Monday, October 29, 2007

Picking My Brain 07-10-27

I had to remind myself that whenever I want to smile, I just have to imagine George Stephanopoulos hosting This Week, and he has guests Robert Reich and Madeliene Albright, and the three of them are sitting in huge oversized chairs, so their legs all dangle down the front but come nowhere the near the floor. Like Edith Ann, from Laugh-In. Try it. I guarantee it will make you smile.

Talk about irony. When Ellen Degeneres had a sitcom, she had talked to everyone involved with the show about having Ellen's character (herself, more or less) finally come out of the closet. When one of the network executives heard about this, he said, "Why can't she just get a puppy?" So, Ellen's staff decided to refer to the episode in which Ellen's character comes out as, "The Puppy." Then she got into all that trouble over giving away a puppy.

Rudy Giuliani's divorce from Donna Hanover didn't happen until July 2002. Remember that famous stunt when his cell phone rang during the middle of a speech, and he tried to pretend it wasn't set up? Remember how he said that "ever since 9/11" he and Judith would call each other to say, "I love you." I hate to say it, but "Ever since 9/11"? He was still married to Donna Hanover at the time. (In fairness, I guess I should point out that he had already announced that he was separating from Hanover in May of 2001. She learned about it at the same time we all did, as Rudy announced it at a press conference before telling her. Republican values for you.)

Saturday, October 27, 2007

A Day in the Lives of Two Joes

Someone sent me the great piece below, called "A Day in the Life of Joe Republican." I thought it was a great example of the hypocrisy that many conservatives live when they denounce things they rely on every day of their lives as being liberal. Here is that piece first, and then we'll continue from there. I have no idea to whom I should give credit for the first part, as it was one of those things sent through the tubes of the Internets. As to the follow-up response to it that I'll discuss afterwards, I'll do the guy a favor and not mention his name (since I don't know it) on the off-chance that this was supposed to be satire, or humorously-intended. It just seems too much like how a conservative would "re-invent" Joe Republican, that I didn't think it was facetious. So, in case it was serious, I decided to counter it.




“A DAY IN THE LIFE OF JOE REPUBLICAN”

Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards. With his first swallow of water, he takes his daily medication. His medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to ensure their safety and that they work as advertised.

All but $10 of his medications are paid for by his employer’s medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance - now Joe gets it too.

He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs. Joe’s bacon is safe to eat because some girly- man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.

In the morning shower, Joe reaches for his shampoo. His bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient and its amount in the total contents because some crybaby liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained.

Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some environmentalist wacko liberal fought for the laws to stop industries from polluting our air.

He walks on the government-provided sidewalk to the subway station for his government-subsidized ride to work. It saves him considerable money in parking and transportation costs because some fancy-pants liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.

Joe begins his work day. He has a good job with excellent pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some lazy liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Joe’s employer pays these standards because Joe’s employer doesn’t want his employees to call the union.

If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, he’ll get a worker compensation or an unemployment check because some stupid liberal didn’t think he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune.

It is noontime and Joe needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe’s deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some godless liberal wanted to protect Joe’s money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Great Depression.

Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae-underwritten mortgage and his below-market federal student loan because some elitist liberal decided that Joe and the country would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his lifetime. Joe also forgets that his in addition to his federally subsidized student loans, he attended a state-funded university.

Joe is home from work. He plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive. His car is among the safest in the world because some America-hating liberal fought for car safety standards to go along with the tax- payer funded roads.

He arrives at his boyhood home. His was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers’ Home Administration because bankers didn’t want to make rural loans.

The house didn’t have electricity until some big- government liberal stuck his nose where it didn’t belong and demanded rural electrification.

He is happy to see his father, who is now retired. His father lives on Social Security and a union pension because some wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberals made sure Dad could take care of himself so Joe wouldn’t have to.

Joe gets back in his car for the ride home, and turns on a radio talk show. The radio host keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. He doesn’t mention that the beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day. Joe agrees: “We don’t need those big-government liberals ruining our lives! After all, I’m a self-made man who believes everyone should take care of himself, just like I have.”-



Well, I sent that to a liberal friend of mine, and he in turn sent it to several of his friends, some of whom are conservative. One of his conservative buddies decided to answer the list back.



Of course, the web would not be “fair and balanced” if there weren’t an equal and opposite view out there. All it takes is Google, and changing one word in the title of your piece. Enjoy the dichotomy!

(signed) Mr. Fiscally Conservative Democrat


"A DAY IN THE LIFE OF JOE DEMOCRAT"

Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee. He can only afford to drink four ounces a day because his tree-hugging governor raised the sales tax for the fifth time in four years to pay for gov't run Daycare, the Playboy channel for incarcerated sex-offenders, free needle-exchange programs, social services for illegal aliens, and condom-vending machines in preschool.

But he savors every drop, for next year he'll only be permitted to buy decaffeinated coffee because FDA testing found that force-feeding lab rats 20 gallons of coffee per day raised their cancer rate by .0003% per thousand.

With his first swallow of water, he rations his daily intake of medication. He can't afford all his meds because some stupid commie liberal ambulance-chaser drove pharmaceutical costs through the roof with frivolous law suits.

His meds are subsidized by his employer's medical plan because some liberal closed shop union workers fought their employers in order to garnish employee wages so that Joe would labor under the illusion that someone else is picking up the tab when in fact his employer is reaching into Joe's own back pocket.

He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs. Joe's bacon is unsafe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for limited liability laws so that if anyone dies of food poisoning, the meat packing industry will pay a fine and pass the cost on to the customer.

In the morning shower, Joe reaches for his shampoo. His bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient because some crybaby liberal thought that he was too stupid to know that imbibing a pint of shampoo might be harmful to his health.

Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. Joe begins to cough, choke, and gasp for breath because some environmentalist wacko liberal fought for passage of the Kyoto treaty, allowing Third World countries to contaminate the world air supply with carbon monoxide.

Joe doesn't dare go out at night because some environmentalist wacko liberal lawmaker forbad the spraying or draining of malarial swamps.

Joe lost his first home to wildfire because some environmentalist wacko liberal lawmaker forbad the thinning old growth forest land.

His dad used to take the train to work. But when the Federal highway system destroyed our once-magnificent train system, Joe had to resort to the filthy, crime-ridden subway system because some fancy-pants liberal fought to disarm law-abiding citizens so that street gangs could mug commuters, then cop a plea based on post-traumatic slavery disorder.

Joe begins his work day. Joe's dad used to support his family at a middle class lifestyle on a single income. But it now takes two or three incomes to do the work of one because liberal bureaucrats drove up the cost of doing business through overregulation and usurious corporate taxation.

If Joe gets bored with his job, he can fake an injury and collect workman's comp., retiring to the slopes of Aspen to recuperate because some stupid liberal didn't think that employees might try to bilk the system.

It is noontime and Joe needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe's deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some godless liberal thought that financial institutions should be able to defraud their customers and then file for bankruptcy, thereby shielding the pension and severance pay of board members while sticking the taxpayer with the tab.

Joe has to pay his federal student loan because some elitist liberal decided to subsidize college education so that universities, freed from competitive pressure, no longer had to keep tuition costs down.

Joe had the GPA and SAT scores to get into Harvard, but he had to settle for a community college because racial quotas kept him out while admitting inner city students who couldn't read or write, but had mastered multiple techniques of fitting a condom in high school sex-ed.
Joe is home from work. He plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive. He has to practice defensive driving because some America-hating liberal had alcoholism classified as a legally-protected disease and disability.

He arrives at his boyhood home. The countryside used to be a quiet, leisurely, pristine place to live until the Federal highway system and force bussing overran the bucolic countryside with suburban sprawl as urbanites fled the cities.

His family used to live off the land, in harmony with nature, until some big-government liberal stuck his nose where it didn't belong and demanded rural electrification, powered by fossil fuel consumption.

He is happy to see his dad. Dad will be the last generation to retire on Social Security because some wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberals regularly raided the SS trust-fund to subsidize social programs, instead of allowing workers to invest their own earnings in compound interest-bearing accounts.

Joe's Dad was forced into early retirement, without a pension, because some environmentalist wacko liberal discovered a snail-darter in the cooling system of the local nuclear plant, where his dad used to work.

Joe's uncle used to be a cattle rancher until he was driven out of business because some environmentalist wacko liberal lawmaker kept him from shooting wolves that preyed on his livestock.

Joe's cousin used to work at the local lumber mill until he was laid off because some environmentalist wacko liberal discovered a spotted owl on timber land.

Joe's relatives used to receive assistance from the local chapter of the Salvation Army until it had to close its doors because some liberal civil libertarian sued it for refusing to offer domestic partnership benefits to all its employees.

Wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberals also invented a Constitutional right to an abortion, resulting in 45 million fewer workers to support the retirees.

In addition, wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberals promoted SS so that no able-bodied, adult child should ever be saddled with the onerous burden of caring for the elderly parents who devoted the best years of their lives caring for them when they were young and helpless.

Finally, wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberals lobbied for involuntary euthanasia so that burdensome parents can be put out of their children's misery.

As the day ends, Joe reflects on his nation, his liberties and his freedoms. He is free because conservative cold warriors kept commie lefty Liberals from unilaterally disarming America.

Joe resents having to be so dependent on gov't goods and services, but since he didn't ask for it, since--indeed--it was imposed on him anyway, against his will, and forcibly deducted from his hard-earned wages, the only way he can recoup a fraction of his losses is to play the hand he's been dealt--even if the deck is stacked against him.

But given a choice, he refuses to a vote for a Massachusetts liberal who was drafted; who tried to dodge the draft by requesting an education deferment to study in Paris; who volunteered for the Naval reserves (when his deferment was denied) to duck active duty service; who gamed the three-purple-hearts-and-your-out policy by writing up his own glowing after-action reports about his self-inflicted flesh-wounds; who, after receiving a dishonorable discharge, laid the groundwork for a successful political career by slandering his comrades-in-arms; who eventually ran for president on the platform that he served honorably in a dishonorable war; and who angrily denounced a war he authorized.
Joe gets back in his car for the ride home, and turns on NPR. The radio host keeps saying that liberals are good and right-wingers are bad. He doesn't mention that the beloved liberals have fought for the infringement of every freedom that Joe's old man used to enjoy and take for granted.




Well, where to begin? I guess I’ll start with the intro, since there are some things that need to be cleared up there.

Of course, the web would not be “fair and balanced” if there weren’t an equal and opposite view out there. All it takes is Google, and changing one word in the title of your piece. Enjoy the dichotomy!

I would enjoy it, if it was based on facts and the truth. Unfortunately, this list is not. And who the hell says that the internet has to be "fair and balanced"? Are you one of those people who thinks that if we're not hearing both sides of a dispute, we're not being properly informed of the truth? Did it ever occur to you that in a dispute where one side's take differs from the other's, it's usually because one of them is lying? Or is it that you think there is nothing wrong with lying to get your way?

"A DAY IN THE LIFE OF JOE DEMOCRAT"

Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee. He can only afford to drink four ounces a day because his tree-hugging governor raised the sales tax for the fifth time in four years to pay for gov't run Daycare, the Playboy channel for incarcerated sex-offenders, free needle-exchange programs, social services for illegal aliens, and condom-vending machines in preschool.

Not so fast, Joe! I checked a recent store receipt to confirm my suspicions. If Joe thinks he has to ration his coffee because the governor raised the sales tax rate, then Joe needs to get out more. Coffee beans that you grind yourself (or at the store after you purchase them) aren't taxable. So, go ahead and have that second cup, Joe.

But he savors every drop, for next year he'll only be permitted to buy decaffeinated coffee because FDA testing found that force-feeding lab rats 20 gallons of coffee per day raised their cancer rate by .0003% per thousand.

Not quite. It must have been the caffeine that was determined to be bad, not the coffee itself, otherwise Joe wouldn't even be able to get decaf next year. When Sacharrin was found to have caused cancer in lab animals given doses equivalent to drinking 800 cans of soda a day (that's 75 gallons, not 20, and it would be physically impossible to drink that much in one day, anyway), they required that the product carry a warning to that effect. They haven't yet banned it, even though subsequent tests confirmed the potential cancer risks (see article). Drinking 10 gallons of just water would kill you, so forget about 20, let alone 75. Besides, do you really think they'll ever ban coffee outright in this country? They could announce that drinking coffee causes your sex organs to fall off, and they would still have a hard time banning it. Just never going to happen, especially not for the reasons Joe here thinks.

With his first swallow of water, he rations his daily intake of medication. He can't afford all his meds because some stupid commie liberal ambulance-chaser drove pharmaceutical costs through the roof with frivolous law suits.

Wrong again. The high cost to us of prescription medicine has nothing to do with "frivolous lawsuits". That's an old chestnut that the right still likes to throw out once in a while. Yes, there are people who file lawsuits for what appear to be stupid reasons. But if it wasn't frivolous, then it must have had merit. Which means that the pharmaceutical company probably did do something wrong for which they should be made to pay. It shouldn't be profitable to rip off customers and be protected by the law. But the most important hing to keep in mind is that the problem isn't that meds cost so much, it's that they charge so much. And one reason they charge so much is to get back some of the excessive money they spend on advertising. A company rep would drive away and give away boxes of the stuff to local doctors. Some of them, in turn, give them to their patients several at a time (if it is safe to self-medicate, such as heartburn). I was once given a pill by a doctor that came in a free sample pack from the pharmaceutical manufacturer. The packaging alone for that one pill had to cost close to two dollars. (I know this because my job involves knowing such things.) It's all done in the name of advertising, to get their drug's brand name out into the public's mind. Maybe they could save themselves some money if they spent more on bringing advertising costs down and less on trying to convince you to convince your doctor to write you a prescription.

His meds are subsidized by his employer's medical plan because some liberal closed shop union workers fought their employers in order to garnish employee wages so that Joe would labor under the illusion that someone else is picking up the tab when in fact his employer is reaching into Joe's own back pocket.

Joe is laboring under an illusion. An illusion that his employer-provided medical insurance is money coming out of his own back pocket. Backing up a moment, if his meds are "subsidized by his employer's medical plan", then how come "He can't afford all his meds"? Is he on a boatload of meds per day? Is he a hypochondriac? If his meds weren't subsidized at all, which ones would he choose to take? Lucky for him he doesn't have to make that hard choice. As for the money for this coming out of his wallet, Joe doesn't understand how it works. You see, it's a "benefit" that your employer offers you. Your employer sees it as an incentive to want you to keep working for them. It has a certain dollar value that the company is paying. They can write it off as a business expense. (At some companies, if you want to cover your family, you pay the extra out of your own pocket. That way, everyone in the company is getting the same benefit, and not being given more just because they reproduce more than others.) At the same time they do it because they want you to take care of your health, because a healthy worker is a more productive worker. (Some, like my bosses, do it because it's the morally right thing to do, and they feel good about being able to do it. It's a family-owned company, so any profits would go to the few shareholders in the family. It literally is money out of their own pockets to offer it to us, and we are a small enough company that we would be exempt from any laws that mandate they do it.) But if you choose not to accept a company-offered health plan, they will only pay you what they would pay for the plan they offer, provided you can prove coverage under an equivalent or better plan. Otherwise, you pay for that plan out of your own pocket. Joe should talk to someone at his company to have his benefits program explained to him.

He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs. Joe's bacon is unsafe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for limited liability laws so that if anyone dies of food poisoning, the meat packing industry will pay a fine and pass the cost on to the customer.

Wrong again, Joe. I don't know who's been teaching you what Liberalism is versus what Conservatism is about, but I can promise you that if liability laws are limited "so that if anyone dies of food poisoning, the meat packing industry will pay a fine and pass the cost on to the customer", it's not because liberals fought for that. It's because conservatives, especially "fiscal conservatives", fought for that. Hardcore fiscal conservatives believe that anything that hurts the bottom line profits of a company is inherently bad, so they like to see no government regulation at all. That includes regulatory standards regarding health and safety. Too costly, they say. Dead customers don't give a lot of repeat business, I say.

In the morning shower, Joe reaches for his shampoo. His bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient because some crybaby liberal thought that he was too stupid to know that imbibing a pint of shampoo might be harmful to his health.

Not quite, Joe. You see, as technology advances and new ways are found to simulate what people use to use in their household products but can't any more (sometimes because the species of creature that produced that ingredient has been hunted to extinction), we're finding out that the human body sometimes reacts2 badly to these things. Warning labels that point out that the product contains ingredients known to cause allergic reactions in people help save lives. And is Joe in the habit of drinking just anything that comes in a bottle of some kind?

Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. Joe begins to cough, choke, and gasp for breath because some environmentalist wacko liberal fought for passage of the Kyoto treaty, allowing Third World countries to contaminate the world air supply with carbon monoxide.

That would more likely be because the US refused to take the lead on Global Warming and Climate Change. We can't expect the developing nations of the Third World to do anything about their own environmental pollution if we don't show them how it's done. What happened to "good old American know-how"? How come our corporations have such a defeatist attitude when it comes to trying to do something about not polluting the air that the breathe and the water that we drink? The longer we take to get started, the further we fall behind the rest of the world who are doing something about it. Joe should accept that the climate is undergoing changes resulting in weather patterns we are not used to seeing, and for which we are presently under-prepared to handle. Add to that the impending oil shortages and rising energy costs (even without the greed exhibited by certain corporations), there comes an even greater incentive to stop trying to pump as many dollars out of the ground and into the pockets of the people who are financing and supporting the very people with whom we are supposed to be at war, and start helping small businesses in this country profit from the wide-open market of renewable enery sources right here in the US. Obviously there is not a one-size-fits-all solution, but the people who live in areas that get at least a decent amount of year-round sunshine should be able to buy affordable solar panels, and the people who live in areas that get a lot of wind at least some part of the year should be able to buy wind-power generators, and the people who live in areas where there is a good deal of warmth underground should be able to buy affordable thermal energy systems. There are present-day technology, real-time solutions to the problem now, and continued support by the federal government (instead of giving billions to the oil industry to explore for oil instead of making them pay for it themselves) will help bring down the price and, at the same time, do something that might help make our biosphere a little less unfriendly to us humans. A little less profit-taking, a little more planet-saving.

Joe doesn't dare go out at night because some environmentalist wacko liberal lawmaker forbad the spraying or draining of malarial swamps.

Yes, because sometimes the government would send out helicopters to spray mosquitos while kids were outside playing. So their parents exercised their First Amendment rights and petitioned the government for a redress of grievances. Besides, does Joe not own a jacket? Has his local merchant made the business decision to not stock bug repellent, even though he's apparently located near an undrained swamp?

Joe lost his first home to wildfire because some environmentalist wacko liberal lawmaker forbad the thinning old growth forest land.

First of all, I'm sorry Joe lost his home and the memories within. Seriously. That kind of thing sucks. That having been said, did Joe know the area was susceptible to wildfires when he bought the place? Did he understand the risk? Did he have homeowner's insurance? Because he doesn't appear to be homeless today, so he must have had the money to buy another house. Did he move to some place less dangerous? It's his choice. It's a free country. What's his point? That there would never have been a wildfire if the old growth forest land had been thinned out so that some timber company could make a buck? Has Joe ever heard of lightning? These things are going to happen, regardless of how much thinning of forests is done. It can reduce the chance of someone losing his home to wildfire, but it won't eliminate it. Then there's always the occassional arsonist, as in the recent California fires. (My heart goes out to those people. If there's anything I or your fellow citizens can do, just ask.)

His dad used to take the train to work. But when the Federal highway system destroyed our once-magnificent train system, Joe had to resort to the filthy, crime-ridden subway system because some fancy-pants liberal fought to disarm law-abiding citizens so that street gangs could mug commuters, then cop a plea based on post-traumatic slavery disorder.

Is Joe referring to the marketplace of ideas favoring the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System over the rail line? And that other stuff is illogical. Perhaps Joe Democrat's creator isn't familiar with the mass transit system in some areas. I can take a train down to NYC, but once there, there are no above-ground trains to take, so I would have to take the subway to get around within the city. So the loss of the above-ground railway system to the Interstate Highway System would have had nothing to do with why Joe's father started taking the subway to work. (By the way, it hasn't stopped people from taking the train down to the City from where I live; both the trains and the highway are used. I know, I drive on the highway and over the rail tracks every day) At least, it doesn't make any sense where I live.

Joe begins his work day. Joe's dad used to support his family at a middle class lifestyle on a single income. But it now takes two or three incomes to do the work of one because liberal bureaucrats drove up the cost of doing business through overregulation and usurious corporate taxation.

No, greedy corporations drove up the cost to consumers, and wages lagged behind inflation, so families had to come up with more jobs among them to make ends meet. But those Big Oil Company execs are doing all right, aren't they? They sure look like they're getting their three square meals a day (and then some). That's Capitalism for you. The rich get richer and the fat get fatter.

If Joe gets bored with his job, he can fake an injury and collect workman's comp., retiring to the slopes of Aspen to recuperate because some stupid liberal didn't think that employees might try to bilk the system.

That would be a crime. Why would Joe automatically assume he could get away with insurance fraud which is illegal and has severe penalities? Does he think no one ever checks on these things? I've seen many newspaper reports of city officials and employees supposedly out on disability doing things they shouldn't be physically able to do if they were as badly injured as they claim. They usually get caught. Joe would have to be an idiot to think that this made sense as a financial security plan. But he would get free room, board and clothing in prison.

It is noontime and Joe needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe's deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some godless liberal thought that financial institutions should be able to defraud their customers and then file for bankruptcy, thereby shielding the pension and severance pay of board members while sticking the taxpayer with the tab.

How could Joe believe that Liberals would want banking institutions to get away with ripping people off? I have found that it usually pro-business Conservatives who like to fight for these kinds of things. Republicans, especially, like to tout "Caveat Emptor" ("Let The Buyer Beware") as the best form of Capitalism.

Joe has to pay his federal student loan because some elitist liberal decided to subsidize college education so that universities, freed from competitive pressure, no longer had to keep tuition costs down.

How exactly does making college affordable for everyone raise the price? I don't understand. Joe thinks that because education is subsidized, the colleges and universities would have no incentive to keep tuition costs down. How would constantly raising the tuition costs attract more people? Or would that only attract the kind of people who equate quality with price? Maybe they wanted to subsidize their athletic teams? Besides, if more students can afford to attend a college, there is less incentive for them to need to raise tuition, because they will be takinig in more people now that it's affordable. It's exactly like the theory that says if you lower income taxes, you'll take in more revenue.

Joe had the GPA and SAT scores to get into Harvard, but he had to settle for a community college because racial quotas kept him out while admitting inner city students who couldn't read or write, but had mastered multiple techniques of fitting a condom in high school sex-ed.

Just because Joe failed condom-fitting in high school sex-ed is no reason to be jealous. Besides, if Joe's GPA and SAT scores were good enought ot get into Harvard, then why did he end up in a community college? He must have been good enough for another prestigious school. Sounds like Joe is easily discouraged. Maybe that's why he failed condom-fitting.

Joe is home from work. He plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive. He has to practice defensive driving because some America-hating liberal had alcoholism classified as a legally-protected disease and disability.

Wrong again, Joe. It's not because alcoholism is a disease (and it is, trust me, I know) that Joe has to practice defensive driving, it's because it's too damn easy to get a license to drive! In my state (and each state varies), when I got my "Operator's License", I had to answer a 20-question, multiple-choice test. I needed an 80% score or better (16 out of 20), and of the four questions regarding road signs, I was allowed to get up to two wrong. (I aced my written test, by the way. First and only time.) Then there's a very simple road test you have to take where the purpose is to see if you can operate the vehicle correctly. Note that that's "operate the vehicle", not "drive". You learn just how to drive in my state after you get your license. And that's why we need to practice defensive driving on the highways - because not everyone who is given a license to drive has the ability, talent, and intelligence to do so. And doesn't Joe's auto insurance company offer a discount to drivers who take a defensive driving course?

He arrives at his boyhood home. The countryside used to be a quiet, leisurely, pristine place to live until the Federal highway system and force bussing overran the bucolic countryside with suburban sprawl as urbanites fled the cities.

Many people out there may be too young to remember the big debates over forced bussing. This was something ordered by the courts when certain communities (mainly in the South, but elsewhere in the country, too) refused to integrate their schools quickly enough after Brown v. Board of Education (or, as it's officially known in legal circles, Oliver L. Brown et.al. v. the Board of Education of Topeka (KS) et.al.). I wouldn't be so quick to blame that on Liberals. Maybe if bigots - who tend to be conservative - hadn't fought and resisted integrating their schools so much, the courts would not have imposed that bussing plan. (Many who resisted pointed to the wording of the Supreme Court's decision that said they must integrate their schools "with all deliberate speed". Instead of interpreting that to mean "as quickly as possible", they chose to claim it meant "take your time".)

His family used to live off the land, in harmony with nature, until some big-government liberal stuck his nose where it didn't belong and demanded rural electrification, powered by fossil fuel consumption.

Oh, Joe. Where do you get your facts? The Rural Electrification Act of 1936, one of the most successful programs in government history, allowed the federal government to provide loans to communities who needed to upgrade their electric service. But the source of the power to provide the electricity did not need to be fossil fuel-based. There is also hydro-electric power. And that "big-government liberal" to whom you refer must have been President Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose programs to help lift us out of the Depression really began the modern Conservative movement. Today's Conservatism defines itself by what it's against, not what it's for. And it's against everything FDR did to rescue the country.

He is happy to see his dad. Dad will be the last generation to retire on Social Security because some wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberals regularly raided the SS trust-fund to subsidize social programs, instead of allowing workers to invest their own earnings in compound interest-bearing accounts.

I am 47 and, as far as I know, the money for my Social Security retirement will still be there when I need it. A common falsehood promulgated by the right is that SS will go bankrupt around 2040. This is false. In 2041, money coming in to the fund will no longer exceed money going out of the fund. It will not be bankrupt. That is a lie the conservatives want you to believe so that you'll support privatization of Social Security. But privatizing Social Security means that the guarantee that your funds will be there is gone, because you will be forced to risk your money on the stock market. Just because the market has gained money overall throughout its existence, that does not mean that everyone who invests in the market will make money. And putting your retirement funds into risky investments defeats the entire purpose of having a guaranteed retirement income system.

Joe's Dad was forced into early retirement, without a pension, because some environmentalist wacko liberal discovered a snail-darter in the cooling system of the local nuclear plant, where his dad used to work.

Joe's Dad must live in Tennessee or Alabama, the only two place where snail darters can be found. They live in gravel and sand shoals, not nuclear power plant cooling systems. I suspect that Joe's Dad lied to him about why he lost his job. Maybe Joe's Dad lost his job due to incompetence? That does still happen, despite what conservatives blame liberals for.

Joe's uncle used to be a cattle rancher until he was driven out of business because some environmentalist wacko liberal lawmaker kept him from shooting wolves that preyed on his livestock.

Wolves are such misunderstood creatures. Like all animals, they serve an important ecological and environmental function. They don't simply attack livestock, they also eat other small creatures, too. This, in turn, keeps the small creatures from overrunning the place, spreading disease and being a nuisance. It also keeps the small woodland creatures from eating too much of the plant vegetation and nuts. This leaves more plant life to take in carbon dioxide and give off oxygen, which we humans need to breathe. It's a great Circle of Life. Perhaps he could have kept his ranching business if he could find a better way to protect his livestock from not just wolves, but bears and other predators, too. It's one of the things you have to put up with if you want to live out in the country.

Joe's cousin used to work at the local lumber mill until he was laid off because some environmentalist wacko liberal discovered a spotted owl on timber land.

Like the wolves above, owls are predators that keep the population of the smaller animals from going wild. And if Joe's cousin's lumber mill was getting their wood from only one place in the forest, then they weren't going to be around long anyway. (I noticed Joe Democrat's problems seem to be digressing from Joe Republican's, but that's okay. He's still wrong.)

Joe's relatives used to receive assistance from the local chapter of the Salvation Army until it had to close its doors because some liberal civil libertarian sued it for refusing to offer domestic partnership benefits to all its employees.

I wondered what this was about, so I looked up the story. The Salvation Army is a religious organization that wants to receive funding from the government. [From the link:]"The group is handed millions of dollars of both federal and local funding at the same time as it fights to overturn local laws banning discrimination based on sexual orientation. In 1998, the San Francisco-based Human Rights Commission, one of the largest gay groups in the country, ordered SA to offer domestic partnership benefits or lose a $3.5-million city contract. For one whole year SA refused to comply, and was finally forced to forfeit its contract." I do not know if that meant it had to close its doors to the needy, or that it simply had less to work with in doing so. But other charitable organizations exist that could have helped out Joe's relatives.

Wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberals also invented a Constitutional right to an abortion, resulting in 45 million fewer workers to support the retirees.

There is little point in getting into a debate over whether or not a woman should be allowed to terminate her own pregnancy. She most definitely should have that right. But where Joe goes all mentally irregular is where he tries to deduce that had the Supreme Court not decided that the States may not deny a woman the right to have an abortion during the first tri-mester of pregnancy, when the State had no interest beyond the woman to care about, they were not inventing a right that didn't already exist. If you'll read your Ninth Amendment to the Constitution, it says:
Article IX.
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
In simple terms, that means that just because the Constitution did not spell out a right that we as citizens have, it did not mean that we didn't have it. But that's beside the point.

Just because there have been some 45 million abortions in the US (which is where I am assuming that he is getting that number; I don't really feel like doing his research, too), it does not logically follow that there would be 45 million more workers earning money and paying taxes into the treasury. For one thing, not all abortions took place long enough ago that those "potential" people would be working today. And a number of those would probably have died too young to contribute much, if anything at all. The law of averages tells us that. It's really just thrown out there at inappropriate times during other discussions to register a personal disgust on the part of the speaker to the idea of woman being allowed to control their own bodies. I treat them as baseless smears and consider them meaningless.

In addition, wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberals promoted SS so that no able-bodied, adult child should ever be saddled with the onerous burden of caring for the elderly parents who devoted the best years of their lives caring for them when they were young and helpless.

Did Joe's parents take care of their parents when Joe was young? And who says that "able-bodied, adult child[ren]" can't take care of their parents if they wanted to anyway? This is really a non-sensical argument. Besides, I thought Joe was on a lot of meds up above. Is Joe an able-bodied adult? If so, then why is he on so much medication? And if he isn't, wouldn't he appreciate that he doesn't "have to be saddled with the onerous burden of caring for [his] elderly parents" without at least a little help from his fellow Americans (which is what Social Security is)? It's part of that whole philosophy of us watching out for each other. That's what our taxes do. We all chip in to help all of us meet our needs, not just the rich and strong and able-bodied. All of us. Sorry if that conflicts with the Conservative ideal of "Every Man For himself."

Finally, wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberals lobbied for involuntary euthanasia so that burdensome parents can be put out of their children's misery.

Joe must be fantasizing here, because no normal person would consider euthenizing his parent against their will just to relieve his own misery. It takes a sick mind to think that this is why the Right-to-Die battle is being fought. There are many people who feel that being kept alive artificially, just to gain a few more weeks or months, at such a great cost to their family, is not worth the suffering and misery of existing pointlessly. If someone is going to die from something at any time soon, and nothing can be done to prevent it, and the only thing to look forward to is possibly weeks of pain and discomfort, then why shouldn't that person have the right to say they wish to end their own life? Why should they be forced to contrinue living against their will? Who are we to say a person must suffer, so that we don't have to let them go?

As the day ends, Joe reflects on his nation, his liberties and his freedoms. He is free because conservative cold warriors kept commie lefty Liberals from unilaterally disarming America.

Excuse me. I am a Liberal Air Force veteran and proud of it, and I was stationed at Ramstein AB, West Germany, from 1986-1988, during the Cold War. Conservatives weren't the only ones protecting your right to say such things. I was, too.

Joe resents having to be so dependent on gov't goods and services, but since he didn't ask for it, since--indeed--it was imposed on him anyway, against his will, and forcibly deducted from his hard-earned wages, the only way he can recoup a fraction of his losses is to play the hand he's been dealt--even if the deck is stacked against him.

Does Joe live in a Blue State? If not, then his state is likely receiving more back from the federal government than they send there in taxes. No one is making Joe use those programs. Besides, if people like Joe, who probably doesn't really need the help, didn't use it, it would cost less to the taxpayers and increase your annual tax refund.

But given a choice, he refuses to a vote for a Massachusetts liberal who was drafted; who tried to dodge the draft by requesting an education deferment to study in Paris; who volunteered for the Naval reserves (when his deferment was denied) to duck active duty service; who gamed the three-purple-hearts-and-your-out policy by writing up his own glowing after-action reports about his self-inflicted flesh-wounds; who, after receiving a dishonorable discharge, laid the groundwork for a successful political career by slandering his comrades-in-arms; who eventually ran for president on the platform that he served honorably in a dishonorable war; and who angrily denounced a war he authorized.

About the only thing I can say in response to this diatribe, is that Joe is seriously misinformed about a number of things. Perhaps a search through credible sources (meaning sources whose only agenda is to uncover the truth) may help Joe learn just how wrong that entire paragraph was. Oh, wait. John Kerry is, indeed, a Massachusetts Liberal. That part is correct. READ A BOOK NOT WRITTEN BY LIARS!

Joe gets back in his car for the ride home, and turns on NPR. The radio host keeps saying that liberals are good and right-wingers are bad. He doesn't mention that the beloved liberals have fought for the infringement of every freedom that Joe's old man used to enjoy and take for granted.

And then Joe got stopped at an armed checkpoint. It was the third one he had come across that day since the terror alert level was raised to Red and Martial law was declared. He had managed to talk his way through the last two because he knew one of the guys from work who was manning each post. One of them had just returned from his third tour of duty in Iraq. He was relieved to hear that he would be sent home stateside, until he found out two weeks later just why that was. President George Bush had declared Martial Law just hours after Co-President Dick Cheney had already done so.

It was discovered through warrantless wiretapping of the internet that an undergraduate student in Tehran was researching how to make nuclear weapons on the internet and was close to discovering a potential way to do so which, if modified correctly, and built to a precision unachievable in his country, and tested after many years to see if it could truly work, might possibly give him the knowledge to sell to the highest terrorist bidder and thus endanger us all. According to the two presidents' foreign policies, Iran must never be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons, nor learn how to make a nuclear bomb, nor even read books about nuclear bombs. And since you need nucl,ear material to make a nuclear bomb, they may not even do anything that comes close to learning how to make a nuclear reactor. What Americans did not know then was that Iran was not even allowed to look at pictures of nuclear power plants, or they risked unilateral invasion and regime change. They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Ain't that the truth where George Bush and Dick Cheney are involved? A lot of secrecy helps, too.

Oh, and don't forget to enjoy the American way of life made possible by Liberals.

Your Money Is No Good Here

Apple computer has decided that your money isn't good enough any more to buy their new iPhones. They are no longer accepting cash as payment for the product and limiting sales to two per person. Is this even legal?

They estimate that of the 1.4 million iPhones sold so far, about 250,000 of them are bought for the purpose of being resold. They don't explain how they come up with this number, but since they were selling as many as five to a customer, perhaps they assumed that anyone buying more than two was going to sell the rest after hacking into it and making it usable on other cellular networks. On the other hand, how do they know that someone with a family of five wasn't buying one for everyone?

When I look at my dollar bills, I see the following note: THIS NOTE IS LEGAL TENDER FOR ALL DEBTS PUBLIC AND PRIVATE. It sounds to me like they cannot legally refuse cash as payment, but it turns out they can. According to the Treasury Dept, "There is, however, no Federal statute mandating that a private business, a person or an organization must accept currency or coins as for payment for goods and/or services. Private businesses are free to develop their own policies on whether or not to accept cash unless there is a State law which says otherwise." So a bus line can refuse to accept pennies or bills as payment (remember Star Trek IV? "What does that mean, 'exact change only'?"), and movie theaters and convenience stores can refuse to accept large denomination bills (usually anything above a $20.)

So, if you want to buy an iPhone now, you better have good credit and a large limit on your card. And if you plan on reselling those iPhones, just remember that they can trace your purchases now. If an illegally re-programmed iPhone finds its way to the hands of the cops, they will be able to trace the original purchase back to you.

Sunday, October 21, 2007

Bush Is Not As Powerful As He Thinks

I just want to point out something about the Constitution that I think has been overlooked, and quite possibly for a long time, but especially since President Bush took office. Bush and his people keep talking about "the inherent authority of the President as Commander-in-Chief during wartime." What they don't point out is: There's no such thing in the Constitution. Go ahead. Show me where it points out just what these powers are. You can't, because it doesn't, because they aren't there. This whole business about how the president has extraordinary powers inherent as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces is a fantasy, forced against the will of logic into the law. One could have called it a "rape" and not been far off. But what is the legal basis of this concept? First, let's review exactly, and in full detail, what the constitution says about the president's role as Commander-in-Chief.


Article II, Section. 2.
Clause 1: The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States;

That's it. That's all it says. It does not say that he may abandon the constitution when ordering the military into action. It does not say that he can ignore the rules under which the military is required to operate in carrying out his commands. Before I go further, I feel I should point out that right above this oft-referenced part of the Constitution, the part that, for all the Bush Administration cares is the only relevant part of the Constitution, is this even more important one.


Article II, Section 1, Clause 8:
Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:--"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

In the Enumerated Powers Clause of the Constitution, this is what it says about the authority of Congress to determine how the military may be used during war or peace.:


Article I, Section 8, :
Clause 1: The Congress shall have Power To...
Clause 11: To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal(*), and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
Clause 12: To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
Clause 13: To provide and maintain a Navy;
Clause 14: To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
Clause 15: To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
Clause 16: To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
(*)A Letter of Marque and Reprisal is a license granted by a state to a private citizen to capture the merchant ships of another nation. So not even the president can order someone to do this.)

To me, that clearly means that it is the Congress, and not the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces (be they at war or not, and I will get to that in a moment), who decides how the military will behave. So where does President Bush get that the idea that he decides how the Armed Forces behave, when temporarily under his command?

Remember that the Founding Fathers never intended that there be a permanent Army. They wrote into the Constitution a provision that allowed the Congress to raise and support an Army, but no appropriation could be for more than two years. (So how do the contractors working for the DoD get deals for longer than two years, if no appropriation shall be for longer than that? Separate question. In fact, how does this permit them to sign a four-year contract with me when I enlisted in the Air Force in 1982? Another separate question.) And they also decided that the Congress would decide how our military personnel, whether in wartime or not, would behave. Now, should the Armed Forces have been needed, the Founders didn't want them to be under their own command. (That's called a junta.) So they assigned the role of Commander-in-Chief to the highest elected office in the country, which happened to be the President of the United States. But, in his role as Commander-in-Chief, he is still bound by the rules the Congress lays down for behavior of our Armed Forces.

The Founders never intended that the President could take command of the Armed Forces, who are governed by the rules that Congress laid down, and institute his own rules that are contrary to what the Congress dictated. If he were to order a soldier to do something that contravened the rules the Congress set in place, then he would be giving them an illegal order under the law. (The law being what the Congress writes, not the president. See Article I.) That soldier would be perfectly within his rights to respectfully refuse to carry out that order with impunity. He (the soldier, and a hypothetical one who could be male or female, so please forgive me for not inclusing both genders each time - I liked the women I served with) took an oath to obey "the lawful orders of those appointed over" him. Any unlawful order would be as valid as an order from you or me. The president does not have the authority to order the troops to do illegal things. Bush thinks he does.

And therein lies the problem. In order for Bush to be able to order the military to do his bidding, he must have a war going on for him to assume the role of Commander-in-Chief. (By the way, you noticed how often Republicans running for "President of the United States" refer to that office as the "Commander-in-Chief", as if that was the title to which they were trying to get elected? That should tell you what they intend to do with the office of President.) And since he feels that during wartime, he is not bound in any way, shape or form by the rules for the military established by Congress (even though the role of "Commander-in-Chief" must be seen as being a member of the military bound by the same rules as everyone else), he believes that his powers during wartime are unlimited. So he must always keep us in a state of war. Without a war, he has no "inherent authority as Comander-in-Chief during wartime." Do I honestly believe that he is that petty? I can't be 100% certain about Bush though I truly believe he can be, but I am about Cheney, and it is Cheney who is the real power behind the rise of the Imperial Presidency.

For it Dick Cheney who brought in David Addington and John Yoo into the administration to write their policies of the president's powers during wartime, a state they intended to keep the country in for their entire time in office. They are the ones who took Ronald Reagan's theory of how to run a State Government (as in, the United States, not a State Nation) called The Unitary Executive. It essentially said that all Executive Branch decisions and authority in a state government should derive from a single person, the Governor, and that there not be so much power distributed to independent agencies. At least, that's the bare bones gist of it. Cheney's people tried to apply that theory to running the federal government, though it could never work. It could never work because it was contrary to how our federal system of government was designed to operate. You see, the Constitution only guaranteed the people that their states would provide a republican (small "r") form of government, meaning that they would be represented in their government body by someone else who would also represent many others. There was no guarantee made that the people coulsd have a hand in choosing those representatives in government, but that was left up to the states. Most of them saw the wisdom in letting the people choose their elected officials, except for the US Senators who, by the Constitution, would be picked by the state governments (either the legislatures, or the governor alone, or however they decided to do it; it was Democracy, and it was all the buzz!) In turn, those states were otherwise free to decide for themselves how they wished to govern themselves in all matters not empowered to the Congress.

But when it came to the federal government, the Constitution spelled out clear delineations on who would do what. The law of the land would be determined by the Congress. This power was plenary, except where the constitution specified it to the states or to the people. The President was empowered to carry out the law of the land as written by Congress. If you will recall his oath of office above, that is pretty much what his constitutional duty is, along with preserving, protecting, and defending the Constitution of the United States. Nothing about carrying out a political agenda. Other than being empowered to determine foreign policy, nothing about the right to start a war whenever he felt like it. That power was reserved to the Congress. And nothing whatsoever about treating the Constitution of the United States like a "goddamned piece of paper". In fact, one could easily argue, quite the opposite. And the Supreme Court (and such inferior courts as Congress may create) would determine how to interpret the law in a manner consistent with the Constitution. The real Constitution. Not the one they wished they took an oath to preserve, protect abnd defend.

George Bush and Dick Cheney falsely believe that they have the authority to do whatever they want to do when acting to protect the country. But protecting the country is not what they are sworn to do. They are sworn to protect the constitution, and no amount of "breaking-the-constitution-to-protect-it"-type logic can justify their actions. When they diverted some $700,000,000 from fighting the war in Afghanistan (which, at the time, was an authorized use of the money, for fighting in Afghanistan, that is) to begin planning the invasion of Iraq (which, at the time, was not an authorized use of the money, for planning the invasion, that is), they violated the Constitution. When they detained people on the battlefield and fully intended to hold them indefinitely, never bring them to trial for anything, and periodically use torture to obtain unreliable information, they violated the Constitution. When they signed bills passed by Congress into law and then quietly issued accompanying signing statements that, for all practical purposes, said that the president would not adhere to any law which he felt infringed on his "inherent authority as Commander-in-Chief during wartime", they violated the Constitution. I ask you, I implore you, please explain to me, why are we allowing either of these gentlemen to serve out the remainder of their terms of office, when they clearly and plainly have no intention of obeying the laws or the Constitution they each took an oath to uphold? Why?

Friday, October 19, 2007

You Broke My Heart, John Hall

Recently I wrote to my Congressman, John Hall (NY-19), former member and co-founder of the rock group Orleans, whose hits "Dance With Me" and "Still The One" can still be heard on the radio; and a lifelong anti-nuclear activist, to ask him to support H. Res 333, a resolution introduced by Rep Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney. Here, re-printed without permission, is the form letter e-mail response I received from his office. (He's a public official, answering public correspondence. This letter belongs to you, too.)

October 18, 2007

Dear Mr. Schneider,

Thank you for contacting me regarding your desire to see impeachment charges brought against Vice President Cheney. I appreciate hearing your thoughts on this important issue.

I believe that the Bush Administration has led our country in the wrong direction and that Vice President Cheney has played a major role in shaping the Administration's policies. The Bush-Cheney Administration took us into a devastating war in Iraq based on false information and misleading statements, has undermined the criminal justice system, and created enormous federal deficits with its misplaced priorities and reckless spending.

I strongly condemn the Vice President's policies and conduct, but I do not support impeachment proceedings against him at this time. I believe that the effort to move forward with impeachment would impair Congress's ability to put America back on the right path. Instead, I want to work in this Congress to reverse the disastrous policies of the Bush Administration and to restore America's reputation in the world, rather than removing a Vice President whose term expires in January 2009.

I am a cosponsor of a resolution censuring President Bush for his commutation of the prison sentence for the Vice President's former Chief of Staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. I also support continuing investigations by Congressional committees into the activities of the Bush Administration. As these investigations proceed, Congress must take strong action to address inappropriate or illegal conduct including bringing articles of impeachment should the Committees determine that is warranted.

Please fell free to contact me again whenever I might be of assistance.

Sincerely,

John Hall
Member of Congress

I can't tell you how disappointed I was to be given that bullshit "moving forward by working to change Bush's disastrous policies"-line. Don't they get it? Bush will never let them do that. Never in a million years, let alone the next 15 months (and about 12 hours, but who's counting?). The only way to stop or reverse Bush's disastrous policies is to remove Bush and Cheney from the picture. Through impeachment! (What were you thinking? I wasn't, because that could be a crime, so don't even suggest it.)

Dick Cheney is on a mission from the God inside his own head to elevate the Office of President of the United States to one equivalent, for all practical purposes, to an Imperial Presidency. It's been his objective for more than thirty years, and he has made no secret of that goal. What he has made a HUGE secret of is his methods for achieving that Imperial Presidency. Part of his belief is that the president does not have to obey the constitution if he doesn't want to. This is another documented fact about Cheney. That is a direct violation of his oath of office. He should be impeached, tried, likely-convicted, then thrown out of his Texan-Wyomingian-Marylandish ass. (Wherever the hell he calls home. Maybe I should have said Hades.)

Once he's gone, the Democrats should take a page out of "The West Wing" and hand President Bush a list of potential Vice Presidents whom they would approve. (The Congress must confirm the Vice Presidential nominee.) The list should not include Nancy Pelosi, or any Democrats deemed "too liberal", although they could suggest some "conservative-leaning" Democrats, but all Republican choices should be moderates whom the country would accept as president should the need arise within the next fifteen months. Confirm that nominee to be Vice President, and the day after the oath of office is taken (by him or her), they should immediately move to impeach President Bush for (well, you pick the charge, there have been so many.) Try him, convict him (you'd have to be insane not to think he has violated his own oath of office just through his signing statements stating that he would refuse to obey the law he just signed if he wanted to), remove him from office, and welcome a president the country could stand behind.

That way, Speaker Nancy Pelosi avoids looking like she favored impeachment of them both to gain the presidency through succession. I know. It's crazy.

But Congressman Hall, with all due respect, I am sorry, but I cannot support a candidate for Congress who does not believe in the oath of office every public servant in Washington is required to take, including you, sir. By not supporting the impeachment of either President Bush or Vice President Cheney, two men who have frequently subverted the constitution in an effort to have their own way despite the will of Congress, one of whom has accelerated a thirty-year personal vendetta to restore power to the White House, and one of whom once told an aide to "stop throwing the Constitution in [his] face." (You remember, that document he swore an oath to preserve, protect and defend?) He then continued, "It's just a goddamned piece of paper!" Are you are going to tell me, Mr. Hall, that these two men should not be removed from office through impeachment immediately, if not sooner? Do you honestly believe that if they remain in office, that on January 20, 2009, we won't already be in a hot war with Iran (and possibly Russia)? Do you think any president should be trusted with the kind of power these two men have amassed? I believe that most of your constituents would say, "No." It's up to you, Congressman John Hall. Remember your own oath of office and preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Sunday, October 14, 2007

How Much Is a Trillion?

"It'd be a trillion-dollar war if it stopped today."
- Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Oct 14, 2007, "This Week with George Stephanopoulos"

So how much is a Trillion? Well, starting out smaller, 1,000 Thousands equals 1 Million (1,000,000); 1,000 Millions equals 1 Billion (1,000,000,000); and 1,000 Billions equals 1 Trillion (1,000,000,000,000). A Trillion can also be thought of as a Million Millions, but let's not go terribly crazy. So how can you relate to such a mind-numbing number like one Trillion?

Let's start with money. Let's imagine that you have a fantastic job that pays you one dollar for every second you work. (As you will see, there are people who get paid more than that.) There are 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour. If you were only getting paid for as 40-hour work week for all 52 weeks of the year, you would still be getting paid $7,488,000 in a year. And if you were getting your $1/sec rate for every second of the year, you would take in $31,536,000 for the entire year. At that rate, to earn a trillion dollars, you would have to work more than 31,709 years! And even if they magnanimously paid you $1,000/sec, it would still take you more than 31 years to earn that first $1 Trillion. They say the war in Iraq is costing taxpayers about $2 Billion dollars per week. There are 3,600 seconds in an hour, 24 hours in a day, and 7 days in a week for a total of 604,800 seconds per week. At $2 Billion per week, the Iraq War costs us over $3,000 every second! Can I borrow a couple of bucks for the rent this month?

Suppose you are a baseball fan. How can you relate to this? Let's start with A-Rod, Alex Rodriguez, third baseman (currently) for the New York Yankees. (Enjoy your winter, boys! Ha-ha.) A-Rod made big news when he signed a contract estimated to be worth about $250 Million. He's hoping to get another one just like it on a team from which he'll retire several years down the road. There are 30 teams in the Major Leagues and at the end of the season, they are each allowed to carry 40 players on their rosters. So that's 1,200 players in the majors at the end of the season. (Forget about the Disabled List and the openings they leave. Go with this, because it will amaze you.) If they gave every player on the 40-man roster of every one of the 30 teams in the Major Leagues a contract like A-Rods, they still wouldn't add up to $1 Trillion. In fact, it wouldn't even add up to a third of a trillion dollars. Put another way, the War in Iraq will end up costing us more than three times what it would cost to give every player on the 40-man roster of every team in the Major Leagues a contract like A-Rod's. Yet they still raise ticket prices every year.

Finally, a look outward. Light travels at about 186,282 miles per second. A "light-year" is the distance that light travels in the course of a year. (It is actually a unit of distance, not of time.) At 31,536,000 seconds in a year (remember that fantastic salary you had two paragraphs back?), light travels about 5,874,589,152,000 miles in one year. The nearest star in the galaxy to our own is about 4 light-years away. That means that they are nearly 25 Trillion miles away from us. Scientists have observed things in the Universe that they conclude are older than the Universe itself (meaning they pre-dated the Big Bang.) The Universe is also estimated to be anywhere between 10 and 20 Billion years old, so let's say that thing they saw was about 15 billion years old. What that means is that it took that light from that object 15 billion years to reach us. Which means it traveled about 90 Trillion miles to get here. And there's every reason to believe that there is more of the Universe beyond that. And that ours is the only collection of galaxies comprising our own Universe. Even further away from us are other collections of galaxies forming their own Universe. Imagine how much gas it would take to drive there. (Let's see, at 30 miles to the gallon, $3 per gallon,...)

Saturday, October 13, 2007

Why I Won't Move To Russia

Today we had the fifth of our monthly anti-war marches through the Village of Pawling, NY, not known for being a bastion of radicalism. Jane and I had marched in all of the previous ones except for last month's, when family matters prevented our participation. The turnout was small, as it seems to be dwindling each month. (This time it was actually was just Jane and me and four other people, as I feared it would be the first month.) It's understandable. We began during the summer when everyone had time and the kids were around to participate. Now, with school underway, the normal Saturday activities (like football games and such) give parents less time to devote to such causes, and I understand that. Also, some local politicians scheduled a "Meet the Candidates" event around the same time, and since most of our participants are politically active, they thought it important to go to that. (The main candidate, whom I will not name, thought it more important than our march and said so.) I have perceived that we've been getting a lot more horn honkers than before, even if our numbers were smaller than our first march. Near the beginning of the route, one guy in a pickup truck slowed down to read our signs. (Sorry, but I always to check to see if they have a gun rack in their truck. This one didn't, so I felt less nervous.) Then, just as he pulled away, he yelled, "Move to Russia!" (Especially glad there was no gun rack now.) I don't think I will, sir, and I'll happily tell you why.

I like what I have here just fine, thank you. And I'm not talking about the material things like the computer I'm typing this on, the furniture around me allowing me to do it in comfort, or the house in which I sit safely protected from the elements while I do it. I'm talking about the environment in which I can do it freely. And I'm not talking about the size of the room in which I'm sitting, the comfortable breezy day outside beckoning me to help my wife with her garden (which I'll do later), or the clean air I can breathe outside thanks to liberals who cared about protecting the biosphere we need to survive against the capitalistic conservatives hell-bent on its long-term exploitation and destruction for the sake of short-term profits. I'm talking about the freedom I have to do it.

It's something I doubt I could ever have in Russia, even if I did sell my soul to work for the Putin government. No, sir. Here in the United States, I have the freedom to do exactly what I was doing this morning: exercising my constitutional rights. A protest march in America is a beautiful thing, regardless of the number of participants. It's a statement. And not just about ending the illegal occupation and continued warfare in Iraq that has already claimed tens of thousands of lives, the all-out attack on our civil liberties planned in secret prior to 9/11 and aimed at silencing those who would dissent, or the impeachment of a president and vice president who flagrantly and proudly disrespect the very document each of them took an oath to "preserve, protect, and defend" against "all enemies". It's a statement about what makes this country of ours great, that every citizen has the right, free of government interference, to say what you want to about the war in Iraq, the erosion of our privacy rights, and the need to remove from office two men who clearly never intended to honor the oaths they took; to peaceably assemble with other like-minded individuals in groups large or small to demonstrate; and to tell the government what we think they are doing wrong and that we demand that they stop doing it. But it is also about so much more than that.

All of us matter. And I don't mean just the ones who fearlessly stand up to tell the public that a serious injustice is being carried out, the ones who forcefully persuade the government to change policy, or the ones who ferociously defend our very right to do all of that. I mean all us. Everyone on the planet. We are all human beings, and until we learn to see each other first as fellow human beings and not as someone segregated into a group we choose not to like, we will continue to make the mistake of sending human beings to fight and die with other human beings for ideals far less important than the ones that can give us hope for a better future for everyone. War is never justifiable. Greed and selfishness are often the root causes of war. The planet belongs to everyone, not just to those who stand atop it with a weapon in hand to stop others from sharing it. We need each other. The human race cannot survive in the long run if we keep dividing ourselves up. The day will come when a planetary-wide crisis will necessitate we put aside our differences and cooperate with one another to arrive at a solution. Should we prevail and overcome this crisis, will we have the wisdom to recognize that what we once fought each other to the death over before pales in significance to the importance of coming together for our common survival? I like to think we can. I'd like to think that you think we can, too. It's the first step toward world peace. And what kind of human being could be against that?

Saturday, October 06, 2007

Those Damn Mets

It's almost been a week since The Collapse. The New York Mets had a seven-game lead with seventeen games left to play, and they couldn't do it. I'm stunned. So stunned that it took me a week to be willing to sit down and think about it. And I still don't want to. How could they do this to us again?

I know what some of you want to say to me. "It's just a game, Wayne. There are more important things in life right now. You should focus your energies on fighting to end the war in Iraq, on restoring habeas corpus, on holding the Bush administration accountable for their numerous illegal activities, on Universal health care for all Americans, on better enforcement of even stronger environmental regulations that don't rely on corporations "voluntarily" meeting already-low standards, on higher education standards so that more Dallas, TX, high school students could identify the country immediately to the south of the United States and more students could tell you that we were allies with the Soviet Union against Germany in WWII (not allies with Germany against the Soviet Union as some believe), and on trying to get more people to stop driving 45 MPH in a 55-MPH Zone." But I would disagree. It is most definitely not just a game. It's Baseball, Mets style!

I have been a fan of the New York Mets my entire life, except for the first two when the franchise didn't exist. Oh, I confess, I had my years of being happy to cheer for the New York Yankees when they were winning in the late '70s, but those were years when the Mets' season was over in July. You gotta understand. The Mets were the team that, prior to the Age of Free Agency (when the top players could be bought on the open market), the Mets had the fastest rise from Team Inception (1962) to World Championship (1969) of any major professional sports team (not counting, I guess, the first teams in the league.) The 1969 team had a bunch of kids on it, with a few veterans, and they managed to author one of the most incredible comebacks in baseball history. In last place in their division at the end of August, they went on an incredible winning streak and finished in first place. (No Wild Card teams in baseball then.) They swept the best-of-five National League Championship Series against, ironically, the Atlanta Braves, and went on to win the World Series against the Baltimore Orioles (with legendary pitchers like Jim Palmer, Mike Cuellar, Dave McNally and others). In another ironic twist, the last out was made by future Mets manager Davy Johnson. What a year. What a season. What a team. They truly were the Amazing Mets.

To give him a chance to end his career in New York, Willie Mays was traded from the San Francisco Giants (once one of two National League teams based in New York) to the Mets in 1973. Again, from last place in August they went on to the World Series, where they stopped by the then-powerful Oakland A's. To their credit, the Mets took the A's the distance, but fell short. It would have been nice for Willie Mays to end his career on a championship team, but somehow in America, second place just doesn't cut it for us. They won the National League Championship and the right to fly the pennant forever afterwards, but it just didn't mean as much. We were so close.

The Mets would not reach the post season again for another thirteen years. Thirteen very long years. Painful years to be a Mets fan. There was some glimmer of hope in the early '80s when the Mets began putting together a nice, strong, young pitching staff that brought through the magical year of 1986. It was not only a joy to be a Mets fan, it was something to be proud of. They were phenomenal that year. I'll never forget a comic strip called "Tank McNamara" that had the newscaster saying that NASA scientists had announced that they had just spotted the Mets out in first place. No lead against them was safe that year, for they were always a threat with the late inning long ball. And, oh, those late innning comebacks. The were the Comeback Kids, the Cardiac Kids, the Amazing Mets all over again. And that postseason series against the Houston Astros.

I was in the Air Force then, stationed in a country that, technically, no longer exists. It was called West Germany (perhaps you've heard of it.) The games were carried live on Armed Forces Network TV, so that meant they started at 2 AM our time. So after I got off duty at 4:30 PM (1630 HRS) I would grab something to eat at the mess hall and go to sleep, wake up around 1:30 AM, take a shower, put on my uniform and go down to the Day Room to watch the game with a freckled-faced kid from Brooklyn. It was a roller coaster of emotion to watch those games, and when they took Game 6 to 16 innings, just to avoid facing Mike Scott in Game 7, it was like
it was meant to be. They couldn't have the fantastic season that they had only to have it end in the playoffs, without even reaching the World Series. But they did, and what a series it was. Now understand something. As Mets fans, we were also Yankees Haters. So, naturally, we were happy for the Boston Red Sox that they were able to make it to the Fall Classic over their hated rivals. And if the Mets weren't in the Series, we'd probably have been rooting for the Sox to break The Curse.

And they almost did. Game 6 of the 1986 World Series is consodered one of the greatest Wotrld Series games in baseball history. Down three games to two, the Mets were one strike away from handing the Red Sox their first World Series win in some eighty-odd years. Mookie Wilson kept fouling off pitches to keep the game going. The Sox were up by one when suddenly, Mookie jumps up and put of the way of a wild pitch to allow the tying run to score from third and the winning run to advance to scoring position. And then the squibbler right down the first base line. Our hearts sank. The season was about to end for the Mets. Our best offensive season in history about to come to a heart-rending end. But wait! Bill Buckner, put in to place first so he could end his career on the field when his team won the World Series, wasn't able to bend his old knees enough to field the ball, and it kept going down the line. Ray Knight came home with the winning run and the Mets lived to play another day. We have a picture of that moment autographed by Mookie Wilson and Bill Buckner. Of course, the Mets went on to win Game 7 and the Championship.

It's the memories of those two championship seasons that keep Mets fans hopeful every year. And this year started out with such promise. From May on, they held on to first place. When their play started to crumble in September, I began to brace myself. We had tasted the bitterness of disappointment before, and some of us had learned our lesson. You can't be too hopeful, or the fall is that much greater. By the time they reached a 7-game lead with 17 to play, I still had my doubts. And when they started losing game after game, blowing huge leads, leaving men on base or hitting into inning-ending double plays, I knew the handwriting was on the wall. They were playing like they had booked plans for this very week and didn't want to lose the deposit. They played like they were too afraid to win. But worst of all for us, they played like their fans didn't matter. They failed us. Again.

But we, after all, Mets fans. We've been through this before and came back the next year, and I'm sure we'll do so again next spring. They do have a lot of exciting young talent on the team, and with the right combination of starting pitching and effective bullpen relief, they stand a strong chance of giving the rest of the league a run for their money. And we Mets fans will be there right beside them, believing in them, encouraging them, and secretly hoping they don't let us down again. We were so close this time. This can't be the closest we get for a long time to come. We know we'll get there. Because we're Mets fans, and we still believe.