I'm so happy to be wrong, and to live in a violent nation...

....Because all the peaceful ones kill you if you step out of line.  Yes, in all probability, we let a killer go free today, but I'm going to be a corny American and see the good side of that.  We're actually practicing the presumption of innocence.  Maybe we are still American.

Michelle Bachman is a very simple person, and that's not a good thing....

Today, Michell Bachman declared her cantidacy for the Republican nomination for President.  Interestingly though, according to Wikipedia, Bachman was originally an activist for the Democrats and only decided to become a Republican due to an incredibly simply process of elimination. Having concluded that the Dem's were dissing the founding fathers, she seems to have assumed that her only other option on Earth was to become a Republican.  This is roughly the same as a German of a previous generation "realizing" that, as he could not be a Nazi, he would have to be a communist, and such simplified thinking may be a large part of our country's general incompetance in government.
     First of all, could we just stop kidding ourselves that the Republicans and the Democrats actually have standing philosophic viewpoints?  I'm old enough to remember when Republicans favored big government for the sake of defense and described a government deficit as something normal for any large economic organization while southern Democrats opposed any sort of equal rights legislation and the party as a whole pleaded for tax breaks.  Ms. Bachman, however, is apparently not well informed enough to see either party's hodege-podge of claims as a hodge-podge.
     Bachman does believe some things I myself find odd.  Quite frankly though, that is no reason not to nominate or even elect her.  Hell, I believe some odd things myself, and so in all probability do you.  If you, I or Ms. Bachman didn't, it would mean that we haven't been thinking enough about the current failures in our government, economy and defense or trying to find original solutions to them.  I'm a little worried, though, that Ms. Bachman may not overcome her oddness and may keep to it, jut like Barak Obama.
     Where's Ross Perot when you need him?  Or, did Ms. Bachman even notice his front-runner status of this founder of the Reform Party for much of the 1992 election, and so, would she even bother to learn from him?  He often claimed nothing more than a willingness to try to figure out what would work rather than to assume a set of answers to be correct.  Maybe we could use a leader like that....
     Just a thought.

Iraq and Afghanistan Aren't Going to Get Any More "Won"

As you can see from these maps, Allied forces now hold every part of both Iraq and Afghanistan.  We have no part of either of them left to conquer, not since Hamid Karsai rose to power and Saddam Hussein dropped out of office.  Still, with rebels sabotaging their own country's oil facilities, gas at four dollars a gallon and the Taliban having tea with the Afghani President, this doesn't feel much like victory.  Still, could it?
     Now I live for a while in Chicago, and ever so often I have to compare our victories in the middle east with the the Chi-Town police department's "victory" over the the street gangs.  Yes, on one hand, nobody actually puts "gangstuh" on his resume.  On the other hand though, the people in the city's west side are either too scared or too supportive of the Kings, the Bloods and the Crips to call the police, and so they go on selling criminal goods and services with almost no fear of a legal consequence.
     The countries of the Middle East may just be like the west side.  Basically, in both cases the people living there see the supposed forces of order as at least something of an occupying force and, even in clear evidence of the benefits of the presence of such enforcers, they prefer to avoid or possibly even subvert them.  Oh, we do have a few advantages in Chicago.  The population speaks the same language as the cops, and they usually have roughly the same ideas about God and democracy.  Still,we do seem to be losing that war simply because of our overall unpopularity with the general populace, and we probably shouldn't think we're going to do any better in a more complex place like Arabia.
     A side thought: we probably should've had a rotation policy in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Then our soldiers there would've had the same chance as Chicago cops to tell us when a policy was working and when it wasn't.
     Hell, maybe we just should've given Iraq to Kuwait.  Hell, in some ways they wanted to be together.
     Just a few thoughts....

Why No One Is Ever Going to Make a Good Jurror

Casey Anthony actually seems to have a pretty good defense. She's found experts willing to claim that the chemicals and insects found in her car trunk are not in fact reliable evidence of anyone having kept a body there, and for better or worse, under the presumption of innocence, that should, in the absence of a corpse, be sufficient cause for a jury to release her. Unfortunately though, she or her lawyer has decided to make a "positive defense," meaning one that does not simply refute the claims of the prosecution, but asserts its own claim, in this case one dealing with coyotes.  She probably should've seen that Meryl Street flick about the Australian chick who blamed the dingoes.  That didn't work out too well for her, either.
     Unfortunately though, simply refuting a case is probably not enough to get a verdict of innocence.  It didn't work for Jesus, after all, and he actually knew the guilty parties.  Unfortunately though, very few people sitting in that despotism called a jury seem to want to find anyone innocent anymore, and can we blame them?
     People on a jury are taking time out of their normal lives to perform a civic duty.  At best, they spend long hours waiting for some clerk to list them as a candidate for something, and if selected they have to face a lot of very presumptive questions about themselves from lawyers trying to weed out jerks.  Lastly, during the trial itself, they have to sit for hours at a time and listen to a disorganized presentation of claims and guess truth from lies while hoping not to look stupid by missing or misunderstanding anything.  Compare it to the most boring class you ever faced in high school but remember that you can't leave after forty-five minutes, that you can't tell anyone what happened to you at "school,"  and that failing this class will cause a hardship for someone and probably piss off Thomas Jefferson and Henry Fonda's character in 12 Angry Men.  In the face of all this pressure then, the average jury is going to want all that bother to serve a purpose, and for that reason they're going to want to do something big, like hanging somebody or exonorating them forever.
     Unfortunately though, having been through all  the aforementioned bullshit, they aren't as likely to save anyone as crucify them
     Just a few thoughts....

A few thoughts on the tea party....

Virginia Tea Party Patriots leader Jamie Radtke went after the Republican establishment Thursday during an address to the Senate Tea Party caucus.

During her address to the caucus, National Journal reports Radtke said, "The Tea Party movement would not exist today if the Republicans had not failed under the Bush years."

Radtke was among a number of speakers at the first caucus meeting. She was joined by Republican Sens. Jim DeMint (S.C.), Rand Paul (Ky.) and Mike Lee (Utah) and Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist, Tea Party Express Chairman Amy Kremer, Americans for Prosperity President Tim Phillips, and FreedomWorks President Matt Kibbe.

Radtke was the first Republican to enter the Virginia Senate race, and will be competing against former senator George Allen (R) for the opportunity to face Sen. Jim Webb (D). Radtke has already established that she will be running to Allen's right, calling Allen a member of the "Washington establishment." Radtke worked for Allen briefly after college.

Radtke has said that, if elected, she would join the Senate tea party caucus formed by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and that she would support a bill proposed by Paul to cut $500 billion in federal spending.

So The Tea Party is rejecting Bush's policies? Which Bush? The one of the First Gulf War or the one who started the second two?

This is probably a bad sign for both the GOP and the Tea Party, though. If the Tea Party is going to expect people to read their lips on "no new taxes," at least in some cases, they're going to disappoint. It's happened before. Worse, their also going to face the demand of blue-collar people and small business owners for welfare, unemployment benefits and government loans and entitlements to pay for their children's college or to keep their business' afloat.

The issue may not be about government expenditure though. The issue may be the resentment of people in "the fly-over states" for paying to a government without benefits. In a sense, they may really just resent getting flown over.

To solve the problems of either Bush administration, or any other one, the government would just have to put an ear back to the ground. When it doesn't, side groups of the far right, the far left, or the narrow center, can simply exploit a few large issues to ride into office.

Just a few thoughts....

A few athoughts on MassChallenge Startup Challenge (Spelling is correct)

If we're challenging people to start new businesses, I'll simply assume that we're doing so for people with some realistic reason to assume that a market exists for their service or product. I would like a little confirmation on that, though.

What I'm worried about more, though, is if we once again aren't getting ourselves into another subprime market. Banks, after all, look for things to invest in. and at any given time they have at least some undedicated funds that they would rather be generating revenue with. A push to foster new businesses would, therefore, have to support ones previously unsupported just to avoid being a sham, and so the banks would be granting loans to enterprises previously considered nonviable.

Kind'a scary....

A few thoughts on abortion as an issue

Back in college days, a few of my fellow psych' students and I decided to do some research into, in our words, "the attitudes, personality and knowledge" of protesters and counter-protesters at an Operation Rescue rally at an abortion clinic near our university. The research data was a little boring; basically, pro-lifers turned out to answer more questions on fetal development correctly than pro-choice types. The behavior of the two groups at the rally, however, may have proven something more....

The pro-life Operation Rescue people were on the opposite side of the street from the clinic, and the counter-protesters were on the same side opposite to them. Even approaching these twin demonstrations, we could hear taunts and insults from the pro-choice side. Outside of a little rhetoric, all the words from near the clinic were attempts to ridicule or judge the people on the other side of the street.

We decided to split into two groups, one for each side of the street, in order to avoid accidentally handing out our questionnaires to anyone twice, and feeling at least a slight aversion to the jeering of the clinic's supporters, I opted for the pro-life side. As a researcher, after all, I had to at least try to prevent myself from displaying any emotional reaction liable to influence the interviewees in any way, and that job just might be a little easier with the less fractious set.

I did not start any conversations with my interviewees. I simply handed out questionnaires. I politely refused to respond to any inquiries as to my own feelings on abortion. More than one person did tell me their reasons for being there, however, and contrary to the pro-choicers estimations, many of them did admit the need for abortion to save an at-risk mother's life or in other, less defined situations. They were terrified, however, of the possible use of abortion-on-demand as a contraceptive for dummies. Basically, they wanted some kind of restraint, and (again contrary to the stated views of them from across the street) they were willing to negotiate to get them.

At some point after the standing protest, the head organizer of the pro-life side of this event spoke, and his words did not seem in any way to represent the stated opinions of the protesters on his side. He certainly did want to outlaw abortion, lock, stock and scalpel.

Listening to his words, I had to wonder about a few things. Had the pro-choice movement possible pushed these people into this man's political arms? Did the pro-choice side have possible motive's for doing so? Pro-choice literature often portrays the need for abortion as something of a medical emergency, and any emergency will rivet the willing and a good number of the semi-willing to action. Were the pro-choicers using that to make a louder and therefore more politically intimidating following?

After our research, my fellow students and I met at a Burger King to hand our data in, but after that we began talking about what we had seen from a more personal perspective. The head of our project was decidedly pro-choice, but even she admitted anger at the confrontational style of "her" side of the debate. I shared my political perceptions, and the others admitted the possibilities.

At the end of things, we all went home of course, but the perceptions of that day have stayed with me. In this "No Labels" time I submit them for your consideration. At least one side of the abortion debate just might be shooting itself in the foot and giving its opponents the means to shoot back.

Just a few thoughts....

A few thoughts on just possibly being wrong about Egypt and Tunisia.

I'm very happy over that possibility!

The "revolution" in Egypt just might have something to uphold. According to London's The Daily Telegraph, American diplomats have been fostering this result for the past three years....

Now this is Machiavellianism at its moral best. At least at first glance, we seem to have found a People's Revolution and supported it. Yes, in a sense we did depose the leader of a foreign land, but for once we just might have done so to enact the will of the people rather than simply the ambitions of that leader's rivals. Theoretically then, a setback in one life may have resulted in real relief for several million.

If Obama took this opportunity, we will at last be able to negotiate from a position of strength in the middle east, and to quell the source of our power, middle eastern leaders will at have to heed the will of their citizens. This sort of thing was the supposed reason for our invasions of Iraq and the now supposedly "nice" (previously unacceptable) Taliban previously ruling Afghanistan, and this time, given success, we just might not leave ground forces behind.

In this case, not actually a thought, but a hope....

PS: Of course--and this just came in--the news now claims The Muslim Brotherhood to be the cause of the Egyptian uprising. I don't know much about them, but the simple fact of their having an agenda other than that of service to the people of Egypt does not bode well. Oh well, I'll still hope for the best for Egypt, but then, I did that before

A Few Thought on The Uprising in Egypt

Well, inspired by the Tunisian example, the Egyptians are trying to riot their leader out of power. As with the Tunisians, I wish them absolute success, but I cannot state my optimism for this affair either.

To put it plainly, a revolution that simply throws someone out of power creates only a power vacuum, and in the face of such anarchy, even people of strong will and good intention are likely to accept the most stable government possible, even that of a dictator. Successful revolutionaries, such as those in my country, or in eighteenth century France, or twentieth century Russia, had or put some form of government in place to fight for. Cromwell's revolt and assorted civil wars in the third world lacked this structure, and they resulted only in dictatorships.

In some ways, establishing a shadow government or swearing loyalty to a Continental Congress, is simply the least test of a people's desire for change. Without genuinely organizing something to oppose oppression, they prove their lack of resolve to fight an oppressor able to inflict pain--and are there any other kinds? Furthermore, without anything to put in power at the end of the fight, the Egyptians and the Tunisians may find themselves with nothing but another single ruler, perhaps promising not to be a tyrant, but only perhaps.

Just a few thoughts....

A few thoughts on Social Security

Economics has rarely been the straightforward exchange of goods for money from the textbooks. A few abstractions, perhaps even white lies, come into play, and strangely,they actually tend to improve the economy and therefore social security.

Now, for the worth of a given company's stock to rise or fall without the introduction of a new service, product or procedure (i.e., without a change in the worth of the company), investors either have to judge those stocks exchange by some standard other than the worth of the issuing company or find some cheaper way to finance or process their purchase; and all of these things do seem to occur. Traders have bought on Credit, pre-sold crashing stocks and cyber-traded entirely worthless ones. Each of these actions has helped to raise the overall price of stocks, and each has drawn criticism for its believed role in a serious downturn. Even in the face of stern efforts to prevent such creative finance however, someone will invent some new system of something and bring the economy to new highs while risking very sudden lows, and, as the economy often follows the market for some reason, Gross American income will rise, taking the tax base and social security with it. Certainly given the twenty-five years till the expected S.S. blowout it will.

Of course, we'll still have the stock market to worry about, but that may be an unavoidable and perhaps ultimately desirable constant.

Just a few thoughts.

A few thoughts on Obama's Speech

Energy:  In some ways, Obama is like a bad-luck version of Capt. Kirk.  He at least seems to know that we have to get out from under imported oil, and, like the engineers on the Enterprise, he even seems to grasp the scientific strides needed to change our energy future.  Unfortunately though, he doesn't have Gene Roddenberry picking his scripts.  We will probably not be able to get cheap, clean fuel through any convenient means like reversing polarity, and unfortunately Obama may therefore end up in the uncomfortable position of asking his crew-mates for sacrifice without reward.

Education:  1)  Science and math are great, but the very communal nature of both of these things may result in our pissing away any advantages.  Scientists talk to scientists all over the world, so very few scientific secrets are going to stay all that damn secret.  2)  According to The Law of Comparative Advantage in economics, a person, company or nation best serve both their own needs and those of the world by pursuing their own best talent, even in the face of superior talents.  Given this, we may not want to try to build an economy on science and math--they may not, in fact still be out strongest suits, and more science and math education may limit us to only certain high-tech' markets.  3)  How 'bout teaching our kids a foreign language, too?  We live in a multi-ligual market and a bi-lingual country, after all.

An End to Tax Breaks for the Rich: Tax ease for the rich is not the same as tax ease for business. At any given time a given company has only an ungrowing fund of about two-weeks worth of its net income available to spend for anything unplanned. After establishing this fund, a business seems to be spending its entire income on payroll, expenses, taxes or pre-planned improvements, and each of these expenditures generates taxes, whether through the income taxes of wage earners and the sales tax on purchases as well as through any further companies receiving that money from the original source. People, however, neither spend nor save all of their money, and so, oddly, they generate fewer taxes, per-dollar, than even tax-free companies of equal income would through the taxes of its employees. In light of this fact then, a tax on the rich does not seem to be a greater burden on the economy than a tax on the middle- or lower-classes, and in light of this, an even tax certainly makes sense. Unfortunately, taxes will probably never be even. The rich will have more ways to invest and disqualify income simply by having more and better advisers, and lawmakers will have to be in a continuous search for means to overcome any tax loop-holes in use. I wish the President good luck in his stated attempt, but I also would like to suggest widening the number of investments exempt from tax to include any money banked for over a year. Banks lend dollars recorded to their funds for the ultimate deposit of at least a percentage of those dollars into the accounts of those receiving the funds. Those recipient banks then record those same dollars to their accounts, and through this hopefully benign fiction, the sum total amount of capital available for investment grows, and probably faster than through any percolation from the top.

Just a few thoughts.....

A Few thought on a new E.P.A.

Newt Gingrich wants to scrap the Environmental Protection Agency and replace it with The Environmental Solutions Agency, "incorporating the statutory responsibilities of the old EPA while making necessary statutory changes that will eliminate the job-killing regulatory abuses and power grabs of the old EPA." Gingrich wants the new E.S.A "dedicated to bringing together science, technology, entrepreneurs, incentives, and local creativity to create a cleaner environment through smarter regulation." The new ESA "will focus on developing actual solutions to environmental challenges rather than simply trying to litigate them into existence. The ESA will work with industry instead of dictating to industry and incentivize the use of newer technologies instead of punishing current businesses.

This all sounds great, of course. We all want bureaucrats to use the most accurate information possible when making their decisions, and we'd prefer them to use incentives rather than punishments. But why does this switch from the whip to the carrot require a new agency? Any bureaucracy, from the EPA to the NSA, ultimately answers to the President for its actions, even self-initiated one, and so the change of mission statement would require nothing more than a statement from the oval office. Creating a new organization, after all, may just leave new members of that organization struggling to define or understand their role--and does Gingrich want them doing that on the public payroll?

Worse, the use of government incentives would still be government control of business, even if through unusual means, and regardless of those means, we can largely expect economic problems. For one thing, any incentive for a business to clean itself will have to be large enough to increase the profits of any company enjoying them significantly. At some point though, the government will probably decide to withdraw those benefits, perhaps as part of a program to pay a deficit or line a congressional pocket, and this will still amount to an unplanned burden on that company. That company, then, will still have to kill jobs to survive--and any politician worth his snake oil will still be able to use this threat to pressure American business....

Just some thoughts....

Note: All quotes above are from Newt Gingrich's website http://www.newt.org/newt-direct/replacing-epa

A few thought on Lebanon

I'm not entirely worried about the election of Hezbollah leader Mohammed Kabbara in Lebanon. First of all, Lebanon is a actually a weak country politically, and she has often been in the hands of outsiders The Israelis even began referring to it as The Lebanese Morass after a vain attempt to find any political entity sufficiently atable to make either war or peace with. This new government then, like Lebanon's previous one, is simply the result of a foreign power strong enough to decide her internal politics. Previously the Syrians were in power, and now the Hezbollah is. A few years from now, the I.R.A. might give it a shot.

Yes, Kabbara is with a pro-Palestinian and therefore anti-Israeli and anti-western "army," and the CIA have even called him a terrorist. In the Middle East, though, organizations like that thrive in their abiity to claim moral outrage and victimhood, and an elected Kabbara will not be able to do that. Instead, he will have to prove himself more able to rule than the Israelis, and very few politicians ever manage that feat. Even The Great Communicator often suffered loss of approval and had to go negative on his supposed ideologic enemies.

Interestingly, Kabbara's placement in office may be a golden opportunity to caponize radical Islam. At some point, after all, someone else is going to want Lebanon and they just might fight Kabbara for it, openning a conflict inside the anti-western world.

Heck, the U.S. might even play smart by staying outside of it to prevent any possible foes from unifying in the face of our external threat. For once we could just let ourselves gain an advantage.

Just a thought....

A few thoughts on Iraq

THE TOP REASONS TO GIVE IRAQ TO KUWAIT: (It's an idea!)

1) They wanted to be together--Iraq even invaded once! Beyond that, hey, they and Iran used to be the same country (Persia), and they seem to see their disunion as the result of decisions by the hated colonial powers. Hell, they even refer to one feature in Iraq's borders as "Winston's Hiccup" and believe it to have been the result a a small bit of indigestion on the part of Churchill while he was drawing the map. The Iraqi's just might welcome such a merger.

2) Pursuant to #1, we could probably spin this to make ourselves seem like the benefactor or the power-broker of the Arab world and that might diffuse a suicide bomber or two.

3) Being an army of occupation is like being a policeman on the west side of Chicago and just ask a cop or a Crip about the futility of that.

4) Any post invasion government in Iraq will at least seem like an American puppet, but the established and respected regime in Kuwait may have no such problems.

5) Placing the progressive government of Kuwait over Iraq would be the de facto removal of tyranny which we might not be able to count on otherwise.

6) The Kuwaitis actually know how to govern a nation in the Middle East and to judge by the army attacks on police stations, we might not.

7) The Kuwaitis are rich enough to finance Iraq's war against Iran, so they probably have the money to arm and organize Iraq, even if they're small.

A few thoughts on the FBI's mafia crack-down

Unfortunately, merely decapitating the mob will do nothing. In the event of the death, imprisonment or retirement of a don or two, one or more newbies will just muscle their way over the deceased's turf.

The DEA even tacitly admits this through its policy of measuring its effectiveness in terms of elevations in the cost of illegal drugs, but this crackdown will, if anything, decrease the price of criminal commodities and services through increased competition between organizations for a part of newly cleared territories. Of course the breakdown of these monopolies of crime may leave business owners paying protection to more than one enforcer in the confusion and dispute over territories.

Well, we could take the one step most effective against any economic organization: a boycott, in this case one against vice, drugs and gambling. Almost no economic organization can stand up to pressure like that.

Of course, though, in that case, the challenge is on us.

Just some thoughts....

A few thoughts on Obama's new economic plan

AP - Under pressure to energize the economy, President Barack Obama will put job creation and American competitiveness at the center of his State of the Union address, promoting spending on education and research while pledging to trim the nation's soaring debt.

...And Obama may have been in better political shape pushing the now defunct (or at least "funct" over) health care program. At least that could justify itself, in spite of any inevitable waste or corruption, on a moral need. Building and economy, however, does inevitably involve a lot of rich types partying at the country club and extending a lot of expensive hospitality to merely possible customers. People already object to the banks' apparently premature spreading of wealth, and such savings institutions are the greatest cause for growth in investment captial.

Worse, with his health care program untested and this an obvious opportunity for media complaint, Obama may end up, in the public mind at least, as a two-time loser in spite of having only one program in place and that one being economic and therefore ambiguous in its end result.

Oddly though, to grow the economy, Obama may just want to bail out the banks again. Of course they're not in trouble currently, but that's not important. Active banking will increase the amount of investment capital available through a process of re-saving. Essentially, two-thirds of every dollar in every bank goes into some investment somewhere and ultimately ends up in the paychecks of the end-recipients on those projects. At least some of those recipients then save at least some of that money, and that point the banks receiving it record that income as part of their investment capital in spite of its presence on the records of the first bank as well. Through this necessary white lie of finance, the total number of dollars available for investment then grows, but in response to the needs of the market rather than any government guess about future markets.

Just a few thoughts.....

A few thoughts of U.S. trade with China

The U.S. probably cannot escape trade with China. These days, the process of making anything requiring more than on step to manufacture almost invariably crosses at least one nation's border, and usually more than one. Given the sheer cheapness of Chinese labor and currency then, some manufacturer somewhere will, at any given time, be buying parts or services from China, and Americans will be buying the end results.

Any law attempting to prevent such trans-national transactions will be a fiction. Foreign manufacturers supplying American ones with parts or services will, after all, have a legitimate right to use Chinese suppliers, and even in the face of such a law against trade with China, they would only have to purchase such things through a third party to grant themselves plausible deniability on location of supply. In light of this problem then we might as well grant ourselves access to that reserve of cheap resources and at least one non-military means to threaten the Chinese in times of conflict: embargo in its many, many forms.

Admittedly, Trade with China will be a little scary. As the world's largest economy under one decision-making body and a communist state with at least an ideological desire to hinder the U.S. and capitalism, China just might have at least some desire to harm the American economy. To do that in any greater way than currently, however, China would have to supply a controlling percentage of U.S. imports at prices too low for other suppliers to compete, and to deal with such a threat, we simply have to keep other trade partners such as Japan and The European Union in our economic little black book for use in the event of being monetarily "stood up." Without such a problem though, the added competition may ultimately give us better and cheaper goods from both the Chinese and our current trade partners.

Just a few thoughts....

A few thoughts on gay marriage

Almost all discussion of gay marriage has been on moral grounds--the rightness or wrongness of a union between two members of the same sex, whether considered in religious or secular terms. Unfortunately, I'm not a very good moralist, and so I'd like to present a somewhat more practical view: in my opinion, forcing gay unions into the same legal status as heterosexual ones is probably going to complicate matters such as entitlement, divorce, alimony and custody fantastically. To share a few of the possibilities:

1) Adultery is a grounds for divorce in both civil and canon law, but many gay couples do seek another member to their relationship to reproduce. Therefore, either courts will have to change the accepted definition of adultery to accommodate this practice, or gay couples will have to forgo the possibility of parenthood during any marriage. The first possibility may very well leave philanderers of either orientation able to exploit this new definition for their own purposes, but the second will certainly come under fire from gay-rights groups.

2) Alimony decisions may be arbitrary, but they are predictable. As a rule, without clinching evidence to the contrary the court will define any wife as a homemaker and grants her restitution. Defining one party of a same-sex marriage as the homemaker and the other as the breadwinner, however, will, almost undoubtedly, require a more random and arbitrary ruling. Expect a certain amount of injustice and confusion to result.

3) The very need to introduce another person into a gay marriage in order to have children will force courts to judge the parental rights of three people, one with only a step-relationship to the child and another without a marital relationship to anyone. Asserting the rights of either of these parties will set precedent affecting persons with similar relationships to the children of heterosexual marriages, and, obviously, at least some marital partners, sperm-donors or womb-renters are going to address the court over perceived and even real injustices.

In all, the legalization of gay marriage seems likely to put both heterosexuals and gays into a deeper legal mire, and in light of this, those in homosexual relationships may simply want to define themselves as the legal equivalent of a purchasing co-operative. In a sense, they are indeed that, and the sheer simplicity of that idea would present American law with a more copable set of questions.

Just a few thoughts.....

A few thoughts on Sarah Palin

After Sarah Palin's most recent interview, pundits, even conservative ones, are pronouncing her hopes for the presidency dead. Oddly though, nearly everyone once did the same for Dennis Kucinich's ambitions to be anything beyond a one-term mayor of Cleveland, and he currently represents Ohio's district 10, an area including that very city. Likewise, after failing to win the presidency in 1960, Nixon obviously did end up as a president.

These people don't just lay down and die, damn it. Hell, according to Wikipedia even Jerry Springer thought about throwing his sleazy hat back into the ring as late as 2003. Palin is not about to give up. In fact, she's keeping herself on the countries news-screens, and intentionally or not, she may even be developing a means to gain popularity. Given the usefulness of even bad publicity, after all, her gray publicity might be even more usable than that. She's basically been arguing about a set of non-issues, such as the semantic propriety of the words "blood libel," and a decent spin-doctor could easily twist even greater negatives than that into positives.

For me, though, Palin does face at least one serious political problem: she seems to have made herself less of a politician and more of a personality, less of a statesperson and more of a celebrity. I no longer hear people talking about her policies--and some have certainly inspired discussion!--but about Sarah the person: the wife, the mother and, only thereafter, the Governor. This focus on Palin the person has successfully distracted us from any real issues of her administration, but in doing so, it has also elevated each question about her to one on our acceptance of both her and her entire administration. As a result, then, any complaint about any of her decisions may become a challenge, not simply to some small number of decisions, but of her overall competence, and an opponent wiling to "go negative" may be able to keep her on the defensive--and a candidate on the defensive tends to lose support. Just ask Barak Obama.

Furthermore, on a moral level, her elevation of herself to celebrity leaves us less able to make informed choices about government under her. Personally, I sympathize with Ms. Palin in a number of ways. Like us, she seems to face problems in her marriage, family and job, and, like us, she may take hard-to-explain steps to solve them. On the other hand though, I can neither agree nor disagree with most of her policies; after all, I simply don't know them! My daily paper and even my My Yahoo page (geared for an absolute news junkie) feature stories on the dramas of Palin's life but nothing about her decisions. Hell, in light of this ignorance, she may already be running the risk of losing voters due to a small but unshrinkable doubt about her candidacy.

Just some thoughts.....

A few thoughts on Obama's health care plan

According to an article in yesterday's Michigan City News-Dispatch, the democrats have realized the tepidity of their "matter of policy" justifications for the proposed health care system, and to prevent Republicans from simply ridiculing it as more meaningless government spending, they will now be attempting to defend the program on moral grounds. Personally, of course, I love any attempt at ethical behavior, even one motivated by self-interest, but to actually reach a driveable stretch of The High Road, democrats should keep a very clear idea of at least three of the concerns of the common citizen in mind:

First, we, or a close relative or friend, have been down to the V.A. hospital, or the emergency room, or the office of the insurance agency chosen by our employer, and the people at that location denied us or our loved ones genuinely needed medical attention but granted seemingly superfluous care to those simply luckier or more able to con the system than ourselves. in light of this, we fear having to pay more than the current drain on our income to receive more of the unacceptable same.

Second, we also fear our own inability to predict the effects of a bill too long to read, memorize or interpret. The thing probably has no specific clause mandating a jail sentence for leaving one's tonsils in place of course, but able and motivated government officials just might be able to find a way to bring some sort of consequence on those refusing procedures. We unfortunately have no way of foreseeing such an outcome, though, and so we live in tension.

Oh yeah, and as a last point, we also fear crafty recipients of health care benefits exploiting this larger system as a form of welfare. Each of us knows at least one person already purposely striving to meeting the letter of the law of current program's requirements to gain some sort of government benefits, and we fear their use of this larger aid program in a similar but more expensive way. This may not be a humane viewpoint of course, but it does reflect the ugly reality before our eyes.

Answering these issues just might give health care supporters the chance to usher in a new and progressive social program into American life, and failing to do so may leave the public at the very least scratching its head. As a citizen, I ask them to try.

Just a few thoughts....

A few thought's on North Korea's Nuclear Arsenal

"I think they"--North Korea--"will come to the point where they can no longer sustain the burden of military expenditures," Chun Yung-woo [South Korean nuclear envoy] told "PBS NewsHour.

Chun's statement above could be nothing more than a show of unconcern in the face of a growing North Korean nuclear potential. On the other hand though, it just might show a real understanding of North Korea's reason's for bringing China, the U.S., Russia, Japan and South Korea to the bargaining table: North Korea apparently needs everything....

North Korea's "Army First" policy appears, at least according to the news, to have made that country pre-existingly poor, even for a Marxist state, and a recent set of destructive floods cannot have helped them to rise above that poverty. Worse though, according to a report on NPR a few months ago, defectors from The People's Republic of That Place Next to China have reported corruption rife enough to be the most important source of income for most officials; the waste of even the few economic resources available for recovery must be vast!

North Korean leader Kim Il-Jong probably has his hands tied in dealing with these problems. No government, especially not an authoritarian one such as his, has ever seemed to find the real markets (read: the real material needs) of its society through legislation. The process is just too slow and clumsy. Worse, the large number of regulations and laws normally imposed on any effort at production in such a country will hinder and perhaps even halt any initiative for the re-development of even poorly directed production. The corruption is, of course, just the rancid icing on the out-of-date cake. It may actually be nothing more than a final superfluous barrier to an already impossible goal.

Some experts see Kim as too deluded to understand his country's situation or too self-serving to care, but he could also just fit Kissinger's description of many Asian leaders, a follower of Confucius attemting to rule though some self-perceived virtue and assuming the inevitability of a positive outcome given this trait. In any of these cases though--in fact in any case other than his complete recognition of his supposed situation--Jong will not go down without a fight, and given a North Korean nuclear capacity, that could be a hard fight indeed.

The fight, though, just might be a diplomatic one. Jong might be using the threat of developing nuclear weaponry as a means to drag the super-powers and the countries most vulnerable to his threat to the bargaining table to extort aid. Even a lunatic, a nepotist or a Son of Heaven would see the pragmatic benefit of such a plan, and it would spare him the expense of actually developing nukes.

Given this situation, we probably don't have to give in to his demands, though. With China as his backer, he, like China, may lack any real delivery system for his bombs. Furthermore, the mysterious launching of a missile from the West Coast last November may have been a message to Jong on our own capacity and willingness to vaporize his cities and defenses in the face of his supposed threat. Certainly he stopped rattling nuclear sabers after that launch. We can bargain with him, then, from a position of strength, and our position may only strengthen with time. Japan and South Korea may be somewhat afraid of North Korea, but China and Russia seem tired of the whole damn nation. The Russians are probably too busy with their own problems to turn their attention to China's half-pint, and since the breakdown of Korean forces brought the American Army to the Chinese border in 1950, the Chinese at least seem to have viewed their southern neighbor as a political liability. Rather than risk confrontation with the U.S. over the interests of another state then, China and Russia may be more likely to pressure their fellow communist state into being less of a headache. In other words, North Korea may end up trying to negotiate without any support for its interests other than its possibly disproven nuclear threat. She may be in no position to demand anything at all.

Just a few thoughts....

A few thoughts on the deficit

Oddly, I will not comment on the budget itself. The thing is not, after all, a single entity, a budget, but a massed set of thousands of pieces; and each piece has earned the approval of at least one congressperson and the acceptance of one or more congressional committees. Each part then, at least presents itself as serving the supposed legitimate interest of somebody's constituency. Beyond that, I would also drive readers crazy trying to justify or invalidate legislation meant to meet the needs of some distant place. I couldn't possibly get through all the minutae of the thing.

Of course, Congress is in roughly the same shape. Not even a single member of the House or the Senate--nor even a single one of their aides--will have read the entire bill; and, like me, none of them will even have a means to determine the supposed purpose and justification for any expenditure at all. Regardless of that though, congress has already voted for the thing and now, paradoxically, will start to eliminate parts of it in an effort to please voters. Of course, all during this process, various economists and statisticians will make justifications and recriminations over each line of text, but, unfortunately, they will only rarely state any justification for their opinion beyond their supposed status as experts. Because of this, and in hopes of provoking a little thought on the matter, I'd like to present the following set of questions to ask about the passing or repeal of any expenditure:

1) Does this bill cut any exiting government expenditure?. To name one example: The government faces certain losses for uncollected medical and legal fees through the burden of "bad debt," a means for professionals and others to deduct unpaid bills from their taxes. Therefore, the cost of medicade, medicare, V.A. health care and supplied legal services is at least somewhat smaller than the sum paid for them, and other services may have similar deductions. A real tab of the "cost" of any government expenditure must account for this sort of figure.

2) How much did this expenditure shrink the economy? All taxes end up in somebody's paycheck, and that person will, of course, either spend or save that money, ultimately stimulating the economy to at least some degree. To determine the economic loss from taxation then, the supposed experts will have to determine the difference between the stimulation expectable from the spending and savings of the money's original possesor to the stimulation expectable from the spending and savings of the ultimate recipient.

3) What is the total dollar benefit of this expenditure to the economy? Roads obviously foster trade, but the police, the E.P.A., welfare, health care and legal aid all prevent losses in productivity due to disruptions from crime or the ill health or workers. They therefore operate at a cost less than the gross payments to them, and statisticians and economists must therefore figure this dollar amount into their assessments of the worth of any of these programs. Again, examples of such cost/benefit relationships probably do not stop with those listed....

But then, the list of considerations probably doesn't stop with this list, either....

A few thoughts of revolt in Tunisia

According to one source:

(AP) TUNIS, Tunisia – After 23 years of iron-fisted rule, the president of Tunisia was driven from power Friday by violent protests over soaring unemployment and corruption. Virtually unprecedented in modern Arab history, the populist uprising sent an ominous message to authoritarian governments that dominate the region.

Well, Americans are once again welcoming a supposedly anti-despotic revolution in the Middle East. I do of course hope for the Tunisians to secure the blessings of liberty to themselves and their posterity, but unlike the the reporter above, I have some knowledge of such precedents for this event as the Shah's ouster and the Moroccans revolution against the French. None of these produced a one-man one-vote system of anything, and so, to judge from experience, even after this coup, Tunisia may well be in for more of the depressing same.

Certainly the Tunisians are not demonstrating enough love of freedom to inspire hope. They did not fight long or hard to remove their despot. They do not seem to have established militias or a secondary government. Instead, they just seem to have rioted in order to drive out a very driveable old man. Worse though, they did not fight to end over-government but to establish a government strong enough to control the economy and create jobs. In light of this apparent unconcern for their liberties then, the Tunisians are unlikely to make the many daily sacrifices necessary to maintain them, and their future government may well therefore be another unelected weight upon their lives. In fact, given their stated goals, a tyrant promising jobs, land and bread may find himself not simply unopposed but welcomed. Certainly current authorities are facing no real opposition:

(http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AF_TUNISIA_RIOTS?SITE=NMALJ&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT), "plainclothes police were seen hustling some people off the streets of Tunis, which was under curfew. One was clubbed, another was dragged on the ground."

A Few Thoughts on Snow in Hawaii

Scientists have been discussing green-house gasses and global warming since the seventies, and on paper their ideas look good. Carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and methane all do trap infra-red light as heat, and so a surplus of any of these gasses should raise the temperature of the Earth. Heck, in confirmation of this idea, we do see a general rising of temperatures; but, strangely, we also see signs of increased cold. Snow has fallen in Hawaii, Iraq, South Africa, Argentina and, for the first time ever, in Thailand. Clearly, something else just may be going on, perhaps an increase in climactic variability, a set of many changes to the environment from all the many different effects of humanity on that environment. In other words, we may not be facing global warming so much as global weirdening.

Now any increase in the variability of weather such as global weirdening would be very likely to escape the notice of scientist. A scientist running an experiment is almost always looking for changes in something's average rather than its deviation, and so he or she is likely to ignore record highs and lows of temperature as mere distractions from the real data of a stable average temperature. In such a situation, however, that "stability" of temperature may be the result of increases in the number of both high and low temperatures rather than a continuation of of previous ones. Worse though, in not noticing the degree of variability in temperature, meteorologists may well be ignoring the more impactful consequences of a less predictable environment. Farmers, economists and city planners, after all, may be able to take effective measures against simply a continued heating and drying, but each new possibility for change will increase the expense, effort, loss and suffering of those people. Worse still, having such extremes occurring so near to each other may well create further problems. Tornadoes, for one example, result from the meeting of hot and cool air massed, and global weirdening should indeed increase such meetings. Interestingly, much of the world is at least reporting an increase in the number of tornadoes....

A few thoughts on Jared Lee Loughner

Some news have suggested that the inflammatory political rhetoric so common today may have fueled Jared Lee Loughner's homicidal rage, and these news-writers and -editors are asking us to sheath such verbal weaponry in order not to arm further such psychos. Unfortunately though, judging any words by the reaction of the people least able to cope with them ignores a simple fact: anyone, like Loughner, unable even to sit in a class or walk a dog is likely to find something to be an idiot about, regardless of the media available to them. Furthermore, even the utter elimination of negative speech in politics will not elevate the rhetoric used; politicians will simply find politer ways to imply the necessity of removing their opponents from the political landscape and will thus simply probably motivate murder by the maladapted in a more gentle way. Dedicated politicians upholding a good cause, however, will lack at least one means to express the emotional force of their cause, and the electorate will still remain unprepared to face such verbal manipulation from their candidates.

How 'bout we just uphold critical thinking? We have to use it in other parts of out live....

A few thoughts on Ted Williams

People seem to be taking a very "I told you so" attitude toward Ted William's entry into rehab, and at first glance they do seem to have a point. The guy does drink, snort, lie and brawl, after all....

I won't uphold his behavior of course, but I will point to the futility of belittling someone who is at least trying to change himself from a drain on society and an asset to crime into at least something of a productive citizen. Such behavior, whether from oneself or Williams' mother, just drives more of the very few people able and willing to bring themselves up from the dregs back down. It also proves that people will accept the most disturbing behavior from established celebrities such as Michael Jackson, Lindsy Lohan, Paris Hilton, Mel Gibson, Charlie Sheen, Tom Cruise, Sean Penn, Whitney Houston and Paula Abdul, but that the Susan Boyles and Ted Williams' of the world had better expect the most severe scrutiny possible.