they do hit the ball out of play, why does the hitter run around the bases? Why not just go sit down? Is it a victory lap?

Just a side question; aren't there any women who can hit well enough to play professional baseball with men?

Basketball:
Why is the basket so low that the players can stick their hand down inside and dunk? Shouldn't the basket be higher so they would have to shoot? I think that would make for better all around players.

Social Security and a Solemn Commitment?

2005-01-19T06:32:00.000-05:00

I almost choked the other night.
I was watching the news, and there is Ted Kennedy telling us that we can't fool around with social security reform because Franklin Roosevelt had given the people a "solemn commitment". Then the news anchor explains that the truth actually is that the social security trust fund has a surplus that will last for another 30-40 years.

I couldn't believe it!

I think it works like this; The government collects money from your paycheck, then it puts the money in the SS Trust fund where it is invested in U.S. government bonds which pay interest. The interest is paid by the government back into the fund which is held by the government. Then the government gives the money to someone else who probably will take more out of the fund than they put in. If I ran my finances the way the government does, I would be put in jail for fraud.
Before we had social security, we managed to look after each other pretty well. Children took care of their aging parents. Churches took care of widows and orphans. We cared for our neighbors more. It was not ideal , but for the most part, people made do.
Now Social Security is seen as a substitute for managing your own finances to provide for yourself. Wouldn't it be better if we were a little more independent?

Back to Mr. "solemn commitment";

During JFK's inauguration speech on 1961, didn't John F. Kennedy say;
"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty."

Here is Ted Kennedy's answer to his brother's "solemn commitment" to defend liberty.
"This misguided war in Iraq has distracted us from the real war we must win and made that war harder to win, because even as we combat terror, it has left America more and more isolated in the world,"
That's the war we must really be fighting, the war to be liked by our more enlightened overseas friends.

I don't know about you, but when Germany and France protest our policies, it tells me we are probably going in the right direction.

California Mudslide. Why Doesn't The State Do Something About That?

2005-01-13T05:40:00.000-05:00

I was watching what passes for the national news last night.

In a video from the site of the California mudslide, a woman resident questions Gov. Schwartzenegger about why the state didn't do more to protect them from mudslides. She tells him that they had asked the state to terrace the hillside but the state had said it was too expensive. And just how much money was it costing to come out and try and dig out the bodies now?

That attitude might be understandable in the aftermath of a tragedy such as happened there. But it is the same attitude that blames others for decisions that you make for yourself.
Her feet weren't nailed to the ground. If she thought it was too dangerous to live there, why was she living there? She was living there because she CHOSE to live there. She weighed the possibilities, and bought a home there anyway. NOW since it turned out to be a questionable decision, she is not going to blame herself for making that choice, she is going to blame the government for not protecting her from the consequences of her decisions.

Certainly the state has a responsibility to protect it's citizens, but the costs of that protection must be weighed against the benefits of using those resources in other areas.
Those types of decisions are made by the representatives that chosen by the people.
If they are doing their best to make the right decisions, I think that is the best you can expect.

But in typical knee-jerk fashion, I imagine the State of California will now spend some huge amount of money to take the top off that mountain and move all the threatened homes to Indiana where it's safer.
While the state is at it, maybe they could take a look at that woman's eating and exercise habits to make sure she lives a long and fulfilling life. Make sure she wears a seat belt when she drives too.

We are supposed to gather information and then make rational decisions for ourselves.
I'm sure that before all is said and done, there will be lawsuits filed against the State of California (for not spending a billion dollars to remove the mountainside), the Fire Department (for not rescuing people sooner) and maybe God for not stopping the mud from sliding.

Actually, someone did try to sue God once, but the subpoena could not be served.

Charities

2005-01-09T17:54:00.000-05:00

I heard on the news yesterday that some charities have raised too much money for the tsunami relief efforts. The charities could no longer promise that all the money they collect will go to help the victims.

And hey, we want to make sure all the money we give goes where we want it to. By golly, no darned charity better try to spend any extra money on anything other than what tugged at our heartstrings and made us want to give in the first place.
That's why the families of the victims of the 9/11 World Trade Center attack got paid hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars for the death of their loved ones, in contrast to the families of the soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq on the war on terror who get about $10-20,000. (But that's another subject.)

At dinner time tonight the phone rang. We usually let our answering machine screen our calls for us, but tonight we stupidly answered it (because we had just left a message on a friends answering machine and thought they were calling back.)

The caller said they had an "EMERGENCY" message for us .

Well, that got our attention; we have a loved one in the hospital in a coma, and an elderly relative in Florida. But no need to get excited, it was only World Vision.
Not wanting to miss a golden opportunity, they were calling to capitalize on the misfortune of all those suffering the effects of the disaster around the Indian Ocean, by hitting me up for a donation.

I understand the squeaky wheel getting the grease, but that really gets my goat.

I make donations to charity regularly, year after year. The charities I give to, almost without exception, then pester me with phone calls, e-mails, letters and cards telling about the latest disaster and asking me for more money.
In the beginning I even went along with them. I naively thought that there must be a real need for it or they wouldn't be asking. So I would give another $50 and they would send a nice thank you letter, and not wanting to waste the postage or the opportunity, ASK FOR MORE MONEY! Often times offering to give me a calendar, coffee mug, tote bag or umbrella as a small token of their esteem.

Well sometimes the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and sometimes the wheel gets replaced.
I doubt they would notice if I replaced them.

Why elected officials don't always answer to the voters

2005-01-07T16:32:00.000-05:00

When was the last time you contributed money to ANY politician's campaign?
Does NEVER sound about right? That's what it would be for me.
If you aren't giving any money to politicians to finance their run for office, where do you imagine the money comes from?

Some of it comes from their own pockets, but most comes from PAC's and donations to the National Party made by special interests. If those contributions don't buy influence, why in the wide world would those special interests want to give away millions of dollars to people who aren't going to listen to them and/or do what they want?

I admired the frankness of Charles Keating, who headed Lincoln Savings and Loan in the 1990's during the savings and loan crisis. When asked by a reporter if he thought his donations to the campaigns of various senators had bought him any influence, his reply was "I certainly hope so". He had to go to jail anyway, but the carrers of Congressmen Cranston, Reigle and DeConcini were cut short by the scandal.

Actually, I have to lower my voice here. My sister told me that I sound arrogant. Maybe I am arrogant. It's hard to judge for me to judge. Judge for yourself.

So, maybe most politicians aren't part of an elaborate sheme to lie to us, tax us and then pay back their buddies. It could be that they are incompetent.
Would the results be about the same?

Elections

2005-01-06T06:24:00.000-05:00

Why don't more people vote?
Could it be because they think that both candidates are unworthy of their vote?

How about a new choice for the ballot;
( ) NONE OF THE ABOVE.

If more than a certain percentage of the voters make this choice, the candidates are disqualified and the parties must offer two new candiadates.

Or how about amateurs for office.
We could choose the next officeholder by lottery. Okay Joe Schmo, it's your turn to be the Representative from the 1st Congressional District of Ohio. Maybe that would bring some common sense back to government.
Because you would never know who the candidate would be, the special interests would not have the ability to influence you future conduct with their campaign donations before you took office.