GOP litmus test: How'd you do?

So what's this GOP litmus test all about?

This is pulled directly from MSNBC, and run verbatim. The link within the text is in downloadable, .pdf format in case you're interested:

The "Resolution on Reagan’s Unity Principle for Support of Candidates" outlines 10 conservative principles the group of signees wants potential candidates to abide by. The principles include support for:

(1) Smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s “stimulus” bill
(2) Market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run healthcare;
(3) Market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation;
(4) Workers’ right to secret ballot by opposing card check
(5) Legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;
(6) Victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;
(7) Containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat
(8) Retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;
(9) Protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion; and
(10) The right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership

"President Ronald Reagan believed, as a result, that someone who agreed with him 8 out of 10 times was his friend, not his opponent," the resolution states.

OK. I got most of them, though not enough to be Ronnie's friend. But that's OK, I'm not running for anything.

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You tell me: How did you fare on this litmus test? Are you going to run for office? Would you care to use the comments section to announce it?

GOP trying to restrain its rogue elephants

I don't know if they're trying to clean up the party or just pass around the Kool-Aid, but the GOP is trying to cull those who aren't "one of them" from those who are.

Understandable, because the John McCains and Lindsey Grahams of this world are, well, they dress like Republicans but few are really sure who they are.

Future candidates may have a litmus test to determine where they're coming from, and the gold standard by which Republicans may be judged is none other than Ronald Reagan. The party drafted 10 questions to ask each candidate during the vetting process, and a failing grade (in this case fewer than eight out the 10 questions) is likely to cost them funding and endorsements.

Guys like McCain and Graham (who represents South Carolina in the Senate) are sure failures in the political quiz. As are a majority of the party's office holders, I'll wager. But Graham in particular is being branded as a RINO, Republican In Name Only, for his stances on health care and illegal immigration.

Which makes sense on the surface, but the party may be shooting itself in the foot here. Columnist Kathleen Parker calls the litmus test a "suicide pact."

The ultralib Daily Kos is having fun with this one, and one of its writers, in a tongue-in-cheek article, suggested its own litmus test for Democrats:

... out of pure bullet-point envy, I propose that Democrats must also have their own list. Ten litmus tests which every potential Democratic candidate should be able to ace before they ever hope to put (D) after their names. In fact, I'll go so far as to be more pure than the Republicans. If you can't pass every one of these tests, don't bother to sign on ...

Some of the Kos points include:

... (1) We support the rights extended to Americans extended under the Constitution. All the rights. For all Americans ...

I can't say I recollect the Democrats ever being all fired-up over the Constitution, but that's a separate rant. Let's move on:

... (5) We support American business, and recognize that an unregulated market is an unfair market, an unstable market, and a market doomed to failure ...

I'm trying to ignore the contradiction in that statement. To continue:

... (9) We believe that access to our government is not for sale. Not in the courthouse, not in the White House, and not in the legislature ...

Two words for y'all: BILL CLINTON! As in, Lincoln Bedroom. Remember?

To be sure, the conservative (Reagan) wing of the party really didn't have any muscles to flex until 1980. Before that, Barry Goldwater was the lone "real" conservative in a party that would surely flunk the litmus test today. And Goldwater was considered dangerous, a bomb-thrower, and not politically correct anyway. But after Reagan, there were few "real" conservatives to be had in the party -- surely not Bush Sr. or Jr. You'd have to drill deep among the also-rans in the 2008 primary to find one in Mike Huckabee, and even he's a little suspect.

To look at the GOP's history over the past 50 years, Reagan was the aberration. The party itself, well, it was hard to tell them from the other guys a lot of the time.

While it's nice to develop some sense of unity and identity, it's a real mistake to treat the party as a private club. In all its attempts to seek definition, the party will completely kiss off all the independents who are a better fit on that side of the two-party system. While they're about it, they might as well save time and concede the 2010 and 2012 elections right now. The party's in serious trouble right now; you don't fix that by narrowing your scope.

Let's say (purely hypothetical here; there's no way I'd even consider doing such a thing -- I'm already considered a loose cannon in some circles) I decided to run for Congress. Let's say it'll be in one of those nonexistent districts that were created by the recovery.gov website in the stimulus. There's no way I'm gonna pass that litmus test, though my politics are certainly closer to the Republicans than the Democrats. So I might as well forget about funding, endorsements, etc. The GOP wants a Reagan clone, and that ain't me.

See, I told you this is a stupid scenario.

More intelligent (now that's a stretch) voters are more likely to look at the candidate instead of the party. Anyone who goes into the booth on election day and chooses his candidate solely by the presence of a "D" or "R" beside the name isn't smart enough to vote anyway.

I've suggested this before. The two-party system is one of those things that was a real good idea at the time, outlived its usefulness, and is still hanging around searching for relevance. Sort of like the electoral college.

OK. So who's an elephant these days? And who's a RINO?

Eleph-ino.

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Going paperless is possible, but is it practical?

How much has technology changed our lives?

I saw an indication when reading John Grisham's latest legal thriller, The Associate. There's an exchange between two old college buddies, Kyle and Joey. Kyle is under surveillance (part of the story, of course), so he goes to old-school methods to contact his buddy ... like writing a letter. Joey answers:

"What's with the snail mail? Your handwriting really sucks ... my hand is aching and I feel like such an old fart writing with ink."

It sounds left-field futuristic, but we are moving toward a paperless society, bit by bit. I guess you can say fewer trees are being killed to cover our daily needs, but a lot more electrons are dying in agony.

A productivity blog called Dumb Little Man recently ran a piece about steps one can take to eliminate paper use in his or her life. And while I'm using a lot less paper these days, I'm not completely paperless. Nor do I plan to be.

I haven't owned a printer in years. It's not moved any higher on my shopping list, either. The last time I owned a printer, I went through a ream of paper every month or two. Most of that printing was unnecessary, now that I think about it. About the only things I need to print now are my resume (a factor now that I'm in job-search mode), charts to songs I'm learning, the occasional letter, and that's about it. If I need to get something printed I can put the photos on a thumb drive and get that done anywhere.

Here's where Jay Scarrozzo, who wrote the DLM piece, suggests technology can take the place of paper:

- Books: DLM is big on the idea of ebooks and their offshoots. If you have something like an Amazon Kindle, you can load some 1,500 full-length books onto your handheld device and take it with you. I understand you can even download the Kindle software onto your laptop and save a step there. A whole lot less paper, no clutter, no bookshelves ...

... you can have it.

I do have a few books loaded on my computers -- mostly old ones from the free Project Gutenberg site -- but I can't get interested in a full conversion to electronic reading. I like the weight of a book in my lap. I like the feel and smell of the paper. The mere act of turning the page of a really good book is like opening another gift. I can shove a bookmark wherever I want and do something else -- like read another book. I'll often have three books going at a time; does that make me ADHD?

When I read, I'm a big annotator and use high-lighter pens liberally, which are habits that don't lend themselves well to electronic books.

So while I find the idea of e-book readers intriguing, they're for other people.
- Magazines: I don't have many at all, and I used to be a big magazine reader. I can go on line to get most of that information, and the magazine industry is dying even faster than newspaper publishing.
- Newspapers: That used to be a daily habit, and back then I'd get two or three of them -- one for local news and one for national. But somewhere I skipped the next logical step, going to the newspaper's web site for my daily fix. Today, I RSS everything. My daily news feeds include the New York Times, Reuters, Associated Press, the local newspapers,and just about everything else. The last newspaper I bought was 10 days ago, and I know that because it's still on the couch, half-read. But folded neatly.

- Sticky notes: Dumb Little Man suggests using your smart phone (for those who have one) or even the notepad feature on your regular cell phone (that's for the rest of us rabble). All phones have that feature now, but by the time I find my electronic notepad, get to it, and start typing on the keypad, I've already got it down on a real index card. Pass. I have experimented with some Web services that will take a phoned-in note and transcribe it into text, and while there's a geekiness factor there, I'd rather have my million-dollar idea down on paper.
- Notepads: Here's another area where you're not going to see me change much. While I do most of my writing -- including first drafts and outlines -- on a computer, I still rough out ideas on a legal pad. I'm also big on making lists and writing little notes to myself, and I always have my Hipster PDA (nothing more than a bunch of index cards held together with a binder clip; the ultimate in understated cool) with me.

- Bills: I get one, from the electric company. But they also send me a paper bill at the same time, so there's no change in the amount of paper used.

- Checks: I write two a month, for rent and for my electric bill, and I have the folks at the bank do that. I can't remember when I last wrote an actual check, but it's not because I've gone high tech. In fact, I went the other way. Nothing beats cash.

So I'm using less paper than I used to. I notice it in my waste stream. I only need to bring my trash can out for pickup every couple of weeks, unless I just cleaned out the fridge. But I'm noticing I'm less of a pack rat than I used to be, because there's less to pack. My desk actually has some clear spots on it. I have a small work table in my living room, and there are a few things piled on it:

- Three books
- Bottle of water
- Two 5x8 legal pads. One carries notes on a couple of songs I'm arranging.
- One 8x11 clipboard, holding brochures for the local college.
- A pair of pliers. It still escapes me why they're there.
- Receipts I've already entered on my spreadsheet. Why don't I throw 'em out already?
- Two miniature, pocket-sized composition books.
- Sheet music -- some bound, some loose.
- Several pens and high-lighters.
- Shoot, there's even room for a cup of coffee, as long as I'm real careful.

Let's not even look at my bookcase, OK? And I'm not even going to get into hard-disk clutter. Not even going to go there.

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Photo by burgermac. If you look hard enough under all that paper, you can tell that's a MacIntosh under there.

hipster PDA
wikipedia = RSS

RWEYSWS57JR6 - for Technorati -E

RWEYSWS57JR6 - for Technorati
-E

On The Workbench: Chrome OS will leave mark but not kill Windows

(Posted in The Workbench, Reloaded)

It won't be ready for the general public for another year, but the sneak preview of the Google Chrome OS is generating quite a buzz.

It may be a Windows-killer, some claim. It'll put Linux on the map, say others. It'll be a fiasco, say still more pundits. So far, nobody's neutral.

Google Chrome, built from the Debian GNU/Linux operating system (which I've always liked), is designed for the ultralight, ultracheap netbooks that are not really built for much more than Web browsing and lightweight office work. And the Chrome system is really little more than a front end for "cloud computing" ... [more]

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Steering wheel tabletop for the multitasker who has everything

There's always someone on your Christmas shopping list who is guaranteed to stump you. I'm talking about the person who already has everything, right?

I found this in the mentalfloss blog, and wasn't even sure this was real. Can't be. But the Laptop Steering Wheel Desk might be just the thing to give this year.

This cool item is a little tabletop you can attach to your vehicle’s steering wheel, and it creates a level space to do anything you might need a level space for.

But when I wrote this, Amazon had 326 reviews for this product. Mentalfloss writer Miss Cellania related some of her favorites in her blog entry, and here's one:

... I am a Pathologist in Riverside County California and the Laptop Steering Wheel Desk has changed my life. I used to spend long hours in the autopsy room and had too much time away from my family. With this new tool I am able to dissect the organs of a patient during my commute home ...

OK, I grew up in Riverside County, and I can attest that not all of us are freakos.

Then there's the review -- I'm not making this up -- from a dope dealer who loves his steering wheel tabletop because it allows him to ply his trade without having to hire a runner. I tell you what, some of these reviews are classic.

On its face, the whole thing sounds kind of pet-rockish. Why do you you even need something like this?

I can see some uses for this item. During my taxi driving days, my office was behind the wheel. I kept a manifest of all my trips, plus I always had a few other things cooking. Between calls I'd do some writing, arrange some music, or make some phone calls. I'd always have two or three notebooks lying around, a clipboard or two, a briefcase, a couple of books, a newspaper, my lunch, and a travel mug of coffee. Plus my cell phone, charger, handheld computer, and a folding keyboard for that. Trying to keep all that stuff neat was a real chore, and it wasn't good for my legs and back to work while slumped in the driver's seat.

But maybe its allure is a little behind the curve of society. It seems our multi-track fast-lane culture is giving way to something a lot simpler. I'm reading lots of articles suggesting that multitasking is on its way out, that you really don't get anything done when you've got 15 things going at the same time. Which is true, by the way. Like it or not, multitasking is a moral weakness.

But if you feel your time in the vehicle is dead time, you might want to take a look at this item. Just don't use it while you're driving, and we'll all be OK.

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I wonder he there's a

I wonder he there's a Falcon Heene balloon at the Macy's parade?
-E

Hear tell a guy in

Hear tell a guy in New Hampshire is running for Congress in one of those nonexistent districts. They need representation too.
-E

My choice for 2009 Turkey

My choice for 2009 Turkey Of The Year is (drum roll) GOV. MARK SANFORD. Who's yours?
-E

It's been 90 days since

It's been 90 days since Obama was asked to send more troops to Afghanistan. The war may end before he does something.
-E

North Charleston (where I live)

North Charleston (where I live) is now 22nd most dangerous place to live. Beats last year's 10th, anyway.
-E

Note to Maj. Nidal Hasan's

Note to Maj. Nidal Hasan's lawyer: Being a nutjob is NOT the same as being legally insane.
-E

North Charleston (where I live)

North Charleston (where I live) is now 22nd most dangerous place to live. Beats last year's 10th, anyway.
-E

SC Gov. Mark Sanford accused

SC Gov. Mark Sanford accused of 37 ethics violations in report released today. Still sounds like mental breakdown to me.
-E

Ground broken for new Boeing

Ground broken for new Boeing plant here in Charleston today. Trust me, that wasn't StimuPork.
-E

Anyone placing bets on when

Anyone placing bets on when Oprah makes her comeback? Methinks she won't stay gone long. Two years, tops.
-E

Happy 81st, Mickey!

Vintage Mickey, from 1929. I hear tell he's still holding his age well.

Obama: Spending could create double-dip recession

Forget about trying to get a read on the economy these days. Some indications say it's recovering, while others say it's spinning clockwise in the drain.

But Barack Obama, of all people, is warning about the possibility of a double-dip recession -- the kind that recovers for a few minutes only to plunge back down again. A double dip, just like you'd see on a graph.

According to the Associated Press, he's "worried that spending too much money to help revive the economy could undermine a fragile U.S. recovery and throw the economy into a double-dip recession."

OK. His administration has squandered $787 billion on a stimulus package that isn't working, except maybe in congressional districts that don't exist. They're playing with a health care package with a cost in the trillion-dollar range (which makes the price tag on the Senate version of the bill look like a blue-eyed bargain at $849 billion). There's scuttlebutt that a second stimulus package may be in the offing.

And he's worried about spending?

Fasten your seat belt. It's gonna be a bumpy ride.

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Some reasons to avoid H1N1 vaccine are better than others

I'm stubborn. I'm still not getting my H1N1 flu shot. And it looks like a lot of people are with me there.

Like more than half the population. I'm getting my numbers from a CNN poll:

According to the poll, 55 percent of adults don't want to get the swine flu vaccine, and don't plan to get a shot. Another one in five say they want to get inoculated but haven't taken any steps to do so, 14 percent want a shot and have tried to get it but have been unsuccessful. Just 7 percent have been inoculated for H1N1.

H'mmm. Interesting, yes?

I have my own reasons for avoiding the needle. I've never had a flu shot, and I don't plan to start now. If I get some sort of flu -- which I get every few years, I usually let it run its course, dose myself with vitamin C, slam down a bunch of juice and water, gobble aspirin, pile the blankets on top of me, and sweat it out by force. Then I'm done with that for the year; I usually don't get sick again.

I've known too many people who got sick off a flu shot -- basically it's an innoculation, which introduces a small (controlled, they say) amount of the virus into your system so you can build up your antibodies. Taking the longer view, it's an effective way to go -- that was how we essentially wiped out smallpox. But thinking short-range, when that sample of the flu virus is injected into your system, what your body does with it is sometimes a crapshoot.

So, no flu shot for me. Rather than burden my body with what is basically a false alarm, I'd rather it raise up the antibodies as needed, legions and legions of them, and stamp that flu out like ... well, like a disease. That's my strategy, and I'm sticking to it.

Here's how CNN interprets its findings:

"The perception that the vaccine has dangerous side effects is the top reason," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "Roughly half of those who don't want a swine flu shot say that the possibility of side effects is one reason why they don't plan to get the vaccine. That works out to 28 percent of the adult population who don't plan to get inoculated due to the risk of dangerous side effects."

While the H1N1 (the bug formerly known as Swine Flu) seems to be a particularly nasty virus, all indications show it won't be any more deadly than your standard-issue flu that strikes every year.

I wrote this last month:

According to the CDC (I got these numbers from the World Almanac), various influenza viruses will hospitalize 200,000 and kill about 36,000 people in the United States every year. That's every year.

But these are good, sound reasons for someone to avoid the flu shot. I've heard some really crazy reasons, too. Ready to hear one?

Good. It seems that a famous Croatian priest, Miroslav Bustruk, is saying the H1N1 vaccine carries a microchip.

Don't give me any trouble, OK? While I may have a good imagination, I can't make this stuff up. But here's the story from Macedonia Online:

“I appeal to you, to not get vaccinated for the so called Swine Flu under any circumstance. There is a plan for massive destruction of humanity worldwide. For this purpose we will see new diseases springing up everywhere” reports Croatian daily “Jutarnji List”, quoting father Bustruk. “The H1N1 vaccine itself is a very sophisticated weapon whose implanted microchip will control the health of the human being” added the Croatian priest which prompted a great deal of disagreement by Croatian officials ...

Did y'all get that? Implanted microchip? While I've been accused of harboring some pretty strange ideas (comes with the territory when you write a blog), this one's a little goofy even for me. The ol' microchip-in-the-flu-vaccine trick isn't on my list of favorite conspiracies.

For the record: I ain't skeered of no flu bug, and I ain't skeered of no microchip. Got that?

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HHS head Sebelius says mammogram

HHS head Sebelius says mammogram call not set in stone. I'm still not changing what I wrote about that.
-E

Mammogram recommendation a sneak peek at medical rationing

The ObamaLosi health care package has not cleared its approval process yet, and indications are that it may be scuttled by the Senate. But, it appears medical rationing is already in effect.

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, an arm of the federal Department of Health and Human Services, now says annual mammograms do more harm than good for women in their 40s, and that the once-recommended self-inspection is worthless.

No matter what the so-called scientific objections are to back the task force up, it all boils down to dollars and cents. Mammograms aren't cheap.

Time to get personal here. Some years ago my then-wife -- still in her late 30s -- detected a lump in her breast. A mammogram showed it was there, and an ultrasound pinpointed it. She went in for a biopsy (where the lump was removed), and it proved to be benign -- fibroids, it turned out. Very scary time in the household for a few weeks. To be honest, I could have handled it better on my end. I was trying (unsuccessfully) to put on a calm front during the crisis. All the emotional stuff that came with it, well, I kept it to myself. I didn't tell anybody, but I felt like improvising a song about it when it was over.

The sole point of my story is that, yes, cancer is an issue with the sub-50 crowd. For a task force of so-called experts to say there's nothing to worry about, well, it doesn't make any sense until you crank in the dollars-and-cents issue.

Call me crazy, but I see this as a preparatory step to universal (i.e. government) health care. Discount the validity of certain procedures, tell the public they're not necessary, and cut costs that way. Like it or not, it's a sneak peek at how health care will be rationed.

Shoot, health care under our current insurance system is screwed up enough. But get the federal government in the picture, things get from bad to worse in a hurry.

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Stimulus will create jobs -- to fix its own screwups

Have you checked out recovery.gov, the government's site tracking how many jobs are saved/created under the $787 billion stimulus package?

Check it out. It's either outrageously funny, or real scary.

According to the site, the stimulus saved or created 30 jobs in Arizona's 15th Congressional district, at a cost of $761,420. Great trick, as there is no 15th District there.

The site also points out success stories in nonexistent districts in Connecticut, and several other states.

From ABC News:

Late Monday, officials with the Recovery Board created to track the stimulus spending, said the mistakes in crediting nonexistent congressional districts were caused by human error ... “We report what the recipients submit to us,” said Ed Pound, Communications Director for the Board ... “Some recipients clearly don’t know what congressional district they live in, so they appear to be just throwing in any number. We expected all along that recipients would make mistakes on their congressional districts, on jobs numbers, on award amounts, and so on. Human beings make mistakes.”

See, this stimulus is truly a miraculous piece of legislation.

I understand the web site will be fixed at a cost of at least $9 million. But the good news is, repairing the data will create -- guess what? -- some jobs.

Now, that's a stimulus success story.

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(Photo: Your tax dollars are working hard for you in Arizona's 15th Congressional District. Oh ... actually this is the California Conservation Corps, taken last March. By Chris Pizzello/AP Photo)

Is anyone taking Woody Harrelson seriously?

What a strange society we live in. We love our bread and circuses, and don't give a rip about real-life issues.

And when a celebrity says something, we're more likely to give it credence than if Joe Lunchmeat says it.

I have to admit, I have a few "star-power" types I pay attention to. I always thought ex-basketball star Charles Barkley was a hoot, like when he recently said he may run for Governor of Alabama and said even he couldn't screw that place up.

But actor Woody Harrelson recently spoke with a Salon.com writer Andrew O'Hehir, and said that while JFK was the last great president we've had, Jimmy Carter was "pretty great."

Huh? The Jimmy Carter? The guy who oversaw a rare economic triple-double (double figures in interest rates, inflation, and unemployment)? The one who sat on his hands while the Iranians held hostages, and eventually launched a helicopter attack that would have been laughable if the situation wasn't so serious?

Yeah. That Jimmy Carter.

One must consider the source. Ol' Woody has been huge on loosening our marijuana laws, and has admitted to smoking a number or three every so often. Maybe the stuff really does distort one's perceptions. Uhh, cool, man ...

But enough of that. Let's go to the horse's ... uhh, mouth:

"Obama has the chance of becoming JFK or LBJ. I think JFK was one of our last great presidents, although I thought Carter was pretty great too. LBJ could have been a great president if he hadn't gotten bogged down in war, but that was quite a war to get bogged down in."

And about Obama?

"I think there's a lot of persuasive and powerful people around Obama. For a president to make his own decisions, I think that's a rarity. Even someone who we think of as our guy -- this is a guy with integrity, a guy who cares, for the first time in a long time -- in the Oval Office, even with him we don't really know who's pulling the strings. I think of every president as being a marionette. Whether he's any different, I don't know. Certainly his military advisors all want him to prosecute this war to the end, just as they did in Vietnam with LBJ."

I wonder if anyone's taking Woody seriously? And I wonder what Charles Barkley thinks of it all?

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Biden motorcade = Runs with scissors.
~ E

So Obama doesn't tweet; what's the problem?

Apparently Barack Obama isn't the twit people like to think he is.

He's one of the most popular users of the microblogging Twitter service, with 2.6 million followers on his account, but whoever sends out those tweets under his name, it's not him.

Obama has his name on one Twitter account, @BarackObama, which is run by Organizing for America, his political arm which is now operated out of the Democratic National Committee. The other account is @WhiteHouse, which was first set up to send out news about H1N1. @BarackObama has 2,678,464 followers and @WhiteHouse has 1,455,965 followers.

"My thumbs are too clumsy to type things in on the phone," he told students at Shanghai. I can relate to that. I'm of an older generation, one which uses fingers (all of them) to type.

This shouldn't be that much of a surprise. Presidents don't write their own speeches; they have a stable of writers to do that work. Staff handles communications for the president, and probably from your local congressman. That lovely note you got from your senator probably flowed from the pen of an anonymous staffer. So there's no scandal there.

Actually, I'd rather the President spend his time doing his job than waste it on social media. Well, considering it's Obama, let me rephrase that. Let's give him a plug-in keyboard big enough to type on, and he can Twitter all day long.

What's interesting is that the tech-savvy Obama, who is never without his Blackberry (crackberry?) admitted he'd never Twittered. At all. Again, so?

Still, there's disillusionment, particularly among the Chinese students in the audience. Their country has seen a crackdown in social media use, including Twitter.

You might as well blast Santa Claus out of the sky by a heat-seeking missile. Splatter the Easter Bunny all over the road with an SUV.

From TechCrunch:

... this is interesting considering the Internet, and social media in particular, was considered a large part of his ascension to the Presidency. Obviously, he had a killer team around him that was able to embrace the web without the then-Senator getting too much involved. Still, it’s somewhat surprising that he never sent any of his own tweets during the primaries. And undoubtedly part of us wants to believe that when you see tweets like “This is history,” which was sent on November 7 — or “Humbled” after he won the Nobel Peace Prize in October, that’s it could the President really sending it. Nope ...

OK, so who's sending out those tweets? Rahm Emmanuel?

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(Photo: Barack Obama checks his Crackberry during a campaign swing last year. He uses this device for everything except tweeting.)

Online "divorce" becomes Word Of The Year

"Unfriend" shouldn't even be a word. I's a horrendous mashup, created by the impossible-to-ignore social media scene. But it's big enough to be chosen Oxford Dictionary's Word Of The Year.

In the Facebook sense, "unfriend" is a verb, as is "friend." To friend someone is to, well, add him to your social media network, make him your friend. To unfriend him, therefore, means you're telling him to stuff it. It means a Facebook divorce is in the works.

Like in high school, the number of friends you have is all-important, and popularity is the coin of the realm. If you play the social media game correctly, then, you'll have friends numbering in the thousands.

My thought: Who has that many friends?

Simple. "Friend" is diluted to the point it means nothing.

I never could get my brain wrapped around that aspect of social media. I guess I define "friend" as something different than the average Facebook or Myspace user does.

Now, in Twitter you have followers. OK. That makes sense. I may follow a band, I may follow the works of a writer, but it's pretty presumptuous to say we're friends. And it's just as easy to unfollow (yes, that has suddenly become a word) someone as it is to follow him.

To give an idea of how cheap friends are these days, my own Twitter account has about 140 followers. Which on one hand sounds like a lot, but in Twitter it's pretty paltry. And quite a few of these followers are not people I'd care about. Some would not be allowed in my house. But that's OK. They're just reading my musings, not having dinner with me.


To "unfriend" someone has got to mean something. Or maybe not. You'd have to do something really bad to be unfriended, unless the unfriending one is merely purging the friend roll. But since the number is so important, why would he want to do that?


I have a group of friends that get together once or twice a week for dinner. Guitars and keyboards will come out at some point during our get-togethers, and we'll do a little living-room picking. We do things as a group -- camping trips and things like that. We discuss what's bugging us, and we watch one another's tails in this mean ole world. Now, these are friends.

Then there are payday friends. These are the folks who turn up right after you get paid, and they always seem to want something. When they get paid, you never see them.

Now you have Facebook friends. Individually they mean nothing; it's the number that's important. But despite my criticism, social media is cool anyway. Some folks I've "met" that way have graduated to become actual flesh-and-blood friends. Nothing wrong with that.

Social media and our plugged-in world gave us a few other "words" that merited attention from the Oxford editors:

Hashtag - Also known as #hashtag in Twitterese. That's a function that brings a little organization to the overloaded morass that is Twitter. Tweeters will inject a hashtag to make it searchable, so one can build a live feed. Unfortunately, there's no set standard there, and not everyone uses these tags. If I wanted to do a search or feed of posts dealing with all the disorganized crap that's on that microblogging service, I can use #twitteranarchy. Or not.

Sexting - You've probably heard about this; where young people -- too young to really think about stuff like that -- send photos of a sexual nature to others via cell phone. Usually photos of themselves, thereby cheapening themselves even more than before.

Paywall - A for-pay subscription to something online, like a newspaper. You can only get so far into one of these sites, and to get past the paywall you need to dig out the credit card again.

Here are some more, from Oxford University Press:

Economy

freemium – a business model in which some basic services are provided for free, with the aim of enticing users to pay for additional, premium features or content

funemployed – taking advantage of one’s newly unemployed status to have fun or pursue other interests

zombie bank – a financial institution whose liabilities are greater than its assets, but which continues to operate because of government support

Politics and Current Affairs

Ardi – (Ardipithecus ramidus) oldest known hominid, discovered in Ethiopia during the 1990s and announced to the public in 2009

birther – a conspiracy theorist who challenges President Obama’s birth certificate

choice mom – a person who chooses to be a single mother

death panel – a theoretical body that determines which patients deserve to live, when care is rationed

teabagger -a person, who protests President Obama’s tax policies and stimulus package, often through local demonstrations known as “Tea Party” protests (in allusion to the Boston Tea Party of 1773)

Environment

brown state – a US state that does not have strict environmental regulations

green state – a US state that has strict environmental regulations

ecotown - a town built and run on eco-friendly principles

Novelty Words

deleb – a dead celebrity

tramp stamp – a tattoo on the lower back, usually on a woman

###

They Vote & Reproduce: The call was free, anyway

Somehow I keep flashing back to that great Ray Stevens song, "It's Me Again Margaret," about the obscene phone caller who got arrested and used his one phone call to do some more heavy breathing. But this one's real.

A 29-year-old named Joshua Basso placed his obscene phone call to ... the 911 dispatch center in Tampa, Florida. Repeatedly. He made sexual comments to the dispatcher and asked if he could come by for sex.

From the Associated Press:

Tampa police said 29-year-old Joshua Basso made sexual comments to the 911 dispatcher and asked if he could come to her house. Investigators say she hung up, but he called back four more times ... he was arrested about 15 minutes later at his home late Wednesday and charged with making a false 911 call. Basso reportedly told officers that he didn't think he would get in trouble for calling 911.

Was the dispatcher that drop-dead hot?

Doesn't matter. Basso said he called 911 because ... he ran out of minutes on his cell phone, and the emergency number was the only one he could call.

###

Strippermobile too much for Sin City

Anything goes in Vegas, it's said. Anything that happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

Think about it. Gambling has been Vegas' calling card for nearly a century. Quickie weddings and divorces used to be a cottage industry. Prostitution, while illegal in Clark County (unlike the rest of the state) was winked at regardless. Casinos were ruled by a bunch of guys with last names ending in vowels, and now they're run by giant corporations. Jerry Tarkanian coached the local college basketball team for many years. I tell you, Vegas is a whole different world.

So, something would have to be totally outrageous to offend the citizens of Sin City.

Like hauling strippers around to advertise a club. This is from Newser:

A Las Vegas strip club has agreed to stop an advertising promotion that involved hauling bikini-clad exotic dancers around in a truck. Larry Beard, marketing director of Déjà Vu Showgirls, said today he's taking his lawyer's advice and parking the truck. "We're going to respect the opinion of the folks...

Hey, the town has a reputation to uphold.

###

Woman runs charade for plastic surgery

What a lot of women wouldn't do for a statuesque figure ... Trista Joy Lathern from Texas went so far as to pose as a breast cancer victim.

It worked, for a while. She raised more than $10,000 for breast cancer treatment, then spent $6,800 of it for a boob job.

Except she didn't have breast cancer. And her efforts may get her jail time for a charge of theft by deception.

Got to give Lathern credit for great acting, or at least for trying. To match her story that she was getting chemotherapy, she shaved her head.

MSNBC has the story.

###

Is chocolate the great stress reliever?

In a world where the news seems to get worse and worse, there's finally something uplifting in the headlines: Chocolate can relieve stress.

According to psychcentral.com writer Rick Nauert PhD, chocolate does seem to help the body cope with stress, and helps to correct any biochemical imbalances related to stress.

H'mm ... Prozac in one hand. Chocolate in the other. Which one to take? Man, you've got to be kidding.

According to Nauert:

In a clinical trial, investigators found that eating about an ounce and a half of dark chocolate a day for two weeks reduced levels of stress hormones in the bodies of people feeling highly stressed.

I wouldn't have minded being a lab rat for this test.

OK. Who cares about what the clinical tests say? I could have done these tests myself and saved the scientific community a ton of money. Maybe I can't tell these scientists the chemical breakdown of how chocolate works on mind and body, but I can tell them the world would really suck without it.

Nauert's article also mentions a few other bonuses of dark chocolate:

Sunil Kochhar and colleagues note growing scientific evidence that antioxidants and other beneficial substances in dark chocolate may reduce risk factors for heart disease and other physical conditions.

That's the buzzword in nutritional circles these days: Antioxidants. That's the mystery stuff you find in some food that, if it doesn't cure all your ills, it helps to make the body more resistant to all kinds of illnesses. Fortunately, you'll find a good dose of antioxidants in all my favorite things:

Sweet tea (known in these parts as "Southern crack").

Coffee.

And now chocolate.

Bring it on. And while you're about it, fire all those viruses at me. I'll shed them like Superman does with bullets.

And then there's this:

Studies also suggest that chocolate may ease emotional stress. Until now, however, there was little evidence from research in humans on exactly how chocolate might have those stress-busting effects.

Ahh, the mystique of chocolate ... Di, a blogger who writes about her experiences in the love wars, will tell you about it:

I remember getting a book years ago for chocoholics like myself. In one chapter there was scientific evidence cited to show that the human brain experienced similar chemical reactions when they “fell in love” and when they ate chocolate. This led the scientists to the conclusion that people eat chocolate as a substitute for love. However, chocoholics like myself know that the opposite it true – that people fall in love as a substitute for chocolate ...

Now, even though I'm male (you know the Mars/Venus dichotomy), this still makes sense to me. A whole lot of sense. We guys may not talk about it, but we've got to have our chocolate too.

Another rumor I'd heard years ago was that some components of chocolate were structurally similar to THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. Now, that sounds like the makings of good urban legend, but aq dose of chocolate does seem to make the world a better, more peaceful place. Now, it's been many years (actually decades) since I've smoked one of those left-handed cigarettes, and I've never felt like I missed it. Who needs it when you've got chocolate?

I don't think chocolate will give you the munchies, but writing about it sure does. I think there's a last piece of cake in the fridge. I'm after it.

###

People may vote with their pitchforks in 2010

You hear about this every so often, but now the numbers are showing it. Voters are in a mood to throw the bums out.

This is from CNN's Political Tracker:

According to a new Pew Research Center poll, 52 percent of registered voters would like to see their own member of the House of Representatives re-elected next year, while just over one in three say that most members of Congress should be returned to office. Both numbers come close to the all-time lows seen just prior to the 1994 election, when the Republicans won control of Congress, and the 2006 contest, when the Democrats returned to power in both chambers.

It's interesting to see these numbers, particularly because it could be a harbringer of another 1994. Keep in mind, that was two years after Bill Clinton was elected to his first term. And Clinton wasn't nearly as big on change as Barack Obama is.

Not surprisingly, it's the Republicans and independents who are sharpening their pitchforks right now. According to the Pew poll, 42 percent of independents would like to see their own representative brought back, and one in four wants to see the same gang of idjits in Congress.

Polls by both Pew and CNN indicate Republicans are stoked about next year's election. CNN polling director Keating Holland likens this to a football team that just got the ball:

"The party that is out of power usually gets to play on offense, while the party in power is essentially playing defense," Holland says. "Playing offense gets your team pumped up. Maybe the same psychology is at work on the political playing field this year."

Right now, the Democrats have a 258-177 advantage (an edge of 81 seats) in the House and a 20-seat margin in the Senate. Next year, all 435 House seats and more than a third of the 100 Senate seats are up for election.

I subscribe to many different news outlets and a lot of blogs from all sides -- liberal, conservative, libertarian -- and I can pick up on that same throw-'em-out feeling. The Tea Party move is just a part of it. But there's a lot more noise being made now than there ever was before the 1994 elections, and the 2010 vote is just a little short of a year away.

I'll admit, the Republicans do sound a lot like the old Brooklyn Dodgers right now: "Wait 'til next year." And almost every year, the Brooklynites got smoked by the New York Giants or St. Louis Cardinals, as thoroughly as the Republicans were drubbed in 2008.

But I'm expecting some sea changes made in the makeup of Congress next year. There's no way around it. The Obama presidency -- backed by the Democratic House and Senate -- is making the most polarizing decisions I've seen since I was old enough to open the newspaper by myself.

###

(I got this art from a website honoring illustrator Willard Mullin, who penned the famous wait-til-next-year Brooklyn Bum. This one's from the Brooklyn Dodgers' 1952 yearbook -- and no, I'm not that old!)

Paralyzed jihadist + PC government = Some real breaks

Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the suspected gunman in the Ft. Hood bloodbath that killed 13 people, is alive and awake. And, it turns out, he's paralyzed.

That's right. He's a paraplegic right now.

Now, how much do you want to bet our politically correct government -- the same one that kept him in the Army even though the FBI knew of his jihadistic leanings for at least six months -- will cut him some more slack?

If you want to know the last time a paraplegic was executed, I can't help you there. I can't think of any. In fact, you can bet he's not going to be the first; he'll get a pass on that. He might even catch some real breaks in his trial because of the injuries he received in the commission of a crime.

What's more, you can bet Hasan will get a lot of medical care while he's alive, and a serious effort will be made to restore function to the lower half of his body.

And you'll be paying for it.

Well, here's a comfort. Jihadists believe they'll be greeted in their afterlife by a whole mess of virgins. But in his current state Hasan won't be able to do much of anything except maybe stare at them.

OK, I feel better already.

###

Scuttlebutt: You might be a Lib if ...

Twitter is fun, despite the sheer volume of messages and the signal-to-noise ratio. But once you get the hang of it and learn to filter the noxiouus garbage out from the regular garbage, it can be a fairly useful and enriching tool. OK, it only takes a few years to develop a system, but it is doable.

The discussion I caught was about liberals, and with a nod to my boy Jeff Foxworthy, I now present the Twitter version of "You might be a Lib if ..."

... the first word in the description of your hair color is "neon."

... you believe in censoring conservative talk radio, but not pornography.

... you think human beings are related to horseshoe crabs.

... you think plush toilet paper is evil, and we should all be forced to pick up a corn cob to do the honors (OUCH).

... you protest tonight's execution and visit abortion clinic tomorrow.

... you've stood for animal rights, but wear leather belts and sandals.

... you think French is an English language.

... you are offended by guns but are pro abortion.

... you can actually take a U.S. president seriously after he said "wee wee" in a sentence.

... you think your cousin Pookie got off the couch and voted in New Jersey.

... you dont have a problem with Planned Parenthood covering for sexual predators.

... you think Hasan was a kind soul and under stress.

... you stink because you only use one sheet of toilet paper.

###

Throwing race bait to Boeing: Will company bite?

OK. Boeing recently announced they were going to build a plant here in North Charleston. Probably the biggest economic news since ... well, since I've been here.

Now, state Sen. Robert Ford is playing the race card, making sure Boeing is an equal opportunity employer and all that. From the Post & Courier:

COLUMBIA -- The South Carolina Legislative Black Caucus won't push for unions at Boeing's planned 787 Dreamliner facility in North Charleston, but the state legislators will do all they can to make sure the state's minorities have a fair shot at the new jobs the aeronautics giant will create, Sen. Robert Ford said Monday.

Ford, on behalf of the caucus' 39 legislative members, wrote a letter to Boeing's president Jim McNerney on Oct. 30 to ask for information about the company's hiring practices and its race and gender breakdown ...

Got that?

Now, Boeing is a big company, a highly specialized company. I don't think they really give a rip about what the job applicant looks like. The question is, can this guy do the job? Will he be an asset or liability to the company?

Boeing exercised faith in this area, throwing the dice that the folks here are not just a bunch of backward country boys. I hope McNerney doesn't think everyone else here is as big an idiot as Sen. Ford.

When I grow up, I wanna be a ...

According to the folks at Pongo Resume, these are actual jobs, taken from U.S. Dept. of Labor's Dictionary Of Occupational Titles.

Any of these would look great on your business card, and make you instantly popular when someone asks what you do for a living.

So ... here are some of these job titles. If you had one of these jobs, which industry would you be in?

TITLE: Bosom Presser
INDUSTRY: Military Services or Laundry & Related Services?

TITLE: Blind Hooker
INDUSTRY: Boot & Shoe or Forestry?

TITLE: Rubber Tester
INDUSTRY: Motion Picture or Rubber Goods?

TITLE: Rack Carrier
INDUSTRY: Paper Goods or Automotive Services?

TITLE: Vibrator-Equipment Tester
INDUSTRY: Personal Service or Machinery Manufacturing?

TITLE: Parts Inspector
INDUSTRY: Real Estate or Many Industries?

TITLE: Boner
INDUSTRY: Government Services or Meat Products?

TITLE: Fur Beater
INDUSTRY: Fur Goods or Dairy Products?

TITLE: Bottom Nailer
INDUSTRY: Leather Manufacturing or Wooden Container?

TITLE: Pantyhose-Crotch-Closing-Machine Operator
INDUSTRY: Welding or Knitting?

TITLE: Suppository Molder
INDUSTRY: Pharmaceutical or Sugar & Confectionery Products?

TITLE: Muff Winder
INDUSTRY: Air Transportation or Textile?

TITLE: Bit Shaver
INDUSTRY: Petroleum Refining or Misc. Fabricated Products?

TITLE: Nut Picker
INDUSTRY: Machine Shop or Canning & Preserving?

TITLE: Impregnation Inspector
INDUSTRY: Electrical Equipment or Chemical?

OK. You're gonna love me. For the answers, go to Pongo's site. I'd tell ya, but then I'd spoil the surprise.

(Special thanks to Media Bistro for sharing this.)

###

They vote and reproduce: He didn't want the bench warrant

So Samuel George Botchvaroff of Oakland, California needed to make it to his court appearance and had no way to get there, so ...

... he stole a car to go to court.

Obviously, not a smart man. But it seemed like a good idea at the time. He was facing a heavy charge in court -- auto theft.

###

Officer? This is (ralph). Someone stole my pot ...

Calvin Hoover, a 21-year-old from Salem, Oregon had been drinking in a bar when he called the police. Seems a few items were stolen from his car:

- $400 in cash ...
- a jacket ...
- and three-quarters of an ounce of marijuana.

He called from the bar and waited for deputies to show up. Then got in the car, started driving, and called 911 again to complain. Police dispatchers said he was difficult to understand on the phone ...

... partly because while making the call, he stopped several times to vomit on the road.

According to the Statesman Journal, the responding officer took a theft report and gave Hoover a stern lecture about the implications of carrying marijuana. , and he probably didn't get his weed back. Hoover was also arrested for driving under the influence.

And he probably didn't get his bag of pot back, either.

###

Ft. Hood shootings had earmarks of suicide attack

We do live in an accelerated time. Not only were we getting real-time dispatches from the scene as 13 were slaughtered at the Fort Hood Army Base in Texas, but there was a lot of speculation about the suspect within minutes.

With this overflow of information, we're probably even more confused about what happened. And the stench of conspiracy, rivaling 9/11 and the Kennedy assassination, is finding its way into the headlines.

Especially when Major Nidal Malik Hasan, an army psychiatrist, was taken into custody and named as a suspect. That's when the rumors really started to grow legs.

According to the blogosphere scuttlebutt, the 39-year-old Hasan knew some of the 9/11 suicide bombers and worshipped in the same mosque ... that he was part of the Homeland Security panel during Barack Obama's transition into the White House ... that he shouted "Allah akbar!" in praise to Allah during the shooting ... that Texas Gov. Rich Perry said there were three shooters at the massacre ...

Take each of these and weigh them individually. Some of these are valid; others you can, well, you know. Blame on flat-out hysteria, or just on everything happening so fast the mind can't process everything accurately.

Congressman and retired military colonel Allen West (R-Fla) told The Hill that he believes the Fort Hood shooting is evidence that the "enemy is infiltrating" our military. You can say he's being hysterical, except I believe he's right.

The biggest question here is whether Hasan merely bucked under stress of his job or was acting out his own one-man jihad. Other questions came out as soon as his Middle Eastern surname was disclosed -- did he act alone? Was this part of a larger plot? Was this a terrorist attack, or was it just another guy going postal?

Senator Joe Lieberman, who called for a committee hearing on the massacre, is playing it as a terrorist attack, according to CNN:

... Saying it was too early to know Hasan's exact motive, Lieberman declared that if reports of the alleged gunman's possible Islamic extremism are true, then "the murder of these 13 people was a terrorist act."

"There are very, very strong warning signs here that Dr. Hasan had become an Islamist extremist and, therefore, that this was a terrorist act." He also called Hasan "a self-radicalized, home-grown terrorist" who had turned to Islamic extremism.

If it's true as it seems, this makes it the deadliest terrorist attack on United States soil since 9/11.

The politically correct failure

According to the London Telegraph, the FBI knew about Hasan for a while:

... the US Army major who killed 13 people in a shooting spree at America’s biggest military base had come to the attention of the FBI six months earlier over possible links to extremist comments posted on the internet ... Major Nidal Malik Hasan, a devout Muslim who was trying to buy his way out of the Army, was suspected of being the author of postings which compared suicide bombers to heroic soldiers who throw themselves onto grenades to save others ...

As the story develops, more into Hasan's politics and religious life come about. It turns out he had attempted to contact al-Quaeda, and the FBI had known about this. In fact, U.S. intelligence knew what this guy was all about even before he was assigned to Ft. Hood in July.

Now, here's the deal. We're in a war.

Although Afghanistan is the main theater right now, the war itself is against terrorism in general. Against the kind of terror that flattened the World Trade Center, tore a chunk out of the Pentagon, killed 3,000 people, and brought mass hysteria (see: USA PATRIOT Act) to our land. That kind of terror.

OK. That said, will anyone please explain to me what an obvious jihadist is doing in the United States Army?

And how, pray tell, did he become a major? Shoot, that's a commissioned office, ranking above captain and below lieutenant colonel. Most majors give orders, not take them.

You can blame our asleep-at-the-switch intelligence community for letting this guy in through the gates -- and it's a popular argument given the intelligence failures that made 9/11 possible.

But the failure ran much deeper than that. You can bet Hasan achieved that rank because it just wasn't politically correct to do anything else. That's all. Don't want to look like the bad guy because you're giving the Muslim close scrutiny. Never mind stirring the waters with all this bad talk of his jihadist leanings, about how he's really an enemy combatant in a U.S. uniform. What the hey, let's promote him to major and let the guys salute him.

Sorry, folks. Guys like that don't belong in our armed forces. And they don't belong at Ft. Hood. Guantanamo, or wherever it is they stash enemy combatants these days, would be a better venue for the likes of Dr. Hasan.

Planned, not postal

Dr. Paul Ragan, a psychiatrist from Nashville, told CNN he ruled out post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), saying Hasan spent much of his military hitch going to medical school on the Army's dime, and hadn't spent any real time in combat areas.

"I think religion did play a role," he told CNN interviewer Betty Nguyen. "Evidently he was counseled about proselytizing patients which was clearly a boundary violation. We have a report that he gave in his class at the fellowship, he was talking about endorsing suicide bombings. He was clearly engaging in some type of tunnel vision where this kind of radical view, which is not, as again the soldier said before, is not a part of mainstream Muslim religion. And so, he was -- there was something going on there, very much so."

Another psychiatrist, Dr. Peter Breggin, pulled no punches in the Huffington Post:

... Major Nidal Malik Hasan was driven by religious ideology. For years he openly claimed that the War on Terror is a war on Muslims. He announced on the Internet and to his fellow soldiers in a course on public health that a Muslim suicide bomber should be praised for killing a hundred soldiers. It's reported that fellow soldiers warned his superiors that he was a ticking time bomb ...

Like Ragan, Breggin says the evidence tilts more toward Hasan being a terrorist than insane.

... first, Major Hasan is a domestic terrorist and a traitor. Second, he's a madman--and that doesn't contradict his identity as a terrorist and a traitor. Third, there's nothing incompatible about being a psychiatrist and being a violent person ...

Hasan's behavior in the days before the assault, while certainly not normal, doesn't suggest someone who is mentally going where the buses don't run. He sold off his stuff and closed out his apartment, which is something you'd expect from someone who is planning to die. He knew what he was doing.

Although talk of a conspiracy is premature right now, the evidence points to the Ft. Hood massacre being an ideologically-driven terrorist attack.

###

On The Workbench: After rough start, Firefox marks fifth birthday

(Posted in The Workbench, Reloaded)

I never would have expected this: Firefox is five years old.

Despite its promise from the jump, Firefox spent its beta period without any real identity. Literally.

At first no one was really sure what to call it. For a while it was known as Phoenix, then Firebird. I believe the developers had to come up with a fast name change because there's another piece of software called Firebird, and branding is a big thing in the computer world.

With such an inauspicious beginning, it's amazing to see that the product survived, let alone developed a reputation as a stable browser ... (more)

Health care debate brings possible Howard Beale scenario

Really about the only good thing about the health care bill is that the Democrats probably signed their death warrant for 2010 and 2012.

The only thing that may save their butts there is that the Republicans offer nothing in the way of an alternative.

Remember the movie Network back in 1976? The one where the washed-up news anchorman Howard Beale starts shouting how mad he was and became the mad prophet of the airwaves? I expect to see his prophecies come true in the next few months -- already you're getting an inkling of this with the Tea Party movement -- and his famous quote will become part of the national vocabulary. If there's ny hope the United States doesn't turn into Sweden or Great Britian or something, folks like that may have part of the answer.

If you're a political watcher or news junkie, the next few years ought to be real interesting. I'm expecting more people will realize how much of our lives the federal government hopes to grab, and maybe bite back. Stranger things have happened.

###

(Photo: Howard Beale is one angry individual. From the movie Network; photo from Wikipedia.)

Health care plan needs to be put out of its misery

The ObamaLosi health care plan cleared its first hurdle over the weekend with a narrow, 220-215 vote Saturday, and it's a tough call whether it will pass muster with the Senate.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolinian who swears he's a Republican, said the proposal for national health care, all 1,990 pages and $1.2 trillion of it, is on life support as it hits the Senate.

"The House bill is dead on arrival in the Senate," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Sunday. "It was a bill written by liberals for liberals."

Which is amazing because Graham is one of the most liberal of Republican senators, and has been one of the early supporters for national health care though he draws the line at a public option. He may be right, though, and people who see the big picture hope he's right.

If the health care bill is not DOA already, then it's time to mash a pillow in its face. Put it out of its misery. Please.

Here's one thing that gets me about this piece of legislation: If approved it won't even kick in until 2013 -- after the next presidential election -- but the White House and Congress are both in a hurry to get it approved and signed now.

"We are going to have a complete government takeover of our health care system faster than you can say, 'this is making me sick,' " said Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mich.

The only reason I can see for this urgency is that the Democrats -- and in particular the Nancy Pelosi/Harry Reid/Barack Obama troika may never see as much pull as it has now. If the recent elections in Virginia and New Jersey give a clue, the liberal gang's power base will be in trouble in 2010.

And voters won't realize how terribly screwed up the health care system will be until after Obama is up for reelection. Convenient, no?

I'm not much of a prognosticator, and the only message I get from reading my coffee grounds is that it's time for a refill. But I expect to see the best doctors shutting down their practices and the second-raters taking over. If that's the case, health care will suffer.

I also expect to see changes in the workaday world. Unemployment is high enough right now, but if employers are required to provide health care for its employees, they'll think twice about hiring extra help.

So if you're expecting unemployment rates to drop with the health care plan in place, forget it.

Companies are already cutting back to save a few bucks, letting some employees go and dumping the extra load on the workers that stay. Crank in the cost of mandatory health coverage -- or the fines for noncompliance -- and more workers will be cut loose. That's almost a guarantee.

I expect to see employers riding the razor's edge and going more toward independent contractors instead of employees. Unfortunately, not everyone is smart enough to know what that entails or honest enough to care -- under the law independent contractors set their own schedules and work conditions, and employers won't have the same control they have over on-the-books employees. Many employers, I suspect, will attempt to call their employees independent contractors and try to set their same operational rules, and eventually lose their butts in lawsuits everywhere.

On the short-range view, national health care almost sounds like a good thing. What's wrong with keeping the people healthy even if they can't afford the scandalously high medical costs?

But on the long view, everyone loses, and the biggest loser will be the guy who punches a clock, puts in a day of work, pays his taxes, and tries to put some beans on the table. He won't be able to afford fatback to go in the beans.

###

(Photo: An anonymous ticked-off taxpayer somewhere in the USA has his say. The photo came with an email I received this morning. Convenient, yes?)

ObamaLosi Health Care Reform package passes in the House. It's official. We are becoming Sweden.
~ E

Gore: Eco-prophet or just another rich guy?

Leave it to Al Gore to strip the global warming question of any credibility it might have.

A story in the New York Times (registration required) outlines what we've long suspected of our famous former vice-president and Nobel Prize winner turned crusader -- that this carbon-footprint thing is making him a very rich man.

Gore’s investment company, Generation Investment Management, sells carbon offset opportunities and is the largest shareholder of the Chicago Climate Exchange, which stands to make big bucks in the so-called "cap and trade" plan. And that's not the only financial interest he has in environmental matters.

This is according to New York Times reporter John Broder:

... former Vice President Al Gore thought he had spotted a winner last year when a small California firm sought financing for an energy-saving technology from the venture capital firm where Mr. Gore is a partner ... the company, Silver Spring Networks, produces hardware and software to make the electricity grid more efficient. It came to Mr. Gore’s firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, one of Silicon Valley’s top venture capital providers, looking for $75 million to expand its partnerships with utilities seeking to install millions of so-called smart meters in homes and businesses ... Mr. Gore and his partners decided to back the company, and in gratitude Silver Spring retained him and John Doerr, another Kleiner Perkins partner, as unpaid corporate advisers ... the deal appeared to pay off in a big way last week, when the Energy Department announced $3.4 billion in smart grid grants. Of the total, more than $560 million went to utilities with which Silver Spring has contracts. Kleiner Perkins and its partners, including Mr. Gore, could recoup their investment many times over in coming years.

And ...

... few people have been as vocal about the urgency of global warming and the need to reinvent the way the world produces and consumes energy. And few have put as much money behind their advocacy as Mr. Gore and are as well positioned to profit from this green transformation, if and when it comes ... critics, mostly on the political right and among global warming skeptics, say Mr. Gore is poised to become the world’s first “carbon billionaire,” profiteering from government policies he supports that would direct billions of dollars to the business ventures he has invested in ... Representative Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, asserted at a hearing this year that Mr. Gore stood to benefit personally from the energy and climate policies he was urging Congress to adopt.

Gore says there's nothing wrong there; he's just putting his money where his mouth is. "Do you think there is something wrong with being active in business in this country? I am proud of it. I am proud of it."

Although this quote sounds like something from Capitalism 101, few of his supporters seem to notice. He's considered a saint in some circles, and Newsweek recently ran an article calling him an "eco-prophet."

Uhh, try eco-profit. But then, there's nothing wrong with that. If you're a capitalist, then it's great. More power to him. But if you're one of those share-the-wealth types that considers WalMart to be evil and Bill Gates to be the devil incarnate, then it's time to rethink Gore because there ain't a dime's worth of difference.

Global warming causes still a mystery

Just so you know, here's my take on global warming: I'm somewhere in the middle between the Gore gang and the naysayers. It's a little hard to see footage of the Antarctic ice cap breaking apart and the Arctic ice cap receding and say it's all a bunch of crap. It's a little hard to say it's bad science when you can see changing tide levels over the past decade here in Charleston. Some of it is cyclical; the planet has a history of warming and cooling trends as long as we've been able to collect evidence. Some of the temperature change can be called natural causes, but it's true man's poor management of his home turf is also a factor. How much of a factor, though, remains open to debate.

And it's amusing listening to the naysayers trotting out their own statistics and hypothesis; that cattle farts and belches unload more carbon dioxide than humans ever could, that keeping a pet dumps off more CO2 than keeping a sports-utility vehicle. Like carbon dioxide itself, many of these explanations are just full of gas.

And, blaming our environmental crises on carbon dioxide sounds pretty sketchy at best. There are plenty of real pollutants floating around in our atmosphere to worry about; to pin it all on CO2 is pure hypothesis and nothing's been proven there. But the Gores of this world are ready to build a whole economy around it, with him making a fortune in the process.

Respin and try again

After several years of evangelizing on the ills of carbon dioxide, Gore recently backtracked a bit. He now admits CO2 may be overrated, that the gas we exhale was not the chief culprit for global warming occurring until 2001.

"Over the years I have been among those who focused most of all on CO2, and I think that’s still justified," the former vice president told Newsweek . “But a comprehensive plan to solve the climate crisis has to widen the focus to encompass strategies for all" of the greenhouse culprits identified in the NASA study."

Gore now blames soot and methane for the majority of global warming, leaving the door open for a tax on livestock, a tax on meat, a tax on milk, and on and on until he changes his mind again and blames another culprit so that too can be taxed.

Amazing how he can shift gears like that without being branded an idiot. But many who swallow his Kool-Aid don't seem to know good science from bad, and certainly don't care whether the facts bear out the theory or not. And if not, respin it and try again.

As mentioned, Gore sees nothing wrong with making money from an idea. Businessmen do it all the time, and they're usually condemned for such profiteering - particulary by folks on the left. But these very same people consider sainthood as appropriate for Gore. What's the deal here? Put Gore in the same camp with the Bill Gateses, the Waltons, and the Buffets and see how you like it.

Lobbyists make a living twisting governmental arms for the sake of a profit, and on a good day they're called slezebags. But when Gore pushes to implement laws, he's considered a forward-thinking man of the people.

What kind of hypocrisy is this?

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(I snagged the artwork from Newsbusters.org ... I really liked it.)

Unemployment rate for USA is now 10.2%. Crank in those who gave up on finding a job and it's 17.5%.
~ E

Stimulus: Not much boon, but a whole lot of doggle

How's that stimulus working out for you?

According to the White House, the $787 billion stimulus package created or saved somewhere between 500,000 and a million jobs, depending on how you count them -- and maybe depending on which day of the week you ask. There doesn't seem to be a lot of agreement there.

Michigan is one state that was really nailed in the economic meltdown, and even when times were good it wasn't any great shakes there. But that state received $5.2 billion in federal stimulus. Now we're told that 22,500 were "created or saved." It doesn't take a math genius to figure out that our taxpayers forked out $231,000 for every job created or saved in Michigan. Taking that number even further, assuming the phantom "job created" paid $20,000 per year -- meaning not much of a job -- that $231,000 will pay for 11.5 years worth of that salary if the payment was made direct instead of going through the many layers and black holes of bureaucracy.

So far, $160 billion in stimulus money has been spent. From that, the most-cited figure is 640,000 jobs created or saved nationwide. That stacks up to about $246,000 per job. The Associated Press cautions against using simple math to figure out cost-per-job, as there's a lot more to the picture than that -- the asphalt the employee's going to push around, the worker's benefits. But this is still money spent, no matter which pocket it's going into.

Meanwhile, what about these 640,000 jobs? The White House doesn't differentiate whether these jobs were saved (i.e. maintaining the status quo) or actually created. It also doesn't tell whether these jobs were mostly in the private or public sector, although we have a few indications. A little more than half -- 325,000 -- were in education, purely public sector.

The smart money says that if you want one of those stimulus jobs, work for the government.

As I go over this shopping list of stimulus projects, I keep thinking of the old Works Progress Administration (WPA), from the weirdly wired brain of Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Great Depression. Most of those WPA projects were more boondoggle than anything else -- curbs in the middle of nowhere, things like that. To be sure, some folks did actually find WPA work (great market for shovel-leaners back in those days). But this stimulus package seems to have precious little boon but a whole lot of doggle.

According to Sen. Tom Coburn's (R-Oklahoma) office, here's where some of the stimulus money went, and again this is stuff I just can't make up:

- $100,000 for a program in Maryland to keep tabs on how often doctors and nurses wash their hands at hospitals.

- $300,000 for a GPS-equipped helicopter to hunt for radioactive rabbit turds at the Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington state.

- $30 million for a spring training baseball complex for the Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies.

- $11 million for Microsoft to build a bridge connecting its two headquarters campuses in Redmond, Wash., which are separated by a highway. Somehow I'd think Bill Gates would be able to afford this on his own, without government help.

- $430,000 to repair a bridge in Iowa County, Wis., that carries 10 or fewer cars per day.

- $800,000 for the John Murtha Airport in Johnstown, Pa., serving about 20 passengers per day, to build a backup runway.

- $219,000 for Syracuse University to study the sex lives of freshmen women. I can't see much in the way of jobs coming from that, though you can say that's definitely stimulating.

- $2.3 million for the U.S. Forest Service to rear large numbers of arthropods, including the Asian longhorned beetle, the nun moth and the woolly adelgid.

- $3.4 million for a 13-foot tunnel for turtles and other wildlife attempting to cross U.S. 27 in Lake Jackson, Fla.

- $1.15 million to install a guardrail for a persistently dry lake bed in Guymon, Okla.

- $9.38 million to renovate a century-old train depot in Lancaster County, Pa., that has not been used for three decades.

- $2.5 million in stimulus checks sent to the deceased. And why not? In some parts of the country being dead does not affect your right to vote either.

- $6 million for a snow-making facility in Duluth, Minn. Ask anyone in that state -- they can get all the snow anyone needs for nothing.

- $173,834 to weatherize eight pickup trucks in Madison County, Ill. Do the math here. That's $21,729 per truck. Shoot, you can almost buy a new one for that.

- $20,000 for a fish sperm freezer at the Gavins Point National Fish Hatchery in South Dakota.

- $380,000 to spay and neuter pets in Wichita, Kan.

- I love this one: $300 apiece for thousands of signs at road construction sites across the country announcing that the projects are funded by stimulus money.

- $1.5 million for a fence to block would-be jumpers from leaping off the All-American Bridge in Akron, Ohio.

- $1 million to study the health effects of environmentally friendly public housing on 300 people in Chicago.

- $356,000 for Indiana University to study childhood comprehension of foreign accents compared with native speech.

- $983,952 for street beautification in Ann Arbor, Mich., including decorative lighting, trees, benches and bike paths. Well, that's part of the $5.2 billion I mentioned, and I'm curious how many jobs came from that.

- $148,438 for Washington State University to analyze the use of marijuana in conjunction with medications like morphine. Again, I know a lot of students who would do that research for nothing.

- $462,000 to purchase 22 concrete toilets for use in the Mark Twain National Forest in Missouri.

- $3.1 million to transform a canal barge into a floating museum that will travel the Erie Canal in New York state.

- $1.3 million on government arts jobs in Maine, including $30,000 for basket makers, $20,000 for storytelling and $12,500 for a music festival.

- $71,000 for a hybrid car to be used by student drivers in Colchester, Vt., as well as a plug-in hybrid for town workers decked out with a sign touting the vehicle's energy efficiency.

- $1 million for Portland, Ore., to replace 100 aging bike lockers and build a garage that would house 250 bicycles.

Oh, yes. It's not pork. Pork is what the other legislator, on the other side of the aisle, implements. But you already knew that.

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Celebrating 50 years of marginal thinking

It's hard to believe cartoonist Sergio Aragones has been at it 50 years.

Aragones was the artist who put the madness in Mad Magazine, a publication which was so important to my generation. Anyone who grew up in the late 1960s or early 1970s will remember laughing at the little cartoons, "Drawn-out Dramas," sketched in the page margins.

I remember reading about his work habits, how hyperactive a cartoonist Aragones was. He'd draw anywhere, at any time. He'd decorated many napkins and place mats while waiting for the waiter to take his order. The guy was incredible. Spontaneous. This ability to create something out of nothing at any time is a hallmark of the real artist, on a par with a John Coltrane solo.

It wasn't just his work in the margins that caught my attention; his crowd scenes were something else. Numerous sight gags. You could stare at some of his crowd drawings for a good while, laughing all the way.

I haven't picked up a Mad Magazine in years. I reckon I'd have a hard time viewing some of his art now; my eyeballs are not what they used to be.

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You might be a racist if ...

In the past few months, the R-word has been freely tossed around, to the point where it doesn't mean anything any more.

In the past, racists were easy to pick out. They were the ones wearing the white hoodies. The ones passing out ax handles to keep black folks out of their restaurants. The ones who assume -- and build policy around the assumption -- that a certain class of people was incompetent and needed special rules to level the playing field (see: Affirmative Action). But now, it's a tougher call.

I've heard "racist" applied to those who disagree with the policies of a president who just happens to be black. Now, that's a real leap in logic, but that's a whole 'nother rant.

Check out the flow chart, courtesy of missourah.com to determine whether you, in fact, may be a racist. It's interesting.

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