Well…if you have been reading this stuff for a while, you have seen that I have taken the conservative writer Nolan Finley from the Detroit News to task for his parroting of the repubs talking points in his daily columns. But today, I was amused when he related his efforts to purchase enough incandescent light bulbs to last the rest of his life before they stop making them next year; when government regulations take effect that will essentially ban the sale of the bulbs that all of us grew up with, replacing them with the more energy efficient compact fluorescents. His contention was that this is just another incidence of government intrusion into the free market and an example of the “nanny state” that is trying to regulate all of our daily lives in the guise of trying to make the country more energy efficient. When I wear my Libertarian hat, I have to agree with him….nope, no lightning strike yet, I, too, believe that we have survived a long time in this country making decisions like this for ourselves and are perfectly capable of continuing to do so, I get the frustration that the right has with government when they do things like this; like any bill or regulation that impinges on the decision making that should be an individuals choice….helmet laws and seat belt laws are two great examples of what I see as government overreach….and I would still wear my seat belt even if it wasn’t against the law….because I know they are effective in protecting me from others mistakes. I agree with Nolan that this type of thing is just a waste of rescouces that we can’t afford…and all of the new bulbs are made in China…not in the midwest of America….let’s not help them kill more jobs…
Category Archives: Misc
It’s been weird…
Well…with all of the strange things happening over the past few days, I’ve really struggled with working up outrage over politics or really anything; so that’s why you’ve only seen a few of these lately. There is a small bit of one that I might be able to use to get started, though,…with Sister Sarah putting her foot in her mouth once again, this time on the Koreas, I was taken that her reaction to criticism of her gaffe was to tweet about the few times that Obama has misspoken; trying to equate her ignorance and stupidity with Obama’s distracted statements. Really, Sarah? There is not much else to say when the media covers the village idiot with the same gravitas as the president. Does anyone think she’s not running?
Okay….I’ve exhausted what little energy I had…so I’ll come back later and continue…
It’s later….went out for a while to meet up with the twins and V for a couple and to watch Michigan lose…again…to a new place called Farah’s that I’ve never been to…but that is about it for the day…I’ll probable feel lousy tomorrow so there may be a lag in the normal post times…who knows?
The MAD thing…
Well…lest you think I’m one of those squishy folks that think it is a sin to use American power to further our security ends, this one will put that to rest…I hope. For all of us that have lived through he cold war and the threat of having 20,000 nuclear warheads from the Soviet Union rain down on our heads, this fearful overreaction to a bunch of cave dwellers with a few pounds of plastic explosives is just laughable. I mean, please, we disrupt our whole way of life, give up essential freedom, and spend billions of dollars on scanners and other security measures that are always chasing the last attack while we stand for the humiliation that chips away at the very idea of America. I propose that we stop playing defense…that we get rid of these scanners, the TSA, and stand up like the country that won World War Two…
My proposal is simple…we let the world know that in the event of any attack on any American anywhere, we will spend 6 months finding out who is behind it…and then, whatever country is responsible will have one of their cities turned into a puddle of glass. I know the argument that these terrorists are an amorphous, stateless entity, but they get support from many well-known countries like Pakistan, Iran, and Saudi Arabia with money and logistics. A very simple, easy to understand set of consequences…why do you think the Soviet Union with one of the largest armies in the history of the world never attacked us…it was the policy of MAD…Mutually Assured Destruction that made the price too high. I just propose that we again make the price too high…that we stop cowering in our stocking feet being searched like criminals and become Americans again.
The answer to the terrorist’s statement that they will defeat us with a “death of a thousand cuts” is to reply with a death of a million degrees…geez…
Top Gear America…
Well…I was going to put a placeholder here until the comments solidified in my head but I think I’ll just start and then come back…this one is going to be about the British show “Top Gear” and its pale, bastardized American version that aired on History this past Sunday night….kind of telegraphed my feelings, huh? Come back after pool in Ada and I’ll complete it…
Okay…I’m back and feeling kind of weird…the chicken I had for lunch may have been borderline…but, we’ll see…if you’ve never seen the show “Top Gear” on BBC America, it a car show with three middle aged men as the hosts; that sometimes like each other and sometimes show the uniquely British contempt that is reserved for the “wankers” that is not only directed at each other but the world as a whole. I think where they are successful is that it is basically allowing these cranky hosts to be the normal, funny people that they are…not the perky, young, always “on” hosts that infest most of American TV. That brings us to the History channel’s americanization of the show, using the young, perky, hosts that I just hate. It starts with Tanner Foust, whose 15 minutes of fame should have been over long ago. The same can be said for one of the other hosts, the never funny Rutledge Wood that I’ve seen and avoided in many Nascar broadcasts, and the other one that I’ve never heard of…the three of them trying to match the smart banter of the BBC show with their own lame version. It only took about 10 minutes of the first episode for me to gag and quit watching it…what’s wrong with having some funny middle-aged Americans hosting the show…or heaven forbid, a woman? Just my thoughts…and I may come back later to say a little more…but if I feel like this, I won’t…one last thing before I head out…the one most important thing that I think the American producers missed is that Clarkson, Mays, and Hammond in the British version are extremely intelligent, well-read individuals, and come across that way…and the hosts of America’s version come across as “Jackass” lite who don’t bring anything to the show but reading the script….does everything have to be dumbed down for us Americans?
An Independent judiciary…
Well… this is not the one I was thinking about earlier in the day but it is a topic that needs to have some light shone on it after the recall of three judges in Iowa this election. If you didn’t read, there were three judges that voted for equal protection under the law in ruling that gays and lesbians have the right to marry in Iowa. What the crazy right wingers are saying that judges should reflect the will of the people and because they are against it, the rights of gays and lesbians should be suppressed until they say it okay to grant them the same rights as the rest of us. The founders established the independent judiciary specifically as a counterbalance to popular opinion to ensure that the majority couldn’t repress other citizens…what’s next…when judges vote to protect minority rights will they be recalled? These are the same people that thought “separate but equal” was just fine and it took an independent judiciary to end segregation and the many other instances of discrimination that “popular opinion” thought was just great. Again…it just another instance where the righties are all for the constitution unless it goes against their ignorant opinions….geez…
The noose is closing…
Well…an interesting day in the news yesterday and Ole GW should start sweating a little…if you didn’t hear, the mayor of London issued a warning to GW about any idea for a book tour that would include Europe…with the victory tour to support his new book, the idiot has gone on record with Matt Lauer of NBC and even in the book that he authorized torture…the waterboarding of a couple of prisoners over 100 times when waterboarding is torture in both international treaties that the US has signed, and in a 1994 US law that makes it a felony to approve or participate in torture. This moron thinks that just because his hand-picked lawyers said it was okay to torture, that he is protected by the law…when it is clear in the treaties that there is no hiding behind lawyers; as Augusto Pinochet discovered when he was arrested for approving torture and murder in Chile, as he traveled to Europe for medical care. Now, the outcry to hold Bush and Cheney responsible is rising across Europe and Canada as a result of the decision of Obama to not investigate or prosecute these clear violations of the law…this lack of commitment to uphold our international obligations is another black eye on the Obama administration and on us, the people of America and have further destroyed our moral standing in the world.
I hope both Bush and Cheney decide to flaunt their lawbreaking by traveling to one of the countries that is a signatory to these international laws against torture….they deserve to be prosecuted for their role in the torture and the ruination of our country’s traditional role as the leader on human rights….we are supposed to be a nation of laws and we used to be…now, we are a society that Orwell described in “Animal Farm”…that everyone’s equal…but some are more equal than others…
It will be a shame if we have to be taught our obligations to the world by Europe and Canada…geez…
If it sounds like I take this stuff personally, you’re right…
It’s come to my attention…
Well…it’s come to my attention through some comments that some of you may be having trouble downloading the novel…I just tried it using another provider and it worked using Word as the program…but I’m using firefox so I don’t know if that makes any difference…let me know if any of you are still having trouble and I’ll get the IT geek son on it….thanks for looking…and I hope you like it…
Oh…and the spam filter on my e-mail has been deleting some comments and I think I have that fixed, too…at least I hope so…it’s important to hear from everyone….agree or disagree….
A little civil disobedience can be a good thing…
Well…it’s about time that we Americans started to say “enough” to the actions of government as embodied in the TSA and their new passenger screening techniques that are being rolled out at US airports. First, it was the pilots that started to rebel at being fondled or blasted with radiation so they could do their jobs, now, ordinary people have started to do the same, to say “enough” to the gradual chipping way of our freedoms to the overreaching god of security. But, as you could easily predict, the masses…that great group of the easily led who have bought into the lie that there is danger under every bush, who have bought into the lie that by giving up the basic freedom to be let alone, they can be safe, have vilified these individuals. How has safety come to trump freedom and those who stand up for it?
I want to encourage this kind of behavior that says “enough”, that says just wait a minute, that says no one asked me if I wanted to be afraid….that no one asked any of us whether the American people are such wusses that we can’t take a little danger in exchange for freedom. All of the generations before us made the right decision, that freedom from government interference is a core value that we will not give up because some danger befalls us…we have always stood up as a nation and said we are tougher, we are greater than that…there is no power on earth that could make us give up our freedom because we are afraid and these times are no different.
I have to pass on one of the quotes from Benjamin Franklin that I always believe goes to the core of the balance we need to remember in America…and points out the danger we are in succinctly….”those who give up essential liberty for temporary safety deserve neither”. Thanks, Ben…
We’re tougher than this…
Well…after the release of the new TSA screening processes, I feel heartened that there is a growing group of us that are saying enough. We do not need to be molested in the name of safety by a government agency that has become as much a terrorist organization as al-Queda. Well…that is a bit of hyperbole but these folks use fear to change peoples behavior just like the terrorists; the TSA continues to inflate the threat of attack to raise their budgets and consolidate power over the people. But, as I said earlier, the people are starting to revolt, they are starting to actually think and realize how much of their freedom they have given up…completely disproportionate to the chances of any danger to any traveler from the terrorists. I think this is the pendulum starting to swing back to the American values of toughness…and people are seeing that fear is no way to live their lives and want to challenge these cave-dwelling idiots that want to do us harm. I, for one, am completely willing to take increased risk to protect the values that made this country great..after all, life is a risk…you are 100 times more likely to die in a car accident than from a terrorist attack. Are you going to stop driving?
With the lessons of 9/11 still clear in our minds, I wouldn’t want to be a terrorist going up against a planeload of pissed off Americans…please government…let us take care of ourselves…geez…
Life’s been weird..
Well…have been feeling out of sorts lately, even more than normal which is a lot for me. The peace that I had found a few weeks back has eluded me and I don’t know what to do about it…because I don’t know how it happened in the first place. Oh, well…I am glad to not have the filth in the political ads bombarding me anymore…damn…I don’t know if this is writers block or not but I can’t seem to get going…there were weird dreams last night…but all I can remember is giving all my stuff away…okay, this one is crap…need to take a break and try, try, again…