Well…two days in a row of being good and I feel okay today…better than okay, really…I have some energy as you can see by the fact I’m getting this out at 6:25 and have been up for about an hour. Weird…wonder if it might be that I got some exercise last night? I suited up and went out in the snow for an hour or so…just walking and it was cold but I still think it did some good….new pains this morning, though. It looks like a quite snowy couple of days coming and I hope it’s not like the greasy stuff from yesterday…one plus of that was I had to shift down two gears traveling and it made it pretty relaxing watching the idiots try to fly and sliding all over…and I really don’t have anywhere to be so taking more time is not a problem. There will be topics for later today…have a holdover from yesterday that I want to get to along with the return to faith-based economics that our boy Boehner telegraphed in a speech thurs….it’s going to be a target rich environment for two years….more later…
It’s the fourth amendment…again….
Well….was going to talk about politics this morning but a couple of articles that I’ve read in the past few days set me on a different path….politics will wait until I do this one. First, there was the Cali supreme court ruling that if a person is stopped for any reason, their possessions can be searched as well as their body…in this particular case, a man was stopped for “suspicion” of some crime; not charged but stopped for questioning…the police were then allowed to search his cellphone for text or other communication that may have had reference to drugs in it…well, they found reference to ‘smoking up” or some such thing and used those words to justify searching him and his car where they found a small amount of marijuana and charged him with a felony. This has been decried by all constitutional scholars as a shredding of the fourth amendment since it now allows you, your car, or since you have your house keys on you normally, your house to be searched on the vaguest kind of innuendo or suspicion. Never mind that the 4th amendment states that they need a warrant for such things…these guys just don’t care….
Then next one comes out of a study in the Chicago Tribune today where they analyzed the use of “drug dogs” to find drugs in traffic stops…and the findings were startling in the damage that these tactics have done to our rights…the researchers found that while the police still see the idea that dogs are infallible and the courts agree with them, the data of their abject failure has been suppressed by law enforcement who depend on these dogs to get to their ends of being able to search anyone at any time without probable cause. The statistics are horrifying…in only 30% of the stops and searches that were triggered by dogs were there any drugs found…and in only 1 in 8 of the stops on Hispanics were drugs found. The study goes on to say that dogs can give a false positive for many reasons, with the most cited one being that the officer telegraphed that he wanted the dog to alert. I hope some of you can see the potential for abuse that these kids of things have….and I have only one question for the tea partiers…with your supposed reverence for the constitution, where is your cry for these things to be changed? Not gonna happen….again, I fear for our wonderful country…geez…
Look, before you get it in your head, I want to address the old saw that states “if you aren’t doing anything wrong, you won’t mind being searched” that the law and order types use as a hammer to attack those of us that still revere the constitution and the protections that it gives us. Why do you think there is a fourth amendment? Because the founding fathers had seen unwarranted, capricious, detentions used for repression of the populace across Europe and in the colonies and wanted to make sure that could not happen in our country. It is one of the primary reasons we fought the revolutionary war…and that is not just my opinion…look it up…I find it so sad that the people who have been protected since the country’s founding by the bill of rights now are so fast to abandon it for some temporary safety….
january 6th
Well…was really good last night but still feel groggy this morning…slept okay, too, so maybe that’s it…looks like a big snow storm coming in the next couple of days but probably a little to the west since it’s going to be lake effect…you probably don’t know what lake effect is…if you live in Buffalo you’d know…lake effect snow is when cold air blows across the warmer great lakes and it creates snow that can go on for days…that’s why we in the west part of Michigan get so much more snow than the center or east of the state…it can get quite discouraging when you get it started…but, I really don’t have anywhere to be so I can just ride it out here…and I do like getting out in it to just look…not much to do today…might have to do the grocery run today but it hinges on when the cleaners are coming to T’s..but I’ll be prepared either way….
There are so many easy targets in the news in just the one day that the repubs have controlled the house that I will have topics for later…but it may be a little later if the cleaning does go today….more later…think it might be later?
Here we go again….
Well…how much more depressing can the news get that the new repub controlled house is going back to the bad old days that gave us the financial meltdown….I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when they went back to the people that gave them money to construct their version of these regulations…but to have businesses and lobbyists come back to write their proposed changes to the ones enacted under the dems is just too much to bear…I mean, really guys? You couldn’t at least have made it look like you weren’t bought in the last election? I am astounded by the repubs going back to their old ways the first frickin day of the new congress…and, I don’t even feel good that I predicted this back in August when it looked like the repubs would be back in control…I really didn’t want to be right, I hoped and hoped that these idiots had leaned something…but, I guess the only thing they learned was that lies and giving the country to the rich works…for them…I fear for the rest of the country….
January 5th
Well…slept okay last night but was up at 4:30 again….lost at pool out in Ada…tom was just shooting great so I don’t feel bad about it…and our tab was about 10 bucks less than normal so that was a plus…I don’t even feel that bad this morning and the Wings won the first game on their west coast swing so that is a good start…and ozzie got his 401st win…yay! I haven’t looked to see if I won the Mega jackpot but you’ll know if this site goes dark…will probably let you guys know with one last post…maybe it would even be more interesting if I had 330 million dollars and I continued it….it surely wouldn’t be mundane anymore…not much to do today…the normal routine with the cats included….I am going to take the rest of the week off and give my body a rest…need to try to figure out what exercise I’m going to do to replace the bike pretty soon…probably back to walking a couple of miles every night since I do hate to run….there should be topics today since the repubs take over the house and the craziness begins….more later….
Scalia and the law…
Well…quite a heated discussion this morning on Justice Scalia’s latest outrageous statement that the 14th amendment that deals with equal rights doesn’t guarantee them for women or gays and lesbians since they were not mentioned by name in the amendment; only the phrase “any person’ and Scalia wants to go back to the interpretation of the time that only white males were considered “persons” in the law. This idiot is always searching for “original intent” when it suits his political ends but is so quick to discard it when his corporate masters say jump…as evidenced by the Citizens United decision where he sided with the right wing majority and granted corporations the same first amendment rights as flesh and blood citizens when corporations are not mentioned anywhere in the constitution. What is it Anty? Do you read the constitution as written or do you make it up as you go? This abject abandonment of consistency or even of following the constitution is seen best in the Bush v. Gore decision where old Anty was so quick to abandon the “states rights” mantra that he and his ilk shout from the rooftops….made even more egregious by the fact that the majority in that case knew they were making law and being the worst kind of activist judges; because they stated that the decision was a one-off and couldn’t be used for precedent in any other case….the time is coming to impeach this idiot…geez…
January 4th
Well…a fun night out with G last night…played Keno all night with just 5 bucks so that was cool, too…and I was good when I got home so I feel okay today….sleep was weird and segmented, though….but I’m kind of getting used to that. Just found out I can get “Countdown” on my Roku and I can watch last night’s in the morning now….pretty cool and it will give me topics in the morning when I’m much more lucid and I may remember them…so, we’ll see how that works out. Not much to do today…it did snow last night so I’ll have to clear off the car and let it run for a while before coffee…yeah, tough problem, huh? Then, I have pool in Ada…I will have to remember to check the pool cue again to make sure the tip is still on…I did have a dream about my stick being stolen in Chicago last night….why I would have had it in Chicago, I don’t know….but dreams can be weird…or I hope my dreams are weird…normal ones are just too boring…more later…
One last thing..Charles Krauthammer was in the dream, too…I guess that takes it up a notch on the weird, huh?
A couple of things…
Well…don’t know where to start this morning but I know I have to deal with Chuck Krauthhammer and Darrell Issa…and the crazy assertions they make in the papers this morning…first, let’s start with Chuck…the headline of his article was ‘Obama’s secret plan: governing by regulation”…and he goes on to assert that since Obama can’t get bills with what he wants passed through congress, he is going to use the regulatory apparatus of the government to bypass congress and enact all kinds of scary things…his prime example being the new Medicare regulation that will pay for end of life counseling that the repbs labeled “death panels” last summer and was left out of the bill because of those scare tactics pushed by the rabid right wingers. Where have you been for the last 30 years Chuck? This type of thing has been done ever since these regulatory organizations were first enacted by legislation….so now, you don’t want Obama to keep the government functioning just because you don’t like it…elections have consequences, Chuck…look what your boys did with financial regulation in the 8 years of ole GW. At least Obama is doing something for the middle class, not just the rich that your party bows to every day.
Then, you have Darrell Issa saying that his primary focus as the chair of the congressional oversight committee is going to be investigate Obama and his administration and to blanket them with subpoenas until they can’t do anything except answer them…since he calls them the most corrupt government in American history. Oh, really Darrell? Didn’t see them authorizing torture, or letting the oil industry write our energy policy, or providing sweetheart no-bid contracts to all of Cheney’s cronies, or removing enough financial regulation that allowed the banks to almost steal the whole country. What about the people of this country Darrell? When are you going to focus on jobs? When are you going to focus on healing the divide that splits us? Oh, I get it, never…just another political hack that chooses to put party before country….again, and, again, and again….geez…
January 3rd
Well…I was all geared up for a really boring day yesterday but then the Lions won and K called for a short SF so it turned out okay. Yep, I couldn’t believe it either…4 wins in a row to end the year…maybe we’ll have a season that we make the playoffs this fall…see, the Lion’s disease is in full swing with me….oh, well….other than that, the Wings lost with some really sloppy play but there is still more than half of the season left for them to get better…should this have gone in sports? Felt like I’d been drinking all day when I got up this morning and I can’t figure it out….just had a couple with K and then not any more here so I should feel better…is it age again? Hope not, but I am sore all over again…maybe a bug? Going to keep using that excuse as long as I can continue to delude myself….after all, deluding myself is pretty easy….not much to do today….the normal morning routine with the cats added but that is about it…may be going to a movie later in the week with K….would love to have some theater popcorn just soaked in butter….so much butter it’s coming out your pores the following couple of days….and mountain dew….should have some topics for later…only have one question for our new governor…where are the jobs? You’ve been in office for two days….yeah, that’s a joke…more later…
Another reason….
Well…this idea came from an an article I read by Nicholas Kristof that was in the NY Times this morning…he was commenting on the new book “The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger” by a couple of British authors who have taken on the topic of inequality and how it relates to both the psychic and physical costs to a society. You guys know that this has been one of the threads that have run through my posts here, and what I saw as an existential danger has now been quantified by these two authors down to the physical ailments that come from an unequal society. I know, it sounds like kind of a stretch to make these connections, but these are not fly by night authors…they are well respected in their field and present mountains of data to support their hypothesis.
That said…I have many times railed here about the growing inequality in our society but it was more out of my sense of fairness; that there is something wrong when only the top 1% of our society is doing well and the rest of us scrape and gouge to keep our heads above water. Now, with this new book, we can see that there are real costs to this inequality…not just that people are beaten down emotionally, but physically as well; and this continued grabbing of the entire pie by the rich hurts everyone and can kill our great society if it continues. The next step should be how to address it…and I will admit I don’t have the answers but the old saying “from those to whom much is given, much is expected” or something like that is a good start.