Zombie invasion? CDC has some emergency procedures for you

They come out at night ...

... in search of brains ...

... and the Center For Disease Control wants you to know what to do in the event of a zombie invasion.

Maybe the whole idea came from all those pepperoni pizzas washed down with way too much Mountain Dew, but the CDC put out a blurb outlining preparedness steps when the undead come a-calling.

Seriously. Check it out. Here's the link.

"The rise of zombies in pop culture has given credence to the idea that a zombie apocalypse could happen." wrote CDC official Ali Khan. "In such a scenario zombies would take over entire countries, roaming city streets eating anything living that got in their way. The proliferation of this idea has led many people to wonder 'How do I prepare for a zombie apocalypse?' "

One of the first things I think of immediately is that the CDC is a governmental function, and they're screwing off on taxpayer time. But this CDC announcement may actually make more sense than just about any other governmental release. Well, kinda sorta.

"Well, we’re here to answer that question for you, and hopefully share a few tips about preparing for real emergencies too," Khan continues.

OK. Now we're cooking. Khan then outlines some preparedness procedures that could serve you well in a pandemic, a hurricane, or zombie invasion.

Craziness aside, what I get from my reading is that it's hard to sell preparedness to the public. Hurricanes are not sexy enough. Earthquakes don't have that "it" factor. Even a multi-angled event such as a Katrina (featuring disasters such as a hurricane, massive flooding, societal breakdown and FEMA) and Japan's recent earthquake/tsunami/nuclear trifecta aren't enough to sway the populace in the semi-civilized world.

The CDC rationale, it seems, is to come up with something really over the top to garner public attention -- such as a zombie takeover. It is unbelievably tempting for me to say something about how the zombies already took over several years ago and were the difference-maker in the 2008 Presidential election, but I'm not gonna say it. I'm not gonna say it.

Later with these pedestrian hurricanies, tsunami, nuclear mutant monsters from Japan, and even space aliens. All of these have been done to death, and in our ADHD culture, you've got to hit the public hard, frequently, and from a variety of angles.

I can understand that complacency, somewhat. I grew up in California, the place where visitors and new arrivals get scared because of earthquakes. Well, there are a lot of other scary things about California, but right now I'm just going to key on earthquakes. To a new arrival, any shaking of the ground is enough to trigger a full-blown panic attack. However, it takes a Richter Scale hit of at least six-something to move the longtime resident. Don't pester me over a little trembling; if dishes fly out of the cupboards, then call me.

As far as construction goes, whole metro areas are built along earthquake fault lines. The Inland Empire, which for decades saw the fastest growth of any area in California, is nestled along the San Andreas and San Jacinto Faults. The San Jac passed underneath the a) the freeway interchange of I-10 and I-215 that had some pretty big skyhooks, b) the men's department of Fedco, and c) the San Bernardino Valley College campus. Did I worry about getting caught in the mother of all earthquakes during my classes at Valley? Not at all. If it happens, it happens. If it doesn't, it doesn't.

I now live near Charleston, South Carolina, known to outsiders as hurricane country. Every year we go through the same drill here -- pick up a hurricane tracking map at the Piggly Wiggly, and make noises about putting together a plan. Which usually never comes off. Here, life goes on. We watch the hurricanes develop in the Atlantic, note that for a moment Charleston is named the primary target, then relax when the hurricane takes its usual dogleg right turn. We do have an evacuation every decade or so, but the last hurricane of any real consequence to hit the Lowcountry was Hugo in 1989. Since then the wreckage was cleared out, the sea islands were built back up, and everything went back to normal.

For the record, I do have a skeletal emergency plan in case the Son Of Hugo blows the roof off my mobile home. I have a backpack loaded with clothing sleeping bag, rope and tarp, plus some prepackaged rations I'm starting to collect. This is really in anticipation of a hike I'm planning, but if something weird happens before then (fire? Flood? The PC Police knocking at my door?) it's nice to know I'm somewhat prepared.

Standard survival items, straight from the CDC, include:

* Water (1 gallon per person per day)
* Food (stock up on non-perishable items that you eat regularly)
* Medications (this includes prescription and non-prescription meds)
* Tools and Supplies (utility knife, duct tape, battery powered radio, etc.)
* Sanitation and Hygiene (household bleach, soap, towels, etc.)
* Clothing and Bedding (a change of clothes for each family member and blankets)
* Important documents (copies of your driver’s license, passport, and birth certificate to name a few)
* First Aid supplies (although you’re a goner if a zombie bites you, you can use these supplies to treat basic cuts and lacerations that you might get during a tornado or hurricane)

Gee, I think I have room in my backpack for the best defense against zombies: A shotgun. Gotta be prepared for anything.

###

Parts of Arizona's immigration law gutted; fight not over

This almost sounds like the perfect compromise because now, no one is pleased. For the record, though, Arizona's immigration law has been gutted.

The battle's not over; expect more talk about state's rights to come.

However, I am hearing reports that illegal aliens are leaving Arizona in droves. Holding sidewalk sales, lightening their loads for travel, the whole smash.

Where do you think they'll go?

There are 49 other states to pick, and it just might be yours ...

Judge Blocks Parts Of Arizona Immigration Law - cbs5.com

###

Student opposes homosexuality, is expelled, federal court upholds expulsion

Now ... if she was Muslim or Paiute or something like that, would the court have taken this stance?

Or would the judge have bent over backwards to keep her in school?

FOXNews.com - Court Upholds Expulsion of Counseling Student Who Opposes Homosexuality

**facepalm**

###

Greene's first speech shows slippery grasp of facts

South Carolina's action figure hero/Senatorial candidate Alvin Greene made his first speech over the weekend, on his home turf and in front of a relatively friendly crowd.

To his credit, he didn't screw the pooch in his not-quite-seven-minute speech to the NAACP in Manning, but let's just say he doesn't have a firm grasp of issues.

Surprised?

Greene's statements don't always match reality:
COLUMBIA -- In his first campaign speech over the weekend, U.S. Senate candidate Alvin Greene pledged to get South Carolina back to work and decried the state's bottom-of-the-barrel employment and public education rankings.

Let's just say he's fuzzy about a lot of things, OK? A lot of the stuff he's saying is so garbled that you can't even run it through the Bravo Sierra translator without it breaking.

A couple of samples:

GREENE: There are more people unemployed in South Carolina than ever before.

Wrong. Now it's at 11 percent, or 238,000 people. Which sucks, but it doesn't suck as bad as it did in January -- 273,000 unemployed, at 12 percent. The rates have steadily improved since then.

GREENE: South Carolina spends twice as much per inmate as it does per public school student.

Right idea, wrong figure. The state does spend more per inmate ($16,300) than per student ($11,372). That's not double. But then, Greene himself is a fine product of our South Carolina edjumication system, and has the degree (from the University of South Carolina) to prove it.

So where was he getting the data for his speech?

GREENE: "Research, multiple sources, everything, news. All of the above."

And this guy swears he is a serious candidate. He actually has the nomination from a major party.

But he didn't say anything about how a line of Alvin Greene action figures would benefit the state. And he didn't say anything about Denzel Washington portraying him in a movie. Not this time anyway.

I guess South Carolina is safe.

###

Charleston County to privatize recycling

I really like this. An idea that is way overdue, and not done often enough.

The Post and Courier - Charleston County to farm out recycling - Charleston SC - postandcourier.com

In private hands, Charleston County's recycling operation should make $1 million more each year than it does now, said County Council officials who voted Tuesday night to privatize the facility ... Council approved a contract with American Recycling of South Carolina to run the facility in Charleston, and in another waste-related vote agreed to sell the site of the former garbage incinerator in North Charleston to Shipyard Creek Associates for an as-yet undisclosed price ...

I'm not just thinking about the money angle here. See, when you take these government functions and have them done by the private sector, they generally will be a lot better run, more efficient, just better functions overall.

H'mmm ... maybe the federal government ought to consider privatizing the medical industry? Just asking.

###

Getting interviewed by the Census Bureau

The Census Bureau is still at it, and I don't think they believed me the first time.

Got a visit from some guy wielding a clipboard a few minutes ago. He's with the Census Department's quality control division, doing a little spot-checking.

"I sent mine in," I reminded him. "The Bureau sent me two forms so I almost sent in two."

Turns out "something happened" to the form I sent in, he told me. Yeah, I know exactly what happened to it. I sent it in with just the information that was needed under the Constitution, i.e. address and number of people living in my place. The rest was left blank. Understand, the Census is a head count; nothing more.

As a result, I earned an interview with the Census folks. This guy is probably a little younger than me, black guy with splashes of gray in his dreadlocks. Nice enough, but a bit nervous.

He asked me my address. Is this the correct one? I said yes.

He asked my name. I gave it to him, and told him it was just hearsay.

He asked my age. With a totally straight face and no shame whatsoever, I said I was 29. When he started to write that in, I told him the truth -- 52.

"Male or female? ... well, obviously," he said as he wrote this down.

"Race?" he wanted to know.

Now, that's a sticking point with me. That is really no one's business. If you fill out a job application, they can't ask for your race. Even including a picture of yourself in your job resume is a no-no because of the race angle. And, whether anyone will admit it or not, race does determine how much government money goes where.

But considering the U.S. Census is an official government function and it's not smart to tweak the noses of the Feds, I gave him my answer.

"Martian."

Hopefully, this will end my involvement with Census 2010.

###

Geography lesson, or Where's Arizona?

This came from commentator Neal Boortz, and it is proof positive that intelligence and/or a knowledge of geography are not required for elected officials. 

But then, Wisconsin is a long way from Arizona. Almost a different country. Oh, wait ...

A MEMBER OF THE DUMB-MASSES: 

Boortz: "OK .. now that I have made my sermon. Watch this video. This is Democrat County Supervisor Peggy West of Milwaukee demonstrating her exceptional knowledge of geography during a meeting. Unbelievable. You people of Milwaukee should be ashamed."

Too bad the video ends right there, without showing West's reaction for being so badly shown up. So I offer another snippet of video that may capture the county supervisor's reaction:

Thank you, Gilda!

###

Getting a handle on Alvin Greene

So who is this Alvin Greene character, and why is he an actual nominee for a U.A. Senate seat from South Carolina?

It's still a mystery. But he will run against Jim DeMint this year. That noise you hear is the sound of Democrats circling the wagons.

Understand, Demint is probably near the top of the Dems' take-em-out list. DeMint shows strong conservative chops, and he's become a favorite of red-state folks everywhere. He was considered vulnerable until last week's primary. 

Greene won the primary with slightly less than 60 percent of the vote, beating out former judge and legislator Vic Rawl in the process. No one is real sure why; Greene has no money. He has no name recognition. He has no job. He's a former military guy who was "involuntarily discharged" from the service six months before his hitch was to end. He faces obscenity charges; something about allegedly showing pornographic pictures to a college girl. None of this stuff came out until after the primaries.

And if you listen to this guy talk, well, you know he's out of his league. He can barely string a coherent thought together. First few sound clips I heard of him, I thought, man, that's some pretty strong medication he's on.

In the days following the primary election,  Rob Groce of The Examiner visited Greene at his Manning home in an attempt to get a handle on this guy. Groce, a rock-solid Democrat who was chosen as national delegate from his home district in 2008, came away with an uneasy feeling:

Meeting Alvin Greene: 

That eerie feeling of being stuck in a still shot from “The Last Picture Show” came upon me once again as I turned my head to look around.When I later saw the photos, I noticed that Greene’s appearance and expression seems unchanged in each one. Frozen. Blank. Distant.Lost.Before I walked into Greene’s home, I was still incensed from the dreadful results of the primary election.When I walked out, though, I felt despondent, and not because of the election results that somehow got him the nomination. I felt so sad because it was obvious that Greene … well … isn’t quite all there. In my layman’s opinion, and which might not mean much to some, I think there may be some medical reason.And I don’t think he was always like this, either. After all, media confirmed that he majored in political science at the Univ. of South Carolina, graduating in 2000. In the military, he worked in intelligence. But he wound being involuntarily discharged from service six months early, and while in a much lower role than his first field of military intelligence.That could indicate that something happened to Greene. An injury, maybe? A medical problem that’s affected his behavior and response? PTSD? I’ll never know the cause, I guess. And don’t really care to know, since it’s none of my business to begin with.As a voting citizen of South Carolina, though, the elections here are my business. And Alvin Greene is clearly unable to hold office ...  

I don't think this Greene drama is over yet. Rawl is challenging the results, and filed a formal protest earlier this week. The national media is laughing -- again -- at South Carolina, and voters in the Palmetto State are just plain bumfuddled. 

Although he is the party's nominee, Greene's probably not going to count on getting a lot of support from there. According to House Majority Whip James Clyburn:

No, I don't see myself getting behind Mr. Greene. The fact of the matter is, of course, I never said he was a Republican plant. I said he was someone's plant. And it turned up after the elections, we found out, as I said earlier, something untoward was going on ... now all of a sudden, we see that Congressman Joe Wilson -- his campaign manager, was, in fact, managing the campaign of my primary opponent. I saw the patterns in this. I know a Democratic pattern, I know a Republican pattern, and I saw in the Democratic primary elephant dung all over the place ... and so I knew something was wrong in that primary. And this result tells us that. People intentionally circumvented the law, the rules and regulations, did not file any disclosures, did not file any of their campaign finances, yet they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars running this campaign and broke every law.

Don't you just love politics? Isn't it better than daytime TV?

###

Mystery Senate nominee Alvin Greene swears he's serious; few agree

Just when you thought a little sanity had finally entered South Carolina politics, well, forget it!

Welcome to the political world, South Carolina style.


On Tuesday, some guy named Alvin Greene won the Democratic primary for United States Senate, to go against conservative Jim Demint.


Alvin who?


That's what the Democrats are wondering. House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn called for an investigation into the campaign. Party leaders are calling for Greene to step aside and let a real candidate run. Some party officials have even questioned his mental state. Greene, however, is saying he'll continue his run.

It's pretty obvious that South Carolina Democrats had a mass rectal-cranial inversion when they went to the voting booths this time around. 


By all accounts the 32-year-old Greene is an unemployed veteran, and no one is sure where he was able to pony up the $10,400 filing fee.


On top of that, Greene was arrested last November for felony obscenity, which he chooses not to comment on. But none of this stuff came up until after his nomination.


He beat out former legislator Victor Rawl for the nomination, with 59 percent of the vote. Besides his background, Rawl has a campaign war chest of $186,000 while Greene doesn't have a pot to pee in.


"60 percent (of the vote) is not luck," Greene told MSNBC commentator Keith Olbermann. "It's a decisive win."


Interesting, considering he really didn't campaign. No one knew who he was. There was no indication he did any traveling. there is an "unofficial" website for him, which he says is not an authoritative campaign site. There was also a Twitter account for him, but he said that was not his either. It has since been taken down; a wise move considering he has far fewer followers than even my modest 635.


And Democrats are saying Greene is nothing but a Republican plant, a tomato can set up to run against top target DeMint. But Greene says that isn't so.


"I have always been a Democrat, and I will always be a Democrat."


His chief campaign pitch is the need for jobs. That's a natural one for Greene, as he also needs a job.


You absolutely must check out this interview with Olbermann. It's a real hoot. Folks on Twitter are calling it "the most WTF interview ever" (I'm not gonna explain what that means). Greene sounds out of it, uncomfortable, inarticulate in the interview, even with Olbermann's softball questions.


According to Mother Jones Magazine, Greene is on intimate terms with these WTF moments:


"Greene insists that he paid the $10,400 filing fee and all other campaign expenses from his own personal funds. 'It was 100 percent out of my pocket. I'm self-managed. It's hard work, and just getting my message to supporters. I funded my campaign 100 percent out of my pocket and self-managed,' said Greene, who sounded anxious and unprepared to speak to the public. But despite his lack of election funds, Greene claims to have criss-crossed the state during his campaign—though he declined to specify any of the towns or places he visited or say how much money he spent while on the road. 'It wasn't much, I mean, just, it was—it wasn't much. Not much, I mean, it wasn't much, he said, when asked how much of his own money he spent in the primary. Greene frequently spoke in rapid-fire, fragmentary sentences, repeating certain phrases or interrupting himself multiple times during the same sentence while he searched for the right words. But he was emphatic about certain aspects of his candidacy, insisting that details about his campaign organization, for instance, weren't relevant. 'I'm not concentrating on how I was elected -- it's history. I'm the Democratic nominee -- we need to get talking about America back to work, what's going on, in America.' 


Has anybody figured out what he said yet? If so, please email me a translation.


Imagine how he'd do in a real debate, or in a conversation with a real reporter, providing there are any of those left. He'd be chopped up into cat food.


Not that this seems to make any difference with South Carolina Democrats. They voted for a name and a face, with no other information.


Shoot, if voters are that stupid, they deserve whatever candidate they get.


Meanwhile, it looks like it's gonna be fun times in good ol' South Kackilacky this November.

###

If it's on the Internet, it must be true: Photoshop or not

Don't you love this Photoshop thing?

Pictures can't be considered real evidence anymore. Now, photos can be doctored so you can't tell what's real and what isn't. And about a zillion people can doctor photos right there on their computer and release them on the Internet.

And you know how it works from there. It's on the Internet so you know it's true, right? If you believe that, I know a Nigerian princess who is willing to share her vast fortune with you.

I knew where photo technology was headed in the early 1990s when I was working for the Mohave County (Arizona) Standard. Matt Wanner, the publisher there, had a brand new camera he was dying to show me.

It looked like one of those cameras you used to get for free when you renewed your subscription to Sports Illustrated, but there was a port on the side where you could plug it into your computer. I was looking at my first digital camera. The camera cost a short stack of hundred-dollar bills back then; such is the way with brand new technology.

"Watch this," Matt said as he took my picture. A minute later, my image showed up on the screen. Then he proceeded to alter that photo, using a new program called Photoshop.

"Wow," I said as I watched my nose grow on the screen. OK, there are times I may dump a whole load of Bravo Sierra in your lap, but I thought the nose-growing thing only happened with Gepetto's creation.

On screen, Matt proceeded to give me a haircut. I know there was some psychodrama involved there; back then a lot of my employers were after me to get my hair cut. I'd usually come back with two estimates, but that's another story.

"That's a pretty amazing thing," I said, although inside I had this chilly feeling. Nothing is safe anymore. The practice of journalism was history as of that day.

"You mean I can take part of one photo, part of another photo, and call it real?" I asked.

True, Matt said.

"You mean I can take a picture of the President and put him in bed with Jeanne Kirkpatrick, and create my own sex scandal?" Hey, I'm a journalist. You know that thought has crossed my mind at least once.

There's a joke there, by the way. The president then was Bill Clinton, the original "pants on the ground" guy when that expression meant something entirely different from what it does now. And Jeanne Kirkpatrick, former ambassador to the United Nations, was probably the only woman in history who could make Nancy Pelosi look hot. Not even Photoshop could help either one of them.

It's not just Photoshop. There are a few other graphics editors that can doctor your photos just as well. My computer has GIMP, which is pretty close and a whole lot cheaper (try free). But you don't GIMP a photo, but you can sure Photoshop it. That program is now part of the language.

OK. I promised. Some Photoshopped works:

This is PrezBo in the wake of the ever-growing BP oil spill.

And you mustn't forget George Bush, checking out the scene of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Suffice it to say, BP may become Obama's Katrina. But you already figured that.

Oh yeah. Here's me, playing the last set of a two-day bluegrass festival. I was in four different bands and each of those bands played at least one gig at the festival -- plus a Saturday night show elsewhere that ran into overtime.

If I can't get my coffee in the morning, there's always Photoshop. I might even look human.

###

Arizona threatens to pull the plug on L.A.

This just came in over the news transom, from the Huffington Post:

Arizona Threatens To Pull The Plug On LA: 

The LA Weekly reports:

An Arizona public utilities official on Tuesday dared Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to follow through with the city's economic boycott of Arizona by giving up the 25 percent of L.A's power he says the city gets from the desert state.

The HuffPo says:

In a letter obtained by the Weekly, Arizona Corporation Commissioner Gary Pierce writes to Villaraigosa to express that he was 'dismayed' by the boycott over the state's controversial immigration law and noted that 'twenty-five percent of the electricity consumed in Los Angeles is generated by power plants in Arizona.'

Now, I'm wondering if The City of Lost Angels is still indulging in empty rhetoric (the smart money says yes) or is actually willing to put a little substance in their stance. Arizona does supply a good chunk of L.A.'s electricity. As far as I know, the state can't do a thing with the Colorado River Compact, else L.A. will be in a world of hurtin'.

Stay tuned. Arizona and L.A. will be in the schoolyard soon, comparing 'nad sizes.

###

###

Obama officially P.O'd in wake of spill

From the Associated Press:

Obama pledges permit review, end to cozy oil links

(AP): 

AP - Declaring himself as angry as the rest of the nation, President Barack Obama assailed oil drillers and his own administration Friday as he ordered extra scrutiny of drilling permits to head off any repeat of the sickening oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Engineers worked desperately to stop the leak that's belching out at least 210,000 gallons of crude a day ...

OK. I don't understand something.

PrezBo sat on his thumb for how many days after the spill started, did nothing, and now he's ticked? 

God forbid a real emergency -- a 9/11 type, for example -- should happen while he's on the golf course. If that should happen, nothing will get done until he's finished putting.

###

Whether we like it or not, Obama shows his hand

Another Obama-ism, at a recent Nuclear Security Summit:

That key sentence again:

"Whether we like it or not, we remain a military superpower."

Whether we like it or not? Pray tell, what does our alleged president mean here?

Personal footnote: I used to think he was just overmatched, in over his head, just a community organizer thrown into a job he is not qualified for. But with statements like this, it looks more and more like he has an agenda. A plan. And it's one that turns us into one of those European nations that's going down the drain. The more I think about it, the more it looks like he wants to castrate America.

Enough of that. With that off my chest, here's the deal:

If you happen to be one of those folks who doesn't like it, I just have one thing to say:

"Delta is ready when you are."

Please. Go away. Get your slack butt out of this country and quit bugging me. OK?

(Gee, what's so hard about that?)

###

15 years later, Oklahoma City terror attack recalled

I don't rightly remember what I was doing when I heard about the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. I was probably on my way to work. But the bombing, which for the next six years was called "the worst terrorist attack on American soil," became part of my life over the next few weeks. Now, 15 years after the attack, memories come back in a flood.

It's one of those things that you can't forget unless you're lobotomized. Nor is it something that should be forgotten. Maybe if we Americans had a lot more memory and a lot less wishful thinking, we'd be much better off as a nation. But I digress.

I do remember a rather strange incident a few weeks earlier. A bomb went off in a vacant lot near where I worked, and being the dutiful reporter I went to check it out. As far as the cops were concerned, evidence was pretty thin. It didn't merit a lot of attention at the time, and the story didn't get more than a paragraph or two. I could have ended the story with that horrendous news cliche, "the investigation is continuing, police said," and I wouldn't have been far off.

Oh. A little footnote about work. I was editor/reporter/photographer/layout man for The Mohave County Standard, based in Kingman, Arizona.

As news of the Oklahoma City bombing became public and a suspect was named, I knew I was going to live with this story for a while. The prime suspect, Timothy McVeagh, lived in Kingman.

There was more. He worked at a hardware store in town with another Kingman resident named Michael Fortier. He kept a mailbox at a local mail-drop business. He rented his movies at a local video store. He was all over Kingman, and soon the FBI was also all over Kingman. For a while the FBI worked with the theory that the vacant-lot explosion was a test run; if I remember straight, evidence suggested fuel oil and fertilizer was the explosive agent -- same stuff that was used to destroy the Alfred Murrah Federal Building.

I don't know if Mac McCarty is still around. Mac was in his early 70s at the time, and I knew him quite well. Mac was the one who reminded me it is grammatically incorrect to refer to someone as an ex-Marine. Mac always carried a gun -- in Arizona you could carry one openly back then -- and he was upset that he had to check his weapon in at the door whenever he went into the county courthouse. He'd staged one-man protests defending his Second Amendment rights in front of the courthouse, with a sign in his hands and his weapon on his hip.

Mac had a little side business when Arizona revamped its weapon-carry laws. To legally carry a concealed weapon, you needed to take a class in handgun safety, and Mac was accredited as a teacher. For a time, he had two students in one of his classes -- Timothy McVeagh and Michael Fortier.

Mac wasn't sure why these two were in his class. They both knew their way around a firearm, he told me. The closest he could figure was that maybe they were involved in militia activity and they were looking for interested people. Mac said he would have been interested in hanging out with the two if that was the case.

While the FBI staked out Kingman, the national and international media also swarmed my town. And many of the foreign reporters -- from the Sydney Herald in Australia, and the L.A. Times in California -- thought the town was a real hoot. Militia types everywhere, they reported. Strong anti-government sentiment all around. Most people lived in mobile home parks, flush toilets had just arrived, and FAX machines had yet to be installed. Or something.

It's true the folks in northern Arizona are a little different from the rest of the country. We Southwesterners (and I freely use "we" because I lived out there for a long time and these roots still show) don't usually recognize foreign powers, and Washington, DC is about as foreign as it gets. We tend to take matters in our own hands and go to the government later, if we think
about it.

But in the weeks and months after that bombing that killed 168 people -- many of them children at a day-care center -- my memories come out in chunks:

• Spending an evening on a press stakeout in front of Michael Fortier's house while the FBI executed a search warrant. His was easy to pick out; it had the Gadsden flag ("Don't Tread On Me") flying proudly in the front yard. I talked my way into his next-door neighbor's living room for a chat; she was in her 80s and rather thrilled at all this drama in her neighborhood. The FBI sprung for about a dozen large pizzas for the press, so they got on my good side for at least a few minutes.
  

• Stopping in at a military surplus place, Archie's Bunker, to pick up a gas mask bag -- which is great for carrying cameras and film. The place was across the street from the National Guard Armory, which served as the FBI staging area. I know they were monitoring the doors of Archie's Bunker; I'm probably on some federal film archive somewhere.
  
  
• Talking to a man who was bicycling from Kingman to Oklahoma City. He wanted to raise funds and awareness, and to let the people in Oklahoma City know we're not all bad in Arizona.
  
  
• Meeting a delegation of visitors from Somalia. I'm not sure why they visited Kingman, but they sure had some preconceived notions about the place. In broken English, one told me he'd heard about "these people who did bad things and now they're ..." That's when, searching for the right word, he held his wrists together in that international gesture. In handcuffs.
  
  
• Hearing from a magazine called Media Bypass, an alternative publication that was self-described as somewhere to the right of Attila The Hun. They were particularly interested in my editorials, where I suggested the bombing took a lot more financing and organization than what two clowns making minimum wage at a hardware store could muster. 
  
  

I'm no conspiracy nut, but I still think McVeagh took a lot of secrets with him when he was executed; secrets that the federal government wanted to stay hidden. But then, I don't recognize foreign powers.

###

Making a living in ObamaNation

Like it or not, Obamacare is the law of the land. The chances of having it declared unconstitutional are only enough to hang a prayer on, and the chances of it being repealed are nonexistent.

OK. I wasn't planning to debate that piece of legislation again; y'all should know by now what I think of it. But Obamacare ushers in a whole different world, and it's especially noticeable if you like to eat, and if you work to keep beans on the table.

Not long ago I was drawing unemployment, and looking for work. I was thinking, anything that moved was subject to my attention, and if it didn't move I'd kick it a few times and make it move. But the job market is, well, pretty slim.

Enter Obamacare. Now, people who hire others are taking a long hard look at whether they can afford to do that. It's bad enough with a tanked economy, but now that the federal government is requiring health care besides? That just kicked any possibility of recovery right between the eyes.

It's a real bad time to look for work.

A few weeks ago I said that one is foolish to depend on one source of income, what with the uncertain economy. Let's amend that. Now, anyone who works for another person in a typical employer-employee relationship faces a bigger disadvantage than ever before.

Welcome to the new world. The independent contactor is king. Instead of punching a clock, getting paid by the hour and banking on those cool benefits, the jobs scenario has people getting paid by the job and seeing to his own benefits.

I'm no stranger to this. For years I worked as a taxi driver and as a freelance journalist. Although the taxi company often played it fast and loose with independent contractor law, it was a pretty good way to work. Call my own hours. If I'm not making money it's my own issue. If I have a problem with the boss, then it's time for some serious therapy.

Now, I'm doing it again. I pretty much gave up on finding actual work for someone else, but am throwing my resources into working for myself. A bit of a high-wire act, admittedly, but it's starting to pay off. I have a couple of income sources for writing Web content, and am making moves toward hire-out writing and editing.

It's a tough go. My biggest hurdle is personal. While it's true that a person with ADHD always has several things in the pot (I'm making no admissions here), focus is my biggest issue. I'm working on that, and making small gains. Except for that, there is really nothing standing in the way.

Meanwhile, I'm making a little hay:

• Got my high-speed Internet up. This in itself is huge. I don't have to run out with laptop and capture a wireless signal; I can work from home.

• Getting my routine together. A few hours in the morning writing and editing today's copy, a bicycle ride in the afternoon (I wrote this column while riding back home from the bank), digging up a little more work, and things like that.

• Working, as I mentioned, on focus. I checked out the "Pomodoro technique," which is nothing but a fancy name for setting a kitchen timer while you work and taking regular breaks. I do my best work in short bursts, living in a bubble of kick-butt for a half-hour at a time.

Meanwhile, I have a to-do list for the next few weeks:

• Continue getting my groove on, fine-tune the routine.

• Get a wireless router. Currently my desktop computer is hooked up to my high-speed Internet, and I do most of my writing on my netbook, outdoors. I move files back and forth with a thumb drive, an inelegant solution. I've priced routers, and I should have one within two or three weeks.

• Start looking at upgrading equipment. My desktop computer is the bottleneck in the system. It's probably 10 years old, and it hesitates a lot when I'm doing high-speed online stuff. I've gutted the operating system and am running one that's little more than a browser and text editor, but it's still the thing that slows me down.

• Dedicate part of my work day to what lawyers call "rainmaking," hitting the wires hot and heavy to drum up some more work.

It's coming together. It's a whole new workaday world out there, and I'm ready for it.

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Speaking your piece: Blogging whys and hows

[First of a short series on public discourse]

They used to say about newspaper publishers that you never argue with a man who buys ink by the barrel and paper by the ton.

But that was a couple of decades ago. Now the guy who buys all this ink and paper has no real credibility. He's in the tank. Newspapers are dying. Network TV news is dying.

But the need for a free, independent press remains, and probably now more than ever. This brouhaha over the ObamaLosi health care plan is instructive. If it wasn't for public discourse via the press and Internet, how would you know some senators -- maybe even yours -- sold their votes for a bit of pork or a few judges? How else would you know what is in that health care plan, and how much it would cost to future generations? How would you know about that gigantic proctoscope coming your way, unless someone tells you about it?

I've written plenty about the stuff going on in Washington, and I've hardly scratched the surface. But I'm not unique. Plenty of bloggers do the same thing, and some do it as well, or better, than me. But that's OK too.

More people get their news via the Internet these days. And with today's tools (Google Reader, Twitter, Facebook) it's easier than ever to share news. Shoot, even with my modest 540 Twitter followers, you can see the potential. Assuming my average Twitter follower has 2,500 unique followers of their own (and I'm clearly shooting wild with the numbers here), you can see how word of something can get out on the Internet:

• First generation, my followers: 540.
• Second generation, my follower's followers: 1,350,000.
• Third generation, my followers' followers' followers: Forget it. Smoke is pouring out of my calculator.
• All of this takes place within a few seconds.

OK, that's some real fuzzy math, but you get the idea. Now you know how a news story or video can go "viral."

Years ago, thinker Marshall McLuhan named the printing press as one of the great extensions of man, arguing that it made the common person into a reader. He later amended it with the copying machine; everyone's a publisher. Ol' Marshall's no longer around; if he'd lived to see blogging and Twitter, he'd say everyone now has a newspaper.

But you get the drift. The media is no longer top-down, i.e. a publisher and a gang of reporters telling you what's news. It's now bottom-up, with the common man setting news policy.

Now, that sea change is for better or worse. The Internet has a horrendous signal-to-noise ratio. For each solid, meaty piece of reportage there are about a million pieces of fluff about Britney Spears or Tiger Woods. Sometimes this bottom-up news policy does make me long for some good old-fashioned elitism.

Still with me? Cool.

Setting up a blog is easy. Just about anyone who can turn a computer on and point a mouse at the Web browser icon can do it.

I'm using Blogger, which is a platform owned by Google. What's beautiful about it is that it's free, it's easy, and initial setup takes almost no effort at all.

Before you do anything else, decide what you want to blog about. If you want to write a bunch of crap about how many beers you puked up, or who you hooked up with last night, do me a favor: Please ignore everything I say here. We've got plenty of the likes of you on the Internet, and you're probably looking at the wrong web site anyway.

But if you're interested in the world you live in, if you are able to string together a few coherent and independent thoughts, if you're not a Kool-Aid drinker, then let's talk about blogging.

• Go to blogger.com to set up.

• Give yourself a sign-in name and password. If you have a Google account (such as gmail), use that.

• Come up with a name for your blog. You will soon be known for that, so choose carefully.

• Pick a template. There are plenty, and some are butt-ugly. But pick one. Don't worry about all the cool widgets and things just yet; you're just writing now. Got it?

• Pull up NEW POST, then write a headline.

• Lock and load. Get your thoughts down.

• Read it over. If it looks like it's what you want to say, click on PUBLISH POST. See how easy that was?

• Don't worry that no one is reading it. Keep writing. If your stuff is good, the readers will come. Tell folks what you're doing. Put it on your Facebook page, or whatever social media you're using.

• Stick with it, and learn the nuances of blogging as you go. There's a whole new science about it. For now, though, just write.

• If you don't write worth a flip, just use your computer webcam and talk to your readers. Start a YouTube channel, save your videos and talking messages there, and post them to your blog. Just make sure you're, well, wearing something -- PLEASE? -- when you make your video.

That's the basic stuff.

OK, so why am I giving up all this information?

Because I can, and because we need more voices out there on the Internet. We need more, well, I said it. Independent thinkers. Folks who don't give a rip what the mainstream is saying. Folks who, like that guy in David Baldacci's Camel Club, "want the truth."

Something smelling funny in Washington, or in your state capital? Don't just sit around whining about it. Blog about it.

(Props to commentator Michael Berry of Houston for putting this idea in my head.)

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[In a future Column, I'll continue this thought ... I'll discuss ways of keeping up with all these Internet headlines. Think RSS here.]

Unemployment and Bunning's TS card: More than the money

Talk that the federal government may not afford paying out more unemployment benefits may leave me in a financial pickle, but more importantly it leaves me with one of those thorny moral dilemmas.

Sen. Jim Bunning (R, KY) is staging a one-man blockade to shut down any expansion of unemployment benefits. Later, Sen. John Kyl (R-AZ) joined him on this, saying the federal government needs to figure out a way to pay for additional benefits first.

"Congress just passed the so-called pay-go legislation which is supposed to require that we find offsets or other savings if we are going to spend money," Kyl said. "So what's the first thing we do? We exempt this bill from it."

Bunning, the baseball Hall Of Famer, laid what older military veterans may call a "T.S. card" on a $10 billion Senate plan to extend unemployment benefits. (Those who didn't hear Bunning's actual comments will probably still get the drift without a lot of explanation.)

While the Senate bill stalls, there's the spectre that benefits may terminate this month for more than 1.1 million former workers. At least, that's what the Democrats are saying, and most of those cats in the halls of Congress are real good at dealing out the exaggerated numbers and scare tactics.

Meanwhile, I will find out fairly quickly what happens next. I get inside information on this kind of news in my mailbox every week. See, with the exception of whatever writing income I scratch out, I've been living on unemployment. And hating it.

While some folks can carve a whole lifestyle out of waiting for that gummint check, I'm not one of those. It goes against everything I believe, everything that's important to me. Plus, it doesn't mesh with my personal style. I'm an action type, and not having a regular job leaves me all jacked up and no place to go. In short, it turns me into Beelzebub.

To be honest, I'm not sure where this unemployment compensation comes from. Well, I kind of do. It's funny money, surgically removed from working people and business owners or, failing that, printed up as needed by the federal government.

OK, here's the moral dilemma. Those who know me through this space have probably figured by now that I'm not big on government assistance. Shoot, I'm not big on government anything. I'd rather have a battery acid enema than deal with all these civil service types. A friend suggested I might consider trying for food stamps. I politely told her no, and the politeness was only because she's such a dear friend. But I'm not hurting. I can do great things with beans, rice, and hamburger. Even with my most expensive grocery item (premium coffee) my food bill is practically zip.

But you see what's going on. I'm writing about these conservative/libertarian principles, and I try to live in a manner that's at least somewhat consistent with what I write. My views have not changed, and don't expect me to start pounding a share-the-wealth message any time soon. I don't roll that way.

See the dilemma here? While some may suggest I just get what I can, shut up, and hang my convictions, I'm just not that type of person.

Strategy time, from my personal notes: I'm still looking for work, but have widened my options. Part time would be wonderful; in fact that's the best scenario I can think of. It was less than two months ago that I started freelance writing in earnest, so I'm just scratching the surface there. Right now, as long as it's legal I don't really care what the part time job is; it's not like I'm going to be married to it or anything. I have three (or four, depending on how you count them) paid writing gigs going on right now, and already at this early stage they amount to half a paycheck. A part-time gig, paying about what I'm making now in unemployment, would be gravy.

Entrepreneurs and high-level economists are smart enough to know that you don't put all your eggs in one basket. But with this economy being what it is, that truth has filtered down to the average folks, those who punch a clock every day. The economy is so uncertain that if you're depending on just one income source for your daily bread, you're inviting trouble.

While some do quite nicely for themselves while waiting for that gummint cheese, I don't see how they do it.

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Sarah Palin: Talk to the hand

I was amused to hear the latest political scandal, the one about Sarah Palin giving a speech using crib notes written on her hand.

It's a blast from the past. Many of us can recall writing cheat notes on our hands and wrists back in our school days. I know I did, and it was worth an extra five or 10 points on many tests. I never really gave up the habit after my school days were over, either. I'm quite a notetaker, and I swear by the wonderful low-tech "Hipster PDA" (little more than a bundle of index cards) for my very survival. If I don't have that or a note pad handy, I'm not above using my hand.

Barack Obama takes a lot of ribbing about his love affair with the TelePrompter (I'm still checking on rumors that he has one in the Lincoln Bedroom with a selection of sweet nothings for Michelle loaded in), but that's little more than a high-priced version of the palm-of-the-hand note.

Now, I like Palin. I know she doesn't have a chance of being elected; she's probably the most polarizing figure since Hillary Clinton. I can't think of anyone who is neutral about her. And she takes a lot of crap from the media. Shoot, there are a lot more conservative folks out there, and many politicians tote a lot more baggage than her any old day. There are many more viable targets than her. But she's a threat to the mainstream partly because of the attention she normally gets, but also -- don't discount this -- she seems to be a genuinely happy person. But this bit about using crib notes -- will someone please tell me the significance of that?

Understand, if you're in politics you're going to give a lot of speeches. And if you're a big-name person like an Obama or Palin, chances are you didn't write the speech yourself. High-level politicians hire speechwriters, and sometimes it's a crapshoot because every word loaded into the TelePrompter is a surprise.

Unless you're giving the same basic speech over and over again, it's pointless to try to memorize all this stuff. And forget about speaking off the cuff; the political graveyard is littered with the bodies of those who said the wrong thing just because it sounded good at the time.

I've given talks over the years, mostly back in California. I was a member of Toastmasters then (and am looking to get back on board there), so I'm no stranger to the other side of the lectern. I spoke from fairly skeletal notes, usually no more than an outline and a few key words. Still, I was working from an advantage over your favorite politician because I wrote my own stuff.

One time at Toastmasters I gave a talk, and my notes were written on half-sized index cards, something I could conceal in my hand. I liked that idea because I could then step out from behind the lectern, move around, and still have my notes -- my crutch -- with me.

It worked well enough, or at least I thought so.

My speech evaluator thought differently, but he was the type of guy who, if he noticed you nervously jingling loose change in your pockets, he'd place a bet on how much money you had there. He was just a totally evil person. Anyway, he pointed out that I had my fist clenched through the speech, and he was worried I'd go over and beat someone up.

Man, I know I should have written those notes on my hand.

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(Above: Sarah Palin gets caught with her notes during Tea Party Convention in Nashville. Below: Palin's answer, after the ordure hit the rotary cooling device. Hi, Mom!)

Hoping this song sticks in your head ...

This is just too good ... unfortunately, it's also too true.

The singer here is Jim Hawkins, someone I'd never heard of.

Props to Richard Todd of WTMA for bringing this to the attention of Charlestonians everywhere.

Great stuff. It's one of these songs that'll stick in your head for a while, whether you want it to or not. Hope it sticks at least until the next election, huh?

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Pass the salt ... while you still can

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, after introducing laws regulating smoking and trans fat in his city, is asking restaurants and food packagers to hold the salt.

Here's a story about it in The Guardian, a publication from The United Kingdom:

... the campaign, called the National Salt Reduction Initiative, aims to cut the quantities of sodium in packaged and restaurant foods by a quarter over five years. The city claims that if the 2014 target is met it will help save many thousands of premature deaths ... Americans consume on average about 3,400 milligrams of salt a day ? well above the recommendation of the American Heart Association of less than 2,300 milli­grams. Most of that is out of the individual consumer's hands as almost 80% of salt intake is already added to packaged and restaurant foods and only about 11% added in the home ... high salt levels can raise blood pressure, which increases the risk of heart disease and strokes ... Dr Thomas Farley, New York's health commissioner, said that 1.5 million New Yorkers already suffered from high blood pressure ... "If we can reduce the sodium levels in packaged and restaurant foods we will give consumers more choice about the amount of salt they eat, and reduce their risk of heart disease and stroke in the process," he said ...

OK, you might think. Let those New Yorkers live their lives any ol' way they please; what does this have to do with everyone else?

Here's the thing: New York City, like California, is a testing lab for strange new laws. Give it a few years, then what happens there will eventually happen in the rest of the country.

Back in the 1980s, writer John Naisbitt penned "Megatrends," a futuristic look at American society, and while he missed the mark on some of his guesses he was spot-on with others. In Megatrends, Naisbitt listed five states as "bellwether states," arguing that, as I am, what happens there will happen here. He kept up on trends by following the news in those five states. To Naisbitt, California was a bellwether state then, but New York wasn't. He did list Florida and Connecticut as two of the other states to watch 30 years ago.

Although it's not something I'd brag about, I grew up in California. But one thing I did gain from my 30 years there was that I had a sneak preview of today's and tomorrow's headlines. I wasn't terribly surprised to see the number of illegal aliens in South Carolina; in fact some folks in the Palmetto State thought I was some sort of mad prophet because I was predicting this here 10 years ago. I'd already seen it happen on the other coast. And I wasn't shocked to see new laws regulating smoking here; in the late 1980s California cities were already banning smoking in public places. We California products -- and New Yorkers now -- already know what's going on.

But then, Californians and New Yorkers know what's going to happen because they're often the trigger for new laws elsewhere. The more folks emigrate from these places, the more they'll bring their laws and customs with them. They become missionaries, trying to bring "civilization" on those poor backwards country boys in the South and Midwest. Shoot, no wonder folks in the South don't care that much for strangers. It's like what the late Lewis Grizzard, a great American, said of the southern states: "Come on down. Marry our daughters. We just don't want to hear how you did it in Cleveland."

Partly because of health concerns (but mostly it's nothing but preference), but I don't use much salt myself -- and I'm glad to share some of my own cooking hacks here -- but I'm not about to ask the government to regulate other people's salt usage. Are you kidding? Even if I could, the feds are the last folks I'd want to involve in this.

Again, from Guardian:

... the difference between the salt drive and the previous health initiatives is that this new mission will be purely voluntary. Smoking and trans fats were both banned, and the posting of calories imposed on larger chains, but in this case food manufacturers and restaurants will be encouraged to participate out of concern for public well-being rather than by compulsion ...

Yeah, that's what they all say.

Almost everything starts off as voluntary.

But here are a couple of things to chew on here:

The federal government is on the verge of taking over our health care system; it's just a question of how thorough a takeover will be at this point. The feds will then have an interest in cutting health care costs one way or another. While there's this talk of rationing health care and cutting back on Grandma (some of this is pure smoke, while some is actual fire), they'll start looking more at the prevention angle. Smoking is definitely a factor in respiratory and circulatory problems, fats fill your thighs and arteries with all kinds of sludge, and too much salt does a number on your blood pressure.

So you know it's coming.

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