Forward Biased (Current Events)

Things I ponder while driving to work

I'm an unwilling consumer of NPR news while driving to work, and a few things I hear raise a few ponderables:

Trent Lott wants to put a $750,000,000 earmark in an emergency spending bill, a bill ostensibly in support of Iraq and Katrina rebuilding expenditures, to destroy a recently rebuilt (at a cost of $250,000,000) railroad and replace it with a highway. This highway has apparently been a dream of his for quite awhile. My question is why something like this wouldn’t be included in a more appropriate bill, say something like the equally bloated highway bill? Could it be that Federal spending on this highway can’t be justified and the only way to get it is by hiding it in a “veto-proof” spending bill? Is this kind of self-serving abuse of trust what we mean by leadership?

I’m hearing a lot of griping about gas prices. How much did a loaf of bread or a gallon of milk cost in 1972? How about 1996? Why aren’t we hearing about price-gouging from dairy farmers? And this proposed $100 tax refund to taxpayers – is the definition of taxpayer “someone that actually pays income tax?” If so, expect to hear about “another tax cut for the rich” from 50% of the country. If not, here’s yet another back door welfare program. I’ve also heard that Congress passed a law mandating increased usage of grain-based ethanol in gasoline, which obviously benefits the farming industry. Does this mean we can get rid of the expensive farm subsidies now?

I’m curious about these Mexican Reconquistas and their claims that they own parts of the Southwest United States and will be taking those areas back. Back where? Are they talking about annexing those lands to Mexico? That wouldn’t make much sense – it’s not like Mexico is land-poor, so their economic problems must be arising from other factors. How long would it take for the newly annexed areas to be just as blighted as the rest of Mexico, and the Reconquistas are pouring out of California (or whatever they re-name it to) and striving to take back North Dakota? Or do they think that can "conquer" those areas but still retain the benefits of an American economy? I can’t see that happening since the “conquered” people would simply move out, leaving the newly reclaimed lands to be managed by lettuce pickers and landscapers.

Again, these are just random point and apropos of nothing in particular.  Might be fun to discuss, though.

Immigration, Amnesty, and a lawful society

I'm sure we've all seen the disgusting demonstrations put on by adolescents in the southwestern regions of our country.  I'm currently vacationing in Las Vegas, so I'm possibly a little close to the "action," and I'm certainly in an area that has a higher population of immigrants than I'm used to at home.

Why do I call the demonstrations "disgusting?"  I hope it isn't because of any latent racism.  In fact, I usually enjoy talking to and working with immigrants, particularly of the Mexican variety, although I've also had some very interesting conversations with the Somalians that we see at home.  The Mexicans that I have exposure to are typically friendly, industrious, and hard-working.  I hope that doesn't come off as a "some of my best friends are Mexicans" arrogance - I truly have a tremendous amount of respect for them.  That said, I cannot support the rewarding of any kind of amnesty for illegal immigrants.  I would, however, support a more streamlined immigration process to enable those that choose to pursue their fortunes in our country to do so without enduring a ludicrous amount of governmental red tape.

I call the demonstrations disgusting because they go beyond that.  The demonstrations I have seen are not about immigration; rather they are focussed on the idea of Mexican ownership of this country, and they are blatantly anti-American.  It confuses me, frankly, to see such an anti-American sentiment from those that desire to strongly to be here.  My gut reaction is the opposite of one which would allow me to support their cause.  When I see American flags flown in a subservient position to the Mexican flag by these demonstrators, my first thought is "if you don't like it, swim you ass back across the river."  Surely that is not the way to advance their cause with the typical American.

My problem with an amnesty program, no matter what semantic lipstick the gov't tries to dress that hog with, is that it makes a mockery of our laws, just as the pardoning of those that fled to Canada to avoid the draft in the 60's and early 70's did.

If illegal immigrants can openly break the law and be rewarded for it with an amnesty program, I'm left wondering what kind of sucker could ever give a damn about the law.  Why, for example, should I pay the exhorbitant taxes I do?  Why should I ever bother to even glance at a speed limit sign?  Why shouldn't I have a still in my back yard?  Why in the world would I worry about breakinig the law by growing pot in my basement?  Where do you draw the line?

A society based on equal enforcement of the law for all cannot survive when it becomes apparent that the law only applies to those that choose to follow it.  Nor can it survive when the laws are only selectively applied.  While I can welcome immigrants and support an easier way for them to legally enter the country, I cannot get behind rewarding illegal immigration with a free pass.  Such a policy would be a brick in the road to anarchy.

We interrupt this weblog...

...for a word about Mad Cow.  Disease, that is.  Hamburgers.  Movie stars.

A sensible word, though, something that's in short supply nowadays.

Ralph Bristol writes:

In 2004, the U.S. beef industry slaughtered 32-million cattle. Yesterday, the U.S. confirmed the third case of mad cow disease.

Good Lord.  The third bloody blankety-blinkin' case.  We're all doomed.

None of those three got into the food chain.

Ok, now, just how many sick cows got into the food chain? 

Repeat after me:  none.

If they had, your chances of eating beef from a mad cow would be approximately one in 10 million.

We're doomed, I tell you.  Doomed!

By comparison, your chances of being killed by lightning in your lifetime is 1 in 56-thousand. Your chances of being killed while crossing the street are one in 612. You have a one in 228 chance of dying in an auto accident. Your chances of drowning in your bathtub are one in about 10-thousand.

If you do a Google News search for "mad cow," you will find 3,680 pages of links to news stories about mad cow disease. No doubt about it - Mad Cow is the scare du jour, but I submit that the facts don't support the perception.

There are plenty of things for us to be conserned about.  Legitimately concerned about.  Terrorism.  You want diseases? MERSA and H5N1 flu.  Entitlements bankrupting our country—under an ostensibly "conservative" administration.  Loss of individual liberties because we simply don't value them.  Politicians and other evil "leaders" who shamelessly and selfishly subvert our national interest in favor of their own.  Equally evil voters who do the same, yet expect politicians not to.

Ok, you want "apocalyptic" disasters?  Asteroid impacts.  The Yellowstone Caldera (look it up) erupting.  These are things that are going to happen—the only question is when.  And millions will die when they do happen.  Maybe all of us will.

And we're all tied in knots over Mad Cow.

About 800 people will die this year from choking on their food. If 800 people died from mad cow disease, practically no one would eat beef, the beef industry would suffer a huge financial loss, and tens of thousands of people would be out of work as a result.

800?? It would take only one person dying from eating Mad Cow-tainted beef for the whole beef industry to go into a tailspin, or some other even worse aviation-related metaphor (help me out here, Hogarth).

We evidently have no idea how to keep things in proper perspective.

Why not?

Rather, why do only a few of us seem to think rationally?

There's a non-trivial chance that I could die within the next five minutes from a myocardial infarction, but I'm not afraid of that.  I'm rather enjoying life, thank you.  I have reason not to, but I do nonetheless.  Not by mindlessly ignoring life's hazards, but by keeping them in perspective and enjoying life's little pleasures, such as writing, having (a few) others read what I write, and best of all, learning as a by-product of writing.  Life isn't long enough to learn all there is to be learned.

Sorry for the sermon, folks.  I'm not one to gather inapplicable or fallacious "wisdom" from sources such as movies, but Tommy Lee Jones did have a great line in Men In Black: "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals, and you know it."

Yeah, we know it.  Thing is, as smart and rational as we can be individually, why?

The Cigar Intelligence Agency linked with Wednesday Roundup.
The Watcher of Weasels linked with Submitted for Your Approval

God works in mysterious ways

I really don't know what category to put this in.  And this is via Steel Turman, so sorry for all of you who have seen this already.  Over there, I mean.  Or anywhere, for that matter.

Via the great AP Teletype Oracle, we find that:

WACO, Texas (AP) - A pastor performing a baptism was electrocuted inside his church Sunday morning after grabbing a microphone while partially submerged, a church employee said.

The Rev. Kyle Lake, 33, was standing in water up to his shoulder in a baptismal at University Baptist Church when he was electrocuted, said Jamie Dudley, a church business administrator and wife of another pastor there.

For those of you who don't know for sure, yes, "electrocuted" means killed by electrical means.  It's kind of awful—I don't know what to say.

The woman Lake was baptizing was not injured, Dudley said.

... "He was grabbing the microphone so everyone could hear," Dudley said. "It's the only way you can be loud enough."

... Lake, who had a wife and three children, had been at the church for nine years, the last seven as pastor, Dudley said.

This is terrible, and I find I can't make a "joke" or humorous aside that wouldn't be in terrible taste.  After all, a guy died here.

As a former electrical professional, it strikes me as extremely foolish to grab a microphone like he did without first having established that the system was properly grounded—and even then, if he was going to use a mic while standing in water, he should have used a wireless mic, not something connected to line power.  But he may not have known that, and his ignorance meant his death.  Death by ordinary household 120VAC while doing God's work.

This is all so very ironic.  Somehow this reminds me of the Old Testament, but I'm not sure exactly where...

The power of the press

Someone somewhere owes someone else an apology, and more besides, but it's not likely to happen.

Ah, where to start?   Have you ever watched the TV program "Extreme Makeover, Home Edition?"  Ok.  Then you know how they try to find a worthy family—perhaps the parents run a camp for disabled children, perhaps they take care of children no one else will care for...you get the idea.

This is the kind of family that was assaulted—yes, assaulted— by a sensationalism-hungry Legacy Media over the last few days. Now, when they get to find wrongdoing in the halls of power, O how they feel so righteous!  And yet when their vaunted layers of editors and fact-checkers make a—oops!—mistake, and something gets into print that shouldn't have, how do they correct their errors?

Errors?  What errors?  We're the PRESS!  We trump everyone!  Whatever errors may have been made were of little importance compared to the seriousness of the charges!  What errors could you possibly be talking about?

Well, lessee...let's start with this AP story that ran all over the world—just try to google "gravelles wakeman ohio" (without the quotes, of course) and you'll pull up dozens of pages of news, outraged Reporters Reporting the Reports that have been Reported to them by the Holy AP Syndicated Teletype Oracle, of how there are children in Ohio being kept in cages!  Cages, I say!  It's outrageous!  And I'm appropriately outraged for the occasion, of course.  Back to you, Dan.

Of course, plenty of blame goes also to prosecutor Russell Leffler who started this mess.  He—now get this—he actually wanted to make the case that the Gravelles were doing this for money.  Right.  We'll get to that in a minute.

And oh, yes, I forgot to introduce you to Mike and Sharen Gravelle.  They adopt the un-adoptable children that are normally doomed to spend their lives in institutions instead of homes.  And just what is their reward for doing all this?  It is to have all their children taken away from them and to be known far and wide as the Most Evil Parents in the World.

First, an example of what was reported:

WAKEMAN, Ohio - Sheriff's deputies removed 11 children from a home where they were locked in cages less than 3 1/2 feet high, authorities said.

The children's adoptive and foster parents, Mike and Sharen Gravelle, denied that they'd abused or neglected the children during a custody hearing Monday in Huron County. No charges had been filed as of Monday night.

... The cages were stacked in bedrooms on the second floor of their house, said prosecutor Russell Leffler, who was reviewing the case.

The children were found by a children's services investigator on Friday when he stopped by the Gravelles' home outside Wakeman, about 50 miles west of Cleveland. Deputies returned to the house that evening.

Some of the cages were rigged with alarms, Sommers said; others had heavy furniture blocking their doors. The children didn't have blankets or pillows.

One of the boys said he'd slept in the cage for three years, Sommers said.

... In March, a couple who had recently moved from Ohio to Florida was charged with neglect when their adopted teenager was discovered malnourished in a crib-like cage. The then-17-year-old weighed 49 pounds, investigators said.

The twin-bed-sized crib had been prescribed when the boy was much younger and lived in Ohio. It had been fitted with a lid, chains and a padlock, investigators said.

See?  Cages!  And note the strategic use of the word "rigged," as in "some of the cages were rigged with alarms."  I guess that's supposed to bring up thoughts of booby-traps or something.  See how outrageously outrageous this is?  I'm just...outraged!

I can find no more obvious example of the Legacy Press abusing its power than this story.  None of the abovementioned reporters ever went inside the actual home to see what this was all about, but of course, that didn't stop them from writing stories about the wicked cages, rigged with alarms!—until Michael Gravelle became tired of his wife's being labeled "the world's most evil mother," and he decided to give a tour of his home to a reporter from The Cleveland Plain Dealer.

"I felt terrible about it," Michael Gravelle told a reporter and photographer for The Plain Dealer during a tour of his home Sunday. "But it's necessary."

The children were removed from the home last month and sent to foster homes while the adoptions are investigated. The parents have not been charged, and custody hearings are scheduled in the widely publicized case.

The couple previously has not let reporters into their home.

For privacy reasons, they haven't allowed reporters access to their home.  Reasonable enough.  Except that said reporters will punish you for that by spreading baseless rumors about you.

Here's the kicker.

The Gravelles say they were adopting children nobody else wanted, who had problems such as fetal alcohol syndrome, autism, HIV and pica, an eating disorder that causes children to eat dirt and rocks.

The enclosures where the children slept are about 6 feet in length. The doors could be opened easily and had no locks on them, but a battery-powered alarm would go off when the doors opened, the newspaper said.

They were used as sleeping quarters to prevent the children from hurting themselves with glass or eating medicines, Michael Gravelle said. Every cupboard and shelf was covered with chicken wire for the same reason, he said.

"If you can call these cages, take me to jail right now," Michael Gravelle said. "Right now."

Oops.

Someone kind of, well, jumped to conclusions, didn't they?  These aren't normal children being kept here—these are the most difficult of the difficult cases, the ones where you can't even leave a child unattended through the night, so an alarm was set up to warn the parents if one of the children got out of bed.  I'd probably do the same thing, under the circumstances.

Prosecutor Russ Leffler alleges that the Gravelles were adopting the children for financial gain. Records show they received $4,265 monthly in adoption subsidies and disability payments when they had eight children in 2001.

"You could not pay me enough to do the things we had to do," Michael Gravelle said. "There is nothing easy about raising these children. We did not abuse them. That's the truth."

Let's see...that's about $51,000 a year to raise eleven of the most difficult children in the world.  Sure sounds like "easy street" to me.

Leffler is such an asinine...I can't say it.  I just can't say it.

When the Blogosphere makes an error, it gets splashed all over the front pages of thousands of blogs all over the internet.  When the Legacy Media makes an error, they didn't, really.  It gets buried—nothing to see here.  These aren't the horror stories you're looking for.  They can go about their business.  Move along.

There will be no gnashing of teeth or wringing of hands from them over this.  They caused untold pain and anguish to a family that was just trying to do something good, but there will be no attempt to make it right.  No headlines about what a wonderful thing the Gravelles are doing.  No foundation set up to receive donations so that the Gravelles, and others like them, can do their work a little more easily.  That's the least they could do.  The very least, after spreading nasty, unfounded rumors about good people who were just trying to help.  And the Legacy Media has the power to do just that.

Let's just watch them make it happen, right?  Right?

(Hat tip to Ralph Bristol, and thanks to Greyhawk at Mudville Gazette for the Open Post!)

The legal profession may never recover

Let me make sure I get this straight.

A woman in Ormond Beach, FL, one Diane Johnson, buys a pork loin at her local Publix grocery store.  She gets home and prepares it for her family's evening meal last Tuesday.  In the process of preparing or serving it, she discovers that there's a bullet in it.  A bullet in her pork loin casserole.

But this isn't the strange part (and no, I'm not making this up). 

All she wants is a replacement piece of meat.  Publix is happy to comply with a $10 refund and a fresh pork loin.

She isn't going to sue anyone.  No one.  Not Publix, not the slaughterhouse the meat came from, not the ammo manufacturer, no one.  After all, she said, no one got hurt.

Local lawyers are still in shock, but plan to file a Class Action against Ms. Johnson for Wrongful Denial of Income, Illegal Display of Common Sense (going against Florida community standards), Willful Infliction of Emotional Distress, and all associated Medical Expenses.  Don't try to tell them that no one got hurt.

Ok, I made that last part up, but I can just see the Volusia County Bar Association staring, slack-jawed, at the local newspaper, wondering just what the world has come to when a woman can find a bullet in her pork loin and not only remain calm and emotionally distress-free, but refuse to cash in on this country's Powerball Tort Lottery that has made millionaires out of mental midgets who spill coffee in their laps while driving, not to mention a whole lot of lawyers.

That pig may not have dodged a bullet, but Publix sure did.  And in a small way, so did we all.

Just imagine—is it possible that tort reform in this country could be enacted, not from Washington, but by its citizens?  (Thinks for a moment.)  Nah.

One other thing that came out in the story—Publix officials are puzzled over how the bullet escaped detection beforehand, since all meat is scanned by metal detectors before reaching store shelves.  Why on earth would they scan...on second thought, don't answer that question.

(Hat tip to Ralph Bristol.)

UPDATE:  Thanks to Brad over at The Unrepentant Individual for the link—and he remembers another case that didn't work out quite this way.

No money, no squirtey

If you think this makes me an evil, heartless right-wing extremist SOB, then so be it.  I don't call people morons often, and never generically, but in this case, you are a moron.  Specifically.

There's outrage in northern Minnesota after firefighters allowed a man's mobile home to burn.

Outrage, I tell you.  Sheer raging outrage, which in itself is outrageous.  That there's outrage, I mean, about which I am truly...outraged.  And what, I ask, fuels this righteous fire of furious, indignatious ignition?  What great miscarriage of justice has left a poor, hapless citizen alone at the mercy of those horrid, merciless agents of the BATF local firehouse and whose only hope is the saintly estate of journalism?

Carl Berg had failed to pay the 25-dollar annual fee required for fire protection for homes outside International Falls city limits.

Berg says he couldn't afford the fee or fire insurance. He says he lost everything in last month's fire.

Oh.

Pardon me whilst I work up some outrage over that.  (Grunt)  Dang, can't do it.  Sorry—I tried.

Twenty-five bucks, folks.  That's not per month.  That covers you for a year.  Toss 49 cents into a coffee can each frickin' week and you'll still have 48 cents left over at the end to blow on a half-order of those chicken nugget-like things.  I'm sorry, but in this country, no matter who you are, no matter what you do, if anything, no matter if you're on welfare and food stamps or just what you can bring home panhandling, you can afford $25 per year to pay someone to stay on call, equipped and ready to come and put out a fire.  This isn't rocket science (because if it were, it'd cost $25 billion per year just on standby, plus a couple hundred million for each actual trip, at least NASA's way).

But I digress. 

Oh yes.  Outrage.  There actually are folks who have enough outrage to spare, just sitting around, that they can throw it away on this kind of absurdity.  Must be a Really Slow Day for Social Inequity and that sort of thing.  Notify UNICEF that it's time to bomb some more Smurfs.

The Fire Department poured enough water to put the fire out temporarily and make sure everyone was safe. But when the blaze rekindled later, firefighters let the flames destroy what was left.

Fire Chief Jerry Jensen says he doesn't want to see that happen again. He says a firefighter's job is to "put out fires, not to watch them burn."

Now, at first this might carry the Appearance of a Stupid Thing to Do.  I mean, seeing as you're already there with your truck and hoses and everything, would it have hurt to have added a little milk o' human kindness to that water and help a guy out?  I mean, like the man said, isn't that, like, your job and all?

Local officials have been haggling for two years over how to pay for fire protection.

There's your answer.  Yes, it would have hurt to have put out the guy's fire.  If a man can't won't pay a mere pittance like $25 per year for the privilege of public fire protection (and yes, someone somewhere has doubtless already referred to fire protection as a "right") then give me some reason the faithful, law-abiding, bill-paying taxpayers of International Falls should pay up one cent for him!  Because they're nice guys?  I might fall for that one if we were discussing a legitimate hardship, but this is beyond ridiculous.  If local officials have been haggling even one day over how to pay for fire protection, it's one day too many.  You've evidently already got a mechanism in place to pay for it.  Carry it out like you would anything else.  If you don't pay your power bill, the man comes over in his little truck and does mean, restrictive things to your access to electrical current.  Even in winter.  Even if you're "poor."  And over a lot more money than $25 per year.

It's neither mean, heartless nor even strict to demand the same accountability for fire protection.  It's everyday common sense.  And I've already ranted way too much over such a small thing, but way down inside I don't really think it's a small thing at all.

The idea of simple, basic personal responsibility is a foreign concept to millions of otherwise capable Americans because their elected representatives have discovered that it pays (it pays the elected representatives, that is) to convince you that you have none and should have none.  That all you need to do is trust your friendly neighborhood government to take care of you, womb to the tomb.  And you may not even owe $25 per year—not if we can get those Evil Rich People to pay it for you.  (All they'll have to do is lay you off from your job in order to afford it.  Evil Rich People do seem to employ a whole lot of Other People, Evil or Otherwise.)

To these people this issue is hardly an absurdity—it's the foundation for their worldview, and the basis for their claim to power, not to mention money.  Your money, without which they can't finance their airplane trips from coast to coast to tell you how they need you to tighten your belt and ante up more taxes, nor their very jobs, if you can call them jobs.

That's what filled me with so much, well, outrage that I was compelled to post umpteen bazillion words about a stupid $25 fee in a town hundreds of miles away, in Minnesota, of all places.   If you're smart, you won't tick me off like that again, or I'm liable to go on and on about, say, Oregon, or worse, South Carolina.  You have been warned.

(Hat tip to Ralph Bristol, and thanks to Mudville Gazette for the Open Post.)

UPDATE:  Thanks much to Mark over at Cutting Edge of Ecstasy for granting me my first "Spewy" award:

WARNING: Do not attempt to consume liquids while reading this post.

I'm truly touched.  (Sniff)  If anyone spewed actual liquid in the process of reading this post, I'm tempted to offer to pay for any damage, just to celebrate.  Tempted, now—but not yet yielding to said temptation.

Does irony rust out in the rain?

It's raining.

I mean really raining, a good, slow, soaking rain, not like those unmeasurably light showers that breeze through and are gone in two minutes.

But that's the only kind of rain we've had here since the beginning of September, which is to say, none.  And that's after a summer of drought, and that's after several summers of drought.

It comes courtesy of tropical storm Tammy, of course, and we're likely to get more of it before it's over.  But think of it—there are millions of people up and down the Gulf Coast, from Texas to Mississippi, who would gladly have sent a little of the rain they received last month over our way if they had the choice.

They were being inundated out of house and home while others who needed rain went dry.  Now, it's not that we were so dry that everything was brown and everything.  Not that bad at all.  But it just seems ironic to me that there was enough rain to go around between those two hurricanes—it was just a bit, well concentrated.  And to add to the irony, the only reason we're getting rain now is because of another tropical storm.  But I'll take it however we can get it.  Within reason.

At least Tammy's projected path goes south of us, so while we'll get plenty of rain for a day or so, we won't get the moisture overload that folks in Georgia, northern Florida, and Alabama will get.   So I should be grateful, and I am.  I just don't particularly like it when a good thing comes to me because misfortune is coming to others.

Well, ok, except in politics.

UPDATE, Thurs. AM:  Hoo, boy.  I'd forgotten what real rain was like, but we sho' nuff got it now.

UPDATE PARTE LE DEUX:  Gosh, I almost forgot to ask, but Phoenix, how's the weather down in your neck o' the woods?

The usefulness of anger

Anger seems, most often, to manifest itself as a negative emotion, doing little good while having the potential to do nearly limitless harm.  But, like most such internal, subjective things, it does different things to different people, some not readily apparent.

Rage renders some people incoherent and others blind. It causes some to flare up--fiercely, but briefly--and then to burn out. In others, it does no more than instill sadness, and paralysis. Yet in Debra Burlingame--the 51-year-old sister of Charles F. "Chic" Burlingame, the pilot of the plane that was crashed into the Pentagon by terrorists on September 11, 2001--rage has fueled eloquence, an impressively mulish obstinacy, and an almost eerie moral clarity.

Via Rand Simberg we find an interview with Ms. Burlingame in OpinionJournal, written by Tunku Varadarajan.  Ms. Burlingame, more than any other individual, was responsible for Gov. Pataki's decision to scrap the "Freedom Center" from the World Trade Center memorial site.

He did so, it should be said, in response to the relentless pressure exerted by Ms. Burlingame and the Take Back the Memorial Movement, a coalition of little platoons of 9/11 family members assembled to boot the Freedom Center off Ground Zero. This is ground that Ms. Burlingame and numerous Americans regard as hallowed; for them, the Freedom Center's apparent mission--the establishment of an educational venue focused more squarely on such matters as the Native American genocide and the Jim Crow South than on the victims and perpetrators of 9/11--was pure anathema, proof not merely of leftist muddle-headedness but also of an elitist contempt for popular feeling.

It all started when Ms. Burlingame wrote an op-ed essay on 08 Jun of this year.

"Rather than a respectful tribute to our individual and collective loss," she wrote, "[we] will get a slanted history lesson, a didactic lecture on the meaning of liberty in a post-9/11 world . . . [and] a heaping foreign policy discussion over the greater meaning of Abu Ghraib and what it portends for the country and the rest of the world." She also asked whether it was seemly for the Freedom Center's advisory board to include members who had said, "I'm not sure which is more frightening: the horror that engulfed New York City or the apocalyptic rhetoric emanating daily from the White House" (Columbia's Eric Foner).

...Her rage was irrefutable, and one got the sense, after her piece appeared in print, that the Freedom Center did not stand a chance.

"...When I talked to Tom Bernstein in person about what they were about to do at the center," Ms. Burlingame recounted, "he said to me, 'You know, 9/11, if we don't put it in a broader context, it will be forgotten. It will not stand the test of time if we do not put it in a broader historical context.' The arrogance of this was stunning. And when I told him that Ground Zero was, to the 9/11 family people, and especially the military, a sacred place, and that you cannot put anything on this site that ignores that, denigrates that, marginalizes that, or does not give it the acknowledgment that is due . . . he looked at me blankly. Completely blankly. They were trying to cut 9/11 out of it completely."

...By her account, Mr. Bernstein said, "Debra, we're calling on people from all sides of the political spectrum . . . very balanced . . . people who are very dignified." To which she responded, "Oh really! Tell me who you have that's conservative. And he replied, 'Fareed Zakaria' [editor of Newsweek International]. I squinched my face up and said, 'He's not conservative,' and Bernstein goes, 'Naah . . . he's not, yeah, you're right, he's not.' "

This gets to the heart of the problem: The Freedom Center's progenitors were convinced--utterly and adamantly--of their own reasonableness. In an inversion of the usual conditions of passion, the Forces of Rage--here, led by Ms. Burlingame--had an impressive clarity of vision; by contrast, the self-styled Forces of Reason were blinded by their own certitudes.

"...Anger can be very, very productive, as long as it's focused and you don't lose your mind. After the London bombings [in July], someone asked me, 'Have we become complacent? Do you miss 9/11, when people had more unity?' And I say, 'No, no, no. What I miss is the anger. And the clarity. That's what I miss.' "

The anger and the clarity.  Yup, I agree completely—both were palpable in the days following the attack, only to slowly dissipate as less and less attention was paid by the Legacy Media.  That's why I was happy to find the little Java/Flash animation now at the top of the left sidebar (hat tip to Bill Quick).  Yes, it's free, if you want it for your own blog or website.

By "anger," though, I certainly don't mean the sort of hateful attitude typified by people like Michael Moore and Cindy Sheehan—I mean exactly the sort of attitude Ms. Burlingame shows us.  Keep the anger, but keep the clarity, too, which helps you to channel the anger in productive ways.  We didn't have this sort of problem in the years following Pearl Harbor.  We channelled our anger into steely determination to win a war.  And Pearl Harbor has stood "the test of time" just fine, thank you very much.

But this war has become so politicized that this determination, born of anger, has nearly disappeared.  We're letting the politicians lead it.  Somehow, we've got to take the lead back.

You know the drill.

Everything's the responsibility of the federal gov't, right?

So, post-Rita and Katrina, it seems that we've discovered the obvious—that we're generally ill-prepared to evacuate major metropolitan areas.  So, in a story by an AP writer discussing this issue, where does she focus?  Mayors of several metropolitan cities?  Emergency preparedness planners from the same cities?

Are you kidding me?  Nowadays, we all run to the federal government for our every need.  And rather than accepting only their actual constitutional responsibilities and pointing out what their "enumerated powers" actually are, they're quite eagerly accepting the job of planning emergency preparedness for everyone in the whole bloody country.  All 295,734,134 of us.  Shucks—should be a piece of cake.

President Bush  has ordered the Homeland Security Department to review disaster plans for every major metropolitan area. Experts say the slow pace of evacuations in Houston and New Orleans show the need for changes to get people out of harm's way in a more urgent emergency.

"You have to accept the possibility that a major portion of the people will be left behind," said Roger Cressey, a former anti-terrorism official in the Clinton and Bush administrations. "You may have to write some of them off in far larger numbers than people realize."

Perhaps we could just fund the states and cities and let them do the planning?  I mean, they know their people, areas, and circumstances much better than some bureaucrat in Washington, don't they?  Not to mention that they might not be quite so ready to "write off" some of their citizens.  Oh, wait...

Cressey said the answer is not simply giving local governments more money to improve emergency operation plans.

Lawmakers said they plan to address the issue.

Oh, oh.  They're gonna "address the issue." 

Have you ever—ever—heard of Congress refusing to take action—i.e. "spend your money"—on any issue, saying, "that's a job for state and local governments?"

"You would think four years after 9/11 with billions of dollars spent to improve our emergency preparedness that the response to Katrina would be far crisper, far better coordinated and not marred by failures at all levels of government," said GOP Sen. Susan Collins (news, bio, voting record) of Maine, who heads the Senate Homeland Security Committee.

Cressey said there must be plans in place to move the poor and disadvantaged. Thousands of them were left behind in New Orleans after Katrina.

Hear me, loyal readers.  Virtually every member of Congress, indeed the president himself, has has broken the oath of office that each one "solemnly swore," namely, to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

The wording is slightly different for Senators and members of Congress, but it amounts to the same thing.  And, with a very few exceptions, they all break it.  Actually they pulverize it beyond recognition.

That constitution you swore to defend has a tenth amendment, people.  Remember your high-school civics class?  It goes like this:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

This is probably the most routinely ignored sentence in the entire Constitution.  I'd be willing to bet that no one reading this has ever heard his/her congressman¹—or any congressman, for that matter—mention this sentence for any reason, much less to argue against federal involvement in someone's local affairs.  The result of 229 years of this, as we're all aware, is a federal government that employs more people nationwide than any private employer, anywhere.

This is obscene.

And the most overt, shameless example of violating this oath of office is the president himself, when he signed the McCain-Feingold Campaign "Finance Reform" and Back-door Assault on the First Amendment bill.  Bush himself expressed his reservations about the bill's unconstitutional restrictions on free political speech, but "hoping" that the SCOTUS would trim out the objectional parts, he signed it anyway.  Sheesh.  If ever there was a clear example of dereliction of duty, this was it.

In fact, the president had already promised to veto the bill on national television while George Will interviewed him—on 23 Jan 2000, on ABC's This Week.  He had built a reputation for actually keeping his campaign promises, but he now betrayed the people who voted for him in a calculated political move that didn't exactly go as planned.

Because, in a ruling that doubtless dismayed the president and floored me (although I'm sure that many more politically astute people were not surprised at all), the SCOTUS upheld these restrictions on political speech (finding unconstitutional only a provision prohibiting minors from making contributions to candidates and parties).

I don't know about you, but I don't appreciate being betrayed.  It puts me in a bad mood.

Actually, I'm digressing badly from my original point, except that this illustrates how government officials don't keep their oath of office foremost in their minds when making decisions.  They makes their deals and they takes their chances—only it's us that gets screwed when things go like this.  And most of the time it's their best interests, not ours, that are advanced even when things go "right."  If it insures and/or expands the amount of power they have over us, the states, or anyone, it's a good thing and they'll find some way to sneak it in, if necessary, and vote for it.  All "for the people," of course.

It's enough to make a guy just give up trying to influence government leaders in any way.  They're gonna do whatever they can to maintain and expand their reach, no matter what I say (not that I'm anyone special).  (Sigh...)

Wait a minute—the whole idea of having to be "someone special" in order to influence government was part of what we fought the Revolutionary War over, wasn't it?  Well, wasn't it?

What happened?  We've obviously lost control over our own government, and much control over our own lives.  And it happened so slowly that we didn't see it coming and stop it when we had the chance.  In particular, we allowed the executive branch (the presidency) to almost completely bypass the legislative branch (congress) by establishing bureaucracies such as the FDA, EPA, FCC, OSHA, etc., etc., etc. that have authority over our lives, make up their own laws as they go, and seem accountable to no one.  Did you ever vote for the head of, or members of, the FDA?  Are their rules and regulations, to which we all must submit (like it or not), ever brought up for public debate?  In what way can it be said, even loosely, that this huge part of our governance is "democracy?"

Well, maybe I'm in denial, but I'm too bloody well angry to give up yet. _______________________________________________________________________

¹I'm using the male gender generically, of course, which is perfectly correct English.  Sometimes I give in to political correctness and say "his/her," but honestly, it's a waste of space and time to do that every dang time I mention someone who could be either female or male.  I trust you all realize that I, or anyone else who does so, is hardly sexist for doing it.

(Hat tip to Ralph Bristol.)