The Happy Slave

Electing LEADERS?

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

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

It's about time.

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

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

EVERYBODY PANICCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why have liberals gone down the toilet?

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

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

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

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

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

Is Congress growing a pair?

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

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

And watch the rats backpedal.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tar, feathers, a rail.

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

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

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

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

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

Israel's anti-terror policy WORKS.

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

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

Matter resolved

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

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

"Education" for the convenience of the bureaucracy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We'll see how this pans out.

More stupid politician tricks!

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

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

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

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

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

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

The priviliged press vs. the truth

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

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

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

Idealists make bad leaders

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The life police will arrest Mr. Brown soon.

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

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

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

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

Hatred for mothers.

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

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

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

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

Cutting your own throat.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Race war?

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

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

Democrat == Fascist

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

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

Damned lies, statistics, and gasoline prices

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They are simply not human.

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

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

Guests are not family!

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

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

Four philosophies of life.

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

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

Color the Federal Government "Fascist"

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cooper makes an admission.

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

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

Scoring the cards some more.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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