Asking Santa for a Balanced Budget Amendment

The Christmas season is all about giving, and your federal government is in a generous mood this year. President Obama is trying his best work out a package of tax cuts and new spending with congressional Republicans before the end of the year that would add almost $900 billion to our already massive federal debt over the next five years. Ho, ho, ho!

Their actions lead me to wonder if the people who are running our country are just really stupid or if they simply don’t care that they are driving the country off a financial cliff. Given the fact that they are able to dress themselves, feed themselves, and (usually) speak in complete sentences, I don’t think they can be excused from their actions due to mental incompetence. But I would understand if you disagree.

But did you really expect anything else? It doesn’t seem to matter which party has control of the White House or Congress, they all like to spend money they don’t have and kick the consequences down the road for someone else to deal with.

The recent failure of President Obama’s bipartisan deficit reduction commission is a perfect example of how things work in Washington – everyone agrees that we have a financial crisis but no one has the brass to stand up for the painful measures that need to be taken to pull us out of the ditch.

I’m afraid it’s just unrealistic to expect any government agency with the power to spend an unlimited amount of money to exercise restraint. It is contrary to human nature to expect people to police themselves in this area – especially when their job prospects depend solely on favorable public opinion.

That’s why the only realistic solution to this problem may be to place hard limits on what the federal government is allowed to spend. State and local governments are bound by law to stay within certain spending limits, and it is probably one of the biggest flaws in our US Constitution that some sort of limiting factor was not included to keep federal spending from running amok.

The arguments against such limits being in place usually point out that in times of war or extreme national disaster the federal government needs to have the capability to initiate emergency spending without regard to its current financial standing. It’s a valid point, but exceptions could be made to a federal Balanced Budget Amendment to account for such emergencies, such as allowing for temporary surges in spending when they are approved by a supermajority in Congress.

Of course I’m not the first person to suggest such a thing. But Balanced Budget Amendment proposals usually die a quick death in Congress because, well, can you really expect sitting congressmen to support to a change to the Constitution that would curtail his own power? It’s sort of a Catch-22 situation.

But, there may be another way. While researching the history of proposed Balanced Budget Amendments I learned that Article V of our Constitution states that if the legislatures of two-thirds of US states petition Congress for an amendment on the same subject, Congress is required to call a convention on that subject.

I also learned that between 1975 and 1980, 30 states submitted petitions to congress regarding a Balanced Budget Amendment. (Georgia was one of those states.) Since then, two more states have also submitted similar petitions, leaving us just two states short of forcing Congress to deal with an issue they would much rather sweep under the carpet.

If ever there was an issue tailor-made for the Tea Partiers, I think this is it. I find it hard to believe that we couldn’t get two more states to submit these petitions given the current political climate. There are a lot of pie-in-the-sky ideas out there about how to send a message to Washington about how fed up we are with their spending habits, but this one seems eminently doable to me.

Let everyone serve

The divide that separates what the people who run our government think is important from what most of us actually care about is sometimes almost too vast to comprehend. The raging debate that is going on in Washington right now over the fate of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy is a good example of that.

Unless you are a gay person who has dreams of becoming the next Colin Powell, you probably don’t spend a lot of time agonizing over this issue. You are likely more worried about mundane matters like finding a job or (if you are fortunate enough to be employed) holding on to the one you have. But in Washington they have much bigger fish to fry, like deciding whether or not the country is safer if gay soldiers pretend to not be gay.

In case you aren’t familiar with “don’t ask, don’t tell”, it is a compromise passed during the Clinton years that allows gay people to serve in the military as long as they don’t do or say anything that would indicate what their sexual orientation is. Now liberals are pushing the lame duck congress to do away with the rule and allow gay people to serve openly before the government tilts back to the right next year and drives them back into the closet for who-knows-how-long.

Well I have at least one thing in common with the politicians in Washington and that is that I don’t mind getting paid (a lot less than they do of course) to debate trivial matters that most people don’t care about, so I might as well have my say on this.

And my say is this - let them serve openly and without pretense. Frankly I think the change is long overdue. It is patently unfair that heterosexuals are the only ones who have the opportunity to get shot at in the service of their country and it’s high time that gay people enjoy the same privilege. But in my view that should be just the beginning of a more sweeping change to the rules that define who may fight for our country.

We should also immediately do away with the exclusion of women in the military from combat roles. I’m a strong advocate of complete gender equality, and I believe that women should have the same opportunities that men do to experience the thrill of bullets whizzing by their heads and bombs blowing up all around them. Why should men get to have all the fun?

One side benefit of this change would be to encourage married couples to enlist and serve together on the front lines. If women could serve anywhere that men can we would no longer have to fret over military spouses who get “left behind” during war time. Imagine husbands and wives hunkered down in foxholes together – what could be more romantic, not to mention patriotic?

Of course you might wonder who would be taking care of the children if moms and dads are serving on the front lines together. I thought of that too, and I think that once we stamp out discrimination based on gender and sexual orientation, it will be time to address ageism in the military. Once a child reaches an age where they are old enough to go deer hunting (say 13 or 14) they are certainly old enough to “hunt” America’s enemies as well. Sign them up.

And I am not forgetting about Grandpa and Grandma either. There are plenty of seniors who are healthy enough in mind and body to serve our country and it seems unfair to exclude them being able to do so.

Young or old, male or female, gay or straight – it shouldn’t make any difference. The military ought to “look like America.” If an 80 year-old lesbian wants to chase after terrorists in the deserts of Afghanistan, who are we to tell her she shouldn’t have that right?

My new retirement plan

Now that I am well into my 40’s, I’ve reached the age where I’m starting to think about what I want to do when I retire. Taking into account how I have come to feel about my fellow man and the state of the world in general, I think I am going to want to spend my golden years in a nice private place far away from the noise, pollution, crime, and general unpleasantness one is forced to bear when living in close quarters with other humans.

I think that I have found the perfect place. I am going to retire on Mars.

I have to thank the two scientists who published an article about Mars colonization in the latest issue of the Journal of Cosmology for inspiring this idea. In their article “To Boldly Go” they suggest that we should modify our thinking about taking a trip to the red planet. Instead of just visiting Mars, they believe that we should plan on going there to stay.

I admit that it sounds crazy at first blush, and a lot of people (including the bigwigs at NASA) are dismissing the idea out of hand. But they do make some good points in support of their proposal, and I think we should hear them out.

They point out, for instance, that a one-way trip would be vastly cheaper than a round trip, and one can’t underestimate financial considerations in these difficult economic times. The authors believe that we could save up to 80% on the total cost of the expedition because we wouldn’t need the extra equipment and fuel required for a return trip. Supply ships could be sent out to the colonists periodically, but again that could be done relatively cheaply since those ships don’t have to come back.

Aside from the cost, the authors suggest that we consider the trip to Mars to be not just a visit, but a colonization effort. There is always the chance that life on Earth could be unexpectedly wiped out by disease, an asteroid strike, or some other calamity. As it stands now, if that were to happen humanity would simply cease to exist.

Having colonists on another planet would give humanity a backup plan for survival. The Earth has been very good to us so far, but it is never a good idea to put all your eggs in one basket.

But who would want to leave the earth without a possibility of ever returning, you might ask. The authors have thought about this, and they suggest that we only send people who are getting up there in years, perhaps in their 60s. It is unlikely that those first pioneers would enjoy a terribly long lifespan because of radiation exposure and lack of professional medical care, so you probably wouldn’t get too many volunteers in their 20s.

And that’s where my retirement plan comes in. The scientists believe we could be ready for such a voyage in about 20 years, and by then I’ll be in my mid 60s and likely ready to leave the rat race. Instead of getting a trailer in Florida, I’m going to reserve a space on a ship bound for Mars. Finally, at long last, I will be able to enjoy some peace and quiet, far away from budget deficits and global warming and crazy people who want to blow us all to pieces.

I’ve discussed this idea with my family and friends, and they all seem to be surprisingly supportive of the idea of me leaving the planet, never to return. They have even offered to help me pack and drive me to the space dock when the time comes. It is truly touching to know that the people around me are so willing to help me achieve my dream.

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One last chance

It would seem that change is in the air. Again.

Voters fed up with Obama and the Democrats’ march towards socialism “sent a message” to Washington this week by calling up an army of new Republican congressmen to take the place by storm and (presumably) tilt the country back to the right. I guess we showed them, didn’t we?

Wait a second, didn’t we just “show them” two years ago when we sent Obama and an army of new Democratic congressmen to Washington to shake things up after we’d had our fill of George W. Bush and a GOP congress? And it doesn’t seem like it was all that long ago that Newt Gingrich and his band of merry men promised to change the culture in Washington and get the country headed in the right direction during the last Republican revolution. They are all so full of promises on the campaign trail, but they never seem to deliver on them once they are handed the key to the castle.

Call me cynical if you want, but it seems to me that no matter which party we turn to when we are tired of the status quo, things don’t really change all that much. The federal government is a big, bloated monster that seems to assimilate whoever we send to Washington into its hive-mind and turn them into slaves to special interest groups and deep-pocketed lobbyists. They seem to forget about us pretty quickly once they put us in their rearview mirror.

But maybe this time it will be different. Some of the Republicans who won office this week were Tea Party-backed candidates who have promised, at long last, to scale back the size and scope of the federal government and reign in all that deficit spending. I’ve heard that promise out of Republicans before, but they haven’t backed the talk with any real action for a very long time.

I’ve harped on the national debt issue for as long as I’ve been writing this column (12 years and counting), so if anyone wants to believe the GOP when they say that this time they are serious about getting our financial house in order, it’s me. But trust is a hard thing to win back when it has been betrayed.

I made the mistake of believing in them when they had control of the White House and congress, and what did they deliver to us? The massive deficit spending that occurred under their watch for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and on recovering from Hurricane Katrina may or may not have been ”mandatory”, but they also increased spending on things like education and Medicare even as all that emergency spending was going on. The plain truth is that the last time Republicans had power they proved themselves to be no more responsible with our money than the Democrats had been, and in fact you could make the case that they were even worse overall.

I for one, felt very let down by that experience, and I will admit that I’ve voted for a lot of Libertarians since then. But in this election, for the first time in a very long time, I voted a near straight ticket for the Republicans. I have decided to give them one last chance.

If they will live up to the ideals that they claim to stand for – limited government, responsible financial management, and respect for the Constitution, I will return to the fold. But if they let me down one more time, I can promise you it will be the last time. I won’t get fooled again.

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Low blows keep on coming

We’ve almost made it. In another 11 days we will have survived another election season, and hopefully our sanity will still be (mostly) intact. I know I say this every two years, but the campaigning this year seems to have reached a new low.

Maybe the hardest contest to stomach has been the race for governor between Roy Barnes and Nathan Deal. Over the last week or so the candidates have been hitting each other below the belt so often I have to believe they are both singing soprano by now.

You’ve probably seen the Barnes ad that claims that Deal sponsored a law in Georgia that, if it had passed, would have weakened protection of rape victims from being questioned about their personal lives when their accused attacker was on trial. While the accusations are being leveled in a voice over, you get visuals of an empty car that appears to have been the scene of a struggle.

I suppose the suggestion is that someone was raped in this car and then – what? I’m not sure. Perhaps the victim is supposed to have fled the scene after the attack so that Nathan Deal would not force her to testify about her personal life.

What the ad doesn’t tell you is that Deal and the other legislators who were behind the bill were trying to bring Georgia law into line with federal statutes so that rape convictions would be less likely to be thrown out on appeal. Some people believed that the changes would have weakened the state rape shield law (though opinions varied on this point) and it was eventually scrapped because of the negative publicity that followed.

What the ad also doesn’t tell you is that Roy Barnes was at that time a member of the State Bar Evidence Committee that reviewed and approved that proposed change to the law.

I am certain that the Barnes team who produced the attack ad know all these facts. They know that they are distorting the situation, and they know very well that Nathan Deal is not some monster who wants to persecute rape victims. They know this, but I’m sure if questioned they would say that this is just how the game is played. This is how you win. And everybody does it.

Sadly, that is the truth. And Deal’s people are playing the game as well. His campaign has an ad out now that digs up a very old and unflattering quote Barnes made in a debate years ago regarding the inevitability of losing some children who are in state custody. Barnes said immediately after that debate that he misspoke, and that he does not view the death of any child in state custody as being acceptable.

Of course he doesn’t, and no reasonable person would think that he would. But these ads aren’t aimed at the reasonable side of our brains. They are character assassinations based on the flimsiest of premises, and it amazes me that the people involved in producing them can live with themselves.

The really sad part is that because the game is played this way it obviously prevents a lot of good people from ever wanting to run for office. Would you want to subject yourself to a process where everything you’ve ever done or said in your life was put under a microscope and the most unflattering parts were yanked out, completely out of context, and broadcast out as a 30-second summary of your poor character?

I’m not sure how to fix this, but maybe a start would be to contact these candidates directly and let them know, in your own words, that what they ought to be ashamed of themselves. You can write to the Barnes campaign at info@roy2010.com and the Deal campaign at info@nathandeal.org.

Write and let them know how much you “appreciate” their campaign tactics. They have it coming.

No more running

A couple of years back, I wrote a column about how I’d started back running for exercise after a long layoff. I was 41 at the time I wrote it, and I was fairly enthusiastic about the shape I was in (for my age) at the time. Based on the tone of that column, I sounded pretty confident about holding off the effects of the getting older if I stayed on track with my exercise regimen.

Here are the last few sentences from that piece: “None of us can cheat the aging process, but our actions have a significant effect on how we look and feel as we travel down the road of time. I for one plan to keep on running as long as my body cooperates. And maybe in 30 years or so I’ll be ready for that water aerobics class. “

Looking back on it, I’m afraid I sound a little arrogant there. I sound like someone who had an inflated sense of the amount of control he has over life, fate, and his own health. Maybe I was setting myself up to be taught an important lesson. I think I’m learning that lesson now.

I haven’t gone running for at least three months. A slow walk is the best I can manage at present. I would tell you what’s wrong with me but I don’t know, and neither do the doctors I’ve seen. I’ve had plenty of expensive and unpleasant tests done, but I still don’t have any concrete answers. You would think that hearing “the tests all came back normal” from your doctor would be good news, but that’s not always the case.

So I don’t know what my problem is, and I don’t know if I’ll ever feel as good as I did when I wrote that column two years ago. But I always try to look on the bright side of things, and I can certainly say that the experience has made me a wiser (if less optimistic) person than I was back then. Here are a few of the things I’ve learned over the last few months.

- Taking care of your body increases your odds of staying as healthy as possible for the age that you are, but it is not a guarantee of good health. There are no such guarantees. Life is not like that.

- Medicine is not an exact science. The human body is an extremely complicated thing and there are many different things that can go wrong with it. Doctors have to make educated guesses a lot of the time, and they can’t always be right. Even the really good ones.

- One of the scariest things you will ever hear another human being say to you is this: “let’s put you on this medication and see how you do.”

- In a related note to that last point, all medications have side effects. And they usually aren’t good.

- It is very difficult to concentrate on anything else when you are preoccupied with wondering what exactly is going on with your body and whether or not it’s going to be better or worse tomorrow.

- Good health is probably at the top of the list of things that you don’t appreciate until you don’t have them anymore. But take my word for it - if you got out of bed this morning and started walking around without experiencing any pain or discomfort, you should be very, very thankful.

- I think that one of the highest complements you can ever hope to hear said about you is this – no matter what life threw at him, he never gave up.

Jim Marshall thinks you’re an idiot

If you’ve watched more than 15 minutes of television in the last few weeks you have no doubt had your intelligence assaulted by this season’s crop of campaign commercials. But just in case you (wisely) haven’t turned on your TV in the last few weeks, I can assure you that the ads this year are every bit as idiotic as they have been every other election year in recent memory.

Take for example the ads being put out by Jim Marshall’s campaign for the 8th district congressional race. Yes, take them. Please. I can sum up Jim’s entire campaign strategy as demonstrated by these advertisements in just a few sentences. Read over them and then you can quickly change channels if you see his campaign commercial come on and save yourself from the mental anguish of sitting through the whole thing.

It seems that years ago Austin Scott, the Georgia state legislator who is Jim’s Republican opposition this year, voted against a proposed law that would have slapped a 5% tax on money transfers that illegal immigrants sent back to their families in their home countries. Apparently at the time Mr. Scott said he had a “moral problem” slapping this fee on people who were trying to support their families.

Marshall’s ads have gleefully repeated the “moral problem” quote to humiliate Scott in as many creative ways as possible. Their take-away message is that Scott is soft on immigration and therefore not a Real True Conservative, which is what a person has to be to win an election in Georgia. And of course Marshall claims to have supported every tough immigration law that has ever been come down the pike, so you should definitely vote for him because he shares your values.

I have to wonder how much time and money were spent to develop this masterful campaign “strategy”. I’m not sure I agree with Scott’s vote on the issue in question but I’m certainly not ready to tar and feather him over it, either. I think his voting record on immigration and other issues overall is very conservative and it’s silly to reduce a person’s entire political career to one vote and one mini-quote.

Frankly the whole idea of taxing illegal immigrants’ money transfers seems gimmicky and impossible to enforce. I would have probably voted against such a measure myself because it sounds like a huge waste of time and effort that would show very little return. Besides, if we actually identify someone as being in this country illegally, why wouldn’t we just deport them rather than trying to collect a portion of the money they were trying to send back home? Maybe politics is just too complicated for a simple man like me.

Sadly, Scott’s campaign ads haven’t been any more substantive than Marshall’s. The gist of his ads has been to point out that Marshall is a Democrat and so is Nancy Pelosi, therefore you should vote for Austin Scott. Of course the effect is much more impressive when you see the picture of a sad-looking Marshall cut and pasted next to an image of an imperious-looking Pelosi. I doubt very much that Marshall is one of Pelosi’s favorite legislators given his overall conservative (for a Democrat) voting record, but I guess any link to Nancy Pelosi hurts a person’s image in some people’s eyes.

These inane attack ads just make me wish both of these guys could lose. Not because of Scott’s moral problem with taxing illegal immigrants’ wire transfers or because of Marshall’s tenuous association with the villainous Pelosi. No, the reason I can’t get excited about either of these guys is because they are driving me crazy with their unimaginative, lowest-common-denominator attack ads and we still have more than five weeks of this nonsense to endure before Election Day.

And frankly, I have a moral problem with that.

Is God still “necessary”?

A new book from cosmologist Stephen Hawking came out this week and it seems to be making some people a little hot under the collar. The internationally renowned scientist, who previously authored the best seller “A Brief History of Time”, has apparently declared in his newest book (called “The Grand Design”) that God is “not necessary” to explain the creation of our universe.

Needless to say, his assertion that God wasn’t needed for the Big Bang to blast us into existence has proven to be controversial to say the least. I may be a little cynical, but I expect Hawking and his publishers were aware that his very public denial of the need for a Creator would generate headlines and (more importantly, I’m sure) help pump up sales. Still, there is no reason to believe that Hawking is being insincere, and it would seem that his research and deep thinking has led this highly respected scientist to conclude that the evidence suggests that the universe can get along quite well without the help of a God or gods.

I won’t try and explain his reasons for believing this in detail because, frankly, I’m not nearly smart enough to understand it completely. However, the very simplified explanation is that he believes that the Big Bang actually didn’t produce just one universe but a very large number of alternate universes, each with its own set of physical laws. The universe that we happen to inhabit seems to us to be “finely tuned” to allow the existence of life as we know it, but that’s just the luck of the draw. It’s a variation of the “infinite number of monkeys typing on an infinite number of typewriters would eventually produce the works of Shakespeare” idea, I guess.

Predictably, more than a few people have taken strong issue with Mr. Hawking’s pronouncement that the universe doesn’t need God, and the reactions have been swift and strong. And I think that is as it should be. In a free society, everyone should have their say and we can all judge for ourselves who is enlightened and who is full of hot air (or other things).

What disturbs me a little is the undercurrent of anger, or in some cases what seems like thinly concealed hatred, directed towards people like Hawking when they get on the wrong side of popular religious sentiment. It’s as if some people see him as a danger to society, as if he is going to lead some hapless people astray with his atheist-friendly scientific ideas. It seems plausible that if certain people had their way, books like “The Grand Design” would never see the light of day and people like Hawking would be silenced for the greater good of society.

And I really don’t get that. I mean, does anyone think that God (assuming He does exist) is at all troubled by anything that Stephen Hawking or anyone else has to say about Him? I doubt that is the real concern. More likely, some people may fear that someone who is on the fence about God could be led astray by people like Hawking, thereby putting their eternal souls in peril.

I don’t believe that such concerns are justified. Only a very small percentage of the population (a percentage that certainly doesn’t include me) can really grasp the kind of science that Hawking practices, and I expect that those people who do “get” his theories don’t need anyone to protect them from his dangerous ideas. They are probably sharp enough to work out their beliefs without help from anyone else.

It is equally unlikely that those of us who only dimly grasp the concepts of advanced cosmology are going to give up our beliefs in God based on reading a few paragraphs about multiple universes. If someone were to lose their faith that easily, it wasn’t worth much to begin with.

Recall time in Warner Robins?

Back in the days when Mayor Donald Walker enjoyed what seemed like supreme power in Warner Robins, I remember writing columns that decried his overly congenial relationship with the city council. For much of his time in office it seemed as if Walker had the council in his hip pocket, and they would rubber stamp anything he wanted to do. At the time I felt that a little independence on the part of the city council might be a good thing. I guess you have to be careful what you wish for.

No one is going to accuse the current mayor and city council in Warner Robins of being too congenial with one another. In fact, it’s hard to imagine how there could possibly be any more ill will between a chief executive and a legislative body than there seems to be between Chuck Shaheen and the majority of the council right now.

The situation seemed to come to a head a few weeks ago when the council reversed the suspension of Police Chief Brett Evans that had just been levied by the mayor. Shaheen made the decision to suspend Evens when it came to light that chief had very openly campaigned for Shaheen’s opponent in the last city election, in clear violation of an ordinance that prohibits city employees from getting directly involved with local campaigns.

I have heard no plausible argument to justify what the council did. Their “everybody does it” excuse simply does not hold water with anyone who has an IQ higher than a potted plant. They were looking to slap the mayor in the face, law and order be damned, and that’s exactly what they did.

Many city residents are growing tired of this nonsense. Former Warner Robins council member and mayor Henrietta McIntyre is one prominent citizen who has clearly run out of patience. She is 85 now and has trouble getting around, but she made the effort to stand up and let the council feel her wrath when they rescinded Evan’s suspension, telling them that if she could walk she would “be out there with a petition to recall every one of ya.”

Apparently after thinking the matter over, Ms. McIntyre decided that her inability to walk wasn’t going to keep her from taking the necessary action. When the city government next convened, she was there collecting signatures in the audience for a petition to recall the 5 council members who voted to rescind the Evans suspension. Good for her.

But the council did not seem to get the message. They have now decided to conduct an expensive audit of the city’s operations and to they want to hire a former city employee to conduct the audit, one who was fired by Shaheen and has supposedly stated his intentions to “get” the mayor. This all might be funny if it was happening somewhere else, but for residents of Warner Robins it is no laughing matter.

“Embarrassment” is the perfect word for what is going on in Warner Robins, and the mayor and the council need to deal with whatever their personal differences are like grown men. You don’t have to like each other, but you need to realize that you were elected to do a job, and you are failing at it, miserably, for the whole world to see.

If you can’t act like grownups you have no business being in office and you will richly deserve to feel the wrath of your constituents via a recall effort. Recalls are always an uphill battle and they rarely succeed, but if there was ever a situation where one would be appropriate it is here in Warner Robins in 2010. I can’t imagine that getting the required 100 signatures to get the ball rolling will be hard to do, even for a lady that has trouble walking. I’m sure the voters will come to you, Ms. McIntyre.

Time to cast out the Demon in Warner Robins?

I’m sure you’ve heard all about the local pastor who was arrested at Warner Robins High School earlier this week for leading a protest against the school’s choice of mascot. This isn’t the first time someone has gotten their blood pressure up over the green-eyed Demon, and it probably won’t be the last. It’s tough to fight tradition though, and I expect the movement to cast him out will be just as fruitless in this instance as it has in the past.

But before we completely dismiss this (probably futile) effort to banish the Demon from Warner Robins High, perhaps we should at least consider the argument these protestors are trying to make. Is it possible that extended exposure to demonic symbology could have a negative impact on the minds and spirits of our impressionable young citizens?

I am in a position to shed some light on that question since I was a Warner Robins Demon myself in the early 80s. I guess I could trot out the old saying that “I went to school there and I turned out just fine”, but frankly I bet that a lot of people who know me well might take issue with that assertion. They might say that I could have turned out a whole lot better than I did, and who’s to say whether or not having that scary-looking demon looking down on me with his bright green eyes as I stumbled through my formative years might have had something to do with that?

So maybe we should at least think about changing the mascot for Warner Robins from a Demon to something a little less dark and satanic. And if we did decide to do that, why not take the opportunity to go completely in the other direction and bestow upon Warner Robins a mascot that speaks to our better natures, one that will lift our young citizens’ eyes upwards towards the light instead of down into the pits of despair?

Here are a few possibilities to consider:

- The Saints. The problem here is that everyone associates this nickname with the NFL team from New Orleans. Although they have erased their legacy of being perennial losers with last year’s Superbowl win, we would still have to worry about the lewd behavior commonly associated with the city itself. We might not want the image of inebriated young women exposing themselves to earn a string of beads to be associated with the local high school sports program.

- The Angels. This would be a welcome about-face from the current mascot, but I’m afraid the cute and cuddly cherubs that most people think of when they hear this word might not strike terror into an opponent’s heart on the field of battle the way a demon does. I considered some more intimidating alternatives like the Avenging Angels or the Angels of Death, but those sound like the names of motorcycle gangs, and I don’t think we want to go there either.

- The Holy Warriors. This name sounds tough and righteous at the same time, which is good, but it also has some negative connotations by being associated with the Crusades and some of the nasty things that were done in the name of religion during that conflict. Given the average person’s ignorance of history however, I’m not sure how much of a concern that would be.

- The Wrath of God. I think we have a winner! I mean seriously, does any sane person not quake in fear at the thought of drawing the ire of the Almighty? Imagine an opposing coach trying to get his team ready to face Warner Robins and telling his squad that “this week we will be facing the Wrath of God.” It sounds much more intimidating than some garden-variety demon, don’t you think?

Suffering from pre-election depression

We have a statewide primary coming up on July 20, and this is normally the time when I write a column that tries to get people fired up about voting. Sadly, this year I find that I’m the one that needs firing up because I am not at all excited about this election.

I will most likely vote in the Republican side of the primary (assuming I can work up the enthusiasm to show up at the polling station) and like most people I have been giving the governor’s race most of my attention. That contest has been a particularly ugly one so far, and that fact probably accounts for significant portion my pre-election depression.

All four of the leading Republican candidates are being dogged by charges of ethical impropriety.

Former Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine, who has been leading the race in both the polls and in fundraising, accepted and then returned campaign donations from some big insurance companies and has been investigated for misusing the power of his office in other creative ways as well. Nathan Deal was the subject of a congressional inquiry looking into some questionable dealings between his auto salvage business and the state. Eric Johnson has been hammered for the part he played in dismissing ethics complaints against former Georgia speaker of the House Glenn “Romeo” Richardson. And I’m sure we’ve all enjoyed the ongoing saga of Karen Handel and her on-again/off-again relationship with the Log Cabin Republicans.

Is it possible that there are just no honest men (or women) who choose to pursue a career in politics these days? Or does power just lead automatically to corruption, no matter who you are before you acquire it? Whatever the case may be, I guess I’m like a lot of people in that I’m just turned off by the whole affair. The candidates do such an effective job of tearing each other apart in these campaigns that they convince me that I don’t really want to vote for any of them.

I suppose the best thing to do is accept that no one who has been in politics for any length of time is likely to come out squeaky clean and try and concentrate on what the candidates want to do should they get elected. That would be a lot easier to do, of course, if they would talk more about those plans and less about what a rotten so-and-so the other candidates are.

So here is my plea for John, Nathan, Eric, Karen, and all other candidates for office in Georgia on July 20: please, please, please give us a break from the mud-slinging and tell us, with as many specifics as possible, what you want to do if you should win the office you are seeking. We are facing some serious issues in Georgia and we need to know what you want to do about our economy, our schools, our roads, and our water supply. Treat us like adults for once and let’s have a serious conversation about the issues that are bearing down on us.

I know - it’s not going to happen. We’re going to get another few days of them sniping at one another and then it will be time to step up to the voting machine and hold our noses while we try and decide on the lesser evil. It just seems like there ought to be a better way to get to know candidates than the 30-second attack ads that provide most of what passes for an election campaign these days.

Does anyone out there have any ideas? Let me hear from you if you do.

Who is the Militia today?

The recent Supreme Court decisions to overturn gun control laws in Chicago and Washington DC have a lot of people talking about the Second Amendment and what kind of authority it gives to the federal government to overrule state and local gun control laws.

Despite what anyone says, it’s a pretty complicated question. Let’s examine the text of the amendment.

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

The issue would be a lot more straightforward, I believe, if the amendment had not included those first four words. By including them, the right of the people to own and carry guns is tied to the concept of a “well regulated Militia.” Just what is meant by that phrase, and was it intended to limit our right to own firearms in any way?

That’s a question I’ve struggled with for some time. I suspect that the concept of a citizen Militia had a meaning that was relevant when the amendment was written that is lost on us today.

These days if someone tells they belong to a “Militia” you probably assume they are part of some fringe group with plans to overthrow the government. But I expect that back in the late eighteenth century every able-bodied male was considered to be a part of a citizen’s Militia in their state, city, and neighborhood, and when there was trouble they were all expected to rally in the town square locked and loaded.

We don’t live in that world today, and most of us don’t hold regular drills with our neighbors to practice defensive maneuvers in case we are attacked by marauding bandits. So a plain reading of those first four words of the Second Amendment can’t be applied to the reality of life in America today. What we have to do is try to discern the intent of these words and apply them to the modern world.

If you study the philosophy of the men who wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, you find that one of the concepts that turns up often in their thinking is a healthy distrust of the power of the government over a free citizen. They had witnessed firsthand what happens when a government is virtually all-powerful, and they didn’t want that to happen here.

One of the best ways to be sure that a government does not exercise absolute power over its citizens is to be sure that you never get into a situation where the only ones who have guns are people who work for the government. I believe the Second Amendment was created to guarantee that situation never happened in America.

On the other hand, it probably occurred to the founding fathers that allowing every man, woman, and child in America to own and operate any kind of weapon they wanted in every conceivable situation is not necessarily in everyone’s best interest either. They probably weren’t looking to preserve the sacred right of a convicted felon to walk down your street taking target practice on your mailbox in the middle of the night, for example. I think that may be why they included the reference to a “well regulated Militia.”

My interpretation of the Second Amendment, therefore, is that it was intended to protect the rights of law abiding citizens to own firearms and use them for their own protection. That should preclude cities from enacting virtual outright bans on handguns, but it would not preclude things like criminal background checks at the point of sale.

In short, I think the Supreme Court is following the spirit of the Second Amendment with their recent rulings. But gun control laws have to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis to measure their intent and effect before we can pronounce judgment on their constitutionality.

How dumb do they think we are?

H.L. Mencken said that no one ever went broke, or lost a political office, by underestimating the intelligence of the general public. That may be true, but sometimes it seems that public officials really abuse the privilege of treating us like idiots. A few recent examples of that were especially egregious.

Imagine if you will that you see a car swerving dangerously in traffic. Imagine that you call the police to report this apparently-impaired driver and the police locate said vehicle and pull it over. Now imagine that when the officer approaches the vehicle, the smell of alcohol wafts out of the driver’s open window.

What do you think would happen in that situation? Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the officer would likely administer a sobriety test to see if the driver was under the influence of alcohol, and rightly so. But on that one-hundredth occurrence, perhaps the driver is not just some average schmuck like you or me, perhaps the driver is someone important like Bibb County District Attorney Howard Simms.

When just such a set of circumstances occurred a few weeks ago, the Macon police officer who pulled Simms over did not choose to issue a sobriety test but instead drove Simms’ vehicle to his intended destination and sent him on his merry way. If this does not reek of favoritism, I really don’t know what does.

But Macon police officials deny that any impropriety occurred and claim that the officer on the scene was merely using “discretion” and was acting in “consideration for the driver.” Right. How about showing some consideration for those of us who don’t want to be flattened by an impaired driver? Come on guys, at least do us the favor of coming up with a better cover story when you are looking out for your own.

Another entry in the “how dumb do they think we are?” sweepstakes can be found in the state’s Republican gubernatorial primary. If you know anything about statewide Republican primaries in Georgia, you know that they invariably come down to a game of “who’s the most conservative conservative in this race?” And (for reasons that I don’t fully comprehend) the candidate who comes off as the most anti-gay and anti-abortion rights usually wins the title.

This year one of the candidates has a real problem on the anti-gay front. Secretary of State Karen Handel is running for governor this year, and her apparently cozy relationship with the Log Cabin Republicans (a gay advocacy group within the Republican Party) is coming back to haunt her.

It seems that Handel courted the support of the LCR when she was running for office in Atlanta, but she has tried to distance herself from that relationship now that she running in the (less gay-friendly) statewide primary. Marc Yeager, a past LCR president, has provided warm and friendly emails sent to him by Handel in 2002 and 2003 that seemingly confirm her support of gay adoption rights and domestic partner benefits. Yeager still supports Handel’s candidacy, but is understandably miffed that she is now shunning her former friends at the LCR.

Handel’s explanation for her apparent flip-flop on the gay rights issue is laughable: she says she never wrote the emails that were signed with her name and they don’t really represent her views on gay rights. I hate to tell you this, Karen, but saying that you don’t even have control of what your own staff is doing in your name is really not a big improvement over changing your position on an issue because of political expediency.

But hey, the Macon PD and Karen Handel are just carrying on a time-honored tradition of people in power who think that we will swallow any cockamamie explanation for their foolish behavior because we usually let them get away with it. As long as we put up with their nonsense we can just expect more of the same.

Gulf spill a death blow to small government argument?

One would hope that all of us would be too shocked and saddened by the disaster unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico to spend any of our time and energy figuring out ways to spin the situation to score cheap political points against our ideological opponents. But of course politics never sleeps, and some liberals have been quick to trumpet the situation as an object lesson on the dangers of limited government.

A good example of that kind of opportunism could be found on these pages recently in the form of an editorial by Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts. In his column Pitt gleefully related the supposed “conversion” of Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal from small-government conservative to a guy begging on his hands and knees for Uncle Sam to ride in on his big white horse and rescue his state from ecological disaster.

” As there are no atheists in foxholes,” Pitts opined, “it turns out there are no small-government disciples in massive oil spills.” I have to admit the man is a gifted writer, but I have to respectfully disagree with his sentiment here. There is a big difference between a small-government conservative and a complete anarchist. It may seem like a small distinction to someone like Pitts, but it really isn’t.

Small-government conservatives believe that there are certain things that we absolutely need government for and there are many other things that it should keep its nose out of. And one of the things we need government for is to oversee and regulate activities by businesses and private citizens that could cause serious injury and/or death to other citizens.

Drilling for oil many miles beneath the surface of the ocean is, we should all realize by now, a very risky venture that could cause great injury to the earth and all of its inhabitants if things go wrong. Therefore, even many small-government conservatives would agree that the government had a responsibility to look over the shoulder of BP when this well was being drilled and make sure they were proceeding with extreme caution. It is beginning to look like they did not do a very good job of that.

Consider the following:

- The Deepwater Horizon rig that is at the center of this catastrophe was exempted from a detailed environmental impact assessment by the Minerals Management Service.

- The blowout preventer devices used on this well had exhibited an unreliable track record since testing requirements for them were relaxed in the 1990s.

- The well was not equipped with a $500,000 acoustic safety device that countries like Norway and Brazil require for their deepwater wells.

- There is evidence that a BP executive overruled rig workers who did not want to replace heavy drilling fluid in the well with saltwater. Making the switch was supposed to save the company money, but it may have contributed to the blowout. Perhaps there should be a government safety expert in the room when decisions like this are being made.

I think it’s fair to say that when all the investigations are complete we’ll find that higher level of proper oversight on the part of the federal government would have likely prevented this disaster from occurring. Will this information cause me to abandon my libertarian leanings and jump on the big government bandwagon? Not a chance.

The government has a role to play in society and in the business world. It should most certainly scrutinize and regulate potentially dangerous enterprises like deep sea drilling. But I don’t think an exploding oil well lends any legitimacy to the argument that the government should take over the health care industry or pressure banks to lend money to people who don’t have the resources to pay their mortgages.

Allow me to sum up my theory of government by paraphrasing a famous saying by Albert Einstein - government should be as big as absolutely necessary, but no bigger.

Oil spills and fish tales

I never ceased to be amazed at how an event can be interpreted in many different ways by people depending on their point of view. Take for example the big oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that has already caused massive environmental damage and as yet has still not been contained.

Before the spill happened I was sort of on the fence about whether offshore drilling for oil was really a good idea given the risks involved. Seeing what can happen (and now has happened) when things go horribly wrong pushed me off of the fence and into the “strongly opposed unless someone can convince me this sort of thing is very unlikely to occur again” camp.

I would have assumed that most Americans would feel the same way. But according to a poll I saw this week published by Public Policy Polling that was not a good assumption. The poll showed that a solid 55% of Americans are completely undaunted in their support for offshore drilling despite the millions of gallons of crude oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico.

More surprising than that was the fact that when asked how the spill had affected their support for offshore drilling, a jaw-dropping 21% of those polled said the gulf disaster has made them MORE likely to support offshore drilling than they were before it occurred. Among Republicans in the poll the number was even higher at 28% and was equal to the number who said that the spill made them less likely to support offshore drilling.

That seemed very hard to believe at first, but other data from the same poll provided some possible perspective on why some people might have answered the way they did. 9% of those polled believe the spill was actually caused by environmentalist whackos who wanted to give offshore drilling a bad name. Another 22% were “unsure” if it might have been an environmentalist plot. This was the first time I’d even heard this suggested, but apparently Rush Limbaugh tossed out the idea on one of his recent broadcasts so I guess it’s been out there for a while.

Now I invite anyone who has better information to correct me if I’m wrong here, but I am not aware of a shred of evidence that anyone has produced or even suggested may exist that the oil spill was an intentional act of eco-terrorism. It is amazing to me that Rush Limbaugh or anyone else would throw out such an idea unless there was some factual evidence behind it, but maybe I’m just being naïve because that appears to be exactly what has happened.

The only explanation I’ve been able to come up with is that people who staunchly support the idea of offshore drilling see this spill as a real, tangible, incontrovertible impediment to their cause and have created this fantasy explanation out of thin air to relieve the cognitive dissonance that would otherwise trouble their thoughts. People do this sort of thing all the time I guess, creating alternate explanations for things when the reality disagrees with their world view. This one just seems especially bizarre and desperate.

I have no beef with people who have carefully weighed the pros and cons of offshore drilling and are still of the opinion that we need to continue the practice. Like most anything there are arguments to be made on either side and the current spill is just one facet of that argument. But it’s scary to realize that there are so many people who can easily divorce themselves from reality and swallow fish tales about diabolical environmental terrorists who blow up oil wells while magically leaving no trace of their actions.

If anyone has evidence that this oil spill was anything other than an unintentional screw-up of epic proportions, please come forward. Otherwise they should shut their traps and leave the grown-up discussions to people who live in the real world.

How to compute your erotic capital

According to a 2010 research paper by sociologist Catherine Hakim, we all are blessed with a certain amount of what she calls “erotic capital.” The more of it you have, the more attractive you are to the opposite sex and the more successful you are likely to be in getting what you want out of life.

Ms. Hakim believes your erotic net worth can be calculated by measuring your sex appeal, your level of physical fitness, your adeptness at social skills, and how well you present yourself to the world. What her paper didn’t provide, unfortunately, is some way to generate a numerical score for your erotic capital. I’m here to remedy that.

I like to keep things simple, so I’ll allow a maximum of 25 points for each of the four categories, which gives you a possible maximum score of 100. To illustrate how my rating system works, I’ll rate myself in each category as I break them down. Feel free to rate yourself as we go along, but try to be honest. You don’t want to go through life thinking that you’re George Clooney when you’re really more of a Carrot Top.

Sex Appeal – This isn’t just about looks, but includes things like self-confidence and positive body language. If you stand up tall and look people in the eye when you talk to them, it greatly improves your score. If you’re more like me and tend to slump and look down a lot, you’re going to take a hit. I’m giving myself 15 out of 25 here.

Social Skills – When you walk into a room full of strangers, are you the kind of person who immediately puts people at ease and gets them talking to each other? Do people tend to gravitate towards you because you always know a good joke or an interesting story to keep their interest up? No? Me neither. I can only allow myself 10 points here. I’m beginning to wonder how I ever got a date, much less how I ever got someone to marry me.

Physical fitness – Ah, at last, something I don’t completely suck at. I’m 43 and my waist is the same size it was in college. My BMI rating is right in the ideal zone. However, I’m not what you’d call muscle-bound, so I can’t max out my score. I’m going to give myself a 20 or being in “really good shape, for a man my age.”

Self-presentation – This one is all about style. You get major points for knowing what to wear and how to wear it, but (fortunately for me) you also get some points just for being clean and not dressing like a total clown. I can see my way to giving myself 15 out of 25 just for bathing regularly and knowing that leisure suits are never coming back into style.

So let’s see, if I tally up all my points that gives me 60 out of a possible 100. Not great, I admit, but keep in mind that there aren’t many people who get close to 100 and you can look around in any crowd and see plenty who would probably rate way below 50.

And besides, how much erotic capital do you really think you’d really want to carry around with you? The more desirable you are, the more people are going to want from you. Frankly, I’d prefer to be left alone much of the time, and I imagine it’s hard to get much private time if you’re Brad Pitt or Jessica Alba.

Yes, I know, being mistaken for Brad Pitt is not something I’m ever going to have to worry about. Numbers don’t lie.

Do they still burn witches in Centerville?

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

I hope that you recognize the above quote as being a portion of the First Amendment to the US Constitution. There are, apparently, some people who are serving as elected officials in our area who are either unfamiliar with the above statement, don’t understand it, or don’t believe it should be adhered to.

Apparently in Centerville, my own home town, our elected officials feel that it is their right and responsibility to decide how its citizens can legally practice their chosen religion. Specifically, they have an ordinance (which apparently has been quietly in place since 1985) that prohibits people from being financially compensated for providing certain religious services, and they are currently involved in a legal tussle with someone who recently opened a business that provides such services.

The law doesn’t apply to people who provide religious service or instruction in the support of older and more established faith traditions. No, the city has singled out those weird “New Age-y” religious practices like palm-reading, fortune- telling, and astrology for special regulation. Specifically, if you provide these kinds of services to anyone in Centerville and are financially compensated for them you can be punished with a $500 fine and/or 60 days in jail.

I couldn’t possibly get inside the heads of the people who thought such an ordinance was necessary or the people who are now trying to enforce it, but my guess would be that they might see these practices as “fake” and the people who purvey them as hucksters who are preying on the feeble-minded. Perhaps they even see fortune-telling and palm-reading as dangerous occult practices that might lead people into the clutches of Satan himself.

They do, of course, have every right to feel that way. In this country, however, they are not supposed to use the power of the government to discriminate against the religious practices of one group of people over another, and that is exactly what they are doing.

Some might argue that no one is trying to outlaw palm-reading and fortune-telling, that people can still legally engage in these activities as long as no money changes hands. And that is true. But it is also true that it is perfectly legal in Centerville for Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, or Buddhist worshippers to pay their religious officials for preaching, praying, officiating at weddings and funerals, and otherwise performing the religious duties of their faith traditions. But if a practitioner of New Age religion accepts compensation for performing the rites of their belief system, they can be put in jail.

If that isn’t partiality I really don’t know what is, and I don’t see how anyone can read the first line of this column and not immediately see how this ordinance runs afoul of the First Amendment. The really fun part is that the lady who the city is hounding for offering these services in her recently-opened business is filing a lawsuit in federal court. So, as a taxpayer, am I going to be paying the tab for the city to fight this court challenge just so I can be free of the menace of people shelling out a few bucks to have their palms read in my home town? I’m afraid that unless common sense makes an unexpected appearance at city hall, the answer will be “yes.”

Let me state this as plainly as I can as a taxpaying citizen of Centerville: this ordinance is unconstitutional, unnecessary, and just plain silly. It is not likely to stand up to a court challenge and it is (understandably) turning Centerville into the punch line of some very bad jokes. It needs to be taken off the books, like yesterday, and the city government needs to leave this business owner and her patrons alone and concentrate on keeping the streets clean and the water running.

Put the shotgun away and vote

In a country like ours, where people are free to express their opinions, there is always going to be disagreement, discord, and division. It just goes with the territory. But there are degrees to these things, and at certain times the divisions run a lot deeper than others.

The Civil War was surely the most extreme example of how divided a free nation can become. And though I’m a little too young to remember much about the 60s, it seems that was a time of great upheaval and disharmony as well, especially between the generations.

Today it feels like we are entering another period where our differences of opinion on what direction the country should be taking are driving a deep wedge between us. People are beginning to let their emotions get the better of them, and they are saying and doing some decidedly uncivilized things. The nation’s mood seems to have reached a boiling point and is unlikely to cool off any time soon.

The signs are all around us. The number of hate groups in our country has skyrocketed since Barak Obama’s election. I’m sure we all heard about the recent arrest of members of the Michigan-based Hutaree movement, a group who called themselves Christians and planned to help usher in the “end times” by killing a policeman and then bombing his funeral to add his family and friends to the bodycount. There are more of these sorts of groups forming every day, and it’s likely only a matter of time before some of them start carrying out their long-festering plans of murder and mayhem.

And here in Macon we have a city councilman/right-wing media pundit who very publicly threatened to pull a shotgun on federal census takers if they dared to show up at his door to demand that he fill out his census form. I’m sure the people who took jobs with the census agency this year to help put food on their family’s table (the “twerps” Erik Erikson is threatening to meet at his door with a shotgun) appreciate what he is doing to help make their jobs more exciting.

I do believe that there are situations where violence is a justified response to a repressive government. A good example would be when the founders of our country took up arms against Britain because they had no representation in the government that was controlling every aspect of their existence. Their only options were to live as virtual serfs or to risk their lives in the cause of freedom.

But we are in a very different situation in America in 2010. Our government is made up of people who we elected to serve our interests. Within six years we could, if we chose to, replace the president and every member of congress with new representation simply by showing up at the polls and voting. Nobody needs to die, nobody needs to get beaten up, nobody even needs to be cussed out for such a revolution to take place.

Of course that approach requires a little time, a little patience, and a whole lot of work on a lot of people’s part. And maybe it would be more satisfying in the short term to put a brick through someone’s window or to do something a lot worse, but it would also be stupid and short-sighted.

As bad as our government may be (and make no mistake, I believe we have been been going down the wrong road for a long time) it is still our government. It makes no sense to go to war against yourself.

Personally, I’m not mad at Barak Obama, or the Democrats, or “the government”, and I have no desire to pull a shotgun on anybody. The power that they have, and that they are clearly misusing, is derived from the voting public. That is the source of my frustration, and that is where the real fix to this problem has to originate.

Obama joins the Bad President’s Club

As I look back on the presidents who have served in office during my adult life, I can remember the exact moment when I became officially disillusioned with each one of them. There was always one thing that happened during their term that served as a turning point, a point at which I went from giving them the benefit of the doubt to giving up on them and looking forward to the end of their term.

Technically there was one president I never did sour on. Ronald Reagan enjoyed my support all throughout his eight years as commander-in-chief. It was probably a combination of his charisma and my youthful idealism that protected him from a harsher evaluation. But after he rode off into the sunset, I’d never love (a president) again.

Bush the First lost me at the same time he lost quite a few Americans – when he approved a tax increase after promising during his campaign that he would never, ever do so. With Bill Clinton my expectations were a lot lower, but he managed to hit his head on my low bar nonetheless when he interfered with the BRAC process to save his popularity (and reelection prospects) in Texas and California. Bush the Second lost me for good when he championed a massive increase to the scope of a Medicare program that was already headed for disaster.

Now our latest president has had his moment of truth with me. Frankly I was not high on Obama from the start given his far-left philosophical leanings, but once again I tried to keep an open mind for as long as I could. But I have to say that my mind is now closed after what transpired on this past Sunday.

It’s not what’s in the health care legislation that has me riled up (I’m really not sure how much it’s going to help us or hurt in the long run), it’s the way this thing was passed. What went down in Washington DC over the last couple of weeks was partisan politics at its absolute worst.

Every single Republican in the House of Representatives voted against this bill. Every one of them. Even the more moderate ones who are sometimes derisively referred to as Republicans In Name Only (RINOs) by their more conservative brethren refused to support it.

Why does it matter that the vote was so non-inclusive? It matters because this legislation represents a sweeping change to the way the government operates, and it changes the basic relationship between the government and its citizens.

We are now going to be required, by federal law, to purchase health insurance. And the bottom line is that this change is being made unilaterally by the Democratic Party, disregarding the protests of the other major party and many independent voices.

Polling data suggests that about a third of the country identify themselves as Democrats, a third identify themselves as Republicans, and a third are independents. President Obama is supposed to represent all Americans. I don’t’ think that has never been less true than it is right now. Any claims that he made as a candidate about “changing the way the government does business” can be now be laughed off as the empty rhetoric that it obviously was.

And so I welcome Barack Obama to my Bad President’s Club. There’s a seat for him right next to George W. As the president basks in the glow of his health care victory, he should be aware that many of the people in congress who supported him in this ultra-partisan crusade are going to be facing reelection this year. We will see how many of them are still around this time next year.

I have a feeling that he might have to learn to be a little more bipartisan in the near future whether he would like to or not.

Can’t take my eyes off of you (and you, and you)

One of the many, many ways that men frustrate women is with their propensity to constantly look at (some might say leer at) other women. No matter how attractive a woman is, she will find that the man she is with will invariably scope out other women anywhere and anytime they come across his field of view, especially if that woman “has it in all the right places.”

And frankly, men will admit to this behavior and most would agree that it really isn’t a good thing to do, but they seem powerless to stop themselves. It’s almost as if they are being influenced by a force beyond their control. Recent scientific studies have indicated that may indeed be the case, and the force that is controlling them is basic biology.

In one such study, which I read about this week on livescience.com, researchers performed brain scans on 14 young men while they showed them before and after photographs of women who had their…er…posterior regions surgically enhanced to be more…um…pronounced. Unsurprisingly, the men had stronger positive reactions to the post-op photos, but what was interesting was that the portions of the brain that started buzzing when seeing the “after” pictures are the same areas that get stimulated when someone who is addicted to alcohol or drugs takes a drink or a hit of their drug of choice. In very real terms, then, it might be said that all men are literally addicted to looking at hot women.

It turns out that men actually feel a tangible, pleasurable response in the brain when looking at women with hourglass figures. Well-defined curves in the hips are a sign of fertility, and men’s brains are designed to seek out and zero in their attention on women with those body types. And when they do, just the looking makes them feel very good inside. At least until their wives/girlfriends catch them in the act.

The researchers think this information may also help explain why some men become obsessed with pornography. Looking at images of women can directly stimulate a reward mechanism in the brain and, as with any addiction, once the brain gets used to that pleasurable feeling it craves more and more of the thing that makes it happy.

I’m not sure how helpful any of this will be to women, but at least maybe now men’s behavior may be a little more understandable, if not more tolerable.

Interestingly enough, research has also shown that well-shaped women attract the attention of other females as well, but not for the same reason. Instead of stimulating their pleasure zones, women see other women with attractive bodies as potential rivals. They tend to compare themselves to other women in the environment and identify potential threats. Of course, anyone who’s ever attended an office Christmas party or taken a date to a nightclub has already experienced this scenario firsthand.

My advice to women is that you should accept the fact that men are programmed to enjoy looking at shapely women and realize that it is not a sign that you are undesirable to your partner when he does this. Don’t take it personally. Whack him with a rolled-up newspaper if it makes you feel better, but don’t delude yourself into thinking you are going to reverse basic biology-driven behavior.

My advice to men is that you remember that although we can all agree that the fact that we like to look at other women really isn’t any reflection on how you feel about your mate, your mate is never going to see it that way. If you see a hot girl in the area, chances are your partner saw her first and is monitoring your reaction. And when you do react, expect your partner to react to your reaction. In other words, watch out for that rolled up newspaper.

R.I.P., campaign finance reform

On January 21, 2010, the United States Supreme Court struck a decisive blow in defense of free expression as guaranteed by the First Amendment. Or, they struck a decisive blow for big businesses and labor unions who want to buy political offices for their chosen candidates. As with many things, how the decision handed down in Citizens Untied vs. FEC is interpreted depends on whom you ask, and which end of the political spectrum the person you ask tends to favor.

In a nutshell, this highly controversial ruling removes restrictions on how corporations and labor unions can directly advocate for candidates for federal office. These restrictions had been in place for over a hundred years, and many were shocked by the decision.

Prior to this ruling it was, for example, against the law for a company to pay for direct advertising designed to convince voters to vote for or against a specific candidate. That is now perfectly legal, and as a result many people expect the next election cycle to be unlike anything we have experienced before.

Most conservatives say this is a good thing. They fail to see any line in the Constitution that suggests that the federal government has the authority to restrict political speech, whether that speech is generated by an individual or by a group of people acting in concert.

Liberals, on the other hand, are appalled by this decision. They contend that the First Amendment was never designed to protect the right of Exxon or Microsoft to completely blanket the airwaves in support of their chosen candidates for federal office. Individual rights and the rights of corporations are two very distinct things under the law, they contend, and blurring that line as the Court has done in this case sets a very bad precedent.

Opinion polls seem to indicate that the general public opposes this decision as well, by about a 2 -1 margin. And I can’t say I’m surprised. It’s not hard to imagine a future candidate’s campaign success hinging on how many “corporate sponsorships” he or she is able to pick up. It is certainly hard to compete in a federal election if your opponent has a significantly larger advertising budget than you do, and it is easy to see why people would be concerned that tomorrow’s candidates will come into office “bought and paid for.” Even more than they are today, I mean.

It’s also not hard to see why this decision is generally a lot more popular with Republicans than it is with Democrats. Big businesses, as a rule, tend to favor the GOP and their corporate-friendly philosophies. Certainly the Democrats can count on labor unions for support, but unions can never match big corporations dollar for dollar. It won’t be a fair fight.

You can be sure that we haven’t heard the last of this. There are already rumblings in congress about creating a new amendment to the constitution clarifying the government’s right to restrict corporate participation in federal elections. And I am sure this will become a political football in the 2010 elections.

The Democrats are sure to try and use this as an avenue to attack their Republican opponents, and the Republicans may have a hard time fighting back on this one. It’s not as if they can use all their newly available corporate-sponsored advertising to defend themselves against the idea that they are tools of big business.

It’s sort of a no-win situation for them, and the Democrats are probably thankful to have an issue they can flog that puts them on the right side of public opinion for once. I’m not sure that it’s going to be enough to turn things around for them, since they still have a lot to answer to voters for with things like the failed health care bill and the increasingly ridiculous national debt situation. But at least they now have a straw to grasp at.

Fiscal irresponsibility wins another round

With all the brouhaha over the apparent demise of health care reform when the Democrats lost their supermajority in the Senate, you might have missed the story of another defeat the president suffered in congress this week. His proposal to create a bipartisan panel to suggest a plan to address our deficit problem was defeated in the Senate when it won only 53 of the required 60 votes it needed for passage. That story was no doubt deemed less than exciting by our news media, but in the long run it may have more dire consequences for the nation than anything else that happens in congress this year.

The president’s proposal was to create a bipartisan commission that would suggest a “tough medicine” plan to get our government back onto a sound financial footing. Whatever plan that this commission came up with would have had to be approved or disapproved by congress in its entirety – no additions, no subtractions.

It’s the same method that was used in deciding which military bases to close in past years. The idea is to take an issue that is very difficult for congress to deal with because of its inherent unpopularity with voters and allow a group of people who aren’t worried about the next election cycle to draw up a comprehensive plan to address the problem.

We can predict with some certainty what the plan this commission would have come up with would have looked like. There are only two ways that we could possibly get our spending under control – with steep tax increases or steep spending cuts, especially to Medicare and Social Security. But we’ll never get to see that plan now.

Analysts say the proposal was voted down because too many Republicans couldn’t stomach the idea of tax increases and too many Democrats couldn’t live with steep cuts to Medicare and Social Security. It’s not hard to see where we are going to go from here.

If the Republicans in congress can’t live with tax increases and the Democrats will not consider seriously curtailing their beloved entitlement programs, there is no way progress will be made on the deficit issue any time soon. If congress can’t even agree to create a commission to address the issue in a bipartisan manner, there is zero chance that they are going to piecemeal any realistic deficit reduction plan in their usual chaotic way of doing business.

Most likely congress will continue on the path that they are currently on until some external event forces them to take drastic action. The best case scenario would be reaching that point a few decades down the road when the interest that has to be paid each year on the national debt becomes so large that it starts to eat up all other spending. But things could go off the rails long before then if the people who buy up our debt (lately a lot of which is in the hands of foreign investors, especially the Chinese) decide that the United States in no longer a good credit risk and demand immediate, drastic action.

If that happens, we will be in uncharted territory. All we can say is that it will be bad. Very bad. It’s never a good thing for a country to be unable to make good on its debt obligations, but it’s a lot worse when other countries are holding majority stake in that debt. You are suddenly left to the whims of your creditors and if you are to survive, national sovereignty has to be the first thing to go.

It will be interesting to see how this issue will be addressed in the 2010 congressional campaigns. Do you think any serious candidates will promise to raise taxes and/or make deep cuts to Medicare and Social Security if they get elected? I’m guessing not, even though they know it would be the only responsible (and sane) thing to do.

Some advice for the anxious young

I came across an item in the news this week that made me stop and do a double take. According to a new study based on the results of a psychological questionnaire that has been given to college and high school students since way back in 1938, young people today suffer from anxiety and other mental health issues at a rate that is five times higher than they did during the Great Depression.

Think about that for a minute. The Great Depression! People had some very good reasons to feel anxious back then, including not having jobs, places to live, or enough food to eat. And yet we are raising children who are five times more anxious than the children of that era were. It seems counterintuitive at first blush.

But if you’ve spent any time with people in their teens and twenties lately, you’ve probably noticed this phenomenon yourself. Many young adults seem restless, irritable, and dissatisfied, and it’s not because they are homeless or underfed. It seems to have a lot more to do with life not meeting their unreasonably high expectations.

Most young adults expect life to come to them and deliver the things that they want with minimal effort on their part, and they quickly become frustrated when that doesn’t happen. And it’s not really their fault, because in many cases we have raised them to believe that is how the world works.

We give them everything they need, everything they want, and then give them a little more, all the while trying to shield them from any pain or discomfort. Eventually, they make their way out into the world and find that the rest of the universe is not quite so preoccupied with making them happy. And then, very quickly, they become frustrated.

I’ve been alive for 43 years and counting, and I’ve endured my share of disappointments. But each one of them has taught me something., and I’d like to share a few of the lessons those disappointments have taught me with the young and the not-so-young who feel like the world is against them and that life will never live up to their expectations.

1. The universe was not designed to make you happy. Sometimes things will go your way, sometimes they won’t. It’s like that for all of us. You aren’t special.

2. As a rule, the rest of the human race is not looking out for your best interests. All the people around you are wrapped up in their own situations most of the time, and only occasionally will your wants and needs cross their minds. Most of the time, that includes even family members and close friends.

3. Acquiring things does not make you happy, at least not for long. The pleasure you get from money and the things it can get for you is notoriously fleeting. Love, friendship, working hard at something you enjoy, taking care of your spiritual side, helping out someone who in genuinely in need – those are the kinds of things that can bring you lasting satisfaction.

4. You live in a country where you have a high degree of personal freedom and a wealth of opportunity to pursue your dreams. You may very well come up short, but you’ll find that the pursuit is still worthwhile. In fact, it’s what life is really all about.

5. Remember that the world is in a constant state of flux. That means that good times won’t last, but neither will bad times. You will never reach a point in life where all your problems are resolved and you enjoy a state of perpetual bliss. It’s a rollercoaster from start to finish, and you can either enjoy the ride or squeeze your eyes shut and pray for it to be over. If you live long enough you might learn to be grateful for both the joy and the sorrow, since one can’t exist without the other.