The Mind of Joe

Britain’s Health Care Began With Propaganda

2009-11-03T06:00:00.000-06:00

As America debates the merits and follies of nationalized health care, many people hold up “the rest of the world” as an example of a system that should be emulated.

After all, the argument goes, America is the only industrialized country on the planet that does not provide “free” (or at least, heavily subsidized) health care for its citizens.

It’s true. We’re the last hold-out. For a very good reason. Our health care system mirrors the principles that our founding fathers laid, which in turn created the greatest civilization on earth. There’s no reason to mess up a good thing.

The rest of the world believes that government exists for the benefit of the people. Taken to an extreme, they believe that the role of government is to “take care” of the people. That’s what Annie Leonard declares in “The Story Of Stuff”. She pooh-poohs the government’s true role of national defense, the foundations of capitalism, and the free market. Then she declares that the government should intervene to make sure that we, the consumers, don’t consume too much.

This notion that the government should have an active role in defining our quality of life has deep roots in European culture. We’re reminded of this by watching a charming piece of British propaganda: “Charlie’s March Of Time”. Created by the British government to introduce socialized health care to the Brits, the film traces British government back hundreds of years. In feudal times, the king took care of the people. In more modern times, the House of Commons took care of the common people.

The theme is consistent. People are not able to deal with the standard trials of life — unemployment, hunger, illness, retirement — without the government’s interference.

In a classic case of socialistic incrementalism, the film chronicles one act of Parliament after another, each removing one more area of personal responsibility from the citizenry while claiming to cure all social ills. The culmination of all this effort was 1946’s Health Service Act. The film reminds us that the utopian state costs only a few pounds and tuppence each week.

That’s fine for “the rest of the world”. But there is a very good reason why it won’t work in America. That’s because our country was founded on the principle of freedom FROM government. Americans believe the responsibility for care of the population rests in the population itself, not in the government. The constitution is concerned with what the government CANNOT do, rather than what it MUST do.

America is a collection of individuals. We were founded by a group of men who believed that the rights of the individual superseded the responsibility of the government to care for their needs. Most of our wars have been fought for the purpose of freeing citizens from a repressive government.

That’s what makes America unique from the rest of the world. We realize that rugged individualism and free-market capitalism always succeeds in the long run. And we have seen that socialism always eventually collapse under its own weight.

Let the rest of the world keep their nationalized health care. If it suits them well, so be it. But America has produced the greatest society in the history of the world by believing in the individual’s responsibility to take care of himself. There’s no reason to abandon a system that works.

This Is Why I Need to Go to Washington

2009-06-19T14:47:00.002-06:00

Oh, I wish I could have been there. I wish I could have been a Senator in that room.

Actually, I wish I could have been the Junior Senator from the Great State of Missouri in that hearing room, scheduled to ask the next question after the Junior Senator from California completed her round of questions.

Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) was questioning Brigadier General Michael Walsh about something — it doesn’t matter what — during a hearing of the Environment and Public Works Committee. Senator Boxer received her seventeen seconds of fame on the Internet with a terse and extremely irreverent tirade against the General.

If you missed the video, here it is.

The exchange went like this:

==============

Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA): Well, why has it been delayed?

Brigadier General Michael Walsh: Uh, Ma’am, at the uh, LACPR is a …

Senator Boxer: I don’t… You know, do me a favor. Could you say “Senator” instead of “Ma’am”?

General Walsh: Yes…

Senator Boxer: It’s just a thing. I worked so hard to get that title. So I’d appreciate it. Yes, thank you.

General Walsh: Yes, Senator.

==============

(If you listen closely, you can actually hear a little giggle from somebody in the background right after Senator Boxer’s declaration of working “so hard to get that title”.)

In my wildest of dreams, I am the Senator from Missouri. Immediately after Senator Boxer, it is my turn – according to the rules of the Senate Committee – to ask my questions of the General.

The exchange would go something like this.

==============

Senator Joe DeShon (R-MO): (To Senator Boxer) Thank you, Senator, for yielding your time. (Turning to the General) General Walsh, before I start my questioning, I want to inform you that you are welcome to call me “Sir”, or “Senator”, or “Mr. DeShon” – maybe even “Joe” – as you see fit. You have certainly earned that right in return for your service to our country, for which I am eternally grateful.

General Walsh: Thank you, sir.

==============

And, with that formal exchange, the questioning would continue.

Senator Boxer has forgotten that being a Brigadier General is a service to the country. General Walsh certainly has a right to show his pride by wearing his uniform and displaying his stars in public.

A Senator, on the other hand, is a job for which someone is hired by the voters of their respective state. They are to serve on behalf of those citizens by making laws as mandated by the Constitution of the United States.

The Senator further needs to realize that the first thing that members of the military are taught is to show respect for authority. That respect is usually demonstrated in public by referring to everybody as “Sir” or “Ma’am”. At worst, the general was demonstrating that he is a creature of habit. At best, he is showing respect to the Senator by calling her “Ma’am”, much more respect for her than she showed for him.

If somebody feels that they had to “work hard” for the title of Senator, that person should be shamed into retirement. That is especially true if that person is so insecure in her title that she feels the need to proclaim such a fact on the public record by humiliating a member of the Armed Forces of the greatest country on Earth.

I’m sure after my little display of arrogance in the hearing room that I would be chastised in the hallways of the Senate — perhaps in public — by Senator Boxer or her representatives for the disrespect that I displayed to my colleague. That’s okay; I have tough skin. I can take it.

I am also sure that I would be privately taken to the woodshed by the Republican leadership of the Senate for failing to respect the esteemed opposition and the majority party. I would probably be relieved of any leadership in the Senate. That’s okay; they didn’t hire me for the job.

I am also sure that my mailbox would be full of congratulatory words of encouragement from my constituents at home and that my chances for re-election by those voters would go up by several percentage points for standing my ground on principle.

It would be worth it.

Yep, I definitely need to get serious about this run for Congress…

On Losing My Job and Starting a New Career

2009-03-30T06:00:00.000-06:00

Today I begin my new career as an “independent consultant”.

That’s just a fancy term meaning that the employer with whom I had spent the last twenty years of my life has informed me that my services are no longer needed.

They still need the services of people who had been there half as long as me. As well as people who make half as much money as I made. They even still need the services of people that made twice the money I made. They just don’t need my services any more.

I know. They told me.

I’m in good company. I join the ranks of the unemployed along with 6,000 other people in the largest restructuring and downsizing in the company’s history. I wasn’t singled out — I was just caught up in the cleansing.

I’m not bitter. I’m going to use the opportunity to control my destiny outside the confines of corporate America for the first time in my life.

I have always considered myself as something of an “intrepreneur”. An “intrepreneur” is somebody who has a lot of good ideas, but who implements them within the confines of a corporate setting. That’s how I always saw myself. I was the guy who would get things done inside the company — even if I was just a little bit outside the normal operating process.

That’s how I did things until they didn’t need my services any more.

Recently, I did some research comparing “intrepreneur” and “entrepreneur”. I discovered that the difference is who accepts the risk. Along with that is who reaps the reward.

When I was an “intrepreneur”, I accepted virtually no risk. If I failed a task, I still had my job; I still had my salary. The corporation risked my salary and my resources and was willing to absorb the loss if I was unproductive.

On the other hand, if I was successful with a project, the corporation reaped potentially huge rewards. I usually received an acknowledgement from boss at the next staff meeting. No risk; and not much reward.

Now my role will change from “intrepreneur” to “entrepreneur”. It’s not the course that I chose for myself — I fully intended to retire from my former employer. But it’s a course that I’ll gladly accept with open arms.

The risks will be totally mine from now on. And they will be great risks. I risk losing everything I’ve worked the last 30 years for. I risk losing my life savings, my house, my car — indeed, all my accumulated wealth, such as it is.

But I don’t risk losing the things that are most important to me. I won’t lose my life, my family, my friends. I won’t lose my faith — not in myself nor in my God. No, the things that are the most important to me are at the least risk. And only the things that are least important to me are at the greatest risk.

On the other hand, the potential rewards are great. I can finally be in control of my own time. I can work when and if I want to (subject only to the pressing need to put food on the table). I can set my own rules, establish my own procedures, and choose the guidelines that I want to follow.

Most important, I can treat my customers the way that I want to treat them. I can establish a new standard for customer service. I can set my own prices. I can control my own expenses.

And every post-tax dollar that I earn will be mine to keep — to dispose of or to enjoy or to share in whatever fashion I choose.

It’s a liberating thought. And, frankly, a bit scary. For the first time in my life, I will be in total control of all my risks and rewards.

I can hardly wait to get started.

America’s Best Poet

2009-01-22T06:00:00.001-06:00

We get a new President only every four years or so. Even when the President isn’t the Messiah Obama, a presidential inauguration is the closest thing we have in America to a royal coronation.

Usually at such a solemn event, it is incumbent upon us to enlist the very best. Of course, we would have the best military band to provide the pomp. And the best soldiers to provide the best honor guard.

We would also have the very best Queen of Soul to sing “My Country ’Tis of Thee”. The best evangelical preacher to give the invocation. The best classical musicians to perform a specially-commission piece, written by the best classical composer of our day.

And, in this case, the best ... poet. Perhaps she can call upon the poetry gods ... to inspire her to give a recitation ... of the best ... poetry ... that this great nation ... has to offer.

In case you missed it, Dr. Elizabeth Alexander was the best, uh, poet, that Barack Obama could find.

In deference to copyright laws, I won’t publish her work here. You can read it here.

I think I can call upon the “fair use” clause to give you this sample, the first few lines of “Praise Song for the Day”:

Each day we go about our business,
walking past each other, catching each other’s
eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.

It goes downhill rapidly from there.

I don’t doubt Dr. Alexander’s credentials. After all, she has three college degrees (just like me). A work of hers was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize (okay, she has one up on me in that category).

She is a former journalist for the Washington Post and currently is a professor of English literature, African-American literature, and gender studies at Yale University. Impressive credentials.

Her brother, Mark, was an adviser to the Obama presidential campaign and a member of his transition team.

Well, that explains a lot.

In an interview with the New York Times, she downplayed the role that her inner-circle connections with the Obamanistas played in her selection for this honor. “[E]very choice he’s made is ... based on what he perceives as excellence,” she says.

Here’s another example of what Dr. Alexander believes that Obama “perceives as excellence” as she tries to paint a verbal picture of a slice of life in America:

Someone is stitching up a hem, darning
a hole in a uniform, patching a tire,
repairing the things in need of repair.

Uh-huh.

Writing the things that need to be written. Saying the things that need to be said. Driving to the places that need to be driven to. Doing the things that need to be done.

Not a plethora of substance here.

In 1961, John Kennedy called upon Robert Frost to speak at his inauguration. Frost responded by writing “Dedication”. But in the glare of the white snow on a sunny day, the 86-year-old poet could not read his own commissioned work. Instead, he recited “The Gift Outright” from memory.

Frost later presented his handwritten version of “Dedication” to the President, who had it framed and hung on the Oval Office wall. That copy is now in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum in Boston.

The poem Frost wrote for the occasion was a stirring tribute to the history of a great nation, including the following verse:

Now came on a new order of the ages
That in the Latin of our founding sages
(Is it not written on the dollar bill
We carry in our purse and pocket still?)
God nodded his approval of as good.
So much those heroes knew and understood.

Frost’s go-to poem when he couldn’t read his manuscript was no less majestic, a reminder of our colonial roots and our Manifest Destiny:

The land was ours before we were the land’s.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia,
But we were England’s, Still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.

Forty-eight years later, Barack Obama asked a friend of his to write her best poetry as a gift to the nation. Dr. Alexander came up with this:

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark
the will of some one and then others, who said
I need to see what’s on the other side.

The President has four years to search for our country’s second best poet. Let’s hope he doesn’t get a chance to reveal his choice to the nation.

The Inauguration: So Much Material

2009-01-21T06:00:00.003-06:00

The Inauguration of Barack Obama yesterday as our 44th President provided so much material for comment. Where to begin?

Today, let’s stick to the speech itself. Here are some key phrases from the rambling speech that caught my attention, along with my coherent commentary:

Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath.

Actually, since Grover Cleveland had non-consecutive terms, he was both the 22nd and the 24th presidents. So there have only been 43 men who have taken the oath. And you barely stumbled through yours. Yeah, I know, on further review, the replay shows the fault for the flub goes to the Republican, Chief Justice John Roberts. I'll cut you both some slack, but it’s a shaky start.

At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbearers, and true to our founding documents.

That’s a direct contradiction of your speech a couple of weeks ago where you proclaimed that our problems are so big that “only government” could fix them. Which is it, Mr. President? Are we successful because of “We the People”? Or are we successful because the government is always here to bail us out? I would like to believe the former. I think — regardless of what you say in your inaugural address — that you believe the latter.

Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age.

What hard choices have we failed to make? How have we failed to prepare the nation for a new age? It seems that’s a direct attack on the former president sitting just a few feet behind you. But I believe that the economy has been weakened mostly by the intervention of government in the free market, not by its failure to intervene.

Homes have been lost.

No, sir. Homes have not “been lost”. Some people who could not afford to buy a home — but who had been told by the government that they could buy a home anyway — now realize that the government has failed them and has duped them. President Obama believes that people who can afford homes are supposed to buy homes for those who cannot afford them, because the government has already lied to them and told them that they could afford them.

Jobs [have been] shed. Businesses [have been] shuttered.

Employees are assets. Employers are not charities. When the cost of an asset exceeds its value, it must be shed. Interference by Big Government and Big Labor has resulted in the cost of an employee to be two or three times his salary. If the government were suddenly miraculously found to be irrelevant, most of those people would be back at work.

Our health care is too costly.

Our health care is costly, but saying it’s “too” costly is a value judgment that you are not qualified to make. If it’s the best health care in the world — which it is — then it’s not “too” costly. If you think health care is expensive now, just wait to see how much it will cost when it’s “free”.

Our schools fail too many.

The success of our school is a local concern, not a federal one. The failure of our schools is a federal concern, not a local one.

Each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.

The solution is to invest in nuclear energy (a proven technology with virtually no environmental impact) and clean coal energy (we have more coal reserves than the Arabs have in oil reserves). We have already built all the hydroelectric dams that are economically feasible. Good luck if you think you can power your Presidential Limousine with solar cells and a windmill.

We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.

My safety comes first. Your “ideals” — which will only bankrupt me — are of no concern of mine.

Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine...

Not to take anything away from the perils that the Continental Army encountered, the worse peril they faced was a bullet between their eyes. King George’s army was not capable of flying a plane into the tallest building in Philadelphia.

... drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man...

They drafted a charter to limit size and scope of the federal government. The rule of law and the rights of man are directly correlated to the behavior of the population and the extent to which the government stays away from governing that behavior.

...a charter expanded by the blood of generations.

It wasn’t “expanded” by the blood of generations. It was “defended” by them. Was this a Freudian slip, caused by his belief that it needs even more “expanding”?

Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake.

According to the ideals of President Obama, extracting information from captured terrorists is currently being done because it’s “expedient”, not because it’s actually saving lives.

Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.

Begin again? Remaking America? I don’t think we ever stopped making America great in the first place. What happened? Did we “forget” how to make America and now we need you to remind us how to do it? America was made great because the government allowed its citizens to be great, not because the Commander-in-Chief told us that we’re supposed to.

America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity and ... we are ready to lead once more.

Actually, we never stopped leading. The failure of other countries to follow is not a result of our failure to lead. If we hadn’t led in the war against terror, who would have? The French? The Spaniards?

There you have it. A blow-by-blow, paragraph-by-paragraph rebuttal of virtually every salient point of the President’s inaugural address. I’m tired. It’s going to be a long four years. But I’m up to the task.

Don’t Get Comfortable, President Obama

2009-01-20T18:00:00.000-06:00

This is the day that I knew would eventually come. Barack Obama is inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States. By winning 53% of the popular vote, it can hardly be said that he had an unconditional mandate of the electorate. Nevertheless, today’s festivities are more of a coronation than an inauguration. One thing can be said of his supporters: they turn out and they make themselves heard. What they lack in numbers, they make up for in spirit, and they are to be commended for that.

He wasn’t my candidate, but now he’s my president. I wish him well, but I don’t wish him success. If success were to be measured by the revitalization of our nation’s economy, that would be a good thing. But if success means the successful implementation of his Pollyannic socialistic ideals, that would be disastrous for our country.

Even before taking office, he has shown a dangerous tendency to deliver the best news to a crowd of people at the best of times, while directly contradicting himself by his very actions. And his followers are blissfully unaware of his true intentions as the rapturously absorb his platitudes.

While campaigning for the office, a common theme was “Change doesn’t come from Washington, change comes to Washington.” Shades of Ronald Reagan! The Great Communicator won the hearts of the nation when he proclaimed that “Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.” and “We are a nation that has a government — not the other way around.”

The difference is that Reagan meant it and governed by that principle. For Obama, it was a handy sound byte, designed to win adoration and votes. It got him both, and he immediately abandoned it.

In his Linconesque train ride from Philadelphia to Washington, he proclaimed that we need “a new declaration of independence, not just in our nation, but in our own lives — from ideology and small thinking, prejudice and bigotry — an appeal not to our easy instincts but to our better angels.” What he has forgotten in that his very election proves that we have already declared ourselves independent of prejudice and bigotry. But if he would celebrate the civil rights victory for what it is, he wouldn’t be able to operate in perpetual campaign-mode. A common flaw with liberals is that they believe that declaring victory over a cause would put them out of business — and that’s a situation they can’t afford to be in.

In his pre-presidential speech outlining our nation’s economic woes, he felt a need to remind us of our misery, and to remind us of our impending dependency on Big Government. He claimed that our problems are so big that “only Washington” can fix them. So much for bringing change to Washington! Washington has always believed it was the only solution to our problems — that’s what has created so many of our problems. It’s just that politicians are usually smart enough not to tip their own hand. Apparently, Obama has believed that the “dumbing of America” has worked to the extent that he doesn’t need to sidestep the issue any more.

Will the change that he promised be realized on his first day in office? Nope. Obama’s inauguration will cost four times as much as the next most expensive inauguration. Hardly representative of an austere government in difficult economic times. And will it be for the common people? Nope. It has primarily been financed by the same corporate giants and liberal millionaires that got him elected in the first place.

But that didn’t stop him from literally raffling off a ticket to the event on his web site. Yep. Thousands of people donated money to his cause, hoping to be the lucky one to win a coveted seat at the proceedings. He graciously accepted the working people’s money, even though it was a pittance compared to the corporate sponsorship and had virtually no effect or influence on the outcome. But it made people believe they were contributing something useful and it gave them “hope” for “change”. That’s about the only hope they’re going to get.

Obama’s claim that there is only one President didn’t keep him from demanding hundreds of billions of dollars in stimulus relief from Congress — fully expecting the bill to be on his desk awaiting his signature Wednesday morning.

He doesn’t realize that the only stimulus package we really need has already arrived... it was the housing bubble and the collapse of the stock market and some of our leading financial organizations. That wasn’t a symptom of the problem, that was an indication that the free market was correcting itself. I can’t help it if you don’t like the medicine. It’s the best thing that could have happened.

Instead, he wants to repeat the same mistakes of FDR, actions which lengthened the depression by ten years.

So, enjoy your parties your parades and your balls today, President Obama. Settle into the White House tonight. Enjoy your first day in the Oval Office tomorrow morning. But don’t get comfortable. The honeymoon is already over. The loyal opposition is already in place. And we’re ready for you.

Understanding Billions of Dollars

2008-12-03T06:00:00.002-06:00

Jed Clampett had a problem. Representatives from the OK Oil Company were willing to pump that pesky oil out of his swamp — even pay him for it. But for some reason, they didn’t want to give him “regular” dollars. No, they wanted to pay him with some kind of new-fangled “million” dollars.

And with that, Jed learned the value of putting six zeroes after a number.

Not content with that, Washington politicians insist on putting nine zeroes after every number. Sometimes twelve. They treat “billion” (and increasingly, “trillion”) as if they were mere adjectives. The words “thousand” and “million” are tossed aside like the quarters and nickels you find under your couch cushions.

In an era where the price of a cruise missile is treated as a rounding error, it’s easy to lose perspective of exactly how much money we’re talking about. Maybe it’s easier to understand if we bring it down to a personal level.

There are about 135 million 1040 tax forms filed each year. So for argument’s sake, let’s say there are about 135 million taxpayers in the country. To get an idea of the impact of federal spending on the “average” taxpayer, simply divide the number in question by 135 million.

Here’s how it works:

One billion dollars represents about $7.41 per tax payer. That doesn’t sound like much. For example, if the government needs to build a billion-dollar bridge across a river, that bridge would cost each tax payer a little over seven dollars.

The problem is most federal projects aren’t measured in billions; they are measured in hundreds of billions. A seven hundred billion dollar bailout costs each taxpayer over five thousand dollars.

A trillion dollars costs each taxpayer almost $7500.

If given the choice, would a taxpayer be willing to spend five thousand dollars to “bail out” the economy by giving it to banks, insurance companies, and mortgage companies that have already shown poor business judgment?

Or would it be more effective to give each taxpayer five thousand dollars to invest in the economy by spending it the way that he wants to?

Or would it be better to cut out the middle-man altogether and simply reduce taxes by five thousand dollars and let each taxpayer keep the money that he earned in the first place?

Washington isn’t just broken; it’s broke, too. It’s my money that they’re spending — and yours, too. There’s no hope for sanity until we replace the ones in charge of the checkbook with people that actually understand that concept.

Who to Blame

2008-11-05T06:00:00.002-06:00

Yesterday, we elected our first African American to the Presidency of the United States.

Although he wasn’t my choice, I wish Barack Obama the best for the next four years. I’m not going to whine; we survived four years of Carter and eight years of Clinton. Let’s see what can be learned as we suffer through four years of Obama.

I had to wonder how we got into this mess. There is certainly plenty of blame to go around — on both sides of the aisle. John McCain obviously ran the most inept national campaign since Mike Dukakis rode around in that tank with that goofy helmet.

McCain certainly wasn’t my first choice. (Mike Huckabee dropped out several months ago; Fred Thompson never registered a blip on any charts.) Barack wasn’t my choice, either. A year ago, I lined up all the potential candidates on both sides in order of my preference. McCain was dead last on the Republican side and Obama was dead last on the Democratic side. Sometimes, you just can’t buy a break.

Back to how we got here...

It can all be traced back to the confirmation of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court in 1991. Bear with me; this is the only place you’ll see this analysis. I’m going to share with you how an ill-qualified, unknown product of the Chicago Political Machine became the President of the United States.

The confirmation of Clarence Thomas was arguable one of the most contentious displays of dirty politics ever held in the United States Senate. George H. W. Bush was pressured on all sides to replace Thurgood Marshall with another African American. But the Democrats couldn’t bear the fact that a Republican would have the gall to nominate a conservative black guy to replace a liberal black guy. Of all the nerve!

So the televised mud-slinging started. Charges of pubic hairs on Coca-Cola cans and mentions of “Long Dong Silver” filled the air waves.

Since the Democrats had a 57-43 majority in the Senate, Bush needed to convert every Democratic senator he could to his side — while at the same time preserving his Republican base.

Bush and Thomas won with a vote to spare: 52 to 48. They did it by garnering the votes of eleven Democrats.

One of those votes cost a senator his job, and set into motion Obama’s trip to the White house.

Illinois Senator Alan Dixon was one of those turncoat Democratic senators who voted to confirm Judge Thomas. That single act so enraged Carol Moseley Braun — a former state legislator and the Cook County Recorder of Deeds — that she decided Dixon would have to pay. She decided to run against him in the Democratic senate primary in 1992

It was a bitterly-fought election. Moseley Braun had several things in her favor. She was black — always a plus when you’re a Democrat. She was a woman — how convenient. She was liberal — the trifecta of the left.

And she had the backing of the Chicago Political Machine. Icing on the cake.

Al Hofeld, a millionaire attorney, ran as a third candidate in the Democratic primary. He didn’t see Moseley Braun as a legitimate threat; he was only out to defeat Dixon. So he ran a series of vicious anti-Dixon ads to bring down the incumbent. The result was that he just split the vote. Moseley Braun barely won the three-way race and became the Democratic candidate.

She had no problem defeating a total unknown Republican, Richard Williamson, in the general election. Thus, she became the first African-American woman to win a seat in the Senate.

Once in Washington, Moseley Braun showed her true colors. Everywhere she went, she tried to out-liberal the liberal establishment. Her term was full of charges of corruption and was total embarrassment to the Democratic Party (and to politicians in general).

Not even the Illinois Democrats could salvage her miserable display. She narrowly lost her reelection in 1998 to Republican millionaire banker Peter Fitzgerald.

As much as Moseley Braun tried to out-liberal the liberals, Fitzgerald tried to out-maverick the mavericks. He was always at odds with the Republican establishment in Illinois. The home boys probably didn’t think he had much of a chance to defeat Moseley Braun in the first place and were frankly surprised by his victory. They did everything they could to make sure he stayed at odds with the party. And he obliged.

In 2001, his was the only dissent in the 99-1 vote to aid the airline industry after the September 11 attacks.

Seeing the writing on the wall, lacking support of his local party, and not needing the job, Fitzgerald decided not to seek reelection in 2004.

Moseley Braun, by this time, had enjoyed a nice stint as the us Ambassador to New Zealand. She was spending her Senate pension, running a private law firm in Chicago while working on a run for President. She said she wasn’t interested in being a Senator again. (Later, she wisely withdrew from her presidential bid and threw her support to Howard Dean. Maybe that’s why he screamed in the Iowa caucus.)

That left a huge vacuum for the position of junior senator from Illinois. Barack Obama was biding his time in the Illinois State Senate, having been groomed by the Chicago Political Machine. He was now ready to strike.

The primary race involved 15 different candidates. Obama hired political strategist David Axelrod, who launch an advertising campaign featuring former Chicago mayor Harold Washington and the daughter of the late Illinois Senator Paul Simon. The voters rewarded the campaign with 52% of the primary vote. The only thing that stood between Obama and the us Senate was the Illinois Republican Party. They proved to be as effective as a wet paper napkin.

In a crowded Republican field, one man was left standing after the torturous primary. Millionaire Jack Ryan barely garnered more votes than Jim Oberweis (36% to 23%) for the privilege of challenging Obama. Other than being rich and beautiful, Ryan’s primary claim to fame was being the ex-husband of former Miss Illinois and Star Trek:Voyager actress, Jeri (“Seven of Nine”) Ryan.

Jack and Jeri had split up several years prior. In order to protect their son, they both agreed to have their divorce records sealed. The judge obliged and nobody cared. At least, nobody cared until Jack became the only roadblock between the aforementioned Obama and the Chicago Political Machine’s quest to fill the us Senate vacancy.

The Chicago Political Machine contacted the Los Angeles Political Machine and finally found a judge that would over-rule the wishes of the parents and the best interest of the child and open the court records. Allegations of public sex tumbled forth, the Illinois Republican leadership withdrew their support, and Jack Ryan, seeing the damage done, withdrew from the race in June, 2004.

Meanwhile, what was Obama doing? He was busy writing a speech that would change the history of America. It’s very rare that a sitting state legislator would give a keynote address at a major political convention. But never underestimate the power of the Chicago Political Machine.

The Democratic Party was set to nominate John Kerry in Boston. The Chicago Machinery — aligned with the Kennedy machinery — was eager to humiliate their arch-rivals, the Clintons, while on Kennedy’s home court.

Obama — admittedly a great orator — spoke of change to the convention. Bush was bad, socialism is good, widows and orphans are starving, the Iraq war was a mistake, the Democrats have a better plan. He conveniently belied his own liberal agenda as he proclaimed, “There is not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America.”

The audience went wild. The news pundits drooled and crowned him the successor to Martin Luther King and Jesse Jackson.

And two presidential hopefuls in the audience — Hillary Clinton and John Edwards — put on their poker faces and gamely smiled. Behind those smiles, their jaws were on the floor as they could only mutter to themselves, “Oh ... my ... gawd!”

Meanwhile, back in Illinois, the Republican Machinery — who by now couldn’t get a dogcatcher elected in Peoria — were desperately trying to fill the gap left by Ryan’s fall from grace. Remarkably, not one Republican in the entire state was deemed worthy. Not one candidate — not even Republican primary runner-up Jim Oberweis — was either willing or able to be a worthy opponent to the newly-anointed Kennedy-esque black messiah.

When their last chance of a Great White Hope — Da Bears’ Coach Mike Ditka — declined to run, the Republicans sunk to a new low in stupidity.

In one of the most amazing examples of futile desperation in modern political history, the Illinois Republicans reached all the way to the state of Maryland to persuade Reagan-sidekick-turned-talk-show-host Alan Keyes to carpet-bag his way to the ticket. Keyes, already coming off several failed attempts to be a Maryland senator, obliged. He rented an apartment and a post office box in Chicago and said “Where do I sign up?”

He didn’t need to sign up. Three months later, the Illinois voters saw through the transparent sham and sent Obama to Washington with 70% of the vote — a mandate by any standard.

Keyes went back to Maryland to prepare for his 2008 presidential run. Obama went to neighboring Washington dc to prepare for his 2008 presidential run.

His run for the presidency culminated last night.

It’s been said that we walk through life backwards — only glimpsing at the present, ignorant of the future, while staring at the past.

In this case, we stare at the bold nomination of a Supreme Court justice, the fateful vote of a senator from Illinois, and the rage that ensued — and we now realize that it set into motion the election of a President, and the future of our nation.

Save America

2008-10-25T06:00:00.004-06:00

My experience has taught me to be rather skeptical of forwarded emails that I get through the Internet. But I received an email today from a friend of mine that was especially intriguing. I was so taken by it, I decided to contact the original author, John Dini.

He was kind enough to send me an immediately and personal reply, verifying his original authorship. He also included the original verbiage of the email. (Things tend to get scrambled a bit after they have been forwarded several times.)

Here is something that I have never done before. (And I probably will never do it again, so don’t even ask.) Today’s posting is written entirely by John. It speaks for itself. Feel free to contact John yourself or to spread his message.

-------------- Forwarded Message: --------------

Dear Joe,

Before you mentally check out because of the “Save America” headline on this email, please read the next 2 paragraphs.

This is not a conservative or liberal, Republican or Democratic letter. This is for anyone who is angry about how our government is running, or who is frustrated by a feeling of helplessness, or who feels unable to do anything about our current mess.

A legislature that has a 9% approval rating, one month before an election, just passed a bill that constituents’ comments ran 100 to 1 against! Not only did they ignore voter opinion, but under extreme scrutiny they still added lots of breaks for cronies, and they did so knowing that 90% of them would be re-elected anyway. This letter is long, but at the end I will tell you how I think we can do something about it.

My name is John F. Dini. I am a small business owner in Texas, with 4 employees and well under a million dollars in gross revenue. I have lived in both red and blue states, on the east coast and the west. I don’t think what I have to say should offend anyone. That’s why I’m willing to put my name on it. My email is jdini@mpninc.com. Unlike many of our legislators, I will take personal responsibility for my actions. You are welcome to let me know what you think, and whether you’re signing on to this.

If you don’t want to read about the bailout bill, skip down to where the bullet points end.

Last week Congress passed hb 1424, the “Emergency Economic Stabilization Act.” As you’ve probably heard, it was a bit more than just the bailout bill. I’ve gone through all 451 pages. Here are some highlights:

• Sec. 103: The Treasury can also purchase mortgages on apartment buildings. To my knowledge, those who own apartment buildings aren’t usually in danger of having their house taken away.

• Sec. 110 allows the regulators (there is a whole new bureaucracy being formed) to make any change to any troubled mortgage, including giving the property away.

• Sec. 116: Keeps the bureaucracy in place until the last asset is sold, or the last loan is paid.

• Sec. 122: Raises the debt ceiling to $11,315,000,000,000. For historical reference, we broke the $1 trillion debt limit in the Reagan administration. That runaway borrowing is what George H.W. Bush called “Voodoo Economics” Last week we borrowed another trillion in a day.

• Sec. 132 suspends fasb 157. That’s what made banks show the real value of their assets on their books, even if it had fallen to zero. That is no longer necessary, (but we will form a commission to decide later on what they should be showing to their shareholders, presumably something other than the actual value of their assets.)

• Sec. 136 raises the fdic published coverage limit to $250,000 per account. What they haven’t mentioned is that this higher “coverage” expires in 15 months, and the fdic is ordered not to adjust the insurance for these new risks. That law actually just orders the fdic to change the number $100,000 to $250,000 everywhere, nothing else.

That is the first 112 pages. The next bill (actually several different laws, passed on the same vote) extends a bunch of energy tax breaks for wind, clean coal, biofuels, geothermal, and others. It also gives credits to the steel industry, for plug in vehicles (in addition to the $25 billion handout to gm and Ford last week), for the black lung trust fund, and for home appliances that recycle gray water.

The next bill tacked on is a Tax Relief bill. That one raises the amt trigger by a fraction (from $66K to $69K) and has special tax breaks for:

• Restaurant and retail depreciation
• Rum from Puerto Rico or the Virgin Islands
• Businesses in American Samoa
• Mine rescue training
• Businesses on Indian Reservations (casinos)
• Railroad tracks
• Motorsports Racing Facilities (the “nascar” break)
• Employees of companies affected by Hurricane Katrina
• Investing in Washington dc
• Wool producers
• Film and television production
• Wooden arrow manufacturers
• Winners of Exxon Valdez lawsuits
• Farming Machinery purchases

Also, the failed 2007 Paul Wellstone mental health bill is included here, which requires all health insurers to cover mental health treatment just like physical illness. I’m not sure how long this bill has been trying to get passed, but Senator Wellstone died in 2002.

Under “other” that bill has another 100 pages including the following:

• Funding for schools, roads, weed control, forest ecosystems, improved cooperation among Federal agencies and the Oregon & California Railroad.
• Secure payments for states with Federal Lands, which you would think was everybody, but is defined as only la, ca, or, pa, sc, sd, tx and wa.
• A call for proposals to cooperate with Federal agencies, which upon reading is actually a requirement that blm accept a minimum of 50% 0f timber logging contracts over the next 3 years.
• Doubling of the “Mine Reclamation Fund”
• Rewording of the Katrina relief bills to include il, ia, in, ks, mi, mn, mo, ne, and wi
• Further extension of Katrina Relief to anyone “affected” by Hurricane Ike.

My sympathies to the folks in Maine and North Dakota, who appear to have been left out (unless that’s where the wooden arrow makers cluster.) Actual outlays are not $700 billion, but an estimated $852 billion, apparently not counting tax reductions.

Are you angry yet?

end of bailout bill discussion

In her 1957 novel “Atlas Shrugged” Ayn Rand foresaw an America where corrupt businessmen and politicians allied to loot the country for all they could get. They got away with it because most people either believed that a bit more hard work, a bit more struggling, would see things turnaround eventually, or that everything was beyond their ability to control anyway. Many people disagree with Rand’s conclusions and philosophy, but on this she was truly clairvoyant.

Most voters believe that Congress is full of bad actors, except for their guy! Your congressman (or woman) came to your Rotary meeting, or saved a local industry, or got funding for your favorite park, and therefore is one of the “good guys.” I put forward the idea that if any one of them was truly above the corruption, he or she would have been back in your district screaming bloody murder rather than in dc casting a vote for or against this farce. Instead, every single Congressman is telling you that it was the other guys who got us into this mess. They are cultivating and depending on our fear of each other to stay in power.

what you can do to save america
I don’t “do” chain letters, even the ones my relatives send me that say “return this to show you care for me.” This is my first-ever exception. I care enough to risk your annoyance with me for sending this. It’s up to you to decide whether you care more about saving this democracy, or having a friend, customer or client think you are “too political.”

I believe that if we continue “business as usual” by returning over 90% of Congress to office, we are rewarding their arrogance; and surrendered any fantasy that our government is answerable to the people. They obviously don’t believe it. That is why Congress has exempted itself from labor law, equal opportunity, osha, Social Security and any liability. This may be our last chance to remind our elected officials that this is supposed to be a government by the people.

“My vote can’t do anything”
You can’t vote to throw out the other guy’s representative, you can only vote for or against your own. In 2006 the Democrats won their average district with a 54.8% vote, considered a landslide. The so-called Republican Revolution of 1994 was won with an average of 51.6% of the vote. So if one person in twenty changed their vote, the result would be an almost complete turnover in Congress!

Our Founding Fathers designed the checks and balances of government well. The Senate is supposed to change slowly, so that it provides a longer-term perspective. Congress changes every two years because it is supposed to reflect the current mood of the people! Returning 90% of Congress to office year after year, decade after decade, is surrendering the responsibility that Jefferson, Adams and Washington placed in us. It confirms their belief that they are untouchable.

On November 4th, vote for whomever you feel would be the better President, Senator, Governor, and for any state or local office, but vote against your incumbent congressman or congresswoman. It doesn’t matter who it is. It doesn’t matter who the other candidate is. Cross party lines. Close your eyes or hold your nose when you do it, but do it. In 30 days we can send the biggest message to Congress of the last 100 years. It’s a message that says “You aren’t above the law. You are answerable for this mess. You still serve the people of this country.”

And pass this along widely and quickly. Remember, we have less than 30 days, and it will only take one in twenty.

Thank you.
John F. Dini, cmba, bcb, cbi
President, mpn Incorporated
www.MPNinc.com

Abortion Isn’t a Privacy Right

2008-10-22T06:00:00.000-06:00

Katie Couric, anchor for cbs Evening News, did her best to play “gotcha” journalism with Alaska Governor Sarah Palin during her interview shortly after the governor announced her candidacy for Vice President.

Couric knew she had Palin in a corner when she brought up the question about abortion. Her surprise follow-up question tripped the governor, especially since Palin was not answering from her heart, rather from the very strict and politically-correct coaching that she had been fed from the John McCain campaign.

The question was why did the governor believe that Roe v. Wade was a bad decision by the Supreme Court. The governor was forced to give the party-line answer, positioning it as a states’ rights issue. That gave Couric the opening she needed to assert that Roe v. Wade was a privacy rights issue, not a states rights issue. She got Palin to admit that the constitution guaranteed a right to privacy — It does not — and therefore she must be in conflict with her own assertion.

Palin tried to backpedal and get the topic back on states’ rights issues, but the damage was done. Couric countered with a challenge to name any other Supreme Court decision that Palin disagreed with. Sarah clutched, gulped, and fumbled. She never recovered.

Okay, Sarah, I’m sorry you had to learn the hard way that politics in the federal arena is very nasty business, especially if you’re a pro-life evangelical fundamentalist. I know it was no surprise to you, but it still hurts, doesn’t it?

On the other hand, I am not being interviewed by any national news anchor. I am not accountable to a national party candidate and I have nothing to lose. (Joe the Plumber and I have that in common.) So here is the answer that Sarah Palin wanted to give:

Katie Couric’s question: Why, in your view, is Roe v. Wade a bad decision?

My answer: The individual states had already decided for themselves whether to allow abortion and under what circumstances. The tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States grants all powers to the states if those powers had not been otherwise granted to the federal government. The purpose of the Supreme Court is to interpret law, not to create new laws. Since neither the Congress nor the Constitution had specifically addressed the issue of abortion, the right to regulate it rests with the individual states. Until and unless that changes, the Supreme Court should have never even accepted the case, much less ruled in that way.

Q: Do you think there's an inherent right to privacy in the Constitution?

A: No. I believe there is an inherent expectation of privacy in our society. And there are various laws passed by Congress and by individual states to enforce that expectation. But it is not guaranteed by the Constitution.

Q: But the right to privacy was the cornerstone of Roe v. Wade.

A: And that was wrong. If your question is about Roe v. Wade, the answer is it’s a states’ rights issue. But if you’re asking about my views on abortion, I believe abortion is wrong because it is murder. A fetus is not a cystic mass to be surgically removed by a doctor at the whim of a woman. It is a human being. The rights of the mother are limited when they would infringe upon the rights of the baby to be born. There is no inherent right to reproductive decisions once conception has occurred. And the right to privacy is just a red herring that abortion advocates have put up in their attempt to de-humanize an unborn baby.

There you have it, Governor. I know that’s what you wanted to say. Maybe in your next career, you can be a contributor on Fox News Channel and you can throw that verbiage at Alan Colmes. You don’t even have to give me credit for it; I know you would have come up with it yourself if you were given the opportunity.

Health Care is not a Right

2008-10-21T06:00:00.000-06:00

The presidential candidates were tossed a simple and fair question in their second debate by moderator Tom Brokaw.

Is health care in America a privilege, a right, or a responsibility?

John McCain answered that it is a responsibility, and then went on to trash Obama’s health care plan

Barack Obama said that it should be a right, and justified his answer by noting how wealthy we are as a country.

McCain was close with his answer. Obama was dead wrong. Here’s why:

A “right” is bestowed from a higher authority. It cannot be revoked, it cannot be transferred. The Declaration of Independence refers to “inalienable rights” — those which cannot be taken away. Wikipedia defines them as that “which are not contingent upon the laws, customs, or beliefs or a particular society”.

If health care is a right, then why not define other necessities of life as a “right”? How about food? I could go a week without health care, but going a week without food could be fatal. Should I have a “right” to have my food given to me by my federal government?

How about “transportation”? I need a ride to get to work. Perhaps door-to-door public transportation should be a right that is given to me by my government.

Or my job itself. Many countries guarantee employment. Shouldn’t mine? Should my employer be forced to keep me hired in all circumstances because I have a right to have a job? And if I cannot find one, should my government grant me a job as a right?

If health care is defined as a right, a slippery slope of new “rights” is sure to follow. There will be no stopping people who demand more and more rights bestowed upon them by government.

As the states of Massachusetts and Hawaii have already proven, government cannot afford to grant that right to its citizens without going bankrupt.

Don’t be fooled by Obama’s claim that his health care plan merely supplements whatever existing insurance the population already has. As soon as federal health care is made available, large numbers of people will drop their personal insurance (or their employers will do it on their behalf). The government will have to pick up the tab for just about everybody anyway.

And that’s just fine with the Obama/Hillary socialists, because universal single-payer health care is exactly what they had in mind for everybody in the first place. The plan in Obama’s presidential campaign is merely a placation for the control-minded HillaryCare advocates that have been around since FDR.

My health care is my responsibility. Your health care is your responsibility. The health care (as well as the well-being) of innocent children and those who cannot fend for themselves is society’s responsibility, which may or may not involve the federal government.

But the federal government is the last person I want in charge of my health care. You will never believe how expensive health care can be until it’s free.

Health Care as a Comodity

2008-10-09T06:00:00.000-06:00

Atroubling trend in presidential debates that I have noticed is the tendency not to answer the question that was asked.

Candidates seem to have a template of talking points to cover and they just drop those points whenever they some key word in the question that matches the template.

Since the candidates won’t answer the questions, I’ll answer them here — the way they should have answered them in the first place.

I’ll start with the definition of health care, as asked last week in the “town hall” debate in Nashville between Barack Obama and John McCain.

Question: Do you believe health care should be treated as a commodity?

Senator Obama ignored the question, whined about how health care costs are “breaking family budgets,” and how McCain was going to tax health care benefits.

Senator McCain talked about his health care plan — which includes government giving everybody $5,000 to buy insurance — and how Obama is going to fine small businesses that don’t insure their employees.

Neither answered the question. So here’s my answer.

For the economically uninformed, a “commodity” is defined as a good or service for which there is a demand and abundant supply and for which that supply is essentially undifferentiated except for the price.

Using that definition, yes, there are many aspects of health care that are commodities. In fact, most trips to doctor’s offices are very routine. A prescription for an antibiotic; a bandage on a wound; relief from the symptoms of the flu or a sore back or a headache.

This is not to diminish the work of the medical profession — it just illustrates that a large portion of their work can easily be undifferentiated in the marketplace.

That type of treatment is rightly a commodity. In fact, health clinics to handle routine health care are already cropping up in pharmacies all across the nation, handled quickly and efficiently by medical paraprofessionals.

Do you know what happens when a product becomes a commodity? The price goes down!

I’ve seen it happen in the telecommunications industry. The telecom companies fought for years to guarantee that long distance and wireless voice communications were not commoditized. As soon as they were, competition and the invisible hand of the economy drove the price down — even while the quality of service went up!

It happened in telecom; it can happen in health care.

Let the marketplace determine the cost and availability of routine health care. I guarantee that if the government would get out of the way, everybody who needs health care would be able to afford it. The companies that provide the service would finally have the incentive to provide a quality service at a price that everybody could afford.

There are already government programs in place to act as a safety net in catastrophic and extreme circumstances — as there should be. But if the socialist policies of Obama and Hillary and the DNC were ever enacted as they would like, every antibiotic, every BandAid, and every tongue depressor would be dispensed by a Washington bureaucrat with the compassion of the DMV and the efficiency of the IRS.

That’s a scenario that should inspire Republicans and cure Democrats.

Yep, except in extreme cases, health care should be a commodity.

Maybe next time I can explain to Senator Obama the difference between a right and a responsibility.

Watering My Family Tree

2008-08-12T06:00:00.001-06:00

Since I am an amateur genealogist by choice and a perfectionist by nature, my life is full of complex ambiguities. Genealogy is as much an art as it is a science. In art, there is rarely a definitive resolution. And that drives the perfectionist in me crazy.

I was recently reminded of this when I was browsing some Internet genealogy sites and discovered a record for my late father. The birth date listed for him was several years off. This site’s policy (as is the case with most such sites) is that records cannot be corrected. The best you can do when you discover incorrect data is to post the correct data and then let succeeding generations sort it all out.

One such site reminded me to include my sources when posting such correctional data. My sources? He’s my dad, for crying out loud! Don’t you think I’d know when his birth date was? (The scientist within me calmed the nerves of the artist within me and cooler heads ultimately prevailed.)

Bad data isn’t the worst part of genealogical research. The hardest part is determining your limits. Thus, I have constructed the three most agonizing dilemmas that face me in my pursuit of ancestry:

How deep should I go?

Fortunately, there’s an easy answer to this: as deep as possible. My ultimate goal as a genealogist is to find the oldest possible ancestors. As long as they’re in my blood line, I’ll go backwards as far as I can to find my great-great-great-great-great whatever.

Unfortunately, the farther you go back, the messier it gets. Spellings are not always consistent, the handwriting in family Bibles is almost impossible to decipher, and census takers were generally undereducated and poorly paid.

In addition, a couple of hundred years ago, it seems like every male was named either William, or Henry, or Harry. (Including President William Henry Harrison, but I digress.) Just because you find a person with the same name as a great ancestor of yours, that doesn’t mean you’re related. Challenges like that keep the work interesting.

How wide should I go?

No clear answer on this one. I finally had to draw the line one time when I had the names of my third cousin’s ex-wife’s parents. Fully knowing that I might regret it some day, I decided not to include them in my family tree database. It’s not likely that I’m going to run into them or their descendants in the mall. Let their family build their own tree.

I could be wrong about that one, but that’s my story and I’m sticking with it.

When should I stop?

That’s easy. When people stop being born. And when people stop dying. When history stops living. And when the lion lays down with the lamb.

That’s the beauty of genealogy: It’s a living history. It keeps going and going. And its blessing keep giving and giving.

There are times when I’m working on a particular part of my family’s history when I’ll stop, take a breath, and step back to see what I’ve done. It puts things in perspective. It lets you know where you’re going by seeing where you’ve been. It makes you realize that everybody deserves a legacy, even if it’s just a birth date and a death date in a database.

Then, I get a phone call or an email. Somebody in my family has died. Or somebody has been born. Two people have been joined in marriage or split by a divorce. A new tombstone has been discovered in an old cemetery or a new obituary has been discovered in a yellow, tattered newspaper.

So I open up my database and enter the new information. Another legacy has been preserved. And my great-grandchildren will thank me for it.

That’s a Lotta Zeros

2008-08-11T06:00:00.001-06:00

I have always loved studying really big numbers. I mean really big. Like the number of grains of sand on a beach. Or on all the beaches in the word. Or the number of hydrogen molecules in the sun.

Or the price of a loaf of bread in Zimbabwe.

This third-world African nation is in the midst of some truly world-class hyper-inflation. The rate is somewhere between 2.2 million percent and 12.5 million percent, give or take a few million percent. When it gets that high, it’s hard to imagine.

Currently, the country with the next highest rate of inflation is Myanmar/Burma (I don’t want to start any arguments here about the official name of that country), with a rate of 39.5%. Not much of a challenge for the inflation gold medal, huh.

A loaf of bread costs around a hundred billion dollars. (When Zimbabwe achieved independence and renamed itself from Rhodesia, they adopted the “dollar” as the name of their currency. Any resemblance to the American dollar is strictly comical.) Next month, it could cost a lot more. Or a lot less, depending on whose math you choose to believe.

The Zimbabwe government, in typical federal government fashion, attempted to stop inflation by making it illegal. Such price controls didn’t work for Richard Nixon in the 1970s and they didn’t work in Zimbabwe, either. It’s funny how the free market demands that it remain free — however rowdy and insane that may be.

So a couple of years ago, they attempted to control inflation by ignoring it. They just lobbed three zeros off the currency and declared the problem fixed. That didn’t work, either.

Last week, they took more drastic action. Gone are ten zeros. Ten. What used to be ten billion dollars is now just one.

Yeah, like that exudes confidence in the federal government.

To understand how they got into this mess would require a study of a complicated history of civil wars, border wars, and generally lousy government. Add to that some over-zealous printing presses in the government capital turning out worthless paper currency with zeros that multiply like rabbits and you have a recipe for disaster.

Through it all, President and resident idiot-for-life Robert Mugabe is clinging to power. He got the job in 1987 by simply abolishing the position of Prime Minister and assuming power. Pretty convenient. He managed to get himself re-elected in 1990, 1996, 2002, and 2008. Apparently, there are more dead voters in Zimbabwe than in Chicago.

Now there is some debate over whether it’s Mugabe or the military who is currently running the county. Whoever is in control has a lot of explaining to do.

It is said that the Illinois Republican Senator Everett Dirksen invented the quote, “A billion here, a billion there; pretty soon, you’re talking real money.” Obviously, Dirksen never went shopping for a loaf of bread in Zimbabwe. He was off by about a dozen zeros.

Obama’s Confused Lingual Policy

2008-08-07T06:00:00.004-06:00

Barack Obama recently sent the conservative blogosphere into a tizzy by suggesting that our children should learn how to speak Spanish. It was touted as another nail in the coffin of our Anglo/Christian heritage that so many Americans hold dearly.

Actually, I’m going to give him a little bit of a break. I think our children should learn another language. But I sincerely doubt his motivation and certainly his implication.

To be fair, here’s the quote — in proper context — from Obama as he spoke at a recent campaign event in Georgia:

I don’t understand when people are going around worrying about “We need to have English only.” They want to pass a law: “We want English only”. Now, I agree that immigrants should learn English. I agree with that. But, understand this: Instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English — they'll learn English — you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish. You should be thinking about how your child can become bilingual. We should have every child speaking more than one language. You know, it’s embarrassing when Europeans come over here, they all speak English, they speak French, they speak German. And then we go over to Europe and all we can say is “merci beaucoup”.

At first, Obama appears to chide us into pandering to Hispanic immigrants — telling us we should accommodate their language rather than forcing our own language on them. Then he turns that into a plea for our children to be bilingual. It’s an effective ploy — he is a master of such turn-arounds while stumping on the campaign trail.

But he is missing the point when he compares our language skills to the language skills of Europeans. And I can prove it by asking and answering three simple questions:

Why did I learn Spanish?

To know English better.
I took two years of Spanish while in high school — and a year of French in college. They were some of the most rewarding educational endeavors I have ever done. I learned more about how to conjugate English verbs by conjugating Spanish verbs. I learned more about irregular English words by studying French irregular words. I had a greater understanding, a greater appreciation, and a greater respect for my own language because I learned another language. Sometimes you have to get away from a subject to actually study it.

Why do the Europeans learn English?

Because they have to.
English is the language of law, the language of science, and the language of business. English has become what every French speaker and every Esperantist hoped for their respective languages. It’s the language of the un. It’s the language of the Olympics. It’s the language of nasa. In Europe, every country is the size of one of our Midwestern states. Language barriers abound. Many countries have multiple official languages and dozens of indigenous ones. They need one communicative glue to hold everything together. It may not be the best or most efficient language in the world, but English has become that de facto glue.

Why don’t all Hispanic immigrants learn English?

Because they don’t have to.
I knew we lost the battle the first time I had to press “1” for English at my local atm. I’m reminded of it every time I read the signs in the aisles at Home Depot. (Long ago, I learned that the Spanish word for “exit” is “salida”. How long does it take Hispanics to learn that the English word for “salida” is “exit”?) With bilingual customer service, bilingual menus, and even bilingual ballots, we have accommodated the Spanish-speaking world so much that their incentive to learn English has completely disappeared.

Obama is right, our students should learn a foreign language. They should do it to make themselves better students.

Immigrants to America should also learn a foreign language: English. It’s the glue that holds America together. And it’s the glue that will keep us together unless we choose to dissolve it by accommodating foreigners who refuse to learn it.

Name That Instrumental Tune

2008-02-14T06:00:00.002-06:00

What’s the composer of instrumental music to do? The title of a song is usually defined by the lyrics. But when there are no lyrics, there is nothing to hang one’s hat on. Nothing that intuitively determines a title. How does a composer of a purely instrumental song put a label on his creation?

In the old days, it was good enough to name instrumental music by the type, key signature, and serial number. Is it the fifth symphony in C-minor? Then I guess the name would be “Symphony #5 in C-minor”. Gee, that was easy.

Somewhere along the line, opus numbers came into being. But they were often added posthumously. Composers really didn’t care about opi. (Actually, the plural of opus is “opera”, but it’s not nearly as funny. And who would believe it, anyway?)

Occasionally, some descriptive word would get attached to a piece of music. That’s why we have a “Moonlight” sonata and a “Revolutionary” etude. These names filled the need to identify the songs, but they really weren’t the “names” of the songs.

In the 19th century, some popular composers realized that their songs actually needed marketable names. John Philip Sousa attached names to his marches like “The Washington Post” (it was actually commissioned by the newspaper) or “Stars and Stripes Forever” (it really has lyrics, but nobody cares).

Scott Joplin earned a whopping $360 in his lifetime for “The Maple Leaf Rag”. A better title wouldn’t have helped. And “The Entertainer” was certainly entertaining enough; it just wasn’t real popular until Marvin Hamlisch rediscovered it in “The Sting”.

So what’s a modern instrumental composer to do to title his songs? Here are a few hints.

Make it memorable
Use real words, even if you put them in some strange context. There may not really be such a thing as a “Pink Elephant”, but it would make a cool name for a song.

Make it appropriate
Chuck Mangione’s “Feels So Good” works because the song really does feel good! “Grazing in the Grass” may not make you want to graze, but it sure makes you feel like you should be doing “something” in the grass. And it’s a whole lot better title than just “That Song with the Funky Cowbell Part”.

Make it unique
There are probably a million songs named “I Love You” or some generic title like that. If you do a Google search and you find your song title, you have some more thinking to do.

Make it personal
One of my favorite instrumental titles is “Tuesday Morning”. I bet you can tell when that song was written. Of course, it means something to the composer. Whether it means anything to the listener is irrelevant, because it’s so easy to implant yourself into the song’s history.

Have fun with your titles. It’s usually the first thing that your fans encounter — even before they hear the music. Never forget that the melody makes the song enjoyable, but the title makes it memorable.

Richard, the Space Tourist

2008-02-11T06:00:00.000-06:00

Some over-achievers have all the luck. Consider, for example, the case of Richard Garriott. At a time when most people his age are entering mid-life crises, he’s getting ready for the adventure of his life. And I am extremely jealous.

Growing up, Richard had a dad with the coolest of jobs. His father is Owen Garriott, astronaut. How cool is that? Owen has the distinction of not only being one of the few that worked on the short-lived Skylab mission in the 70s, but who also got to fly on one of the very first Shuttle missions in the 80s. He was there while nasa made the transition from the heydays of Apollo to the truck-and-bus missions of the Shuttle.

As for Richard, he became one of the first truly pioneering and successful PC game programmers. While in high school and college, he made a name for himself writing computer games and giving them away to friends. He soon parlayed that into a business, paying for his college education with the games he sold.

He wrote the first in what was to become a blockbuster series of “Ultima” games. One after another, Ultima sequels were churned out with Richard writing or producing every one of them. Sell a few million copies; make a few million dollars.

The son of the astronaut had become a computer entrepreneur. And in his early 40s, he had more money than he new what to do with. And all the time to spend it.

What’s a fella to do? Follow his dad’s footsteps into space! Lucky guy.

Just about the time he amassed his fortune, NASA and the Soviet space agency started working with private companies to create something that Arthur C. Clarke had dreamed about for decades: space tourism. For a cool thirty million dollars, you can be on top of the world as they light a candle under you and catapult you to a week’s visit on the International Space Station. How could Richard refuse such an opportunity?

Already five men have had their turn. Richard gets his chance in October, 2008. Of course, it’s not all fun-and-games. While on the space station, he will perform vital research into the commercial applications of the effects of weightless on extremophile bacteria. Pretty heady stuff.

Along the way, he has also made a name for himself as an accomplished magician, having appeared on the cover of MUM, the magazine of the Society of American Magicians. And he has served as the corner man for boxer Jesus Chavez. In his spare time, he built a haunted house museum at his home in Austin, Texas.

My mid-life crisis is coming along just fine; thanks for asking. I can look back on my life — I’m about the same age as Richard — and think about what I would could have done differently. My dad wasn’t an astronaut. Every computer game that I’ve written has been a commercial flop. People laugh at my magic tricks. And nobody reads my blog.

But Richard is still an inspiration to me. As soon as I make my first thirty million dollars, I’ll start my weightlessness training in preparation for my trip to the moon. Gee, I better start saving my pennies right now.

A Tribute to Some Lovable Space Junk

2008-02-08T06:00:00.000-06:00

It’s fifty years old and it’s a piece of junk. In another couple hundred years, it’s destined to be destroyed in a violent and fiery blaze of glory.

But it’s a lovable piece of junk. And maybe — just maybe — it deserves to be on some nation registry of history things.

It’s Vanguard 1, currently the old piece of space junk orbiting the Earth. And it’s celebrating half a century of weightlessness.

Vanguard 1 was the fourth artificial satellite put into space by man. The previous three long ago succumbed to the Earth’s gravity and atmospheric drag. But Vanguard 1 is still up there, having completed almost 200,000 orbits so far. It circles the Earth every two hours and fifteen minutes in a highly-elliptical path that takes it almost 2500 miles from the Earth at its highest before dipping to a low of about 650 miles.

And it’s that “low” that’s eventually going to kill it. With every orbit, it briefly touches the very outer limits of our atmosphere. So briefly that it will still be up there another 200 years or so. But eventually, it will run out of inertia and become nothing more than a shooting star for my great, great grandchild to wish upon.

It’s not much to look at. It’s roughly spherical, about six inches in diameter. Six short antennae protrude, one from each side. On Earth, it weighed less than three and a half pounds. In space, it weighs nothing.

It’s shiny on all sides, the first satellite to be solar powered. That was revolutionary at the time, and it allowed Vanguard 1 to transmit a good radio signal for more than six years. At a time when most satellites were burning up in the atmosphere or blowing up on the launch pad, trusty little Vanguard 1 was still up there, beeping its location to anyone who wanted to tune to its 5 milliwatt signal.

Even today, it’s being tracked optically and through radar. Its symmetrical shape and unique orbit has given us valuable information about the limits of the Earth’s atmosphere and the precise shape of the Earth. By tracking slight variations in its orbit, scientists determined that the Earth is slightly “pear” shaped; the southern hemisphere is a tiny bit bigger than its northern cousin. And by watching the orbit degrade slightly through the years, we can measure the extent that upper limits of the atmosphere rises and falls with the sun’s 11-year cycles. Such serendipitous research wasn’t imagined when it was launched. At the time, they were just happy to get it off the ground in one piece.

Vanguard 1 was launched on March 17, 1958, at a time when the Russians were beating us at everything and President Eisenhower was looking forward to retirement and to handing the reigns of the presidency over to Vice President Nixon in a couple of years. From its unique vantage point, it has watched as Man has gone to the moon. It watched Skylab orbit the Earth and fall back in the ocean. It has watched more than a hundred Shuttle missions and witnessed two Shuttle disasters. It has waved an antenna at the International Space Station a time or two.

Its beeper has fallen silent over the years. And the mirrored finish of its solar panels probably isn’t as glossy as it used to be. But it continues to circle the Earth proudly, knowing that it’s the granddaddy of all the satellites. Perhaps, before it’s too late, we can send a spacecraft to meet it in its orbit, gently pluck it, and bring it back home. It would be a fitting tribute for a piece of space junk that deserves a little more respect than most.

After all, Vanguard 1 is a survivor.

My Office, My Playlist

2008-02-07T06:00:00.000-06:00

Several years ago, Muzak (the corporation, not the irritating genre) had a saying something to the effect of “People are more productive when listening to boring music”. And with that, they sold hundreds of thousands of installations of Muzak (the irritating genre).

Through the 1980s and early 1990s, I worked in several offices that had piped-in music — Muzak, adult-contemporary radio, and god-awful country music. It was alternating annoying and soothing, but mostly it was irrelevant. The problem was that nobody could agree on what it should be — what style, what volume, or even if it should exist at all. It seemed like the only one that was happy was the office manager who picked the music.

The revolution toward personalized playlists started with Walkmans and portable CD players, but it really took off with iPods. Now we can add streaming Internet radio, satellite radio, and CD ripping to PCs to the mix. It seems that everybody is plugged in. And that’s fine with me.

I’m constantly amazed at the variety of tastes that exists in the officeplace. When the listener is shielded knowing that nobody else can tap into his style (by virtue of ear buds, tucked away into his aural cavities), all inhibitions are lost.

There are times that I have “peaked” into my co-workers’ playlists. The only thing I can be sure of is that I can never predict what other people are listening to. My own playlist (mostly smooth jazz with some light classical mixed into it) is no match for the mixture of heavy metal, country, blues, and American Idol mush that I know everybody else is listening to.

And that’s fine with me. Individualism is good. It empowers the office worker, giving him a sense of importance. His it department can tell him what version of Microsoft Office he has to deal with. His boss can tell him what font he has to use in PowerPoint presentations. His finance department can tell him what receipts he has to turn in after a business trip. His hr department can tell him what documentation he has to gather before he can fire his slackered subordinate.

But, by golly, nobody can tell him he can’t listen to Def Leppard while he works on his client’s latest proposal.

What harm can possibly come from that?

The Best Sitcoms Ever

2008-01-15T06:00:00.000-06:00

The sitcom was invented for television. It has a dilemma, a development, and a resolution all neatly wrapped into a 30 minutes package with some laughs thrown in for good measure. Here’s my list of the best of the best.

I Love Lucy

The granddaddy of all sitcoms. The one that established the rules by which we all live today. This is the one that established the three-camera standard that is the norm today. It was one of the first to be filmed in front of a live audience on high quality 35mm film, ensuring its preservation forever. We are eternally grateful for that.

Neither Ball nor Arnez needed the job — they were already at the height of their respective careers. And that let them take chances with the show, giving it a unique personality. Owning their own production studio helped, too. They were beholden to no one, only to the enjoyment of their fans.

WKRP in Cincinnati

Arthur thought turkeys could fly. And that pretty much sums up this ensemble farce.

One of the very best comedies to be cancelled at the height of its creativity. It was a true character study. Johnny, the washed-up stoned DJ. Les, the never-been-washed news guy. Venus, the nerdy teacher turned cool DJ. Herb, the slimy salesman. Bailey and Jennifer were a study in contrasts never seen since Mary Ann and Ginger. All presided over by the befuddled Mr. Carlson. And all revolving around loveable Andy, trying to make sense of it all.

It all fell together perfectly. Such an ensemble cast will never again be constructed. Nor should it be.

MASH

The Korean War lasted three years. MASH, the TV show, lasted eleven seasons.

But the MASH wasn’t about the war. In fact, the war was just one character in the series.

MASH was about love, pain, comedy, loss, farce, and everything in between. It was equally about the tragedies of war as the resilience of humanity. It was about distain for authority as well as the rule of order. It was about the weakness of man resulting in infidelity as well as the love of a man for his family.

MASH covered the entire spectrum of emotions and pathos. Who knew that a war could reveal so much about ourselves?

Mary Tyler Moore

Laura Petrie busted out of her capri pants and landed in Minneapolis as the naïve Mary Richards. She fell in love with Mr. Grant and he returned the favor, even though she could never call him “Lou”.

Over the years, the show evolved. Mary moved from the apartment with the kitchen on the left to an apartment with the kitchen on the right. Phyllis and Rhoda left for their own shows. Georgette and Sue Ann took their place. Ted never grew up. Murray never got a promotion.

And in the end, everybody was fired except for the goofball Ted. In the ultimate TV irony, everybody huddled, sang a song about Tipperary, and turned out the lights.

What’s missing?

I could have written about lots of other shows. Both of Bob Newhart’s hits. Andy Griffith. Dick Van Dyke. My Three Sons. And the trifecta of Green Acres, Petticoat Junction, and the Beverley Hillbillies. Each of those almost made my cut.

But two shows won’t be on my list. How could I miss writing about “Friends”? And what about “Seinfeld”?

Well, I would have had to have watched them, wouldn’t I? But I gave up television as a vast wasteland the same time that Bob Newhart woke up in bed with Suzanne Pleshette and realized his second series was just a bizarre dream. I’m sure television has produced a good sitcom since then. It just hasn’t been in front of my eyeballs.

My Blog Ranking

2007-10-09T06:00:00.000-06:00

Sometimes you get a particular piece of news and you just really don’t know what to think of it. That’s the dilemma I face today.

Technorati is the authority for tracking blogs on the World Wide Web. I mean the authority. Nobody tracks blogs like Technorati does.

The blog tracking business is specialized. Not just anybody can track blogs. Technorati does it by inviting bloggers all over the blogosphere to put a little snippet of code on their page. Every time the page is refreshed, a server at Technorati gets pinged and the blog is tracked. Not rocket science. But pretty cool.

Heck, when I first established my blog last year, I balanced the corner of a heavy book on the “refresh” key and left it there overnight, just to raise my blog ranking.

Well, it didn’t work. (I think they have filters for that kind of stuff, anyway.)

Anyway, I just checked my Technorati statistics. According to their web site, they track 108.5 million separate blogs. (That’s million, with an “M”. Not as impressive as a billion with a “B”. But a lotta blogs, nonetheless.) There’s a whole lotta bloggin’ goin’ on out thar!

Out of that 108.5 million, my ranking is, uhm, 1,803,855th.

That’s when the good news / bad news starts to sink in.

Let’s see. On the one hand, I’m in the 98th percentile. Gee, that’s good enough to get into just about any Ivy League school. I oughtta be proud.

My guess is that there are a whole lot of dead blogs out there. Because it looks like there are just about 100,000,000 of them that actually have lower readership than mine. And my readership is just about as low as the belly of a flat skunk on the center stripe of a country highway.

On the other hand, I have almost two million blogs that I have to leap-frog to get to that coveted number one position. (That rank is currently held by “Boing Boing” at www.boingboing.net, described as “a weblog of cultural curiosities and interesting technologies”.)

Heck, I have 800,000 blogs that I have to leap-frog to get to that coveted one million position!

I’m not going to fret too much about it. I pretty much write what’s on my mind. Some of it is actually good. And some of it can be used for bird-cage liner.

I’m going to write what I want. A few people are going to read it. I may get lucky and get a book deal some day. All I need are about a million of my friends to commit themselves to balance a heavy book on the refresh key.

I think I just saw a pig flying by my window. With a melting snowball in his mouth. Maybe there is a chance for me after all.

That Dreaded Season

2007-10-05T06:00:00.000-06:00

The Earth revolves around the sun once a year. And it rotates on its axis once a day. I’ve always had a problem with people who never can remember the difference between a “revolution” and a “rotation”. But that’s the subject for a different day.

The Earth’s axis is tilted at a 23.439281 degree angle. And therein lies my problem for today.

I live almost exactly half-way between the Equator and the North Pole. Around 40 degrees north latitude.

That means that here in the Kansas City area we have four seasons. Go a couple hundred miles north and they only have two. Go a couple hundred miles south and they only have one. But we have four.

And since it’s the first part of October, that means we’re coming up to the saddest season of all. It’s fall. Or autumn. It’s miserable enough that they thought it deserved two different names.

In my mind, “crisp” is just a euphemism for “cold”. There’s nothing “crisp” about this air. I like my crackers “crisp”. I like my air breathable.

It’s not that I don’t like autumn (or fall, whatever). I just think it’s sad. Summer is the time to get everything done. The yard gets mowed. The house gets painted. They play baseball. We go on vacation. Stuff happens. I like it.

Fall (or autumn, whatever) comes around and ruins everything. Suddenly I’m painfully aware of everything I didn’t get done over the summer. It’s a weird combination of a mad dash to get everything done and a sinking realization that it’s not going to happen.

The sun used to stay up until 8:30. I know it did. That’s about the time I have to flip on the headlights on my lawn tractor in July. And I still had a good hour of mowing time left. Now I can’t even get started mowing when I get home from work.

And don’t even get me started on the fact that we revert from Daylight Saving Time around this time of year. You lose a couple of minutes of daylight each day and then suddenly — BAM — a whole hour gets wiped out in one weekend. Depressing.

Holidays? Nope, just Halloween, that dreaded, stupid excuse for making your kids look ugly and cute at the same time so they can mooch candy from their neighbors. Each year I turn off my porch light and hang around the wholesale club until it’s all over. Pushing around a shopping cart full of five-gallon tubs of corn flakes was never so much fun. (Actually, there’s nothing as amusing as those institutional-size jars of mayonnaise.)

The only good thing about autumn (or fall, whatever) is that it’s only two seasons away from spring. Wake me up in time for Christmas. Then I’ll hibernate some more until March.

FactCheck Has Company

2007-08-29T06:00:00.000-06:00

You can measure the credibility of an organization by noting how much it’s interested in achieving its stated goal, rather than in taking credit for it.

For example, if an organization is dedicated to curing cancer, would it not rejoice if cancer was cured by a competing organization? Or would it try to discredit the cure, or inhibit the progress of finding the cure?

Moving from cancer to politics — not much of a stretch, actually — our collective hats go off to FactCheck.org, the arm of the Annenberg Foundation dedicated to keeping politicians honest, and to informing the public when they are less than so.

FactCheck.org rose to fame in the 2004 Vice Presidential Debate when Dick Cheney accidentally referred to them as FactCheck.com. Although a certain George Soros web site suddenly got a lot of hits, the confusion was cleared up the next day and I suddenly became a fan of this wonderful site.

It is the purpose of FactCheck.org (emphasis on the ORG!) to check on all the things that politicians say in public — both mundane and outlandish. When the outlandish is discovered, FactCheck.org (emphasis on the ORG!) rushes into action, publicly chastising the politician and setting the record straight. They are entirely non-partisan; Democrats and Republicans get equal treatment. They have no bones to pick; nothing to sell except the truth. It is truly American politics at its finest.

So I was pleasantly surprised when an email landed in my inbox from FactCheck.org (emphasis on — oh, I’m tired of that joke already) with the subject line, “We Have Company!”

That’s right FactCheck (dot whatever) is actually announcing the arrival of their competition. And, in true character with the organization, they couldn’t be happier.

The St. Petersburg Times has started a new web site, PolitiFact.com. (Yep, they’re a for-profit newspaper; dot-com is okay.)

Whereas FactCheck.org deals mostly in the hard truth (or fiction) of an item, PolitiFact.com attempts a little bit of qualitative judgment by assigning each item a “Truth-o-meter” rating. This unique 6-level scale rates each fact from “True” through “Half-True” all the way to “Pants on Fire!”

PolitiFact.org has been known to get slightly whimsical at times. Joe Biden’s comment that “The president is brain-dead” got an unmerciful “Pants on Fire!” rating, noting that brain death is defined as “irreversible unconsciousness with complete loss of brain function”. Gee, lighten up; I think a little poetic license in political rhetoric is acceptable.

But the point is that FactCheck.org welcomed the competition with open arms. Gotta give them credit for that. In a time where everybody is clambering for their share of the pie, FactCheck.org says the water’s fine, come on it.

FactCheck.org has always gotten my vote for their unbiased reporting and diligent quest for the truth. Once again, they have shown their true colors. They are more interested in getting the facts out there than they are in taking credit for it. And I admire them for that.

Mr. Baldwin’s Winter

2007-02-13T06:00:00.000-06:00

It’s been one of the warmest winters on record in New York. For the first time since 1877, no snow was recorded in New York City for the entire month of December.

Actor Alec Baldwin used the occasion to advance his personal liberal agenda. Writing in the Huffington Post blog, he said “All around us are signs of global climate change. And this Administration’s response is to send in more troops. If you don’t think there is a link between the weather and Iraq, you are wrong.”

Two weeks later, New York state was digging out of a record 100-inch snowfall.

Wow, I didn’t know George Bush was empowered to increase the world temperature by two degrees in a century, which somehow raised the temperature in New York to thirty degrees above the average, which in turn crystallized all the water in Lake Huron and dumped it on the Adirondacks.

Liberals and other global warming Chicken Littles fail to understand one basic concept of global climate science: the Earth’s temperature is not nearly as stable as they’d like it to be. And it never has been.

But their hatred of George Bush and anything capitalistic and entrepreneuristic blinds their better judgment into believing that a war on the other side of the world causes hurricanes on this side. (They literally salivated at the prospect of another Katrina last year and were publicly disappointed when the Atlantic went an entire season without depositing one significant tropical depression on our shores.)

The 10th through 14th centuries were warmer than “average”, which gave rise to the term “Medieval Warm Period”. That was followed in the 16th to 19th centuries by a period of cooler than “average” temperatures, now known as the “Little Ice Age”. What comes next? Yep, warmer temperatures. Duh.

This is in spite of the scare that we all endured in the 1970s of the threat of “Global Cooling”. Remember the Nuclear Winter that we were all going to face because of the carbon emissions of the time? Now those same carbon emissions are being blamed for a warming trend.

Guys, the main source of the heat of the Earth is the sun. The sun gets warmer, the temperature goes up. The sun gets cooler, the temperature goes down. It’s a big, big sun. Really, big. That means that it has a rhythm, but it’s a very, very slow rhythm. It takes it a long time to get a few degrees warmer and then a few degrees cooler.

Accurate temperature records measured with mercury thermometers were virtually non-existent before 1880. If a weather station moves across town (as it has in recent years in Los Angeles and Kansas City) the “average” temperature can fluctuate by ten degrees or more. You can plant a tree near a thermometer and lower its temperature reading. Or you can build a sidewalk near it and raise it. But none of those events have global impact.

You can count all the tree rings you want to, but nobody could have measured the temperature five hundred years ago with the accuracy of today.

And what of Mr. Baldwin’s snowless New York? Well, it’s the warmest winter in New York since 1877. Oh gee, Alec, I guess that means it was warmer 130 years ago than it is today. Are you going to blame that winter on George Bush, too?

The Richification of America’s Poor

2007-02-12T08:00:00.000-06:00

It is a well-established fact that the poorest of America’s poor is wealthy when compared to the poor of most other countries. But that fact is lost on liberals who depend on the poor for their political survival. The constant redefinition of “poor” is the very foundation from where they derive their power.

In the thirty-one years between 1973 and 2004, the U.S. Census Bureau tells us that the percentage of people in America living in poverty “grew” from 11.1% to 12.7%. Did that mean that the billions of dollars spent on raising people from the depths of poverty has been wasted? Nope. It just means that the liberal egghead bureaucrats have done a great job of raising the poverty level each year to make sure a sufficient number of citizens fail to clear the limbo bar of prosperity.

Senator Ted Kennedy likes to refer to those “poor” as people who “go to bed hungry each night”. He and his fellow liberal legislators fail to understand the basic principle of algebra that says that if you define the bottom ten percent of your population as “poor”, then about ten percent of your population will always be, uhm, poor. Duh.

Let’s look at some facts about America’s poor that the think tank Hoover Institute uncovered.

Half of all households under the poverty level has cable television and at least two television sets. A fourth of them own a personal computer. Most of them own a vcr or dvd player.

Friends of mine who teach school tell me of students on free lunch programs wearing hundred-dollar designer tennis shoes and sporting fully-loaded iPods and GameBoys.

Half a century of Great Society reforms has bred a generation of sponges that take pride in beating the system while living in a luxury that the richest citizens of most third-world countries could only dream of.

How do we stop such abuses while still providing an adequate safety net for those who are truly needy? I think the answer lies in the numeration of the luxuries of those receiving aid. I propose a simple plan. With a little tweaking, it just might work.

In my plan, certain “luxuries” would be denied to those receiving federal aid. Simply put, if you are receiving food stamps or Medicaid or welfare payments, there are some things that you simply cannot buy.

For example, nobody receiving federal could subscribe to cable tv. Period. Cable providers would be required to submit a list of their subscribers to federal agencies who would match them against lists of recipients of certain federal programs. A letter would be sent to all households that match. They’d be given a simple choice: tv or federal money. You can’t have both.

Same for cellular phones. You want a phone? Give up your monthly check.

It wouldn’t have to stop there. Why should they be able to rent movies? No Blockbuster or Netflix memberships for these people. If they want to watch a movie, they can relinquish their government subsidy.

Magazines? Nope. There is no need for the poor to read TV Guide, Reader’s Digest, Playboy, National Inquirer. None of them. In my system they could have their choice: magazines or a check from the government. But not both.

Things like magazine subscriptions and cable service and Blockbuster membership — those would be easy to enforce. But heck, I honestly believe that the technology exists to prevent individual purchases, too.

Purchases of any shoes over fifty dollars would be off-limits to welfare recipients, if I had my way. The same goes for ice cream, grocery store bakeries, fine deli meats, and sugar-ladened breakfast cereal. And certainly no alcohol or tobacco products.

Entire stores would be off their list. They wouldn’t be able to buy anything from Starbucks, Crate & Barrel, or any department store fancier than JC Penney’s.

I think it’d be a good idea to force at least 80% of their purchases to come from Wal-Mart. Well, maybe Wal-Mart and Target.

Please understand that I believe in a capitalistic society where everybody should be buy what they want to and shop where it suits them. It’s not my intent to actually deny anybody any freedom. But when you accept federal money, you need to check your capitalism at the door.

I think everybody should have a right to buy all the fine things in life. I just don’t want them to do it with my money.