Politics, The Nanny State

Zero Tolerance Crap

A Virginia woman is going to jail for 2+ years for having a supervised party for her high-schooler. Reason has the details on this MADD-supported horseshit.

Apparently, it would have been better if she’d turned a blind eye to her son and his friends’ underage drinking, and allowed them celebrate in a motel room, a vacant parking lot, or a woods, as my high school friends did, and then drive home.

…

This is the same zero tolerance line of thinking adopted by groups like MADD and the American Medical Association, which a couple of years ago putting out a study lamenting that—horrors!—most underage drinkers get their first taste of alcohol from their parents. Of course, you could make a strong argument that parents are exactly who we want to give teens their first taste of alcohol.

These people are irrational neo-temperance shitheads. The problem they have is not with responsible drinking — which this most certaintly was — it’s with any drinking. It’s the same posturing and non sequitur logic that has men dying in Iraq who can’t have a fucking beer.

Abolish the drinking age. Make parents responsible. Having kids experience drinking — which no amount of nanny-state bullshit is going to stop — under the supervision of their parents is a good thing.

Politics, War on Terror

Powell

Well, I guess Colin Powell is now a Commie Fag Junkie for calling to close Gitmo, give terror suspects fair trials and restore Habeas Corpus.

Here’s the thing. Before the Iraq War, Powell was pushing for more troops and a coherent occupation plan. No matter what people might say about him, he has been right far more often than George Bush.

Or Don Rumsfeld.

Or Rush Limbaugh.

Or Sean Hannity.

Or Ann Coulter.

Or…

'Culture', Politics

Getting Better

Boaz on how good news gets buried. In 2000, improvements in health and technology reduced the number of heart attack deaths by 341,000.

But this great news about heart disease appeared on page D4 of the Wall Street Journal and on page 13D of USA Today. As far as I can tell, it didn’t appear in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, or the Washington Post at all, nor on any NPR program. Though on the NY Times website, you can find an article the same day on the tiny increase in deaths from West Nile virus. And the heart disease story can be found on the Post website, though not in the print paper.

I just recorded a video message for my five-day old daughter telling her to always understand that she lives in the best of times. Too bad our media don’t seem to focus on that.

Politics, Science and Edumacation, Socialism

Friday Linkorama

Sue and I are watching Penn & Teller’s Bullshit! series during feeding breaks. Tonight we watched the show focusing on Norman Borlaug. Read Easterbrook’s outstanding profile and get angry at the enviro-assholes trying to keep Africa in starvation.

That’s real racism.

Why is it that being a commie is still fashionable while being a Nazi isn’t?

The Bushies boasts about bigger welfare rolls. Only this Administration would crow about increasing poverty.

You have got to be fucking kidding me.

Immigration, Politics

Immigration Panic

I only tend to write about Boortz when he hacks me off. Well, today is more of that. He links to a bunch of posts that do nothing but talk panic about immigration.

National Review says immigrants are taking our jobs. This is the same article that tells us George W. Bush has single-handedly dropped unemployment to record lows.

Kris Kobach has a conniption because these incompetent terrorists with their dumbass plots were immigrants. Again, how is keeping immigrants away going to stop someone flying a plane from Havana to Miami with a bomb?

And there’s panic because Bush may temporarily suspend the new passport requirement for Americans to go to Mexico and Canada. I’m not sure how keeping Americans out of Mexico and Canada is going to stop terrorism.

More bullshit. Can’t we just agree to make it harder to get in this country illegally while making it easier to get in legally? Or would that not sooth the xenophobes?

Politics, The Nanny State

Defining Minimums Up

You want to know why healthcare and insurance is so expensive? Because Congress decides to do shit like this, mandating 48-hour hospital stays for women undergoing mastectomy.

Look, it would be great if this were the case. Women should get a 48-hour stay. But you know what will happen if this law is passed? Insurance will get more expensive. Why should we make it illegal for a woman to chose a cheap insurance company that covers her mastectomy at the cost of rushing her back home? Can’t they make that choice? I thought the Dems were all about choice. But apparently crappy insurance is not an allowable choice.

Culture War, Law and Order, Politics, Socialism

Linkorama

What does a baby-driven sleep-deprived blogger do? He links!

Reason has more on the students punished for excessive celebration. It makes some good points, but I am still sympathetic to the students. Stopping “Students crossing the stage were dancing and flashing hand signs; friends in the audience were jumping up, whooping and raising a racket with air horns.” does not mean you stop all cheering.

Cato fisks Romney on health care. I swear. This election is looking like a choice between the little socialists and the big socialists.

I suspect the rise in violent crime has little to do with Bush. Social factors are critical here – especially the rise of Meth. Yeah, the libs will go on about poverty and race and Katrina or something. But our economy is healthy. No, I don’t think this is Bush’s fault.

But you KNOW that if violent crime had gone up under Clinton, the Right would have blamed him in a heartbeat.

This is why things like TABOR, which set strict spending limits and refund tax excess to the taxpayers, are critical.

The typical Fairfax homeowner is paying $4830 a year in property taxes. The FCTA points out that “if during the past seven years the Supervisors had held real estate tax increases to the rate of inflation, which averaged three percent per year, the typical homeowner would be paying $3,079.” … The supervisors–in Fairfax County and everywhere else–respond, “Would you have us close fire stations or fire teachers or throw widows out in the snow?” Somehow they never discuss, as another item in the FCTA newsletter does, the fact that salaries and benefits have increased far more than population growth or any other measure over the past seven years.

If you give government money, it will spend it. Part of the reason for our massive federal deficits now is because Congress responded to the budget surplus with an orgy of spending rather than a tax cut. And when revenues dropped to normal growth, deficits returns — as every Libertarian predicted.

Even thought I somewhat support the death penalty, I have to disagree with SCOTUS on death penalty juries. Jurors judge the case and the law and a prosecutor’s fucking job is to persuade them that the defendent deserved to be killed. Banning jurors who even question the death penalty is rigging the deck and very likely to produce “hang ’em high” juries that have very high false conviction rates.

Michael Moore. As pig ignorant as ever.

Another sex crime outrage.

This is fricking hilarious.

Politics

BGE

I was very disappointed this November when Marylanders turned back on the excellent Mike Steele in favor of the reprehensible former Mayor of Baltimore, Martin O’Malley. It was the “Elect a Shithead” year, so I guess he qualified.

Oops.

Marylanders gained some insight into their new governor last week when the state’s Public Service Commission, controlled by Gov. Martin O’Malley, approved a 50 percent rate increase for residential customers of Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. The approval comes less than a year after a bitter gubernatorial campaign between Mr. O’Malley and incumbent Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.

Recall that Mr. O’Malley lambasted Mr. Ehrlich’s PSC for approving a 72 percent BGE rate increase – an increase that the Maryland General Assembly later scaled back to 15 percent. Mr. O’Malley told voters that Mr. Ehrlich and his commission were in the pockets of BGE. If Mr. O’Malley were elected governor, he promised, his administration would stand up to greedy energy companies and protect consumers.

Doing the math reveals the conceit: When the O’Malley PSC’s 50 percent increase is layered on top of the General Assembly-approved 15 percent hike, the result is a 72.5 percent BGE rate increase. (Example: On a $100 electricity bill, the original 15 percent increase raises it to $115. Add 50 percent of $115 – $57.50 – and you get a total bill of $172.50.)

Why is anyone surprised? I lived in Maryland for three years and saw right through O’Malley. He’s a Big City slickster and a liar who impresses the media while not really doing anything noteworthy. He did improve the efficiency of Baltimore’s government. But he has a tendency to fib on crime stats and taxes, and alternated passing the buck for anything bad that happened while claiming credit for anything good (a proceed aided by Baltimore’s unique “no is in responsible for anything” education system).

When I lived in Baltimore, the roads were terrible, the city was in paralysis anytime it snowed and the Mayor was running around telling everyone how much crime had improved. This was true, but only because it would have been hard to make things worse.

Not that he’s alone in these tendencies, of course. But it’s hard to get more blatant political shitheadism than his grandstanding on BGE.

'Culture', Politics

D-Day

Neal Boortz posts FDR’s moving call to prayer that he gave the American people on D-Day. I won’t quite it. Read the whle thing.

Now, back to gonzo politics. Notice something? No chest thumping. No boasting. No “mission accomplished” or “we’re gonna get ’em”. There’s a call to sacrifice, to give the last full measure.

Different times indeed.

Politics, War on Terror

Now We See That Good Will Always Triumph, Because Evil is Dumb

Seriously, folks, every day the terrorists remind me more and more of the keystone cops:

Homeland Security sources said there is no current threat at the airport and the attack as planned was “not technically feasible.

…

But if incidents like this are going to be used to bolster Bush’s image as a steely-eyed terrorist killer with his six-guns slung low on his hips, I think it’s only fair to point out that the terrorist he just gunned down in the town square was half retarded and trying to stab a woman with a banana.

Like Lee, I’m more attacking the “this proves Bush is amazing” people than the hard-working people who cracked this cell. They seem to be doing a good job here. And I’d rather have them crack a plot that won’t work than not crack one that will.

But again, notice how the plot was busted. No one was tortured. No civil rights were violated. These guys will be given criminal trials. Obeying the law, respecting the Constitution and treating our enemies better than they treat us can work, no matter what Rudy says.

'Culture', Science and Edumacation

But Then Boortz is Right

And after slamming Boortz, I’ll agree with his attack on more school stupidity.

But as Gailes, an honor student, crossed the stage last month to accept her diploma, the members of the audience cheered. According to school administrators, the celebratory display for Gailes and four other students warranted punishment. They withheld the students’ diplomas because family and friends violated a no-applause rule during the school’s graduation ceremony.

Apparently, some people made too much noise so they banned all noise. This is typical government school thinking. Deal with the guilty by punishing everyone. It’s the same mentality that says that if a student fights back against a bully, both are suspended. And it’s garbage. You can define acceptable and unacceptable cheering. And you can find better ways of dealing with it than a “guilt by association” punishment of the innocent student.

Reading between the lines, I suspect they were trying to avoid charges of racism as the rowdy cheering was from some of our nation’s more exuberant minorities. Ironically, they stumbled right into that nest as the punished students were . . . members of more exuberant minorities.

Boortz also links to this wonderful story about a Polish man coming out of a 19-year coma to find that Communism has fallen and Poland is vibrant and alive. I’ve often thought about how amazing it would be to take a time machine and jump every 20 years in history, familiarize yourself with the world, then leap again and see how it solves its problem. I suspect the man would happily have lived through those years. But his medical time machine gives him a perspective that no one else has.

When this man fell into a coma, I was 16 years old, a miserable loner in high school who hoped he’d one day be writer. The menace of nuclear war still hung over everything but Reagan was still President. In the last 19 years, I’ve gotten a Ph.D., moved a million times, watched my team win the World Series, witnessed the fall of the most vile system known to man (Communism, not the three-network TV oligarchy), seen the rise of the internet, continued to write in small dribbles and today had a daughter of my own.

Funny old world. Not too bad most of the time. And pretty fucking good when you smooth it out over a 20-year time-span.

Astronomy, Sports, Mathematical Malpractice, Whatever Else Pops Into My Head