(Not So) Common Sense

Nomination without representation

2012-01-12T20:44:00.000-05:00

With the start of the New Year the 2012 Republican presidential primary kicked itself into high gear. The Iowa caucuses are now just a memory and the votes in the New Hampshire primary are being counted as I write this. Soon the South Carolina primary will be held and at that point some pundits think the race could be all but decided.

But even if it isn’t, the field of challengers will be certainly be narrowed down by the time the people of the Palmetto state have their say. Michele Bachmann is already gone after her poor showing in Iowa and Rick Perry is hanging on by a thread. Those of us who vote later in the primaries (i.e. the vast majority of the American public) may have little or no say in who the Republicans draft to run against Barak Obama.

And that irritates me more than I can say. Is it any wonder that we feel disconnected from our government when the major parties nominate candidates for the highest office using a process that relies so disproportionately on the views of a tiny minority of eligible voters? It’s a silly process that generally produces silly candidates, and we’re lucky that people still bother to vote at all.

Still, I try to care. I recently took one of those online quizzes that asks you a series of questions and suggests which candidates most closely align to your views, theoretically helping you decide who to vote for. Unsurprisingly the libertarian-leaning Ron Paul came in first for me as an 80% match, followed by Mitt Romney at 63% and Newt Gingrich at 57%.

Scoring much lower as my potential political soul-mate was right wing flavor-of-the-week Rick Santorum. That too came as little surprise. The difference between Ron Paul and Rick Santorum comes down to a belief in limited government. Ron Paul believes in limited government, period. Rick Santorum believes in limited government too, except for when he doesn’t.

Let’s take abortion, for example, one of the two take-no-prisoners issues that social conservatives are willing to fall on their sword over (the other one being gay marriage, of course). Ron Paul is personally opposed to abortion on moral grounds, but he does not believe that the US Constitution gives the power on the federal government the authority to legislate the issue one way or the other. Rick Santorum reads the Constitution differently in this case, and believes that there should be a federal law outlawing abortion in all circumstances.

And when I say all circumstances, I mean all circumstances. He believes that victims of rape and incest should be legally required by the federal government to carry their babies to term. The same thing would apply if, say, a doctor told a prospective mother that her baby was seriously deformed and unlikely to survive after being born or that it might kill her if she did not terminate the pregnancy. She would see the pregnancy through or both she and her doctor would be subject to criminal prosecution.

That kind of thinking goes over well with one vocal segment of the Republican Party, but the majority of Americans would be put off by that level of interference by the government in a citizen’s personal life. Abortion is troubling to many of us on moral grounds and we’d likely support some legal restrictions on it, but circumstances matter. The rights of the unborn child have to be balanced against the right of a woman to make her own medical decisions without the interference of the federal government.

But I suppose I may be wasting my time contrasting the potential merits of a Ron Paul or Rick Santorum nomination. By the time I get a chance to vote, one or both of these men could be gone, or one of them could have the nomination sewn up. There’s no sense wasting my few functioning brains cells on a decision the good folks in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina may be good enough to make for me.

GOP searches for its Mondale

2011-12-14T19:20:00.000-05:00

Whatever else you may say about this election cycle’s Republican nomination process, you have to admit that it has not lacked for entertainment value. This week Rick Perry treated us to quite a show courtesy of his widely-discussed YouTube video aimed at primary voters in Iowa, where the first major electoral event of the 2012 election will take place in just a few weeks.

In the video, which was targeted at staunch social conservatives, Perry promises voters that he will end President Obama’s “war on religion.” He looks into the camera and earnestly tells voters that “there's something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can't openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school.”

If you’re anything like me, your reaction to hearing that runs along the lines of – Jiminy Cricket! President Obama has somehow passed legislation preventing children from celebrating Christmas and praying in school and I completely missed it? Why didn’t I hear about this on Fox News?!?!

I immediately went into research mode after viewing this video, trying to figure out how the President had managed to implement a covert plan to stamp out Christmas celebrations and praying in class so far under the radar. Are children being pulled off Santa’s lap in the shopping malls and remanded into custody? Are they being sent to the principal’s office when caught silently praying before their big geometry test? I had to know.

If anything like that has been happening, I could find no evidence of it. In fact I could not locate a single piece of legislation the President has signed that would prevent any child from celebrating Christmas or praying anywhere he or she might choose to pray.

It is true that there are laws in place, and they have been in place for many years, that prevent public school officials from leading prayers or having specifically religious celebrations of any kind. But those laws did not originate under President Obama, and it seems unlikely that a Rick Perry presidency would lead to their undoing.

The ad is both silly and misleading, and it’s no wonder that under the YouTube rating system it had garnered, at last count, 660,000 dislike votes against only 20,000 likes. A good attack ad can be effective even when it distorts the truth a bit, but you can’t just make up ridiculous claims that bear no relation to reality. Many Christians are passionate about their beliefs, Rick, but they aren’t stupid.

On the bright side, Perry was already fading in the polls before he committed this belly-flop, so the whole incident has been something of a sideshow. Still, the whole Republican nominating process has had the air of a slow-motion car wreck. Prospective primary voters seem to have been sorting through the candidates one-by-one, and then systematically discarding each as they hold them up to the light for a close look.

The current front-runner, Newt Gingrich, definitely has spirit and an active intellect and seems to have convinced social conservatives that he is finally settled on a wife he can stay faithful to after a series of infidelities and divorces. But really, can you imagine the phrase “President Newt Gingrich” actually becoming a reality? I can’t.

The Republicans seem to be headed down the same road the Democrats found themselves on in 1984 and 1988, when they nominated candidates who appealed to the extreme left wing of their party but left moderate, non-partisan voters (who end up deciding general elections) cold. And they got trounced as a result.

If the Republicans nominate anyone other than Mitt Romney, I fear they are heading for a similar fate. Romney is unpopular with the far right wing of the party because of his moderate-leaning past (which he has tried to renounce) and because he doesn’t go to the right church.

But unless they want a second helping of “hope and change”, they’d better decide if Romney would at least be a better alternative, or if they want to “Mondale” this election.

Looking for Jesus on Black Friday

2011-11-30T18:36:00.001-05:00

I’m sure we all had a good laugh about the story of the lady who pepper-sprayed fellow customers on Black Friday this year to secure herself a discounted X-Box. We always laugh at such outrageous behavior because we don’t know what else to do. Some people are just nuts, and we can’t fathom what causes them to do such outrageous things.

But I have to take it a step further, personally. The whole phenomenon of Black Friday just baffles me. I understand that it‘s nice to save money, but standing in line at 2 AM to save a few hundred bucks on a TV? It would never be worth the aggravation for me.

Going even further, I will admit that I don’t really understand the logic behind celebrating Christmas with a frenzy of shopping and spending. We commemorate the birth of Jesus in a humble manger by emptying our bank accounts buying things we could easily do without. I admit I’m not a theologian or anything, but the connection just escapes me.

Let’s see what the Bible has to say about money and possessions:

“For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils.” 1 Timothy 6:10

“Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have.” Hebrews 13:5

“You cannot serve God and money.” Matthew 6:24

I could go on, but I think the message is pretty plain. If you’re spending most of your time thinking about money and the things that it can buy, you aren’t paying attention to the things the Bible says a Christian is supposed to be concerned with. And yet, on our most widely celebrated Christian holiday the main activity is centered on giving and getting stuff.

Certainly there are notable exceptions to this rampant holiday materialism, such as the Kids Yule Love program and the bell ringers for the Salvation Army. But if you add up the time most people spend shopping, cooking, and going to parties during the Christmas season versus how much time they spend being charitable, you know which side the scale is likely to tip.

If we were to ask ourselves how Jesus might celebrate his own birthday, I can’t imagine that he’d be in line at Best Buy at 4 in the morning waiting for a chance to buy a discounted high-definition TV. Instead, I expect he’d be doing the same thing he did every other day - being a friend to those who didn’t have one, providing for the needs of people who really needed help, and showing everyone (not just telling them) what God’s love is all about.

That’s why I get a chuckle every time I hear someone get on their soap box about the “war on Christmas”. Christmas has always been more about Santa Claus than the child in the manger. There was never a whole lot of Christ in the way we celebrate Christmas, and some people are expending way too much of their righteous indignation over how awful it is to be greeted with a “Happy Holidays” instead of a “Merry Christmas” this time of year.

I’m not saying there is anything wrong with Christmas, or how we celebrate it (as long as we don’t get too carried away with the spending and the partying). I just think we need to be honest with ourselves about what it is. It’s mainly an excuse for us to take off work, buy stuff for each other, eat, and have parties. All those things are fun, but they have little to do with Jesus or what he was about.

And somewhere this Christmas Eve, there’s probably a couple with a baby on the way wandering the streets looking in vain for a warm, dry place to lay their heads while we party and spoil each other with expensive presents. I guess some things don’t change.

An unwelcome close encounter

2011-11-30T18:35:00.000-05:00

I had what might be referred to as a “come to Jesus” experience not long ago when I was walking my dog just a few blocks from my house. My 10-pound terrier mix was on his leash (as he always is when I have him out in public) but my neighbor’s full grown pit bull was not. And of course when the pit bull saw us he decided to leave his yard and come over and say “hello.”

I think my dog and I probably had the same thought when we saw this fearsome creature coming over to “greet” us, and that thought is not printable in a family newspaper. But I think you can guess what it was.

Luckily the dog’s owner was outside at the time and jogged over in pursuit of his pet, but it was obvious the dog was going to reach us before his owner could catch up to him.

I only had a few seconds to decide how to handle the situation. I knew that running or confronting the animal in an aggressive manner were the wrongs things to do, so I scooped up my little terrier and stood my ground as we waited for fate to take its course.

As it turned out, the pit bull just sniffed at my terrier and my dog had the good sense to do absolutely nothing in response. The dog’s owner finally caught up to us and took his dog back home, and we continued on our way. Sometime after that I regained my composure and my brain started functioning again, and I had but one clear thought – that was not okay.

I‘m sure I’m going to hear from some pit bull fans when this column runs, but I would be happy to see our community become a pit bull free zone. These dogs were bred to be aggressive, efficient killing machines, and I can’t understand why anyone would want to keep one as a pet.

Recent court cases considering the legality of bans on pit bull ownership have identified some unique genetic traits that were bred into these animals that make them especially dangerous: unpredictability of aggressive behavior, unwillingness to give up in a fight, high pain tolerance, and a unique “hold and shake” biting style that tends to inflict damage on deep muscles and rip tissues. Because of that unique biting style, the injuries caused by pit bull maulings are very similar to those caused by shark attacks.

Between 2005 and 2010, 104 Americans were killed in pit bull attacks. That’s 104 people who would still be with us if pit bull ownership was not legal.

I really wouldn’t care if someone wanted to keep a pit bull (or a lion, or a grizzly bear, or whatever) as a pet as long as the thing stayed on their property at all times or was adequately restrained when it was not on their property.

If we lived in a world where these animals never left their owner’s control, I wouldn’t be writing this column. But we don’t live in such a world. In this world some pit bull owners are going to let their dogs run loose, and even responsible owner can lose control of their dogs momentarily. Sometimes that’s all it takes.

I would fully support an outright ban on the ownership of these animals, but short of that it should certainly be a crime for them to leave their owners’ property unless they are properly restrained.
It would also be nice if people who owned these dogs were required to post a sign on their property warning the rest of us what kind of animals they have on the premises. That way I’d know to give their house a wide berth when I’m out and about, and it would be a nice thing to know about one’s potential neighbor when one is out house-shopping.

Another SPLOST, another no-brainer

2011-11-30T18:32:00.000-05:00

One of the main reasons I started writing this column (more years ago than I care to count) was to try and counteract what I saw as a lack of balance in the way certain issues were being presented to the public by political leaders and the media. Nowhere is this lack of balance more apparent than when Special Purpose Local Options Sales Tax (SPLOST) elections are held.

Both Houston and Bibb County voters will get to weigh in on new SPLOST proposals in just a few days, and based on the political speeches and news reports on the subject the choice appears to be, as always, a “no-brainer.”

Houston County has built all the schools it needs for now with the help of the existing education-targeted SPLOST, but now government officials say those schools need to be upgraded and the tax needs to be renewed. Of course it does. And I am 100% certain that if this one is passed it will be put up for renewal again, and again, and again, for as long as we keep approving it.

In Bibb County they have come up with a long list of badly needed projects their SPLOST would pay for, including a $2.5 million “gift” to the Harriet Tubman museum that apparently would never be repaid. Local politicians have portrayed the fact that Bibb County has a sales tax rate of “only” 6% while all the surrounding counties charge 7% as a badge of shame that needs to be corrected. Funny, I never thought of having a lower tax rate than a nearby community as something to be embarrassed about, but what do I know?

The standard arguments in favor of the SPLOSTs have been dusted off and rolled out for us as they are every time they put one to a vote. Let’s run through them, for old time’s sake.

- It’s only a penny on every dollar you spend. Yes, and I’ve seen estimates that a penny sales tax costs the average family about $150 a year. That may not seem like a lot of money to some of us, but for a family barely getting by that could represent a week’s worth of groceries, school clothes for a child, or gas money to get to and from work. Any tax increase negatively impacts the finances of taxpayers and it’s asinine to minimize that fact.

- The projects the tax will pay for are badly needed. That is obviously a judgment call, but it’s kind of a tough sell when the SPLOST is paying for a long list of things, some of which may be more critical than others. And we don’t get to vote on which projects are included and which ones aren’t.

- If the sales tax isn’t approved, property taxes will probably have to be raised. That is always presented in way that sounds like a threat, but I’m not sure why I am supposed to be more amenable to paying sales taxes than property taxes. A tax is a tax. I suppose if you own a lot of expensive property you’d have to figure you’ll pay less taxes overall with a sales tax. I’m sure the argument resonates well with all the local land barons.

But my biggest issue with the SPLOST might be that we are being forced to do our elected officials’ job for them. Setting tax and spending policy is what they get paid to do. It may be their most important function. So what do they do? They spend our tax money to hold special elections so we can help them decide on tax policy.

And hold on to your wallet, because the state is going to allow regional governments to ratchet up the sales tax to 8% in the near future to support transportation projects. Expect the same arguments to be trotted out again, and expect the choice to be presented as another “no-brainer” for us simple taxpayers.

Heeding the call

2011-11-30T18:28:00.000-05:00

I often hear ministers refer to their profession as a “calling” from God. I believe that most of the people who spend their lives as preachers or missionaries believe they were led to do what they do by a higher power.

That makes sense to me. Becoming a man or woman of God without feeling that the man upstairs has called you to do so would be like showing up for work at a place that hasn’t expressed any interest in hiring you. It probably wouldn’t turn out well.

But I wonder if God calls people to do other kinds of work too. Has anyone ever felt called to be a plumber, or a nurse, or a professional bowler? I wouldn’t be surprised if some people do feel that they are doing the job God wants them to do, especially if they are the type who pray a lot and constantly ask the Lord for guidance as they make their way through life.

Apparently some of the people who are currently running for President fall into that category. No less than four of the candidates running for the Republican nomination (Rick Perry, Michelle Bachmann, Rick Santorum, and Herman Cain) have stated that they were led in some way by God to run in 2012.

Cain, the current front-runner, has even said that he “felt like Moses” when the Lord tapped him on the shoulder and told him he needed to be our next President. “Moses resisted,” says Cain, “I resisted…but you shouldn’t question God.”

I agree with him, it isn’t wise to question an all-powerful being. But as voters, I think it’s fair that we all question the plausibility of that all-powerful being inspiring multiple people to enter a contest where there can be only one winner.

At first blush, it seems logical that if God were to get involved in political campaigns (a questionable proposition to start with) He would settle on one candidate instead of sending the voters mixed messages by backing four of them. You might argue that He was respecting our free will by leaving us with some choices, but if that was the case you have to wonder why He would get involved at all.

I think the truth of it is that all of these candidates are sincere in their faith and they believe that what they are doing is part of God’s plan for them. I also think they would be wise to be more careful about how they express that fact. One projects a certain lack of humility when one compares his campaign for President to Moses’ calling to lead the children of Israel to the Promised Land.

I also think it is worth noting that God more often than not seems to call these wealthy, powerful people to follow a path that will allow them to attain even more earthly power. I’d be a lot more likely to believe them if one of these candidates announced that they were withdrawing from the race to spend the rest of their lives ministering to their fellow man and spreading the Good News.

I am reminded of the Bible story where a wealthy and powerful man asked Jesus what he needed to do to have eternal life. Jesus told the man to keep God’s commandments, and the man said he has done so all his life. Then Jesus added this:

“One thing you lack…go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” (Mark 10:21) The man hung his head and walked away, because he could not let go of the things of this world.
That, to me, is a good example of a calling from God. It is also a good example of how we are less likely to heed these callings when they tell us things that we don’t want to hear.

Liberals throw their own Tea Party

2011-10-09T19:45:00.000-04:00

If you’ve been wondering when American liberals would come up with their answer to the conservative Tea Party movement, then you need wonder no longer. What started as a barely noticed and loosely organized protest in New York City three weeks ago is turning into an international phenomenon. Say hello to Occupy Wall Street.

The movement has no leader and no well-defined agenda, but ongoing demonstrations in New York and several other major cities seem to be feeding off the frustration that people are feeling because of our continuing economic crisis. And they are directing that frustration towards the people that President Obama is trying (unsuccessfully so far) to get to “pay their fair share” – rich folks.

That explains the other name being associated with the protests - We Are The 99%. That is, apparently, a reference to the idea that there is an upper class in our society (the lucky 1%) that controls most of the wealth while the rest of us struggle just to get by. So I guess these people are out there agitating for me and probably for you too, even though we didn’t ask them to. Very thoughtful of them, don’t you think?

Exactly what the Occupiers are protesting is hard to pin down. The fact that some people are fabulously wealthy while so many are pinching pennies obviously sticks in their craw. They have also thrown out some strong words about things like pollution, police brutality, animal rights, and inadequate health care.

A statement by the movement’s participants in Seattle said that "the one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%.” And the motto scrawled across the website of the Los Angeles version of the group states “The revolution is happening…it’s not just in the news.”

So they are definitely fired up, and they are claiming to take inspiration from the “Arab Spring” protests in the Middle East. But the parallel to those demonstrations seems shaky at best. The people in those cases were protesting totalitarian governments in which they had no voice. But we live in a country where we elect our leaders.

Do they want to bring down and replace our government, as the Middle Eastern protestors did? It would seem not, as the Occupiers’ protests don’t seem to be aimed at the government at all, likely because there is a liberal President who is sympathetic to their cause currently residing in the White House.

Instead, their demonstrations seem to be directed at the fat cat industrialists who they believe control most of the nation’s wealth. But, again, it is not at all clear what exactly they think should be done about the situation.

In every society throughout the history of mankind there have always been the have’s and the have-not’s. There have been attempts to force economic and social equality on societies in the past, but they haven’t worked very well.

The Communist Revolution in the early 20th century was all about bringing down that fortunate 1% and spreading the wealth to all the repressed workers of the world. It was not very successful. Not only did the governments that sprouted from the Communist Revolution not make people very happy, they didn’t even do a good job of redistributing wealth. The people who had power also seemed to have the best of everything. Such is human nature.

But maybe the Occupiers have some brilliant plan they are sitting on that will allow everyone to enjoy the finer things in life that doesn’t involve the kind of heavy-handed government regulation of private industry that has proven to be a disastrous folly every time it has been attempted. I’ll be waiting patiently for them to come up with an economic model that works better in practice (and not just in theory) than free-market capitalism. But I’m not holding my breath.

We can’t this wrong

2011-09-21T19:57:00.000-04:00

The state of Georgia has been in the news in a big way this week. We’ve been on the minds of a former FBI director, a former president, numerous heads of state across Europe, and even the current Pope. Unfortunately, the attention we’ve been getting is not the good kind.

All of these high profile personalities, as well as hundreds of thousands of regular folks around the world, have been protesting the scheduled execution of Troy Smith, whose fate is still to be decided as I write this. He was convicted of killing a police officer in Savannah back in 1991 and has been on death row ever since. His case has been through numerous appeals but each time the legal system refused to overturn his conviction or give him a new trial.

I have to admit that the situation has me a bit baffled. Depending on who you listen to, the guy is either guilty well beyond a reasonable doubt or else the case against has completely fallen apart over time.

Davis conviction rested mainly on the testimony of nine witnesses to the shooting. No physical evidence of any kind presented at his trial. Since then, seven of those nine witnesses have recanted or significantly altered their stories, and two other individuals claim that someone else has confessed to the crime. Davis even offered to take a polygraph test to prove his innocence.

Yet the legal system has time and again denied his requests for a new trial and his oft-delayed conviction has remained on track. I am not a legal expert by any means, but the reason for that seems to be that once a person is convicted of a crime he has to do a lot more than introduce reasonable doubt to get that conviction reversed. He has to more or less prove his innocence, which is a much higher standard than what is required for an initial conviction.

And there’s a reason for that. If that was not the case, I’m sure you would have convicted criminals constantly besieging the legal system with “new evidence” that might cast some shred of doubt about their guilt. The system would get into a state of constant review and re-review of cases that have already been tried. Once a person gets their day in court, in other words, they don’t get to continue to retry the case over and over, hoping that something will eventually sway someone’s opinion and get them sprung.

However, I think when we are talking about death penalty cases the standards need to be different. Before we stick a needle in someone’s arm and take their life we need to be sure, at that moment, that we are not harboring any doubts about whether or not this person committed the crime they were convicted of.

To be perfectly honest, I don’t care much about what the Council of Europe or Pope Benedict XVI think about Georgia’s legal system. But based on what I know about this case I have doubts about whether or not Troy Davis was guilty of the crime that we executed him for. I would like to know why the Board of Pardons and Paroles does not seem to share those doubts, and I think I have the right to know that.

This is my state. I pay the taxes that fund the courts, the jails, and the execution chamber. I vote for the people who oversee the courtrooms and make our laws. This is not a case where I can say “I’m not responsible for happened.” I am responsible, and so are you. It is my government, acting on my behalf, which ends the life of men like Troy Davis.

There is no way to undo an execution once it’s done. So we better be damn confident we get it right, every time. And if we aren’t, we need to stop executing people until that confidence can be restored.

Housework makes you smart

2011-09-07T19:56:00.000-04:00

I’ve used this space a number of times in the past to lament the fact that I am afflicted by a disorder that, unfortunately, seems to be a fairly common one. Doctors call this disorder “aging”, and if you are suffering from it too you know what a challenge it is to live with it.

Unless you are a vampire, though, it is just something you have to learn to deal with. So I also like to use this column to share tips I come across that help those of us who are on the wrong side of 40 to keep decrepitude at bay for as long as possible.

Today I bring you some good news on that front. New medical research has shown that one of the best ways you can keep your mind functioning (fairly) well as you get older is to keep up with your daily chores.

So mow the lawn. Wash the car. Take the dog for a walk. Vacuum, dust, and do the laundry. It may not sound like a glamorous life, but by keeping yourself in motion as opposed to sitting back and taking it easy you might stave off senility.

According to a study published in a recent edition of the Archives of Internal Medicine, the level of physical activity an older person engages in seems to have a direct impact on how much decline they experience in their mental abilities.

The study followed 200 adults whose average age was 75 and kept track of how many calories they burned each day. The test subjects who were most active and burned off at least 1000 calories daily were 91 percent less likely to see declines in memory, concentration, and language skills than the most sedentary subjects. 91 percent! That’s what the bean counters call a “statistically significant” number.

And those active seniors were not a bunch of gym rats. Whether or not they burned calories running on a treadmill or pushing a lawnmower did not make a difference. The one thing they all had in common is that they kept moving throughout the day. Most of the calories got burned off doing all those mundane chores for themselves that we all wish someone else would do for us.

I have noticed that people tend to approach getting older in one of two ways. Some decide that by the time they reach their golden years they’ve done quite enough work and feel that it’s time to put their feet up and let someone else take care of them. As they accrue the aches and pains that inevitably come with age it tends to encourage them to move around even less, until at last they pretty much become one with their easy chair.

And then there are those seniors who don’t want anyone doing anything for them that they can still do for themselves and are always out and about and being as active as their bodies allow them to be. It is intuitively obvious that the ones who keep moving around are going to keep their bodies healthier, but now it appears that all that getting up and going will help keep their minds working well also.

I know, it’s easy to say “stay active” when I’m not the one whose back or knees or ankles ache every time I try to pull myself up off the couch, and most of us aren’t going to be doing gymnastics when we’re in our 80’s. But unless you are totally immobilized, you need to keep doing for yourself as much as you possibly can.

The fact is laziness overtakes all of us at times, and it can become a really bad habit when your body starts to wear down. But we need fight it off if we want our body to be able to continue to get us where we want to go and our mind to remember how to get back home again once we get there.

Election season in Toon Town

2011-08-24T18:44:00.000-04:00

Barack Obama has been having a rough couple of months. America is a troubled place and he doesn’t seem to have many answers for the challenges we currently face. With an election coming up in a little more than a year, you’d think he might be pretty worried about his chances of winning a second term. But when he looks at his potential competition on the Republican side I bet it eases those worries quite a bit.

He had to enjoy a quiet moment of satisfaction, for example, when Rep. Michelle Bachmann recently promised that if she is elected President the price of gas would once again be no more than $2 a gallon. Never mind that gasoline is an internationally-traded commodity whose market price is determined by a host of complex economic, political, and geographic factors that no U.S. President could ever completely comprehend, much less control – she’s going to find a way to bend reality to her will and keep the cost fixed on an arbitrary number that opinion polls say would make us all happy.

Of course, once she made this ridiculous, impossible-to-keep promise she was laughed off the stage at the event she was speaking at and quickly became the object of scorn and ridicule amongst savvy Republican Party activists. She quickly withdrew from the campaign and the public eye and has promised to make no further public statements until she acquires a modicum of common sense.

I’m kidding, of course! Despite the jaw-dropping stupidity of her comment Bachmann is still very much in the thick of the Republican nomination process because she has charisma, physical attractiveness, and rigidly adheres to a conservative ideology that stokes the enthusiasm of the Tea Party faithful. The fact that she seems to be only dimly aware of how things work in the real world is not seen as an impediment to her qualifications to be our Chief Executive.

But that’s only fair. Why should we hold her to a higher standard than we hold the rest of them to?

It’s always fun to watch the candidates try and top each other with their ridiculous promises while these campaigns are going on. They all have a plan to create jobs, lower taxes, balance the budget, and even get us right with God. You’d pretty much have to be God to do all the things they promise they will do, but I guess they feel like they have to top each other or risk seeming like the lesser man (or woman) in the contest.

One notable exception to all this outrageous grandstanding is Republican candidate Ron Paul. Say what you want about the guy, but he does no sugar-coat his views or over-promise what he thinks he can deliver.

I’ll never forget what he said at one of the 2008 primary debates when the other candidates were giving their competing visions on how they would “fix the economy” if they got elected. When his turn came, Rep. Paul responded:

“The Constitution is very clear that the president is commander-in-chief of the military, but the president is not the commander-in-chief of the economy, or of the people.”

This annoying and unwelcome reference to the Constitution and to reality was politely ignored by the other candidates and the moderator of the debate, and they quickly resumed their content-free chatter. Poor Rep. Paul is a real human being in a world of cartoon characters, like Bob Hoskins when he entered Toon Town in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit.” In the world of political campaigns, the only limit seems to be the candidate’s imagination.

And so the Bachmann’s of the world are treated as serious contenders while Ron Paul is seen as a curiosity, someone who could never appeal to a broad enough demographic to have a real chance of winning. Unfortunately after someone is elected they have to operate in the real world and not in Toon Town. And in the real world when our government falls off a cliff, we all actually get hurt.

This is all my fault (and yours)

2011-08-10T21:15:00.000-04:00

All things considered, it doesn’t seem like America is experiencing its finest hour right now, does it? No sooner did we barely get past the whole debt-ceiling nightmare when a major credit rating agency lowered our country’s rating for the first time in history. I don’t know what all the real-world economic effects of their action will be, but I’m pretty sure our image around the world and in our own eyes has already taken a hit.

But as bad as the economic situation may be, I think I may be just as disappointed by our collective reaction to the apparently not-quite-successful attempt by our government to get its financial house in order. Before the ink was even dry on the debt-ceiling agreement, people on all sides of the political spectrum fell all over each other trying to be the first to assign blame and score political points against their opposition.

President Obama and his Democratic allies did their best to make the Republicans look reactionary and unreasonable as they refused to the bitter end to agree to any sort of tax increase as part of the debt-ceiling compromise. The President even went as far as to blame Standard & Poor for lowering our credit rating, saying the logic they used in evaluating us was “flawed.” Someone’s logic is certainly flawed Mr. President, but it isn’t Standard & Poor’s.

And despite public opinion polls that say most people think the Republicans handled the crisis even worse than the Democrats did, the Tea Party crowd seems to be claiming victory. Although I for one tend to agree with them that we need to attack government spending with a great big hacksaw, it doesn’t seem like a majority of Americans are on board with that kind of thinking.

But the GOP presidential candidates seem to be committed to towing the Tea Party line despite what public opinion may indicate. There is even one guy who is apparently about to jump in the race (Texas governor Rick Perry) who has been “anointed” by a group of self-proclaimed modern prophets who believe that all of our ills are a punishment form on high for our declining morality. If we straighten up and fly right (i.e. stop being so tolerant of abortion and homosexuality) they believe that all of our problems will disappear.

I won’t pretend to know what God is thinking or what His plan for our country might be, but I do know that we don’t need any supernatural explanations for why we find ourselves on the verge of economic disaster. We are merely being punished by the most basic law of economics. If you spend way more than your take in, and you do it for a long time, eventually very bad things happen to you.

And I don’t blame Barack Obama for that. I don’t blame the Democrats. I don’t blame Republicans. I don’t blame the wealthy, big business, big labor, the Tea Party, or Standard & Poor’s.

You want to know who I blame? I blame you. I blame myself. I blame anyone who has ever voted for a politician who promised to keep the government pork flowing without raising anyone’s taxes. And we’ve all been buying into that song and dance for a very long time.

There is no surer way to lose an election than to suggest that you would either cut back on our cherished entitlement programs or raise somebody’s taxes, and by continuing to punish any candidate who would even hint at doing either of those things we have all had a part in digging the deep hole that we’ve fallen into.

Soon another big election will be bearing down on us. Are we finally ready to change course? Will we reward a candidate who tells us that we can’t get out of this mess without someone (likely all of us) taking a major hit in the pocketbook? Will such a candidate even emerge? We’ll soon see.

Red State versus Blue State

2011-07-28T21:46:00.000-04:00

One of the worst things about having a government that is dominated by two diametrically-opposed political parties is that they always have the option of blaming each other for whatever is going wrong in the country. We are seeing a lot of that right now as they point fingers over who is more responsible for our woeful financial state.

The fact that we tend to get fed up with whichever party is currently in power and turn to their opponents in hopes they will do better makes it even harder to decide which of them is more incompetent. As the years go by control of the White House and Congress swings back and forth, and each side claims that they could get things straightened out if only those miscreants on the other side of the aisle would stop mucking things up. There seems to be no way to settle the argument of which party could really do a better job governing the country.

Well, I think that I have thought of a way to settle the argument once and for all. I would like to propose that we try a little political experiment.

My idea is to give each party one of our fifty states to rule over completely. They would do things their way in this state, unopposed by their nemeses in the other party, and at the end of a predetermined period of time (maybe 10 years or so) we’d see which of these states ended up with happier citizens.

Now which state would we give each party to run? I think we should choose a state that already leans heavily toward the party that is taking it over and one that is not terribly large or populous so it will be easier to manage.

I’m thinking I’d give South Carolina to the Republicans. I lived there for eight years and it’s a pretty conservative place, but there wasn’t much to do there. They could do with some excitement.

I’d give the Democrats Massachusetts. The state gave us the Kennedy’s, after all, and this would be a good way to pay them back.

In the Republic of South Carolina taxes would be low, government entitlement programs would be non-existent, and the Ten Commandments would be displayed on the grounds of every public building. Abortion would be completely outlawed, every school day would start and with a prayer, and the borders would be very secure (thanks to a very tall fence, and possibly land mines).

Meanwhile, a huge party would be going on up in the liberal utopia of Massachusetts. Everyone (who had a job) would be paying at least 50% of their income in taxes, but no one would mind because health care, education, retirement, and nearly everything else you need would be provided by some government program. The borders would be wide open, people could marry anyone or anything they wanted, and only the really bad drugs would be illegal.

At the end of ten years we’d do extensive polling in each state and see which group of citizens was most satisfied with life under exclusive control of each party and then we’d know once and for all whose ideas are really superior. Then maybe we could put an end to all the bickering between the parties and the loser would graciously disband itself.

You’re probably wondering if I’d be interested in living in either of these trial states while the experiment was going on. The answer is a resounding “no.” My suspicion is that after ten years Massachusetts would end looking too much like Greece does right now and South Carolina might have a little too much in common with Saudi Arabia.

Instead I will have slipped off to the Florida Keys, where the Libertarians would have quietly established their own little proving ground. You’re welcome to come and join us as long as you don’t expect something for nothing and you know how to mind your own dang business.

My endorsement in the Macon mayoral contest

2011-07-13T20:13:00.000-04:00

It’s almost Election Day in Macon, and as usual the Telegraph will endorse its favored candidates in some of the major contests as we close in on the big event. I’ve been known to occasionally make some endorsements in this space as well, and I’ve decided to formally back one of the competitors in the Macon mayoral contest this year. But before I get to that, I should probably clarify the criteria I use when picking a candidate to lend my support to.

The editorial board of a major newspaper like the Telegraph endorses candidates who they think will best represent the interests of their constituents. As an opinion columnist, however, I have a very different agenda. I endorse the candidate who I think will be the most fun to write about should they be elected.

In order to decide who I’d most enjoy writing about, I have to calculate what I call a “goofball factor” for each competitor. There are several personality characteristics that help to increase an individual’s goofball factor. Possessing an inflated ego, having no sense of shame, and displaying an obvious contempt for one’s political opponents all help ramp up the goofball factor, and being completely oblivious to how ridiculous their actions appear to the general public really helps put an individual over the top.

Calculating this factor for each of the four Democratic candidates for mayor quickly eliminates two of them from contention for my endorsement. Paul Bronson is a political newcomer and as such he is a largely unknown quantity, but to date I am not aware of his saying or doing anything silly or outrageous so he can’t really compete for my endorsement at this point. Incumbent Robert Reichert has held the job for nearly four years and I can’t recall a single instance of him embarrassing himself or the city of Macon in all that time. He has given me virtually nothing to work, with and it’s time for him to go.

Luckily the other two candidates rate much, much higher on the goofball scale. I felt my heart skip a beat when the Honorable C. Jack Ellis announced his intention to pursue the office he previously held for eight wonderfully bizarre years. The Ellis administration was a gold mine for an opinion columnist who loves to skewer politicians. Whether he was cozying up to Hugo Chavez, conducting one of his many diplomatic missions (taxpayer-financed vacations) to exotic foreign lands, or changing his name/religion and then immediately changing them back again, Ellis was the kind of gift that keeps on giving for a snarky news columnist.

An Ellis endorsement would be a slam dunk if lovably wacky State Senator Robert Brown hadn’t thrown his hat into the ring as well and made my decision quite difficult. Brown seems to only pay his taxes when the mood strikes him and he recently made headlines when he made a statement that seemed to imply that certain local Republicans just might be members of the Ku Klux Klan.

When a predictable media firestorm erupted over this statement his idea of “softening the blow” was to call a news conference and claim that his reference to the GOP’s need for stocking up on “white sheets” was actually meant to imply that they were especially prone to sexual indiscretions. As the press conference broke up, the son of one his Brown’s best friends inexplicably roughed up a Telegraph photographer who was trying to snap a close-up of the mercurial senator. Good times.

It’s a tough call between Ellis and Brown. Ellis has a proven track record of mayoral lunacy, and it’s very tempting to stick with a known quantity. But I really have to give credit to Senator Brown, who has a stellar track record of buffoonery as a state senator and has faithfully continued his personal war on logic and humility while campaigning for mayor.

And so, considering his solid history of bizarre behavior and the air of self-importance that seems to animate his every statement, I hereby endorse Robert Brown to be the next mayor of Macon. Let’s help him bring the goofy back to the mayor’s office.

Losing the war on unchecked power

2011-07-13T20:11:00.000-04:00

I could never be President. My brain is just not flexible enough to comprehend the subtle logic that’s required to make the kind of decisions our Chief Executive has to make. Take, for example, the question of when a President should involve the country in a military confrontation in a foreign land.

Being the rather simple-minded guy that I am, my first impulse would be to find out what the Constitution has to say on the issue and try and follow that. Article One, Section 8 says very plainly that the Congress has the power to declare war. It doesn’t say anything about the President having the right to declare war on anyone, so I would be off the hook on this one, right?

Apparently that is not the case. Congress has only formally declared war five times in our country’s history, and the last time it happened was World War II. I think we all know we’ve engaged in some pretty serious war-like activities a lot more than five times. Apparently Vietnam, Korea, and all of the various skirmishes we’ve had in the Middle East in the last few decades were not really wars, despite all the shooting and killing that was going on.

Presidents from both parties have sent troops into foreign lands many times without issuing a declaration of war. Congress finally got fed up with the situation during the Vietnam era and they passed the War Powers Act in 1973 to try and reign in the situation. It states that the President can’t get us into an armed conflict for more than 60 days without seeking authorization from Congress.

Unfortunately The War Powers Act hasn’t stopped our Chief Executives from continuing to involve us in undeclared wars. Most recently President Obama got us knee-deep in a civil war in Libya without getting an okay from Congress, and he’s catching some flak for it.

Congress is divided over whether or not they should be concerned about their irrelevance in the Libya situation, and the division is not completely along party lines. Some of the most liberal of the Democrats aren’t crazy about Obama’s “gun boat diplomacy”, and a smattering of Republicans are okay with his using our troops to play global sheriff, Congressional oversight be damned.

John McCain, for example, says that Republicans who oppose the Libyan campaign are “isolationists” who are being unfaithful to traditional American values. “We don’t want people needlessly slaughtered by the thousands,” says he, “if we can prevent such activity.” Seriously, John?

Anyone who has spent more than a few days on this planet knows that there are many governments who “needlessly slaughter” their own citizens every single day. Are we going to invade all of those countries too? If not, how do we decide when to spend billions of dollars and sacrifice our young men and women not because our national security is threatened, but because we want to protect innocent lives in other countries? And why is it that we seem to value human life more in Libya than we do in Syria, or China, or Rwanda?

My simplistic view is that if we get attacked or if some unexpected emergency occurs in a foreign land the President should have some latitude to engage our military on a moment’s notice for a time-limited basis. But the Constitution and the War Powers Act wisely restrict the executive branch from committing us to long-term, premeditated military conflicts on the whim of a single man. Or they would, if more people in Washington cared about obeying the law.

The whole separation of powers thing only works if all the parties involved follow the rules. The executive branch of our government has accumulated way too much unchecked power in recent times, and I’m willing to bet that none of the 2012 Presidential candidates are going to offer to cede any of that power back to Congress if they should win the office they seek.

Presidential tall tales

2011-06-15T19:11:00.000-04:00

Barack Obama is a closet Muslim who wants to hand our country over to Islamic militants. He’s also a socialist who wants to replace our free market system with a government-run economy. And he’s a fascist who wants to take away all our freedoms as well as our privately-owned firearms. He might even be the anti-Christ.

Chances are you’ve heard all of these rumors about our current president at some point. All of them (except maybe the last one) probably have some tenuous connection with reality, but they are all emotionally charged distortions of the truth. Like funhouse mirror images of a real person, they are loosely based on a person that exists in the real world, but the reflection has been stretched and skewed to create something that is either ridiculous or scary.

This is what we do to our presidents. George W. Bush and William J. Clinton didn’t fare any better during their years in office. Remember how the left painted Bush as a complete idiot who cared only for the rich and liked to start wars mainly to feed his own ego?

And Clinton? Well, it seemed that a number of people had full time jobs keeping track of all the outrageous things he supposedly got up to in his spare time. Some of those things turned out to be true of course, as we all know now that he was not exactly a faithful husband to poor Hilary. But he was also believed in some circles to have a penchant for disposing of his political enemies by faking suicides or orchestrating plane crashes or, in the case of the poor Ron Brown, combining the two methods to make sure he was extra-dead. Still unsolved is the mystery of how he was able to conceal being a mass murderer from the general public but unable to hide his trysts with a silly White House intern.

It seems that whenever someone from the “wrong” party gets elected they are invariably characterized by their opposition as dangerous nut-jobs intent on destroying everything America stands for. And be assured that the next president, whoever he or she turns out to be, will get the same treatment from his or her political enemies. Unfortunately far too many of us will eat it up if our candidate doesn’t win.

I did not vote for Barack Obama. I don’t think he has been a good president, and I hope he doesn’t get reelected. I disagree with his philosophy of government on a very basic level. He believes that government is a tool to make the country a better place and he is not afraid to wield it liberally, while I think that government is a necessary evil that has already grown too big, too invasive, and too expensive.

I do not, however, hate or fear Barack Obama. I do not dislike him as a person. From what I can tell he loves his family and is probably a pretty good guy, for a career politician. I’m not interested in reading or listening to factually-challenged tall tales about how he is the new Hitler or a pawn of the Imams in the Middle East.

And I don’t think I’m the only one that feels that way. I’d be willing to bet that the hysterical character assassinations that get endlessly circulated as chain emails don’t convince a lot of people who were on the fence about whoever is in office to change how they will vote in the future. In fact they may very well do more harm than good.

I read that stuff and think, “I do not want to be associated with people this out of touch with reality, whatever their political beliefs may be.” I don’t rely on the aluminum-foil hat brigade to inform my political beliefs, and I wish they would take me off of their mailing list.

Where is the love?

2011-06-01T21:04:00.000-04:00

So the day the world was supposed to end came and went and it seems that it was just another false alarm. Not many of us seem to have been surprised to still be here on May 22, as even most evangelical Christians thought Harold Camping was hopelessly misguided in his attempt to set an exact date for the rapture of the church.

Still, many Christians in this country do believe that the world is going to eventually end in a manner much like the one Camping described, and quite a few of them seem to think that the day is going to come relatively soon.

Much of this “end times theology” is based on the last book of the Christian Bible, Revelation. If you’ve never read that part of the Bible, it’s a little hard to describe. It is very symbolic and filled with metaphor, and throughout the centuries there have been widely varied opinions on what it might mean. There have been those who believe it describes events that happened in past, events that are in the process of occurring over a long period of time, or events that will happen in the future.

That last interpretation - that it describes a coming “apocalypse” that signals the end of the world - didn’t really take hold in Christian thought until the 19th century, and it didn’t gain a wide following until the Scofield Reference Bible came out at the beginning of the 20th century. Scofield’s notes on Revelation sketched out the end of the world scenario that continues to influence modern end times prophets like Hal Lindsey, “Left Behind” novelist Tim LaHaye, and Harold Camping.

I’ve read the book of Revelation several times, and my own personal interpretation is that I have no idea what it is trying to say. I’ve also perused the various modern and historical interpretations of it and frankly I’m not convinced that anyone knows what it means.

But of course there are plenty of people who do think they have it figured out, and a surprising number of churches seem to base much of their message around a particular interpretation of this difficult-to-fathom little corner of the Good Book.

The really surprising thing to me is that while some of these people seem enraptured (pardon the pun) by whatever fiery death Revelation may or may not predict for the world, they seem to pay less attention to parts of the Bible whose message seems to me to be a lot more clear and instructive.

I would imagine, for example, that anyone who calls himself or herself a follower of Christ would spend a lot of time reading the four gospels that document his words and deeds, using them as a guideline for how to conduct their own lives.

Interestingly, Jesus isn’t quoted as saying a much about how the world might end. Instead, he spent most of his time showing compassion to people the world tended to despise and imploring his followers to do the same. He also had a lot to say about loving your neighbor (Mark 12:31), forgiving others if you expect God to forgive you (Matthew 6:14), and serving God instead of living for worldly pleasures (Matthew 6:24.)

John 3:17 says that God sent his Son into the world not to condemn it, but that “the world through him might be saved.” I’m no theologian, but it seems to me that the people who think of themselves as Christians and spend most of their time looking for signs of the end of the world instead of showing compassion to their fellow man might have gotten seriously off track somewhere.

If America is truly a Christian nation, then shouldn’t we be a country full of people who are slow to judge others, seek spiritual enrichment rather than material gain, and constantly look for ways to be of service to those in need? Look around – is that what you feel surrounded by?

Where did heaven go?

2011-05-18T21:38:00.001-04:00

With all that’s going on in the world, it’s sometimes hard to keep up with all the news that we need to be aware of. Important stories can slip through the cracks if we aren’t careful, and I consider it my duty to bring some of those stories to your attention. For example, did you hear that a leading scientist announced this week that heaven does not exist?

Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking made that proclamation in a recent interview with the British newspaper The Guardian. But it was not exactly front page news here in America, what with randy politicians grabbing all the headlines fathering illegitimate children and chasing hotel maids around their rooms. Still it seems to me that we ought to take a moment to consider what brought one of the great intellects of our time to this startling conclusion.

Unfortunately, I can’t tell you much about that, as Hawking didn’t present any data to back up his assertion. He merely stated his opinion that once our neurons stop firing it is a lot like a computer that gets shut down – we merely stop functioning. He refers to a belief in the afterlife as a “fairy story for people afraid of the dark.”

I probably shouldn’t be surprised that Hawking’s announcement didn’t receive much attention here in the US. After all, we are a very religious country, and it would take a good deal more than the proclamation of a physicist to persuade most of us to abandon our belief in God and heaven.

A Pew survey in 2007 revealed that 92% of Americans believe in God and 74% believe in heaven. In England, where Hawking makes his home, it’s a very different story. A 2010 survey there revealed that only 17% of the British population considers religion to be a very important part of their lives.

Plus, most Americans are not physicists. People who make their living as pure scientists are not likely to be packing the pews on Sundays. A 1998 survey of members of the National Academy of Sciences showed that 72% of its membership identified themselves as atheists and 28% as agnostics.

I think most Americans are aware of the fact that scientists like Hawking tend to be irreligious, and they seem to scarcely take notice when people like him mock their beliefs. But I wonder if deep down some of us find it a little troubling that the majority of the people who spend their lives studying the nature of the universe claim to see no convincing evidence that our belief in God and an afterlife have any basis in objective reality.

Maybe that is troubling to some people, but it shouldn’t come as a surprise. Most believers see both God and our immortal souls as purely spiritual things that exist completely outside the material world. They occupy a space that is beyond the reach of our five senses, and thus beyond the reach of science and the men and women who practice it.

A scientist can only speak intelligently about those things that can be observed, measured, and tested. Science can tell us nothing about God or heaven because those are not things we can see through our telescopes or microscopes. Hawking’s position is perfectly reasonable if you believe (as I’m sure he does) that either nothing exists beyond the material world or that, if something does, there is no way we can know anything about such things since we cannot see, hear, taste, smell, or touch them.

To the proverbial man of science his outlook is perfectly reasonable. To a man of faith it is a sad, stunted view of reality that ignores the things that truly matter. I think that is why the chasm between science and faith seems to be so hard to bridge.

It’s also might be why Stephen Hawking decided to make his home in secular place like England instead of in America.

So far, so good

2011-04-20T20:10:00.000-04:00

During the last election season I wrote that I was voting a straight Republican ticket in hopes that this time they were really serious about reigning in our runaway national debt. I was trying to be optimistic, but in truth my expectations were pretty low. I’ve been burned too many times in the past by big-spending Republicans (I’m looking at you, George W. Bush) who haven’t governed according to their supposed limited-government principles.

Anyone who knows me at all knows that I am not quick to praise politicians, but I have to say that so far I’ve been pleasantly surprised by what the Republicans are trying to accomplish in House of Representatives. Not only did Rep. Paul Ryan propose a long-term budget plan that deals with our deficit situation in realistic way, the House actually passed the thing.

Of course the plan, which includes future spending caps on Medicare and does not raise taxes on “the wealthy”, has no chance of passing the Democrat-controlled Senate or being signed by our current president. But it is a start. And it has even forced the president to introduce his own less serious but still impressive (for a left-wing Democrat) deficit-reduction plan of his own.

The Republican plan is revenue-neutral and relies on spending reductions to put us on the road to fiscal sanity. Obama’s plan would (of course) raise taxes on the well-to-do and would preserve entitlement programs much as they exist now. Although I think the president is wrong to think that we can tax our way out of this crisis I am encouraged that we are now having a real debate about just how much spending we need to cut and/or taxes we need to raise to back us away from a financial cliff.

The truth is I am not completely opposed to some combination of tax increases and spending cuts if (and this is a very big “if”) it is part of a budget plan that seriously deals with our debt situation. Realistically speaking, any deficit reduction plan that would have a chance of passing our currently-divided government will need to represent a compromise between the two parties. Rich folks (as defined by the Democrats) are probably going to have to pay at least a little more in taxes and we have to come up with some way of capping entitlement spending that won’t cause the AARP to have a meltdown.

I’m not sure how likely it is that we will see the two parties reach such a compromise, but it seems that a sense of urgency is at long last present in their deliberations. But they need to work fast as another election season will be bearing down on us very soon.

Already liberal lobbying groups are buying air time to whip senior citizens into a frenzy over Ryan’s plan to end the open-ended nature of the Medicare program, even though his proposal would not affect anyone who is currently over the age of 55. Things could get ugly really fast and the spirit of compromise could fall apart very easily.

If that happens, the voting public might have to settle the debate next year. The Democrats will likely promise to rescue our sinking financial ship by soaking the rich while preserving entitlement programs in their current form and Republicans will probably tell us that we can’t tax our way out of an economic sinkhole.

And I would be fine with that. I would welcome a national referendum on entitlement reform. It’s time that we made a decision on whether we want a government that is grounded in reality or fantasy.

If it comes to that, I hope that the Republicans stick to their guns and provide us with that choice. If they do, they can count on my support next year and for many years to come.

Can we really stand four more years of this?

2011-04-06T21:05:00.000-04:00

This week got off to a very bad start for me. One of the first news items that caught my attention Monday morning relayed the tragic news that Barak Obama has already launched his reelection campaign for 2012.

To tell you the truth, I have yet to really accept the fact that my fellow Americans saw fit to elect an ultra-liberal “community organizer” who had never held a non-government job in his life to be our commander-in-chief two years ago. Now I must face the reality that this sad spectacle could go on for another six years.

Wasn’t eight years of George W. Bush enough punishment for any generation of Americans to endure? What possible sins could we have committed as a nation to deserve two helpings of Bush followed by eight long years of Obama? Those sins must have been very bad indeed.

But, you say, just because Obama is running again is no guarantee that he will win. Perhaps a sober, level-headed challenger will appear on the Republican side who will sweep Obama out of the White House and return a long-absent air of competence to the office. If you hear that such a person intends to jump in the race be sure and let me know, because as yet that person has not appeared.

Brushing aside potential candidates who have trouble speaking coherently (Palin, Bachmann), and those who couldn’t even best a weak McCain for the 2008 nomination (Huckabee, Romney), what do we have to look forward from the Republicans? Could that be Newt Gingrich riding in on his white horse, ready to elevate the 2012 campaign with intelligence, wit, and passion?

It certainly appears that someone who looks and sounds like Newt is making noise about running for president, but this person certainly can’t be the same guy who shook up congress in the Clinton years with his radical ideas and clearness of purpose. He seems to have been replaced with someone who is acting like a Stephen Colbert- like parody of a real conservative politician.

Witness Newt’s recent high-profile speech before a group of evangelical Christians, where he warned that America is in grave danger of becoming “a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists.” Now remember, this was not an off-the-cuff remark made during a live interview. No, this was a prepared speech. He actually meant to say that secular atheists (who do not believe in God and do not believe religion has any place in government) and radical Islamists (who ardently support a very specific version of theocracy) are somehow going to work together to take over our country.

That’s not pandering to conservative Christians - that’s pandering to people who are unfamiliar with what words in the English language actually mean. Newt was trying to get his audience worried about people who don’t share their religious beliefs, but I’m afraid instead he’s gotten us all worried about the state of his mental health.

I think I understand, at least a little bit, how those protesters in the Middle East are feeling. I do not feel connected to my government and I do not feel they represent my interests. However, the problem is not institutional. We have a great Constitution, one that is designed (when followed properly) to protect our freedoms and bless us with a limited government in which power is derived from the will of the people.

That is a rare blessing that not many people in this world enjoy, and it is most frustrating that such a good system is being run into the ground by a bunch of morons who seem to be unfamiliar with how it was designed to work.

Is there any chance we could do a Jurassic Park and clone Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, or Washington? Whatever those guys had on the ball when it came to running a government seems to have been bred out of our gene pool.

World to end ahead of schedule

2011-03-09T19:55:00.000-05:00

There have been some wild rumors going around, largely based on the fact that an ancient Mayan calendar finishes a 5,000 year countdown next year, that the world is going to end in 2012. Well, I’m afraid that I have some disturbing news for you – it might happen even sooner than that. We may run out of time on May 21, 2011, to be exact.

That is the day, according to Christian radio broadcaster Harold Camping, when born-again Christians will be raptured to heaven and everyone else will have to face 153 days of horror and torment before the real, true end comes on October 21 of this year. If he’s right, the end is most definitely nigh.

Of course, Mr. Camping’s credibility is a bit suspect to some since he previously predicted that the end would come in September of 1994 and, apparently, it did not happen. But this time he feels that he has definitely got the date nailed down thanks to a careful study of scripture and some rather advanced mathematics. Consider the following:

Noah's flood, according to Camping, happened exactly 7,000 years ago in 4990 B.C. And, since the Bible says that for God a day is like a thousand of our years, he believes that God is giving us exactly seven of His days until humanity experiences its next dramatic population shift. So 2011 is the year when something big is bound to happen.

But that’s not all. Camping says that we can also arrive at the exact date of the rapture by working forward from the date of the crucifixion, which he says was on April 1, 33 AD. There are exactly 722,500 days between April 1, 33 A.D. and May 21, 2011. And the number 722,500 can also be represented as 5 x 10 x 17 x 5 x 10 x 17.

That is significant, claims Camping, because those numbers all have special meanings: 5 represents redemption, 10 is associated with completeness, and 17 signifies heaven. So, you see, it is fairly obvious that the apocalypse pretty much has to begin on May 21 of this year. The numbers don’t lie, right?

As it turns out, Camping is not taken very seriously even among most evangelical Christians, the great majority of whom do not believe that there is any way to predict the exact date of the Rapture. They point to a verse in the Bible (Matthew 24:36) that seems to say that fairly plainly.

But he does have his followers. There is, in fact, a small band of people who have sold all their possessions and left their homes to travel around the country with Camping in an End Times Caravan, trying to warn us all of our impending doom. People like him always seem to attract a small, but very enthusiastic, following.

I don’t really understand what the attraction is, or why some people seem to get so obsessed with this “end of the world” stuff. I don’t know if life as we know it will come to an end on May 21 or not, but I do know that any one of us could shuffle off this mortal coil at any moment.

I don’t see why it would make a difference whether your demise were to come about at the feet of one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse or at the bumper of an eighteen-wheeler you carelessly pull out in front of – either way you’ll be meeting your maker on that day, ready or not. So if you aren’t ready for that, I’d get it taken care sooner rather than later.

I would not, however, advise anyone to sell all their stuff and join the End Times Caravan. Math is a really tricky subject, and I won’t be at all surprised if Mr. Camping has to pull out his calculator on May 22 and come up with some new figures.

No more running, part 2

2011-03-05T13:35:00.000-05:00

I’ve been writing this column for nearly 13 years now, and the one piece that I probably got more response to than any other was one I wrote in October of 2010 regarding some health problems I’d been having. I was in a pretty frustrated mood at the time and the column was probably a little overdramatic, leading many readers to ask me what exactly I was dying from and how long I had left.

The fact that I am still writing my editorials is good evidence that what I have is not fatal, at least in the short term. After seeing 7 different doctors in 8 months and being poked and prodded and jabbed with needles more times than I care to count, I have only recently gotten a diagnosis that I have some measure of confidence in.

The doctor’s best guess is that I have both Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD), two difficult-to-diagnose conditions for which there is currently no known cause or cure. The good news is that they are not life-threatening and there are drugs that can hopefully help manage the symptoms they cause.

I say “hopefully” because, as I noted in my column in October, not everyone who has the same condition reacts the same way to a particular drug, and the only way to find a treatment that works for you is through trial and error. Now I can say that I know how it feels to be a laboratory rat, and it’s not an experience I would recommend to anyone.

I wrapped up my column in October with a list of things I’d learned while dealing with my health issues and I thought I’d do the same thing this time. Here are some further lessons I learned from my experiences with our “best in the world” health care system.

- We live in the information age. Before you visit a doctor you should be able to look up your symptoms on the Internet and get a pretty good list of what illnesses could be causing them. I encourage you to do that, and write down what disorders match your symptoms and (this is very important) what tests are commonly done to determine whether or not you have a particular illness.

- Also take the time to write down all the symptoms you are experiencing and when you experienced them, if they have changed over time. Take this information with you to the doctor as well.

- When you do see a doctor, go in with the realization that he is likely going to want to hear your symptoms and then make a very quick, on-the-spot diagnosis (i.e. an educated guess) as to what may be wrong. He will then either schedule some diagnostic tests to be done and/or write you a prescription for some medication to try. This is where you may have to become assertive. Make sure that he listens carefully to all you have to tell him about your symptoms. Ask questions if what he is saying is not clear to you, and if your research has led you to conclude that you need to be tested for something that he is not testing you for, make sure he explains why he doesn’t think you should have that particular test.

- Know upfront that many doctors will not react well to the kind of active discussion I am recommending that you have with them. This is understandable to a degree, since they need to be in charge of the situation and can’t have patients dictating their own course of treatment. But remember that you are a paying customer and that this is your health and your life that is in the balance, not theirs. If the doctor you are seeing does not adequately answer your questions and/or refuses to order any and all reasonable diagnostic tests to give you your best diagnoses, you need to find another doctor.

The company we keep

2011-02-02T19:32:00.000-05:00

There are some jobs that are so difficult and stressful that I wouldn’t want to have them no matter how much they paid. College football coach would be one such job. President of the United States would be another. And frankly I wouldn’t want to be in Hilary Clinton’s shoes right now, either. Imagine sitting in the Oval Office this morning while President Obama looks across his desk at you with a furrowed brow and asks, “okay Hil, what should we do about this Egypt business?”

Once again, we find ourselves in an awkward position because we have chosen to play ball with a government that does not share our views on human rights and democratic principles because it suited our purposes at the time. The Mubarak government has been critical to what we consider stability in the Middle East with its hard line stance against terrorist groups and its relatively cordial relationship with Israel, so we in the past we chose to look the other way when they behaved badly.

It’s not the first time we’ve compromised our principles for pragmatic reasons (Saddam Hussein was on our “friends list” before we later declared him to be part of the Axis of Evil) and I fear that it won’t be the last. And now there are thousands of Egyptians marching in the streets demanding a voice in their own government and we are standing on the sidelines with our hands in our pockets not sure what to say or do.

Actually, Hilary’s job may not be that difficult. Her answer to the “what should we do?” question is probably a shrug of the shoulders, because there probably isn’t much we can do now except hope for the best. The best in this case would be a transition to a new, less autocratic government that doesn’t hate us and doesn’t want to wipe Israel off the map. A fire-breathing Muslim theocracy in Egypt would make the world a much more dangerous place for Israel and (by association) for the United States.

So how should the average American, who doesn’t live and breathe world events, feel about what’s going on in Cairo, and the part we’ve played in it? For me, the short answer is “not too good.”

I’m no expert on foreign policy, but I do understand that we have to engage all sorts of governments and that most of them aren’t representative democracies, much as we would like for them all to be. We can’t realistically have an antagonistic relationship with every “bad” government without regard to numerous extenuating circumstances.

And yet I can’t help feeling that we are not measuring up to our own standards somehow. It seems to me that in the decision matrix that we use to separate or friends from our enemies on the world stage, the fact that a government imprisons and tortures its political opponents or executes people for practicing their chosen religion ought to figure more prominently than it does right now.

It’s like if you were looking for a good mechanic to fix your car, and you found a guy that knows his way around a transmission but you also found out that he regularly beats his wife and kids. Would you do business with that guy? And if you did, would you sleep well at night?

Whether you’re talking about a person, a business, or a government, you are to some extent known for the company you keep. Our cozy relationship with the dictatorships in places like Egypt, China, and Saudi Arabia says something about our national values. It says, I think, that we often put practicality ahead of our principles.

Maybe that is something you have to do to get along in this world. Or maybe that is just what we like to tell ourselves.

We will miss you, Phil

2011-01-12T20:10:00.000-05:00

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about two different stories that were reported on extensively by the Telegraph this week. One of them was, of course, the shooting of Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and a number of bystanders in Tucson. The other was the passing of long time Telegraph contributor Phil Dodson. You might not think these two events were related in any way, but for me there is a connection.

First of all let me say that I had a lot of respect for Phil and I will miss his voice on these pages. He was a very intelligent guy who took his job seriously, and unlike a lot of news “personalities” these days he was more concerned with informing the public than in drawing attention to himself. I always admired the fact the he never seemed to lose his sense of humility. Even when he was criticizing someone Phil always stuck to the facts and never resorted to pettiness and name-calling.

And that brings me back to that other story that everyone is talking about this week. One of the major subtexts of the reporting on the Arizona shootings is the question of how much the personal attacks that politicians and media types launched against Giffords in last year’s election influenced the unstable individual who fired the shots. Sarah Palin has been especially singled out in this discussion because of an image displayed on her Facebook page last year that featured a crosshair symbol positioned over congressional districts she was “targeting” for a Democratic defeat. Rep, Giffords’ district was one of those in Palin’s crosshairs.

Can heated political attacks help to push unstable people over the edge and commit violent acts? It is certainly within the realm of possibility, I suppose. But does that mean that the people who launch these personal attacks against their political opponents are partly to blame for the actions of an unbalanced individual, and should we put pressure on them to tone things down?

I think we need to be careful here. This reminds me a bit of the attempts that have been made from time to time to censor musicians whose dark, brooding lyrics have been blamed for causing troubled young people to commit suicide. It’s a misguided attempt to shift responsibility from where it rightly belongs.

Most of us aren’t going to kill ourselves after we listen to “Don’t Fear the Reaper” one too many times and most of us aren’t going to start shooting at liberal politicians because of the barely-intelligible ramblings of someone like Sarah Palin. The culprit here is mental illness, and we don’t need to start some misguided campaign to censor political speech the way some people have sought to censor certain books and music in the past to protect us from what they believe are dangerous thoughts and ideas.

And yet.

Maybe it is not such a bad idea for all of us to take some time to reflect on how our words and deeds affect those around us. I always admired the fact that whenever Phil criticized a public official he stuck to the facts and never made it seem personal. I can’t say that I have always done that. At times I have let my emotions get the better of me and engaged in what might be called personal attacks on certain public figures. Perhaps in the future I should choose my words a little more carefully.

So even though my political views may line up more with Sarah’s than with Phil’s, I still consider Phil to be the better role model. Just because someone is (in my opinion) a bad politician doesn’t mean they are a bad person, and it certainly doesn’t mean that they deserve to be in anyone’s “crosshairs.”

I think Phil recognized that, and we’d all do well to remember it before we open our mouths or start pounding on our keyboards.

Obama call to Lurie was out of bounds

2011-01-02T18:20:00.000-05:00

I don’t know exactly what the President of the United States does on a typical day, but I would imagine that his plate stays pretty full. I’m sure that he has lots of meetings to attend, documents to sign, photographs to pose for, etc. And of course he still has to find time to do the things that regular people do like eating, sleeping, and spending time with his family.

But even with all that important stuff going on, our current president took time out his busy schedule this week to call up Jeff Lurie, the owner of the Philadelphia Eagles, to tell him what a great guy he is. And one of the reasons he gave for having such a high opinion of Mr. Lurie is that he is the guy who gave Michael Vick a job this season after he finished serving time in federal prison for running a dog-fighting operation.

I don’t know enough about Jeff Lurie to say whether or not I agree with Obama’s glowing assessment of him, but I will say that my opinion of the President definitely took a turn for the worse when I heard about this phone call.

To be fair to the President I have to say that I don’t think that there is anything wrong with the sentiment behind what he said to Lurie. He said that people who make mistakes and go to prison deserve a chance to rejoin society if they show remorse for their crimes and make every effort to be good, law-abiding citizens once they have served their time, and I can’t argue with that.

So why do I have a problem with the phone call the President made? Well, everything has to be viewed in context. If Obama wanted to get the point across that people coming out of prison deserve a chance to rejoin society if they have straightened themselves out, I think that he could have chosen a much better poster boy than Michael Vick.

Vick was not some down-on-his-luck family man who robbed a gas station to get money to feed his kids. He was not some misguided youth who got caught up in drugs and made a mess of his life. He was a fully grown adult, a millionaire many times over, who ran a dog-fighting operation because (I must assume) he thought it was a fun hobby.

That was a weird, sick, disturbing thing for a person to do, and I will never understand how he was able to live with himself while he was doing what he was doing. And it seems quite plausible that if he hadn’t gotten caught he might still be running his little operation to this day. He seems to me like a really questionable choice for the President of our country to go to bat for in such a public manner.

Of course Obama was actually heaping praise on Lurie, not Vick, but even that is hard to understand. Do you think Jeff Lurie scours the prisons on a regular basis looking for soon-to-be-released felons so that he can employ them in his organization? I’m guessing not. Vick got his “second chance” because he is a ridiculously talented athlete who was going to give whoever he played for a chance to win a lot more games, and that is the only reason he has a job today. Does Lurie deserve a medal for that?

So to President Obama I say, right message, totally wrong time and place to deliver it. And I don’t think that hitching your wagon to a man who at some point in his life thought it was cool to teach dogs to kill each other for “sport” is ever a good idea.

Of course the way things are going it may not really matter too much. It’s looking as if his only chance of keeping his job in 2012 would be to join the Republican Party like the rest of the country seems to be doing.

Asking Santa for a Balanced Budget Amendment

2010-12-14T19:45:00.000-05:00

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

2010-12-01T20:55:00.000-05:00

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

2010-11-17T20:10:00.000-05:00

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

2010-11-03T19:33:00.001-04:00

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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A collection of some of my favorite columns from over the years is now available in book form. You can order a copy at the following web site: https://www.createspace.com/3491918. It will also soon be available on Amazon.com.

Low blows keep on coming

2010-10-20T19:28:00.000-04:00

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

2010-10-06T21:45:00.001-04:00

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

2010-09-22T20:55:00.000-04:00

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”?

2010-09-08T22:28:00.000-04:00

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?

2010-08-25T19:35:00.000-04:00

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?

2010-08-11T17:57:00.000-04:00

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

2010-07-14T19:08:00.000-04:00

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?

2010-06-30T18:26:00.000-04:00

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?

2010-06-16T17:43:00.000-04:00

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?

2010-06-02T18:56:00.000-04:00

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

2010-06-02T18:55:00.000-04:00

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

2010-05-05T22:26:00.000-04:00

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?

2010-04-24T12:27:00.000-04:00

“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

2010-04-07T20:05:00.001-04:00

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

2010-03-24T21:07:00.000-04:00

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)

2010-02-24T18:08:00.000-05:00

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

2010-02-11T17:08:00.000-05:00

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

2010-01-27T18:46:00.000-05:00

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

2010-01-13T18:57:00.002-05:00

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.

How to stop the health care bill

2009-12-30T18:53:00.000-05:00

“We've affirmed that the ability to live a healthy life in this great country is a right, not a privilege.”

With those words, Sen. Harry Reid celebrated the passage of a landmark health care reform bill by the US Senate just before Christmas. Depending on how you feel about big government and its ability to actually “fix” something as big and complex as the health care industry, that statement either gives you a good warm feeling down deep inside or it sends chills down your spine.

I’m in the chilled-spine camp, myself. Based on its track record with the soon-to-be-bankrupt Social Security program, the sooner-to-be-bankrupt Medicare program, and the “reforms” it mandated for the mortgage industry that contributed to the great financial meltdown of the last few years, I think there is reason to doubt that increased government involvement in the health care industry is going to be a good thing for us in the long run.

And if something isn’t done soon, it may be too late to stop this runaway train. But what can we do? After hearing about how some on-the-fence senators (I’m looking at you, Ben Nelson) were basically bribed into voting for this bill, I’m about ready to consider all-out revolution.

But I’m afraid that idea is a non-starter. I seriously doubt that there are many Americans who care enough about what their government is doing to take to the streets and toss rocks at well-armed federal troops like the protesters in Iran are doing.

Perhaps we need to concentrate on a more subtle way to throw a roadblock in front of the left wing juggernaut that currently holds the fate of our nation in its grip. Sometimes it is wise to consult the history books in such a situation and see what the past can teach us.

Let’s go back to 1992, when liberals were cheering the election of a young Democratic governor from Arkansas and his frighteningly serious wife to the highest office in the land. High on the list of priorities for the new president was – you guessed it – health care reform. President Clinton put the first lady to work on a radical plan to remake the health care system into something that the government could control and manipulate until everyone had the same (bad) level of care, regardless of how much they were able to pay.

Maybe the plan would have succeeded, eventually, but President Clinton had a real knack for doing stupid things that put him in a bad light and weakened his credibility. As a result, he was able to accomplish very little in his eight years in office. Thank goodness!

And I don’t think it is a coincidence that the nation enjoyed a good deal of peace and prosperity during that time of near-inactivity by the federal government. I don’t think it is unreasonable to suggest that we all owe a debt of gratitude to Monica Lewinsky for the good times we enjoyed in the 1990s.

So far, President Obama has steered clear of the kind of personal failings that hobbled Bill Clinton’s liberal aspirations. And I think that is what needs to change. The government is working to well for our own good. What we really need is a Monica Lewinsky for the new millennium.

Somewhere deep in a super-secret location (probably Dick Cheney’s basement) where high -ranking conservatives hatch “if all else fails” type of plans for saving the country from liberals, they need to consider recruiting some young, attractive, conservative females to apply for jobs at the White House and get close to the president. And I mean really, really close.

It is a lot to ask of any young woman, but once the scandal breaks the country will be safe from the specter of an active government until 2012, at least. And then we can all relax as President Palin breezes her way to an easy victory and…okay, maybe I need to think about this a little bit more.

Is it okay to throw stones at Tiger?

2009-12-16T18:16:00.000-05:00

I’m sure that by now you’re probably sick of listening to people talk about Tiger Woods and his harem of Barbie-doll mistresses. Well, that’s too bad, because I’ve got something to say on the subject and this is my column, so you’ll just have to suffer a little bit longer.

It seems that whenever a celebrity gets caught with his pants down, everyone wants to be the first to pronounce judgment and cast a few stones in his direction. I guess it makes us feel good to see the rich and powerful fall on their faces, especially when they do things that we, personally, would never ever do.

Considering the demographic that my writing appeals to, I am confident that most of the men reading this column have never cheated on their wives or girlfriends. I’ll leave it to you to decide if that’s because my male readers tend to have high moral character or because they tend to be relatively undesirable to the opposite sex.

Either way, the men who are reading this probably feel okay about looking down on a philanderer like Tiger, safe from the perch of the moral high ground. But is that a fair, or wise, attitude, to have?

A study I recall reading about earlier this year might suggest that it is not. The study was designed to measure how our confidence (or overconfidence) about how well we are able to resist temptation relates to our ability to actually resist temptation when we are faced with it.

The results were interesting. People who had just finished eating a big meal, for instance, were likely to significantly overestimate their ability to turn down a chance to eat one of their favorite foods at a later time when they weren’t so full. On the other hand, people who were hungry at the time they predicted their capacity to turn down a tasty snack at a later time had a more realistic attitude about their own willpower.

How does the experiment apply to Tiger Woods and our judgmental attitudes towards his indiscretions? Well, it’s been said that you shouldn’t judge a person until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes. So let’s try and put ourselves in Tiger’s golf spikes for a minute.

Tiger is one of the richest, most famous, and most powerful men in the world. I don’t consider myself to be an expert on women, but I have noticed that a lot of them don’t find money, fame, and power to be unattractive traits in a man. So Tiger probably has a lot more women lining up for a chance to spend some private time with him than most of us could imagine having to deal with.

Plus, Tiger travels. A lot. All over the world. I can’t remember the last time I even left Houston County by myself, and I certainly don’t spend time traveling solo to exotic locations all over the world the way Tiger does.

So here you have a rich, powerful man whose work calls for him to spend a lot of time away from home who undoubtedly has beautiful women aggressively seeking to start up a relationship with him under any circumstances that he finds convenient. How many men do you think would fall prey to the same type of shenanigans he apparently engaged in under similar circumstances?

I’m sure we’d all like to think we’d stay on the straight and narrow and come home to our supermodel wife and perfect children untainted by the touch of other women if we were Tiger. But can you know that, for sure, not having faced the same temptations that he has?

Science and common sense suggest that you shouldn’t assume that you’re a better man than Tiger unless you’ve walked his path. Most of us never will, of course. But maybe we should be a little less eager to cast stones at people whose sins are just a little more sensational and newsworthy than our own.

Let the president decide

2009-12-02T18:57:00.000-05:00

As I listened to the back and forth over President Obama’s plan to send more than 30,000 fresh troops to Afghanistan, I kept having the same thought over and over: thank goodness it wasn’t my job to decide what to do with this mess. I’m not defending or attacking the strategy the president has decided to follow, I’m just saying that I have no idea what to do in Afghanistan and I’m not that sure anyone really does.

Just try to picture yourself sitting in the president’s seat and having to make a call on how to proceed with this operation. You either ramp up the conflict as the military strategists suggest, thereby guaranteeing that many more Americans will lose their lives, or you pull up stakes and leave the country to the devices of the same nuts that blew up the World Trade Center back in 2001. Talk about a no-win situation.

Of course this is the kind of decision you sign up for when you run for president, right? Perhaps. But, on second thought, I seem to remember from way back in my American Government class that it is really supposed to be congress’ responsibility to declare war, not the president. So why does it seem to be completely up to the president to decide where we fight, and for how long?

That is, of course, a tricky question. It’s true that only congress can declare war, but it is also true that the executive branch has, over the years, acquired the authority to send a lot of soldiers off to fight on foreign shores for long periods of time without officially declaring a war. And congress has largely gone along with the idea.

Back in 1973, as we were still reeling from the effects of that little undeclared war in Vietnam, Congress tried to clarify and restrict the president’s power to commit our armed forces to a conflict by passing the War Powers Resolution. It limited the president’s authority to send troops into harm’s way for more than 60 days without a declaration of war or a (more nebulous) congressional authorization of the use of military force. It obviously left the president with a lot of leeway.

As you might be aware, congress never issued a declaration of war for the conflicts in Iraq or Afghanistan. They may seem like wars with all the shooting and blowing things up and people getting killed, but according to our government we are not formally at war. Congress did issue very broad “authorizations of the use of force” prior to the launching of those campaigns, but they left it up to the executive branch to work out all the unpleasant details.

For a person with my limited mental capacity, that seems an awful lot like they are following neither the letter nor the spirit of the Constitution’s specific delegation of the power to declare war to the legislative branch. Congress is supposed to decide when the military option is warranted and the president, as commander-in-chief, is supposed to decide how to best achieve our military goals once the fight is joined.

It doesn’t seem to me as if things are working that way right now. It is clearly the president’s show, and congress will rubber stamp whatever plan comes out of the White House. It’s just one of many examples of how the legislative branch seems to have ceded a power that the Constitution specifically enumerated to it over to an increasingly powerful executive branch.

Seeing as how they still control the purse strings, congress could easily take control of the matter at any time. But they won’t. Like me, they don’t want to have that decision weighing on their shoulders, nor do they wish to face the consequences should the decision not pan out. And as long as they can keep ignoring the Constitution, there’s no reason why should burden th

Armchair quarterbacks need to get a life

2009-11-18T20:51:00.000-05:00

This past Sunday night I was doing what I am almost always doing on Sunday nights this time of year –watching NFL football. This week’s Sunday night game was the Colts versus the Patriots. It’s usually a good game when those two teams get together, and this year’s contest was certainly no exception. It wasn’t decided until Peyton Manning threw a touchdown pass leading the Colts to a 35-34 victory with only 13 seconds left in the game.

But many viewers would say the game was really decided when Patriots coach Bill Belichick made the decision to go for a first down when his team had a fourth and 2 on their own 28 yard line with about 2 minutes left in the game. For those of you who don’t know much about football, most of the time you would punt the ball away in that situation, because if you try to pick up the first down and don’t make it you give the other team the ball in very good field position. And that’s exactly what happened – the Patriots failed to get the two yards they needed and the Colts quickly scored the winning touchdown.

I remember being a bit surprised when Belichick decided to go for the first down in that situation and thinking that he’d get a fair amount of criticism if the gamble didn’t pan out. It’s fair to say that I somewhat underestimated how much flack he would get over this unusually aggressive call.

All week long sports editorialists, bloggers, and football fans have ripped Belichick for his “dumb” and “monumentally egotistical” play call. Despite the fact that this man has enjoyed unprecedented success as a head coach, including winning multiple Super Bowls and leading his team to an undefeated regular season one year, it seems as if he has now become a poster boy for coaching ineptness.

Give me a break, people. First of all, as some more mathematically-inclined commentators have pointed out, the call was not really a bad statistical gamble. The odds of his offense converting on fourth and 2 and running out the clock to end the game versus the odds of a Peyton Manning-led offense going 70 yards in 2 minutes are not that out of whack. It was an unconventional decision, but by no means was it an obviously stupid one. People who are painting it as such are only displaying their own lack of football acumen.

But there’s a larger point to consider here. Why on earth is this such a big deal to anyone? We are talking about a game, for crying out loud. It’s a bunch of guys running up and down a field throwing a ball around. So a coach decides to go for it on fourth down when most coaches wouldn’t. So what? I say making that call made the game more fun, more unpredictable, and more exciting for the fans.

As is often the case, I find myself at a loss to understand why some people get so wound up about something so trivial. Death, chronic disease, being too broke to pay the rent – these are the kinds of things any sane person is going to be troubled about. But most of the other stuff we lose sleep over is just nonsense. And I would say that anyone who is spending any portion of their valuable time exorcising an NFL coach for going for it on fourth down needs to seriously reexamine his priorities.

Maybe we should all go for it on fourth down (figuratively speaking) a little more in life, and stop obsessing about what other people think. Maybe having that attitude is, in fact, one of the reasons Coach Belichick is one of the most successful coaches in the NFL and not a know-it-all armchair quarterback typing snarky comments in his blog.

How brave are you?

2009-11-04T20:15:00.001-05:00

Have you ever wondered just how brave you are? Whether we want to admit it or not, we all have something that we’re afraid of. But just where do you fall on the scaredy-cat scale?

To answer that question, I’ve come up with a completely unscientific system for determining your braveness rating. Below is a list of the ten most common fears that people all over the world share that I borrowed from livescience.com. Give yourself one point for every item listed that sends a shiver down your spine. I’ll share my own response to each item so you can see how you stack up against me.

10. Visiting the dentist. This one completely baffles me. I have been to the dentist many times, even had my first root canal last year, and the most I have ever experienced while in the dentist’s chair is minor discomfort. I don’t know what all the fuss is about.

9. Dogs. For me it depends on the dog and his demeanor. If he is one of those breeds that have been known to kill people and he has a bad attitude, of course I’m going to give him a wide berth. But that toy poodle down the road does not keep me up at night.

8. Flying. I’ll admit that I do get a little nervous at takeoff, during landings, and when the ride gets rough. It’s not so much the flying I fear as the possibility of falling. I’m giving myself a pass on this one too.

7. Thunder and lightning. I’m not sure what there is to be afraid of in a thunderstorm except actually being struck by lightning. If I’m out in an open field and it looks like a storm is blowing in I’ll head for cover, but other than that thunderstorms don’t impress me.

6. The dark. I’m only afraid of the dark if I have reason to believe there is something nearby that might present a threat that I can’t see. When a strange noise wakes me up in the middle of the night of course my heart starts racing until I find out it wasn’t caused by a wandering serial killer with a hook for a hand. I don’t think that counts.

5. Heights. Okay, they nailed me here. I do not like being more than a few feet off the ground. I could fall. It would hurt.

4. Other people. Also known as social anxiety. Ouch, they got me again. People are scary, especially people I don’t know, or people I do know who have “issues.” That covers most of the human race.

3. Agoraphobia, or a fear of being in a threatening place or situation that is difficult to escape from. This is like fear of the dark for me – I’m okay unless there is some extenuating circumstance that suggests I may need to escape from the situation.

2. Spiders. Spiders??? Are you kidding me? What could a spider possibly do to me? I have never met a spider who did anything but run away as fast as his 8 little legs could carry him if I got too close. Apparently this fear is almost completely exclusive to women – maybe that’s why I just can’t see it.

1. Snakes. I am afraid of snakes, but I have no idea why. They really aren’t that much more of a threat than spiders, but for some reason I don’t like to get within 100 feet of them. Maybe there’s some sort of residual effect from that whole Garden of Eden incident. That gives me a score of 3.

Scoring key:

(0 – 3) = You are a pillar of courage and intestinal fortitude, like me.
(4 – 6) = You’re probably about average in the fear department.
(7 – 10) = I don’t want to add to your anxiety by telling you what this score indicates. You’re fine, really!

When we soak the rich, we all get wet

2009-10-21T20:28:00.000-04:00

With the Democrats in charge of our government, one familiar refrain we have heard a lot and will continue to hear is how it is time for wealthy people to “pay their fair share.” Rich folks got way too much in the way of tax cuts when the Republicans were in charge, the reasoning goes, and they will not be so fortunate with the party of the common man running the show.

I’ll be the first to admit that rich people can be pretty annoying. There is something that seems fundamentally unfair about the fact that there are people walking around wearing shoes that cost more than my entire wardrobe. So why shouldn’t rich old Uncle Moneybags pony up a little more at tax time when there are so many of us struggling just to get by?

Well maybe he should, but I think there is an important point that tends to get lost when we get on these “soak the rich” kicks. There seems to be an assumption on many people’s part that there are no real consequences for taxing the wealthy. That is a very misguided and dangerous assumption.

To illustrate the point, let’s try a little thought experiment.

Imagine that, tomorrow, you win the lottery. The lottery is going to pay you, say, $10 million a year for the rest of your life. Congratulations - you’re rich, and the rest of us hate you. Now let’s say that the first year, the tax rate for someone like you is 25%, or $2.5 million. Then let’s say the next year the Democrats take over, and your tax rate goes up to 50%, or $5 million.

You still have $5 million a year to live on, the rest of us still hate you, and now the government has $5 million a year to do great things for the American people. So what’s the problem here?

Well, let’s say the tax rate had stayed the same (25%) instead of going up. What would you have done with that extra $2.5 million? Chances are that you wouldn’t have taken it home and stuffed it in a mattress.

Maybe you’re the conservative type, and you’d have put it in the bank. The bank would have used that money to make loans to people, perhaps to build houses or start businesses. Or maybe you’re a little more adventurous and you’d have invested it, or even started a business of your own. Either way, our ailing economy could have used that $2.5 million, but now it’s gone into Uncle Sam’s pocket.

Or maybe you’re a hedonist, and you’d have just blown that $2.5 on buying stuff, or taking trips. Still, when people buy things or spend money on travel that money gets plowed into the economy. Somebody has to build those expensive yachts and sports cars, and hotels and airlines employ lots of people too.

But once again, thanks to that 50% tax rate, you won’t be taking that trip around the world or buying that extra sports car this year. I don’t feel too sorry for you, but I might feel sorry for the guy who worked at the yacht factory or the clerk at the four star hotel who just lost his job thanks to our “soak the rich” tax policy.

I’m not arguing against a progressive tax policy here, I’m just saying that it is a mistake to assume that we can raise taxes on anyone, even those snooty rich folks, without there being negative consequences that reach out and touch all of us. Before we raise taxes on anyone we would be wise to ask ourselves what that money might have done for us if it hadn’t been taken out of the hands of private citizens and put into the hands of a federal government that has not always proven to be a wise steward of its finances.

My final Donald Walker column

2009-10-07T19:45:00.000-04:00

It has been quite some time since I mentioned Warner Robins mayor Donald Walker’s name in this column. It’s been years, I suppose. But it wasn’t always that way. When I first started writing this column in 1998 for the now-departed Daily Sun, Walker was a constant presence in my work. And as far as I can remember, every single column I ever wrote about him was critical.

I disagreed strongly with Mayor Walker’s vision for the city and the surrounding area. He represented everything that bothered me about local politics in these parts. Walker and his contemporaries seemed to have an insatiable desire to build, build, and then build some more, and the faster the better. I always felt that there was a very small, select group of politicians and real estate tycoons who were getting rich from all the rapid-fire development that was taking place while the rest of us “enjoyed” higher taxes, choked roadways, overcrowded schools, and flooded back yards.

And yet like everyone else who lives in Houston County I was horrified by Mayor Walker’s sudden passing. It’s difficult to imagine Warner Robins without Mayor Walker and every time I drive by city hall the same thoughts hits me again – “I can’t believe he’s really gone.” But he is gone, and since the mayor was such a big part of my early writing career, I thought I would devote one final column to his memory.

I spent some time reflecting on the reason I stopped writing about Mayor Walker. I can remember how angry I used to get when I looked around the city and saw another strip mall going up. I remember arguing against every penny sales tax increase that was proposed to prop up our over-taxed infrastructure when it came up on the ballot. It was all too much, too fast, and I couldn’t understand why people kept sending the man most responsible for these “injustices” back into office.

But send him back they did. As it turned out, a lot of people in Warner Robins thought he was doing a great job. They enjoyed all the new restaurants and stores that were coming into their city. They liked the fact that city taxes seemed to keep going down instead of up. And, frankly, a lot of people just liked Donald Walker. I never had a chance to meet him in person, but people who knew him well all seemed to think he was a fine person who genuinely cared about the people he represented.

Eventually it became obvious to me why I stopped criticizing the mayor. It was just pointless. It was a battle I could never win because I was completely overmatched. This was a man who knew how to get what he wanted and was willing to do whatever he had to do to achieve his goals. It is very difficult to win against an opponent like that, and I never really had a chance.

It is always a tragedy when a man takes his own life, and we are right to mourn the untimely end of Donald Walker. But we should remember one thing when we think about his life – he accomplished what he set out to do. He had a big vision and he made it reality against some very long odds. How many people can say that, even if they live to be 100? Not many of us, I’m afraid. I’m 43 now and I am still just trying to figure out what I want to do with my life.

I think everyone leaves a hole in the world when they depart, and the size of that hole varies depending on how many lives you have touched. Donald Walker left a hole the size of a city when he left us, and we’ll all be feeling that loss for a very long time.

Time for us to get taxed by the pound

2009-09-23T19:32:00.000-04:00

If you are reading this column, you are probably too fat. No, I’m not psychic. I just happen to know that a solid majority of Americans are overweight, so the odds are that most of the people who are reading these words could stand to lose a few pounds. Now the question you are probably asking yourself is this - what is the federal government doing about my weight problem?

The answer to that question, according to a group of nutrition and economics experts who published an opinion piece in a recent issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, is that it isn’t doing nearly as much as it should. What we need, say these experts, is a tax on soda pop.

They contend that a steep tax on sugary beverages is a brilliant concept for the same reason that cigarette taxes were a good idea. Such a tax would discourage people from using a product that is not good for them and it would also raise new revenue that the government could spend on much needed programs to further improve public health. That is what we call a win-win scenario.

You might think that congress would be all over a great idea like this one, but to date none of the proposed health care reform bills has included language mandating a soda tax. There was discussion of such a tax when the bills were being crafted, but fears of a backlash from the powerful soft drink industry and angry soft drink addicts prompted lawmakers to back away from the idea. For now.

Let’s face it - it is only a matter of time before we are paying a hefty add-on fee for our Cokes and Pepsis and Dr. Peppers. And it is unlikely that they will stop there. Candy bars, potato chips, movie theater popcorn, and other bad-for-you treats will undoubtedly be sin-taxed as well at some point.

But why not go even further? If we are going to tax our way to better health, there are other consumer products that contribute to our collective obesity that we should be penalized for indulging in.

For example:

- Big screen TVs. There aren’t many things that we buy that encourage us to sit around the house as much those giant flat screens that tend to eat up an entire wall of our living rooms (or our “home theater rooms” for the more avid TV watchers out there.) TVs should be taxed at an increasingly higher rate as their screen size and picture quality increases. With the revenue generated from this tax, we could eliminate sales tax on things like treadmills and stationary bikes. This is what is known as “lifestyle engineering”, and America obviously needs a lot more of it.

- Couches. I can’t think of any piece of furniture in the house that encourages slothfulness as much as a comfy couch does. These things should be taxed so high that people can’t even afford them and are forced to sit in front of the TV on those hard wooden pews that used to be so popular in churches. You wouldn’t even make it half way through “Dancing with the Stars” before you had to get up and walk around.

- “Fat” clothes. Having reasonably-priced clothing readily available in very large sizes has made us all too comfortable with our expanding waist lines. If we had to pay an increasingly steep fee for our clothes every time we went up a size, we might put a little more thought into whether or not we could really afford to have a second helping of Grandma’s apple pie after Sunday dinner. “Sorry Granny, I can’t. I don’t make enough money to shop in the Big and Tall section.”

Latest Obama outrage: brainwashing our children

2009-09-09T19:40:00.000-04:00

Apparently, even the little children are not safe from the nefarious plans of President Barak Hussein Obama. That at least seemed to be the message that was being widely broadcast by the ever-vigilant “Obama is a tool of the devil” constituency over the Labor Day weekend.

The president was scheduled to deliver a video address to all public schoolchildren on September 7 and some conservatives flew into a tizzy, sure that he would be indoctrinating our innocent children into the evils of socialism, government-run healthcare, radical environmentalism, and Lord-knows-what-else.

So some schools opted not to show the speech to their students, some parent kept their children home from school rather than have them be subjected to it, and some kids whose schools wouldn’t show the speech stayed home so they could watch it.

That was an awful lot of hand-wringing over an 18 minute pep talk whose message (yes I did read it) can be boiled down into the following statement: Work hard in school if you want to get a good job and make a contribution the future of your country.

I’m nearly certain that if Rush Limbaugh or Newt Gingrich had read basically the same speech to our children there would not have been a peep in protest from the right wing. But I’m sure that in that case the liberals would have protested the same speech just as vehemently as the conservatives did in the run up to the president’s address.

What I can’t understand is why everything has to be so very personal. It seems like every day I get a new hate-o-gram directed at President Obama in my email Inbox. He’s not really an American. He’s a closet Muslim and has secret plans to convert America into an Islamic state. He’s raising a secret, private army (to do what I’m not sure, but it has to be bad.)

The people who send me these emails usually include a short personal message that conveys a sense of barely concealed glee at their newest discovery of the unimpeachable truth of Obama’s evil nature. “See, I told you he was out to ruin this country!” they exult. I always wonder what exactly I’m supposed to do with this information. I think I am supposed to buy a gun, or build a bomb shelter. Or both.

Let me state plainly that I did not vote for President Obama, I don’t approve of most of the things he is doing as president, and I hope that he is out of office after one term. But my lack of support for him stems from the fact that he and I have a basic difference of opinion regarding the proper role of the federal government in terms of its size and scope. I have nothing against him because of his race, his (real or imagined religion) religious preferences, or his personality. If he were to wake up tomorrow determined to embrace the ideals of low taxes and limited government, I wouldn’t have a problem supporting him without reservation.

But I certainly don’t believe he is Evil Incarnate, and I don’t believe it is wise or effective for those of us who oppose his policies to always assume that every move he makes was orchestrated by Lucifer himself. There was nothing wrong with the speech Obama gave to (some of our) nation’s schoolchildren this week, and if he influenced any of them to buckle down and take their studies more seriously this year I say good for him.

Maybe someone needs to give the adults in this country a speech about not assuming the worst about people before they get all their facts straight and how it is possible to disagree with someone without being disagreeable.

It shouldn’t be me, though. Too many people already think that I’m an idiot.

More things the government could pay us to replace

2009-08-26T19:54:00.000-04:00

This week Americans bid a sad farewell to one of the most popular government programs ever. More than 600,000 worn out old wrecks were traded in for sleek new fuel-efficient cars under the “Cash for Clunkers” program in less than a month. At the end of the day, close to $3 billion dollars of our tax money will have been spent to help people buy new cars and pump new life into the beleaguered automotive industry.

Cash for Clunkers may have ended, but the government is not finished helping us upgrade our lives just yet. Now Uncle Sam wants to pay you to replace your major appliances with newer, more energy-efficient models. You may be able to get a voucher for anywhere from $50 to $200 towards the purchase of a new refrigerator or washing machine if you qualify. Is this not the greatest government in the history of governments?

I feel like a kid at Christmas, wondering what Uncle Sam is going to leave under the tree for me next. We can only hope that the largesse doesn’t stop with automobiles and washing machines. We have an opportunity here to help Americans remake their lives in every conceivable fashion, and it is obvious that money is no object here.

Here are just a few of my suggestions for future “Cash for…”exchange programs.

- Cash for Old Houses. I’d be shocked if this one isn’t already at least in the planning stages because it just makes too much sense. Take a depressed housing industry, stir in millions of Americans living in run-down old homes, and season with an unlimited supply of deficit spending. That gives you the perfect recipe for a massive new spending program to help people purchase new homes. Sure the costs would be astronomical. So what’s your point?

- Cash for Old Spouses. Few things would upgrade the quality of life for many Americans than to trade in their tired old husband or wife for a newer, more efficient model. To qualify you would have to have been married for at least 20 years and your spouse would have to be at least 55 years old. Your replacement would have to be under 35, have a good job, and leave a relatively small carbon footprint. Uncle Sam won’t find a replacement for you, but he will give you a voucher for up to $10K a year to keep your May-December romance in bloom. I’m not going to speculate as to what the government might do with your spousal trade-in, but Sarah Palin probably has an idea or two.

- Cash for Conservatives. If there is one thing holding us back from becoming a liberal utopia it is those busy-body conservatives with their annoying preference for smaller government and low taxes. It’s time to buy them out. For a one-time payment of $100K conservatives would have to agree to do the following for the next four years: vote a straight Democratic ticket every election, abstain from attending any town hall meetings or rallies on any courthouse steps, and have Fox News and conservative Internet blogs blocked from their homes.

If you’re thinking that it would be ridiculous to suggest that there would be any conservatives would sell out so easily, let me ask you a question. Do you think that all of the people who took advantage of Cash for Clunkers were big-government, tree-hugging liberals? Or do you think that more than a few right-wingers who rail against the “spread the wealth around” concept gladly took the $4500 credit for their old junkers because, well, it was just too good an opportunity to pass up?

As Alfred Adler said, it’s much easier to fight for your principles than it is to live up to them.

Are health care forum protests “un-American”?

2009-08-12T21:03:00.000-04:00

So how is your summer going? Has it been too hot, too dry, too short, or otherwise failed to meet your expectations? If so, you can take heart in this one fact: at least you aren’t a sitting congressman who has to go back to his home district and hold a public forum on health care reform. I haven’t been to one myself, but from here it sure doesn’t look like they are having much fun.

You’ve probably heard that there have been some rather spirited protests at these forums. Democrats have accused right-wing special interest groups of organizing these raucous demonstrations and say they are preventing Americans from having a much-needed debate on the topic at hand. Republicans swear that these protests are a grass roots phenomenon and contend that they just show how upset ordinary Americans are with Obama’s attempt at a government takeover of the health care industry.

So are these protesters interfering with the Democratic process? Should the demonstrators politely wait their turn to speak at these forums and allow everyone to have their say rather than disrupting the proceedings with their screaming and shouting? And is it bad form to hang your local congressperson in effigy?

In the past, my answer to all three of these questions would have been yes. But there has been so much nonsense going on for so long in Washington DC that I’m afraid my answers now might be “yes”, “no”, and “you’re lucky you’re only being hung in effigy, pal.”

Ordinarily I’m a non-partisan, even keel sort of a person who sees a certain amount of merit in both sides of a good argument and I like for everyone to have their say. But it seems like things have been going so wrong for so long in our country that now I’m not so sure that polite debate is getting us anywhere good.

Unsurprisingly, Nancy Pelosi and I disagree on this. In a recent op-ed piece she authored with fellow Democrat Steny Hoyer, she said that “drowning out opposing views is simply un-American.” I’m not sure what universe she’s been living, but in my experience drowning out opposing views is pretty much the way politicians have been advancing their agendas for as long as I can remember.

More humorous (or more perhaps more disturbing) was this statement from the Pelosi/Hoyer piece. Once their health care reform passes, they contend that “never again will medical bills drive Americans into bankruptcy; never again will Americans be in danger of losing coverage if they lose their jobs or if they become sick; never again will insurance companies be allowed to deny patients coverage because of pre-existing conditions.”

Do you hear that? “Never again” will any of the bad things that now happen to sick people in our imperfect health care system happen again, ever! Barak Obama and Nancy Pelosi are going to solve these problems for everyone, for all time!

I don’t think so, Nancy. What you are almost certain to do is raise my taxes and make the system much less effective for the majority of us who already have employer-provided health insurance that works pretty well, most of the time. Just because something isn’t perfect doesn’t mean that changing it will make it better. And looking at Medicare, Medicaid, and the VA hospital situation, I don’t see any reason for us to have confidence that the federal government is going to “fix” the health care system. Not in a good way, anyhow.

Maybe these health care forum protests are interfering with the democratic process, but maybe that isn’t such a bad thing. That process, as it exists right now, doesn’t see

A man’s guide to the “Twilight” phenomenon

2009-07-29T22:33:00.001-04:00

If you are a man and you have a woman in your life, there’s a decent chance that she’s a fan of a book called “Twilight”. You might be a little curious as to why this book is so popular with the ladies, but chances are that you aren’t curious enough to actually pick it up and read it.

I, however, was that curious, and I recently completed the nearly 500-page journey into the world of teenage vampire romance. I’m not going to recommend that any men out there follow my example, but just so you won’t be completely in the dark about this estrogen-charged phenomenon I’ll give you a brief summary of what happens in the book.

The story opens with our teenage protagonist, Bella, moving to a new city to live with her single father. Bella is a moody, sarcastic teenage girl with a poor self-image, but the single most defining thing about her is that she is extremely clumsy. She can barely walk without falling down and injuring herself, and I had to wonder if she had some sort of undiagnosed neuromuscular disorder. Unfortunately no one in the book thinks of this, so we’ll never know.

At her new school Bella immediately makes a bunch of new friends and inexplicably seems to despise them all, especially the boys. Being a typical girl, she is instead fascinated by the one guy in school who seems to want to have nothing to do with her.

That guy turns out to be Edward, our other protagonist. Edward is apparently the most attractive man ever to walk the earth, a point that is driven home mercilessly throughout the book. We eventually learn that that Edward is also a vampire, and he lives with a sort of adopted family of six other vampires who are all achingly beautiful in their own right. Not to worry though, they are all “good” vampires and only drink animal blood. They jokingly refer to themselves as vegetarians. Cute!

Some of the vampires in this book have psychic powers, and Edward can read people’s minds. He can read everyone’s mind except Bella’s, and of course that causes him to be fascinated by her. Being as fine as he is, it doesn’t take long before Bella develops a little fascination of her own, and for the next 250 pages or so the two of them slowly get to know each other and fall hopelessly in love.

One day Bella joins the Cullen family as they go out to play baseball during a thunderstorm (don’t ask) when out of nowhere three more vampires show up. Unfortunately the new vampires are not vegetarians, and one of them (James) decides he wants to make a meal out of Bella. Edward scares him off, but this new guy is a relentless hunter and he now has Bella squarely in his sights. Edward’s family quickly spirit her out of town for her own protection.

The dastardly James manages to trick Bella into meeting up with him alone using a scam that involves Bella’s mom, an abandoned ballet studio, and a VCR. Once James has her where he wants her, he makes the classic bad-guy blunder of going into a long, boring speech about how great it is going to be to kill her instead of just sucking her blood and calling it a day. That gives Edward and his family time to catch up and save Bella at the last minute.

“Twilight” is not destined to be on my short list of favorite books as it drags way too much in the middle section and could have benefited greatly from the services of a good editor. It’s not awful though, and I may continue on with the next book in the series, which I hear involves werewolves. No doubt these werewolves will be strikingly handsome when in human form. Just because you’re a monster doesn’t mean you can’t be smokin’ hot

Discrimination – it’s all around us

2009-07-15T21:55:00.000-04:00

Americans are not known for their humility. We’ve been the richest, most powerful nation in the world for a long time now, so I guess it’s only natural that we tend to think of ourselves as being a cut above the rest.

After all, we are among the world leaders in so many categories. Some of them are obvious (income, personal freedom, fast food consumption, etc.), but there are others that you would have to dig beneath the surface to recognize. Like guilt, for instance. Is there any other country that wallows in its past and present shortcomings with the enthusiasm that we do? I don’t think so. As a white male, and a Southerner to boot, I try to set aside some time every day to mentally flog myself over the many bad things my forbears might have done.

And I have to do that, otherwise I might slip up and say or do something that will cause offense to some group of people to whom I should be more sensitive. That point was driven home for me a few weeks ago when I had the temerity to question whether or not the process that led to the nomination of a certain Supreme Court nominee was really an exhaustive one that fairly considered all possible candidates, even those who happen to be male and/or Caucasian.

Shortly thereafter I was subjected to an editorial trip to the woodshed on these pages, and I consider myself to be properly chastened. I must keep in mind that not only can white men not jump, they also cannot talk about reverse discrimination without feeling like they are being lumped together with those bed sheet-wearing yahoos who inexplicably consider themselves to be part of some “master race.” And let me tell you, those are definitely not the kind of people I want to form a lump with.

So I am trying to turn over a new leaf and be more sensitive to the subject of discrimination in our society. And in that spirit I want to discuss a story I came across this week that highlighted a previously unsung class of people who are, through no fault of their own, experiencing verifiable discrimination in the work place.

Did you know that recent studies have shown that tall people make significantly more money than their vertically-challenged coworkers? After accounting for all other factors, it appears that every additional inch of height accounts for almost an extra $1000 a year in annual salary on average. That’s right, mister 5-foot-nothing, that former basketball player who sits in the next cubicle is probably making ten grand a year more than you just because he’s tall enough to dunk.

That’s just plan unfair, and in this golden age where we continuously seek new ways to redress discrimination and eliminate unfair practices, something needs to be done. Obviously the vertically-challenged should be added to the protected list of people who can sue for workplace discrimination. But thinking about this injustice has got me wondering, how many other people are being mistreated by our society yet have not been awarded the deserved title of “victim”?

I would be willing to bet that people who are introverted, overweight, homely, obnoxious, or smelly could very well be suffering from unfair treatment in the workplace and in our culture in general, just like short people are. And something needs to be done about it.

President Obama should institute a new, cabinet-level department that would be in charge of rooting out and redressing any and all instances of discrimination being perpetrated on any American for any reason. Laws should be written, tax breaks should be handed out, and apologies should be made. There is no excuse for any American to be discriminated against in this day and age, and it is the federal government’s job to actively combat all forms of prejudice wherever they occur.

The exception, of course, would be when the discrimination is targeted at Caucasian males, which

From tea parties to the ballot box

2009-07-01T21:23:00.000-04:00

This past Sunday I read an article in this newspaper that was as disturbing to me as anything I’ve read in long time. It had nothing to do with dead celebrities, election fraud in Iran, or global warming. Instead, it was a seemingly innocuous little piece about a congressman who represents a certain district here in Middle Georgia who is facing reelection in just over a year and as yet has no apparent opposition in that contest.

Now that may not seem like a big deal to you, but to a person like me who feels strongly that our system of government only works when the people who are governed by it give a rat’s behind about who represents them, it was very hard pill to swallow.

Before I go any further, let me say this. I think Jim Marshall is a good guy and, in general, he has represented Middle Georgia about as well as any career politician could be expected to. I understand the practical reasons why none of the leading lights in the state Republican Party have jumped at the chance to oppose him, but that knowledge does nothing to cool my outrage that we could have a race for a national office in my own home district where no one may bother to oppose the incumbent.

Some of the views expressed in this piece made me want to tear my hair out. Numerous potential Republican opponents are refusing to throw their hats in the ring because of the long odds against winning and because their personal prospects are more promising if they run for state or local positions. And local conservative firebrand Erick Erickson said that some state GOP officials are hoping that Marshall does indeed go unopposed because a strong turnout for him might unduly influence the governor’s race in favor of the Democrats.

Take a minute to digest that. The GOP brain trust in this state are not simply disinterested in this race, they are actively opposed to anyone of substance from their party running against Marshall because of the effect it might have on the governor’s race. Here we see the genius of the two-party system at work. Do you feel well-represented?

Still, an optimistic soul might see the situation as an opportunity rather than a problem. So the Republican machine has no interest in this race. Fine. That could provide an opportunity for some candidate who is outside of the political mainstream to enter the race and become a viable force.

I want to speak directly now to the citizens who participated in the “tea party” rallies on tax day this year. You are fed up. You are sick and tired of government-as-usual. You have had it up to here with deficit spending, intrusive government, and the lack of respect for our constitution displayed by nearly all of our representatives in Washington. That was the message you were trying to send with these rallies, if I’m not mistaken.

Well, here is an opportunity to do more than wave signs and sing songs. Surely there is someone in your ranks who can speak in complete sentences and has an ounce of personal charisma. I think it’s time for that person to step up and run for office. This is a perfect opportunity for an outsider, a candidate that represents a fresh alternative to business-as-usual in Washington to emerge and give 8th district voters a real choice next fall.

I once wrote that I believed the tea party rallies were political theater, a chance for anti-Obama Republicans to release their frustrations over losing power in Washington. I hope I was wrong, and that some true believer will emerge from that movement and give those of us who are fed up with our bloated federal government a reason to go to the polls next year. The clock is ticking however, and the time to act is right now.

Some creative suggestions for a cash-strapped government

2009-07-01T21:21:00.000-04:00

The recession has been hard on a lot of people, and it hasn’t been easy for our state and local governments either. They can’t just print their own money like the federal government can, so when the economy tanks and tax revenues plummet they have trouble paying the bills just like we do. And often times they are forced to tighten their belts in ways that cause real discomfort for their constituents.

Some government workers have had their pay frozen and some are facing mandatory unpaid “vacations.” Important capital improvement projects have been put on hold. Parks and recreation areas are not open as many days of the week or for as many hours a day as they used to be. And now local libraries have also had their operating hours cut back at the worst possible time – just as the kids are getting out of school and needing a nice safe place to hang out.

I realize that our government is faced with a difficult situation and I understand that they have to do something to cope with the loss of revenue caused by this troubled economy. But it seems like the cuts that they are making are depriving us of some of the best things the government does for us, and I’m not sure that they’ve considered all the options here.

Are there other areas of spending that could be cut or avenues of generating additional revenue that might be tapped so that Georgians would not be deprived of much-needed government services? Frankly I believe that we can do better than furloughing school teachers and shutting down public libraries. Here are just a few ideas off the top of my head:

- Furlough the state legislature. It costs a great deal of money to operate the legislature, and if they were to meet for a shorter period of time for the next several years it would save us a significant amount of money. I’m not so sure that we wouldn’t be better off overall if they had less time to “improve” the laws we already have in place anyway. Oftentimes it seems like they do more harm than good, doesn’t it? And while we’re talking about the legislature, maybe we should…

- Tax lobbyists. I’m not sure what kind of fees the representatives of big businesses and special interest groups pay in order to have the privilege of cozying up to our lawmakers, but whatever it is I bet it’s not enough. Lord knows they’ll probably get it back with grants and “targeted tax cuts” anyway, but maybe we’d at least have a chance to break even if we charged them a significant registration fee.

- Sin taxes. Now hold on a minute – it’s not what you think. I’m not advocating raising taxes on cigarettes and liquor. Those taxes are high enough as it is, and frankly I’m not convinced that smoking a Marlboro or drinking a Budweiser is a “sin” anyway. I’m talking about adding huge fines to the jail sentences of the real bad apples in our society. Murderers, rapists, child abusers, repeat-offender drunk drivers – those are sins that really need to be taxed. Instead, their room and board is coming out of your family budget. Why should they be protected from the recession if they have money in the bank or houses and cars that could be auctioned off?

- Rent out the governor’s mansion. I don’t know how many rooms there are in that big house we provide for the governor and his spouse, but I have to believe that they aren’t using all of them. Imagine how much a high-roller (if there are any of them left out there) would pay for the privilege of sleeping down the hall from our chief executive and the first lady. Turn it into a bed and breakfast I say, and turn the profits over to the people.

Affirmative action, Supreme Court style

2009-06-03T19:28:00.000-04:00

As soon as I heard that Supreme Court justice David Souter was retiring, I knew it was coming. Whoever President Obama named to replace Souter was sure to be too liberal and too much of a judicial activist to please most Republicans. A protest was sure to follow, though it would likely be an unsuccessful one.

The process has unfolded pretty much as expected, but the line of attack on Sonia Sotomayor from the conservative talking heads has taken on a slightly unexpected wrinkle. Who would have guessed that we’d live to see the day when Rush Limbaugh would call the first Hispanic female to be nominated to the Supreme Court by our first black president a racist?

I can’t say that I saw that coming. But maybe I should have.

After all, given the reality of politics it was a near certainty that the president was going to nominate someone who was 1) not a male and 2) not a Caucasian. And given his stated desire to find a justice who possessed a high degree of “empathy”, perhaps it was just as certain that we’d get a nominee who considered their experience as a non-Caucasian female to be an important factor in their judicial decision-making process.

And that seems to be what we got. Judge Sotomayor has plainly stated that she believes that the fact that she is a Hispanic female allows her to “more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” Add to that the fact that she was part of a panel of judges that ruled against a group of white firefighters who had about as solid a case of reverse discrimination as any that has ever been brought before a court in this country and you have all the fuel Republicans could possibly need to stoke the fires of “reverse racism.”

Only most of them aren’t going to go down that road. This is a fight they would almost certainly lose, and they would probably look bad while doing it. They don’t have the numbers or the credibility right now to seriously challenge a president with a high approval rating and charisma to burn. And frankly, Judge Sotomayor is seen as something of a moderate (for a liberal), and there is a feeling among some conservatives that they could have done a lot worse.

It really is too bad that we can’t have a real discussion on Judge Sotomayor’s qualifications in the midst of all of this talk about race and gender. Is she one of the finest legal minds in the country? Does she have a reputation for writing groundbreaking, well thought-out opinions? Is she respected in the legal community as one of the best at her profession?

From what I can tell, the answer to all of those questions is a resounding “no.” Judge Sotomayor seems like a fine person, and she is a real American success story. But if you threw her resume in a pile with the most respected 100 judges in the country and blacked out the information about their race and gender, do you think the president would have picked her name based solely on her qualifications? It seems very unlikely.

And that is exactly why affirmative action is a dirty word for some people. At its worst it screens out potentially qualified job applicants because they aren’t a member of the protected class, and it seems very likely that many qualified jurists had no chance to compete for a spot on the court this time around because they didn’t have the right skin color or reproductive organs.

I suppose that when the next spot on the court opens up, another underrepresented demographic may get their chance at bat. I’m thinking that a transgendered Asian judge may have a great shot at filling the next vacancy.

Is secession a dirty word?

2009-05-20T19:48:00.000-04:00

Did you hear the one about Georgia threatening to secede from the union – again? If that sounds like the beginning of a joke, brace yourself. The Georgia Senate really did pass a resolution (on a 43-1 vote, no less) that some people interpret as a thinly veiled threat to secede from the union if the federal government continues to ignore the limits on its power specified in the Tenth Amendment to our Constitution.

You may not have heard much about this bill because most observers consider it to have been little more than a publicity stunt, a calculated move by Georgia’s ruling party to capitalize on the frustration that many of us are feeling towards the federal government and its seemingly insatiable lust for power. I’m sure that’s exactly what it was too, but it still might provide us with some interesting food for thought.

I admit that the idea of secession seems ridiculous on its face, and I am sensitive to the fact that the last time southern states attempted to secede from the union things did not turn out well. It’s very difficult to even talk about the political and legal justifications of secession in the Civil War era without the discussion being overwhelmed by the championing of slavery by the Confederate states, and understandably so.

But that was then, and this is now.

Today the talk about secession in Georgia and a few other states (most notably the always independent-minded Texas) is not motivated by any desire to enslave or discriminate against anyone. It is motivated instead by a growing concern that the federal government has for some time been ignoring one of the bedrock principles on which our union was founded.

The Tenth Amendment to our Constitution reads as follows:

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

What that means in a nutshell is that the federal government is only empowered by its founding document to govern the states and individual citizens in ways specifically spelled out in the Constitution. Many people, including me, believe that the federal government has for some time been engaging in behavior that the Constitution does not give it the authority to do.

Here are just a few things the federal government does that would be hard to reconcile with the Tenth Amendment:

- Creating mandatory government-run retirement and health care plans (Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid.)

- Passing laws that regulate the practice of abortion, euthanasia, and drug use (both the “legal” and “illegal” kind).

- Setting and enforcing rules and regulations that dictate education policy to the states.

- Using taxpayer money to “bail out” and then take control of troubled private enterprises.

Obviously the phenomenon of unbounded government authority didn’t start with the Obama administration and neither party has let the Tenth Amendment temper their ambitions for a very long time. But the snowball seems to be getting a lot bigger a lot faster lately, and the fact that issue has risen to greater prominence in a lot of people’s minds seems like a very good thing to me.

I certainly don’t believe that Georgia should secede from the United States, at least not any time soon. The best way for us to deal with an out-of-control federal government is to send people to Washington who are committed to turning the ship around and hope that other states do the same.

But what if a majority of the other states do not share our commitment to the Tenth Amendment and the federal government continues to behave in a manner contrary to both the letter and spirit of the Constitution? I think perhaps people in Washington should be made aware that here in Georgia we don’t consider any option to be completely off the table. If the resolution passed by our state senate sent that message, then it was not a complete waste of time.

How not to panic over the swine flu

2009-05-06T20:35:00.000-04:00

Last week I was on the road for a business trip and fell a little behind on what was going on in the world. The “luxury” hotel I was staying at didn’t provide a complimentary newspaper or free Internet service and I can’t stand to listen to any of the talking heads on television, so I had to do some catching up on the weekend by leafing through the newspapers that accumulated while I was gone.

So I was a little late to the panic party over the Next Great Disaster That is Sure to Kill Us All, otherwise known as the swine flu pandemic. As I progressed through the week’s news and read the increasingly alarming reports, however, panic never really set in. Nor did I expect it to.

This sort of news never gets much of a reaction to me. A new and deadly virus that can apparently be transmitted like a common cold is cause for concern, of course, and we should all take the recommended measures to protect ourselves and our families from catching it. But panic just isn’t on my agenda, not over something like this.

It’s not that I’m especially brave, or that I don’t value my own life. If I knew for a fact that Mr. Death was walking up my front steps, I wouldn’t be in any hurry to answer the door. But we are talking about a very speculative event here, something that very likely will never affect me. This swine flu thing would have to get much, much worse than it is likely to get before there was a good chance that it would end my life.

It’s really more about perspective than courage. If you would like to inoculate yourself (ha!) from worrying too much about things like the swine flu, try considering a few facts that are true for all people, everywhere, no matter what their situation is.

1) You are going to die one day. We don’t like to think about this, but every one of us is going to expire at some point. If you can accept the fact of your own mortality (easier said than done, I know) then the specific things that may be the eventual cause of your demise seem a little more mundane.

2) You could die at any second. And there are many, many things that could cause it. You are much more likely to die from something like a car accident or heart disease than from something exotic like the swine flu. Potential fatality is all around you, all the time, and that will be true for as long as you are alive.

3) It may seem a lot more dramatic to die from something newsworthy like a previously unknown disease or a plane crash, but the end result is exactly the same. And in fact people who do die from swine flu die relatively quickly when the disease is fatal. There are much worse ways to go.

I realize that thinking about one’s own death in such a straightforward may seem a little pessimistic, but there is an upside. Actually coming to terms with the fact that life is truly finite tends to make you appreciate the time that you do have, especially the good times. It can also make the things that we tend to worry about, things that we know will be of basically no importance once we are six feet under, seem a lot less important.

So wash your hands often and keep your distance from people who appear to have flu-like symptoms. Other than that, just go about your business and try and enjoy yourself a little. You won’t hear the Surgeon General say that, but maybe he should.

Losing weight is like going to war

2009-04-22T20:40:00.001-04:00

Have you ever noticed that when you are trying to lose weight, the whole world seems to be against you? Fattening food seems to be everywhere, often offered to you for free. Physical activity seems to be a luxury you can hardly afford to fit into your daily schedule. Sometimes it just seems so unfair, doesn’t it?

To be honest, I’ve never been very overweight. But as the years have sneaked by I’ve accumulated a few extra pounds here and there, and I realized that if I didn’t arrest the trend a few extra pounds added on each year could eventually add up to and unhealthy me.

So when I started a new job about a year ago that offered me a free gym membership and paid time off to exercise, I had no excuse not to try and get a little healthier. So far I’ve lost about 10 pounds in a little less than a year by following a pretty simple plan – eat less and move more. The idea is a simple one, but you’d probably agree that the execution is anything but.

We live in a world that is awash in food, and most of it seems to be high in calories and low in nutrition. Walk through a grocery store and it seems like the chips, cookies, ice cream, and red meat just jumps into your cart. Every restaurant menu seems to be loaded with delicious, fattening food that comes in oversized portions. And any time you go to a social gathering there seems to be a spread of stuff you really shouldn’t eat, but it would be rude not to have a little something.

As for moving around, well, who has the time? There aren’t many places you can safely walk to, so we drive everywhere. Most of us work in jobs that require us to sit most of the day. And once we get home we have to watch our favorite TV show, surf the Internet, or fire up the Playstation. Sometimes I wonder if we even need our legs anymore.

The deck is definitely stacked against you if you are trying to eat right and be more active, but the situation is not hopeless. There is a difference between something being difficult and being impossible. Losing weight is merely difficult. Okay, maybe I should say it is very difficult. But it’s not impossible.

What you really have to do is commit yourself to going to war with the world around you. We live in a culture that promotes sloth and gluttony, and if you are going to overcome those bad influences you need to recognize them and actively resist them.

Look for opportunities to get up and move around. Walk whenever possible. Park in the back of the lot instead of looking for that spot near the door. There is always some project around the house that needs doing – tackle it. The more strenuous it is the better.

Start thinking about what you eat. We tend to consume food mindlessly, while we’re doing other things. Pay attention to your appetite and only eat when you are really hungry. When I was a kid and I wanted a snack, my Mom would tell me to eat some fruit. If I said I “wasn’t hungry for that” and asked for junk food, she said I wasn’t really hungry. She was right.

We are habit-forming creatures. That works against us a lot of the time, because bad habits are so easy to fall into. But it can work in your favor, too. Good habits, once they take hold, can drive you to do the right things.

Once you get used to exercise it becomes addictive and (believe it or not) you’ll find yourself eager to move around and do things. And fattening food becomes less desirable, over time, when you stay away from it.

The key is making up your mind, and taking action. No one ever loses weight accidentally. The world may be against you, but you are stronger than you think.

If only the real world was like an Obama speech

2009-04-08T20:52:00.000-04:00

Whatever your opinion of our current president may be, you have to give him this – the man is no slacker. He has been a very busy guy from day one, and he is not afraid to make big decisions and grand gestures. Whether he’s getting the country out of a ditch or driving it off a cliff is a matter of opinion of course, but no one can deny that he’s got his foot down hard on the accelerator.

This week the president was overseas, sharing his charisma and can-do spirit with various foreign audiences and heads of state. One of the main items on his agenda seems to have been to start repairing our battered image in the eyes of the international community. He had this to say in a speech before an adoring crowd in Turkey:

“"Let me say this as clearly as I can. The United States is not and will never be at war with Islam. In fact, our partnership with the Muslim world is critical ... in rolling back the violent ideologies that people of all faiths reject."

His words are stirring and packed with an emotional punch, as we’ve come to expect from him. But, as we’ve also come to expect, some of the ideas expressed in those words don’t seem to have much connection with logic or reality.

To be sure, it is true that we are not nor could we ever feasibly be “at war” with Islam or any other religion. Islam is a large, diverse belief system practiced in many different parts of the world and in many different forms. We could not conceivably go to war against such a thing even if we wanted to.

So I have no argument with the first part of the quote cited above. But that last part about us having a “partnership with the Muslim world” and “rolling back the violent ideologies that people of all faiths reject” suffers from a bad case of what-is-he-talking-about.

If we have secured some sort of partnership with the entire Muslim world, that news somehow escaped my notice. The “Muslim world” is as diverse and hard to pin down a concept as the religion of Islam, and I can’t begin to imagine how we could secure a partnership with such a thing.

And it is beyond ludicrous to suggest that “people of all faiths” reject “violent ideologies.” The men who flew those planes into the World Trade Center were people of faith, as were those who planned and finance their operation and those who cheered the success of their mission after the fact.

What the president was describing was the world as he would like it to be, a world where the great majority of people of all faiths shared the same ideas about peace, community, and freedom. It’s a shame that we have to live in this world and not the one that exists in his speech, but such is life.

In fact there are tenets of Islam that are practiced by a significant portion of its adherents that conflict directly with some of our core beliefs, such as freedom of worship and expression. You can quickly earn a death sentence even in some of the more moderate Islamic countries if you say something considered to be disrespectful to their Prophet or dare to convert to a different religion.

Some of these countries are our allies of course, because in a complex and imperfect world we have mutual interests with them that outweigh our disagreements, for the time being at least. But make no mistake, here in the real world there are differences in our belief systems that run deep and are dearly held on both sides. Barring a sudden shift in the value system of one side or the other, any partnership we have with the “Muslim world” figures to remain a tenuous one at best.

I won’t be going to this tea party

2009-03-25T20:29:00.001-04:00

It would seem that an increasing number of Americans have finally, at long last, become alarmed with the way our federal government is deficit-spending us into financial oblivion. There have been protests breaking out all over the country, often referred to as “tea parties” in reference to that historical tax revolt in Boston during our colonial days, designed to send a message to Washington that they need to do a better job managing our money, or else.

Given my deeply-held and oft-expressed concern about our country’s debt situation, you might think that I’d be first in line to join the party, hold up a picket sign, and lob tea bags (or something heavier) at whatever big-government liberal happened to wander by. But you would be mistaken.

For one thing, I’m highly suspicious of the motives behind these protests. I have to wonder what these protesters (who are being egged on by certain right-wing media “personalities”) were doing while President Bush and a Republican congress were burning through money like there was no tomorrow. Sure, Obama and his cohorts are expanding the hole with a much bigger shovel, but it seems like too much of a coincidence that this display of outrage is so perfectly coordinated with the changing of the party in power.

But the worst part of this whole thing is how the protesters are trying to relate what we’re going through now to a uniquely brave and dangerous act of defiance by some truly disenfranchised individuals. Remember, the colonists in Boston were protesting taxation WITHOUT representation. They did not have an opportunity to vote for or against the people who were bleeding them dry from across a wide ocean.

We are in a very different situation. President Obama and every single member of congress were elected by the very people on whom they are perpetrating, and have long been perpetrating, the financial chicanery that has an increasing portion of the population in an uproar. Do you really want to know who is really to blame for the mess we are in? Go take a look in the mirror.

Instead of carrying signs and waving around dehydrated plant matter, Americans who believe the country is moving in the wrong direction need to think about making some real changes in leadership. Everyone seems to think that managers of failed corporations like AIG should be replaced, but how about the members of congress who were asleep at the wheel (or even actively participating in the problem) while these businesses skirted or ignored laws and business standards designed to discourage the nonsense they were engaged in? Do they deserve to keep their jobs?

I would say no, and a year from now some of them will be coming before you with their hats in their hands imploring you to let them continue to “finish the important work they have started.” Maybe you would say that we should throw the bums out, but do you really mean it?

Would you vote for someone who said they would oppose ALL pork barrel spending, even if it meant your district got short shrift when bacon was being served? Would you vote for someone who pledged to yank Social Security and Medicare back into the real world, even if it meant tax increases and benefit reductions? Would you vote for someone who told you that the government really can’t manufacture jobs, wealth, security, or any of the other good things in life that we all want, but that everyone has to work hard to procure those things for themselves and their families?

I certainly would vote for such a candidate. In fact I have in the past, but usually I’m joined by less than 2% of the voting public. Until that changes you can hold all the rallies you want if it makes you feel better, but don’t expect anything to change.

Please don’t arm the animals

2009-03-11T19:35:00.000-04:00

If you ever get to the point where you don’t feel like you have enough to worry about, just scan the news headlines for a few minutes and you’ll find plenty of things to lose sleep over. The economy is still in a tailspin. Fresh military threats loom in the Middle East and on the Korean peninsula. You can’t even eat peanut butter without worrying about getting sick.

And now it seems that we are faced with a brand new, heretofore unrecognized threat – the possibility of an interspecies war. We were all shocked to hear about the 200-pound pet chimpanzee that mauled a woman a few weeks back, but we probably all assumed it was an isolated incident. New evidence suggests that it may have been the beginning of a disturbing trend.

Consider the story of Santino, as 31 year-old chimp who lives at the Furuvik Zoo in Sweden. It seems that during his time at the zoo, Santino grew tired of the insolent humans laughing and pointing at him from behind the safety of their protective fencing. Thumping his chest and howling in protest only seemed to encourage the hairless yahoos who tormented him, so he came up with another way to show them his displeasure.

Early in the mornings, Santino would carefully collect a pile of rocks and set them aside while the humans lined up to “watch the funny monkeys.” Then, without warning, he would suddenly fill the sky with a hail of stones and watch contentedly as the hapless members of the “dominant” species scrambled for cover. When he ran out of rocks he was even bright enough to look for weak spots in the concrete portions of his habitat and knock them out to restock his arsenal.

Experts in animal behavior were amazed at the amount of planning, imagination, and forward-thinking Santino exhibited with his rock-throwing shenanigans. They aren’t sure if all chimpanzees are capable of this sort of creative thinking or if Santino is some kind of simian Einstein, but either way the cause for concern on our part should be clear.

We need to ask ourselves what will happen if Santino and his ilk ever get their hands on more lethal weaponry. You may find that line of thinking to be ridiculous, but how much more difficult is it to point a gun at someone and pull the trigger than it is to carefully select a well-shaped rock and hurl it at someone? It is not at all hard to imagine an ape of Santino’s caliber being able to figure out just what a gun is for and how useful it can be in influencing human behavior if he ever got his hands on one.

But, you may say, what human would be dumb enough to arm a chimpanzee and teach it to shoot? I say the surprising thing is that this has not happened already. We live in a world where people teach chimps to do lots of things that people do – wearing clothes, eating with utensils, smoking, even “talking” to us using rudimentary sign language. How far-fetched is it to think that someone, somewhere who has access to both a chimpanzee and a 9 mm will make that fatal leap in logic?

In fact, it is not difficult to imagine some of the more radical environmental and animal rights groups deciding to arm the ape world so that they may defend themselves from the oppressive human race on a somewhat more even footing. Anyone who has ever seen the “Planet of the Apes” movies may feel a chill run up their spine. Could we be on the brink of witnessing life imitate art?

I can’t say I’m enamored with the idea of taking a full-time job peeling bananas for our simian overlords, but it’s probably not the worst thing that could happen. Lord help us all if cats ever take over.

Let the sun set on Daylight Saving Time

2009-02-25T18:33:00.000-05:00

When I reflect on the person that I was 20 years ago, I hardly recognize myself. My values, my priorities, and my ambitions have all undergone radical changes with the passage of time. Some of the things that seemed to be of great import in my younger days have all but disappeared from my mental radar screen, while others that I may have taken for granted back then have my full attention now.

One of the things that I scarcely gave a passing thought to as a young man was my health. I could pretty much do as I pleased with my body and there were few consequences. Excessive physical activity, poor nutrition, sleeping only when it was convenient – all of these vices I used to be able to indulge in without a second thought and I was still able to roll out of bed every morning and face the day more or less at full speed.

Now it is a very different story. I have to take care of myself or I know I will pay the price. So even though I wouldn’t call myself a health nut, I try to make good decisions when it comes to how I treat my body. That means working outside all day in the mid-summer heat is not an option, a bag of potato chips no longer passes for a meal, and I try to be in bed every night long before David Letterman does his opening monologue.

But sometimes, no matter how hard I try to take care of my health, things happen outside of my control that force me to engage in unhealthy behavior. That can be very frustrating. And one of those frustrating, out-of-my-control health hazards will be making its regularly scheduled (and unwelcome) visit in just a few weeks. I am talking about the menace known as Daylight Saving Time.

Soon I will be forced to “spring forward”, losing a valuable hour of sleep one night and (even worse) hopelessly mucking up my circadian rhythm for untold weeks to come. It isn’t fair, it isn’t right, and as far as I am concerned it doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Daylight Saving Time is supposed to allow us to enjoy an “extra” hour of daylight in the spring and summer months, but frankly I believe I would enjoy those days much more if I wasn’t half-asleep most of the time. There is also a school of thought that says it saves on energy costs and is good for certain types of businesses, but those contentions have never been quantified or proven.

The benefits of changing our clocks twice a year are relatively nebulous and anecdotal, but the costs to our collective health are concrete and well-known. Lack of proper sleep has been shown to be a major health hazard afflicting many Americans, and setting and resetting the time twice a year significantly aggravates the problem.

Therefore I believe that it is time to stop springing forward and/or falling back. Let’s pick a time and stick with it, and we’ll all be a little healthier and a little less grumpy all year ‘round.

If you feel the same way, you might be asking yourself if there is an organization that is fighting to get DST repealed and if said group has a web site. There is, and they do. If you’re interested, surf on over to www.standardtime.com and see how you can get involved in ending the madness known as Daylight Saving Time. Sign the petition and click on the links that tell you how to write your congressional representatives to share your feelings on the matter with them.

Hey, I know this isn’t curing cancer or anything, but I really believe we would all be a little happier and healthier if we introduced some stability into our time keeping system. That’s a (lack of) change I can believe in.

Added stress from the boss does not increase productivity

2009-02-11T18:45:00.000-05:00

“I need this done yesterday. “

“I’m really counting on you to meet this deadline.”

“The schedule is very aggressive, but we have to come through for the customer.”

If you’ve been in the working world for any period of time, chances are you’ve heard these phrases or something very similar from a boss who was exhorting you to get something done quickly. No doubt he or she believed that giving you that kind of “encouragement” was necessary and part of their job. They would likely justify their actions by saying that tight deadlines are part of reality in the business world, and sometimes a boss has to force employees to face unpleasant realities so that they’ll be motivated to give the extra effort needed to get the job done.

That kind of thinking seems to be conventional wisdom in the business world, but I’ve never been a fan of that particular management style. I’ve certainly had some experience with it.

I spent 15 years working for defense contractors, and in that time I learned that a contractor often wins a job by being “aggressive” in estimating how long it will take for them to accomplish it. Once the contract is won, workers are charged with making the fantasies dreamed up in the marketing department become reality. Sometimes that just isn’t feasible, and that’s when mangers start quoting military leaders who implored soldiers to overcome long odds for God and country. As a worker you realize that what they are really saying is that your weekends are no longer your own.

I often felt that all of the stress managers tend to put on employees when there is not enough time in the day to get everything done is actually counterproductive. Most people simply do not do their best work under stressful conditions, and that seems to be especially true when the task at hand is largely intellectual rather than physical. It seemed to me that all of the hand-waving and mandatory 7-day work weeks might actually be making those projects take longer than they would if everyone wasn’t acting as if the world was coming to an end.

It is always gratifying when scientific studies seem to add weight to one’s pet theories, and today I have a message for managers everywhere who believe they can browbeat their employees into meeting unrealistic deadlines – you might just be making things worse.

As evidence I cite a study performed by Michael DeDonno at Case Western University that was reported in the December issue of “Judgment and Decision Making”. In the study, test subjects were asked to perform an intellectually-intensive task and were given a set amount of time to complete the task. Some of the participants were told that they had plenty of time to complete the task, while others were told that time was short and they needed to hurry.

Unsurprisingly, those who were not “pressed for time” performed markedly better on the task. But perhaps a little surprising was the fact that even those who were, in fact, given less time to finish but were told that they had plenty of time performed better than those who were given more time but told that time was of the essence.

The lesson here is obvious, but one they apparently do no teach in management classes: putting pressure on people to solve intellectual problems faster is counterproductive. And my experience in the business world backs that proposition up. Without exception, all of the projects I was involved with in which people were constantly badgered to meet an unrealistic schedule were a disaster for everyone involved, including the customer.

But is it true that a placid, “let’s just do the best we can” management style would be more effective for a time-crunched project? Good question. If I ever experience that approach, I’ll let you know.

Evaluating Obama’s first week

2009-01-28T18:57:00.000-05:00

I’ve held off on writing anything about Barack Obama for as long as I possibly could. Lord knows we have been saturated with media coverage of the new president to an extent that we have never experienced before, and I didn’t want to be just another of the million voices dissecting his every move.

But when it came time to pick a topic for this week’s column, the only stories that seemed to be choking out every other topic in the news were Obama and the floundering economy. And frankly when I think about the economy I become too depressed to move, much less write anything. So, without further ado, here are my thoughts on President Obama’s first week on the job.

- I don’t believe I have ever seen the mainstream media fawn over anyone the way they have for Obama. Any minute you expect the anchor or reporter covering his latest act to proclaim his/her undying love for the man. That makes me a little nervous. The press is supposed to act as a watchdog when it comes to our government. How likely is it that some reporter who thinks they have uncovered a scandal or evidence of wrongdoing in this administration would get the go-ahead to report on it from CBS News or the New York Times? I don’t like the odds on that one.

- We have our first black president. I understand that this is news, and I understand why this is exciting for a lot of people. But I wonder how many people feel the way I do and could care less if the president is black or white, male or female, gay or straight, or whether he’s a Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, or atheist. I really only care about what he DOES while he’s in office. What decisions will he make and how will those decisions affect me and my family? That’s really all that matters to me. But I feel as is I’ve wandered away from the herd with this attitude. Again.

- Obama is every bit the godsend to right-wing talking heads that they could have hoped for. In less than 10 days he has rolled back abortion restrictions, pledged to shut down Guantanamo Bay, moved to toughen environmental standards, and more or less apologized to the Muslim world for Bush’s hard-nosed anti-terror tactics. This environment has to be much more favorable for them than when Bush and a Republican congress were in charge and less popular with the public than Rosie O’Donnell’s failed variety show. Rush Limbaugh hasn’t been this giddy since he got off the happy pills. I’m just waiting for him to say “this guy is more overrated than Donovan McNabb.”

- Somewhat under the radar was Obama’s pledge to hold a “fiscal responsibility summit” in February with the goal of coming up with a plan to address our unsustainable fiscal position in relation to entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare. It is mind-boggling to imagine this summit taking place even as the government is in the midst of an unprecedented deficit-spending binge as they try to rescue our moribund economy but, well, that’s the plan. Anyone who reads this column regularly knows that the federal deficit and the entitlement program mess is the windmill I most often tilt at, so in spite of my deep skepticism that this will amount to anything I was pleased to hear that this issue is at least on the Obama table. In the highly unlikely event that anything resembling a serious plan to deal with the problem emerges from the summit, it is possible that I will be forced to join the ranks of the Obamaniacs. I may even get one of his t-shirts and tape over the “Change” slogan with a “Fiscal Responsibility” proclamation.

Laziness and desperation lead to a dangerous fake death

2009-01-14T20:32:00.000-05:00

Have you ever made such a mess of your life that you just wanted to start completely over? I’m sure many of us have felt that way at some point and maybe, in the throes of regret over tragedies we have brought upon ourselves, we’ve even considered doing some crazy things to try and erase those mistakes and start fresh.

Perhaps some of us who are creative thinkers have even considered doing something completely off the wall, like, for instance, faking our own death. But 99.99% of us would never in a million years really do such a thing. We would realize that these things are usually unsuccessful and are extremely embarrassing when they don’t go off smoothly.

Ah, but then there is that other 0.01% of the population that does not allow rationality to get in the way of their “brilliant” schemes. And every so often a member of that exclusive group goes and does something spectacular, and spectacularly stupid, and the rest of us can only watch the situation unfold and marvel. We were treated to just such a scenario this week.

By now you have probably heard about Marcus Schrenker’s ill-fated attempt to escape his numerous personal and legal difficulties by faking a death-by-plane crash. The plane did indeed crash, but it didn’t take long for people to notice that when it did so he was not inside. And when a strange man showed up at someone’s door at 2:30 AM along the flight path of said plane claiming to have been in a “canoe accident”, the inevitable sad ending to this saga was irrevocably set in motion.

It is hard to imagine how this guy’s plan ever seemed like a sound one. My guess is that a great deal of beer may have been involved.

First of all, any fan of bad movies could have told Schrenker that if you are going to fake a death-by-plane crash you have to steal a body that is roughly height and weight proportionate to your own and have it sitting in the pilot’s seat when you jump out. Duh!

Also, leaving the plane to fly over a populated area where it might crash into someone’s house when it ran out of fuel – not the best idea. How about pointing the thing out to sea, Marcus? You might even get lucky and it might sink and get lost, never to be recovered.

In fact I think a plane crash is one of the worst ways to fake your death. It draws way too much attention to the situation, and the odds that your true intentions are likely to be discovered are much higher that way. It seems it would be a lot smarter to be low key.

What’s wrong with telling everyone you are going hiking to some remote location and just never coming back? People will assume you got lost and if you are not specific about your plans they won’t even know where to look for your remains.

Or here’s one I like a lot - how about going to visit an active volcano, on your own, dropping a shoe next to the mouth, and slipping away never to be heard from again? “Must have fallen in,” people will speculate. It’s not like they’re going to even try to recover that body.

And that was just off the top of my head. This isn’t rocket science. Instead we have unmanned planes dropping out of the sky and endangering everyone’s safety because some guy couldn’t be troubled to think his fake death plan through properly.

If you are in a desperate situation and considering doing something drastic like this, I strongly encourage you to reconsider. Facing up to your problems is very likely to be a higher percentage solution. But if you are dead-set on a pretend death, put some thought into it and keep the safety of innocent people in mind. After all, you want people to remember you fondly.

A love affair – with your money

2008-12-30T19:16:00.000-05:00

A long time ago, when I was a much younger man, I fell in love and decided that I wanted to get married. And of course when I proposed to my intended bride I had a diamond ring in hand to legitimize the proceedings.

With me being a student and of very limited means at the time, the ring contained only a very, very small diamond, but I was honoring the engagement ring tradition as best I could. Everybody knows that a marriage proposal has to include a diamond ring or it’s not a real proposal, right?

It was something that I really didn’t give much thought to at the time, and I’m sure I assumed that the engagement ring tradition must have stretched back for many generations. It turns out that assumption was quite wrong, and that the link between diamonds and “true love” is actually the product of a genius marketing campaign that took place a lot more recently than I would have imagined.

As late as the 1930s diamond engagement rings were mostly seen a luxury enjoyed only by the very wealthy. In fact, the market for diamonds at that time was anything but robust. Large deposits had been discovered in South Africa, and the De Beers Company (which has long held close to monopoly power in the diamond market) found itself sitting on a big pile of shiny rocks that most people felt they could easily live without.

That, of course, would never do. And so they decided to unleash the power of marketing on an unsuspecting public. They hired N.W. Ayer and Son, the first advertising agency in the US, to disabuse Americans of the notion that their lives could have meaning without diamonds.

The agency got some of the big shots in Hollywood to start sporting their product. Newspapers began running stories on how diamond rings symbolized romance. They even sent lecturers into high schools to embed the link between love and jewelry into impressionable teenage minds. The master stroke came in 1948 when a copywriter at Ayer (ironically a female who remained single all her life) came up with the now-ubiquitous slogan “A Diamond is Forever.”

The campaign succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. In the span of a few decades, marriage proposals and diamond rings had become inextricably linked and De Beers’ profit margin grew from $23 million in 1939 to $2.1 billion in 1979. And by 1988, a young man like me looking to take a wife had nary a second thought about obeying the dictates of De Beers and N.W. Ayers.

Spying the man behind the curtain like this always makes me a little uncomfortable. I have to wonder how many of the things I unthinkingly follow as long-standing cultural traditions are actually carefully manipulated schemes deigned to control my behavior and separate me from my hard-earned cash.

The whole concept of Valentine’s Day immediately comes to mind. And the gift-giving frenzy portion of the Christmas tradition was undoubtedly dreamed up in some company’s boardroom as well. Really anywhere you encounter the idea that there is a “tradition” that dictates that affection should be expressed via the purchase of goods is probably something that was invented on Madison Avenue and was likely unknown to your great-great grandparents.

Don’t get me wrong – I am a fan of capitalism and advertising is an important part of the system. It’s just that there is something creepy about realizing how big companies can manipulate our collective consciousness in regards to things like love, family, and tradition in such a calculated manner.

I’m beginning to understand why people get more cynical as they get older. Unbridled optimism only seems to grow tall in a field of blissful ignorance. And as the De Beers obviously realized, it is best fertilized with a healthy portion of, well, you know.

You can’t upset me sonny, I’m old

2008-12-17T20:26:00.001-05:00

Given the fact that I find myself getting a little older just about every day, I’m always on the lookout for something that passes for good news about aging. This week I came across a story about a study that was conducted recently at the Duke University Medical Center that might, depending on your interpretation of the results, qualify as a blessing of advancing age.

The study had some older folks (average age 70) and some younger folks (average age 24) look at some photographs, some of which had disturbing images. Later they hooked the test subjects up to brain monitors and asked them to recall the unpleasant images.

They found that when the young people brought the negative images to mind the emotional center in their brain was very active, but the older folks used the frontal cortex (where the higher level reasoning and problem solving occurs) to recall the same images. So the researchers concluded that a younger brain tends to react more strongly on an emotional level to negative experiences than a more mature brain. But why would that be the case?

The study hasn’t provided an answer to that question as yet, but I have a few theories based on my own life experiences. I can think of two reasons why a person gets less worked up about the bad things in life as they get older: experience and perspective.

To be young is to constantly find novelty in life. The first time you get your heart broken, or get fired from a job, or face the death or serious illness of a loved one, it is an earth-shaking experience. After these things happen once, twice, then three times, the earth shakes a little less each time it happens. By the time a person reaches their 70s, a number of bad things have happened to them and it simply doesn’t rock their world like it did when they were younger.

Another reason we may get less and less emotional about adversity as we get older is an evolving perspective about what is important in life. To a young person aging and death are far-away, almost unreal concepts. But to a person over 70, mortality has become a familiar companion who has made his presence well-known in your consciousness.

How does that affect your reaction to life’s little tragedies? Well, once you realize that aging and death actually apply to you, many of the things that once seemed like serious problems tend to lose their emotional punch. You begin to really understand the import of the old “what difference will this really make when I’m dead and gone?” line of thinking.

A mature person realizes that there are a very few things in life worth getting upset about. The death or serious illness of a close friend. A major terrorist attack in your home country. Your house burning down. Those are real problems worth shedding tears over. But how many of those things are likely to happen to you in a typical day?

So your car won’t start, or someone made a snarky comment at your expense, or you’re having a bad hair day. If you’re 25, any of those things might be enough to put you in a bad mood. If you’re 75, you are probably thankful that you lived to see today, and you aren’t about to let some minor inconvenience spoil your appreciation of this fragile gift of life that has been bestowed on us.

It’s called wisdom, and it’s generally something that can only be purchased with time. Still, even young people might want to keep in mind that time worrying is usually time wasted. And trust me - you don’t have as much time as you think you do.

The burden of judgment

2008-12-03T19:06:00.001-05:00

This week I did something I’ve never done before – I served as a member of a jury on a criminal trial. I have been called for jury duty a number of times over the years but was never picked to sit on a jury. I guess I figured I just wasn’t the type of person that defense and/or prosecution lawyers wanted deciding their cases, so I was a little surprised to hear my name called.

But this time it was called, and I thought I might relate some of my thoughts on the experience for your reading pleasure.

- This was my first visit to the “new” Houston County court facility and I have to say that it is a huge improvement over the cramped, aging structure in downtown Perry that I visited in my previous calls to jury service. There was plenty of parking outside the building and the inside was spacious and climate-controlled, luxuries not afforded to visitors at the old facility. Hats off to everyone who helped make this new and much-improved courthouse a reality, including the judge who issued a court order to light a fire under our local government to get to work on it.

- I would have to say that every employee I had dealings with during the process of serving on a jury – guards, bailiffs, lawyers, judges, and everyone else – were capable, conscientious, polite, and even entertaining on occasion. I have never had a better experience interfacing with any branch of our government.

- I have a very different perspective on our legal system after being involved with it so directly. Of course I was familiar with concepts such as a presumption of innocence until proven guilty and the right to have one’s fate decided by an impartial jury, but it’s quite another thing to see them put into practice by real live flesh and blood people. I am more grateful than ever to live in a country where the state does not have the right to deprive its citizens of their freedom until they have proven they have just cause to do so to a group of people who don’t have a personal interest in the outcome.

- Our justice system was designed by some very smart people and I don’t believe it could be improved very much. However, even the best system breaks down if all the people involved are not competent and motivated to do their jobs. When people rave about how our justice system is “broken” they are placing the blame in the wrong place. When the system fails it is because somebody somewhere dropped the ball.

- As far as my experience in the jury room goes, it was more stressful and nerve-racking than I could have imagined. There is a great deal of responsibility involved in playing a part in deciding whether or not another human being gets sent to prison. And on top of that, you have to come to a unanimous agreement with 11 other individuals on just where the truth lies in circumstances where there will almost certainly be some room for doubt on either side.

Frankly, I understand better than I did before why a lot of people would prefer to avoid jury duty if they can. However, as the judge reminded us at the beginning of our service, we have to ask ourselves if it was us or a close friend or family member who was on trial, or who had been a victim of someone who was on trial, would we think it was worth someone’s time to listen to the evidence and render a fair and carefully considered decision on the charges in question? And if the answer to that question is yes, is it fair to expect other citizens to take up that burden is we aren’t willing to do the same when we are called?

The ever-evolving concept of marriage

2008-11-19T19:55:00.000-05:00

It’s been more than two weeks since America elected its first African American president, and the excitement is still running high. But that wasn’t the only major story to develop on Election Day. A hotly contested ballot initiative to squash gay marriage in California was also approved, and gay rights supporters are not taking the defeat quietly.

Perhaps they should have seen it coming. Numerous states (including Georgia) have put “Defense of Marriage” amendments to their constitutions on the ballot in recent election cycles and they generally pass by solid margins. It seems clear that a majority of Americans are not ready to extend full marriage rights to gay couples, though that majority does appear to be shrinking, especially among younger folks.

Supporters of the California initiative advanced their case using an argument that has become ubiquitous in these campaigns. Marriage has been a sacred bond between one man and one woman since the dawn of human history, they say, and those who seek to extend marital recognition to gay couples are on a crusade to tear down this pillar of our moral foundation.

It’s a powerful argument, but as we all should have learned in our high school social studies classes, it’s not a very accurate one.

The fact is that the restriction of marriage to one man and one woman is a relatively recent social convention. For a very long time, the standard practice in many societies was for marriage to be a sacred contract between one man and as many wives as he could afford to support. For examples of widely practiced polygamy one need only crack open the Old Testament, where it is reported to have been practiced by many important spiritual figures and is never expressly condemned or forbidden.

But some would argue that polygamy is an ancient practice that has rightly been tossed on the scrap heap of history and that marriage has been recognized by right-thinking persons as a one man/one woman proposition at least since the founding of our great nation. And that is true, but even in the US it is misleading to say that the concept of marriage has been a static one.

Until a Supreme Court decision in 1967 struck them down, numerous states (including Georgia) had laws on the books that made it a crime for white people to marry anyone outside of their race. The fact is that even in America, and even in relatively recent times, the concept of who should be allowed to marry has evolved over time, and most of us would even agree that is a not a bad thing.

But is it time for marriage to be radically redefined once again to accommodate same-sex couples? Frankly the libertarian in me wonders if that is really the question we should be asking ourselves. Maybe the question we ought to be asking is whether or not it is a good idea to rely on the government to decide which unions God does or does not sanction.

I wonder if it is time that we draw a bright line between the civil and the religious aspects of marriage. Maybe a couple looking to build a life together should have the option to engage in a strictly civil union, or be joined together in a religious ceremony, or to do both – separately.

That would leave the debate over which unions God does or does not sanction to the church and the individual, and the debate over which unions the state should recognize to the government and the voting public. It seems like a logical solution to me, but it is probably a non-starter because it fails to appeal to the irrational, emotional side of people that usually takes over all decision making faculties around election time, and at most other times for that matter.

And so, I now return you to the competing chants of “We demand our civil rights!” and “God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve!” that will surely entertain you in the months and years to come. Enjoy.

Local governments know how to spend big too

2008-11-05T19:20:00.000-05:00

I have recently come to the conclusion that I could never be a successful politician. There just seems to be a stark difference between the way I see reality and the way the people who run our government see it. And that is particularly true when it comes to financial matters.

Being the simple, non-sophisticated type that I am, I would naturally assume that when you are managing the budget of some municipal body you’d use a lot of the same principles that you’d use to manage a family budget. I would be careful that I was not spending a lot more than I was taking in. I’d research major purchases thoroughly before committing funds to them. And when tough times hit, I’d tighten my belt and learn to get by on less money to avoid digging myself into a bigger hole.

But that kind of small-minded thinking obviously has no place in government. It’s easy to see that at the national level as evidenced by the eye-popping deficits we run each year, but there are good examples of how local politicians like to “make it rain” with our tax money as well.

This week Houston County residents passed a referendum that will raise our property taxes to fund a new hazard warning system. The new tax is expected to generate about $1.8 million, a figure that was initially calculated as what it would cost to purchase sirens that could be heard by 95% of county residents. However, some time ago it was decided that a system that depended on sirens alone would be inadequate, and currently there is no definitized plan on exactly what the county is going to purchase with that money.

Had I been in the loop on this, I would have suggested that the government decide on exactly what kind of system they were going to buy and how much that system would cost before I proposed any tax increase. What is the old saying about buying a pig in a poke? But we’re trusting types in Houston County, and we obviously don’t mind handing over our money in hopes that our representatives will find something good to spend it on.

For another example of forward-thinking economics we turn to Centerville, where the city government held the first of a series of meetings this week to explain to citizens why they think it would be a good idea to raise their property taxes a whopping 27 percent.

Many angry citizens filled council chambers to express their displeasure with the potential tax increase, which comes at a time when citizens are suffering the effects of the worst economic downturn in a generation. Patient city leaders calmly explained to their constituents that even though city is not currently running a deficit they need more money from them to fund things like infrastructure improvements and “promoting downtown businesses.”

Puzzled business owners who attended the meeting seemed confused by the concept of promoting business by raising property taxes on businesses, and many attendees strongly encouraged city leaders to look for ways to cut costs in lieu of raising taxes on cash-strapped citizens. I personally live in Centerville, and based on my non-scientific polling of average citizens I’d say that sentiment is pretty widely shared.

And that’s just too bad. Centerville residents need to catch the same spirit that voters who approved the disaster warning system obviously tapped into. It’s the spirit that says to government, “take my money - I trust you’ll find something good to spend it on.”

Personally, I don’t think I could adequately represent people who are that generous with their money and that trusting of their government to spend it responsibly. Maybe a lot of my neighbors feel the same way. After all, when was the last time an incumbent got turned out of office around here?

Does socialism equal happiness?

2008-10-22T19:55:00.000-04:00

I got quite a bit of feedback from my last column, the one in which I mourned the apparent demise of our great nation. I came very close to rewriting that piece because I thought the tone might have been overly pessimistic, but apparently lots of other people are feeling the same way I am right now. I think we’re all looking hard for a silver lining to the cloud that is hanging over us and we’re just not finding it.

A few of the people who wrote to me wondered what I might do if the country really does go into the tank and stays there for the duration. Would I give up and search for greener pastures in some other country? In my case that’s very unlikely for a lot of reasons, at least in the short term, but it is an interesting question to ponder. If you decided to leave America, where would you go?

Since I’ve never actually travelled outside the United States, I have a hard time coming up with a reasonable answer to that question. But I’m not the type of person to let a lack of knowledge and experience stop me from expressing an opinion on a subject, so I decided to take a look at the various surveys that have been done in recent years that ranked countries based on the relative happiness of people who live there to see if any of them stood out.

One country seemed to keep coming out on top in most every “happiness index” I could find. According to the vaguely scientific polling I was able to compile, the happiest spot on the planet is Denmark. Now if you’re like me, your knowledge of Denmark can probably be summed up by saying “that’s somewhere in Europe, isn’t it?” But if this is as close as we can get to heaven on earth, maybe we should look into this country a little more closely.

Right away I have to warn you that if “socialism” is a dirty word to you, you aren’t going to like Denmark. They believe in very high taxes and lots of big government programs there. The average “Joe the Plumber” in Denmark ponies up about half his income to the government. That’s the bad news. The good news is that education (all the way through college), health care, child care, elder care, and a whole lot of other goodies are provided for every citizen.

That’s all well and good, but of course like any socialist country there’s a price to be paid for all that “evening out.” Everybody has enough, but nobody has a whole lot. People don’t go to Denmark to seek their fortune. They really have a different way of looking at life in a place like that.

I believe that for someone who was born and raised in America it would be hard to get used to a way of life that is that laid back. America has always aspired to greatness. From the very beginning, people came here to do big things. They came to found churches, to make their fortunes, to achieve.

I believe that spirit is still alive today, and that is what is making our present situation so hard to bear. We’re not used to managing our expectations. A fall is always much worse when it comes from a great height.

Nevertheless, it appears that we may be on the road to being a lot more like Denmark. If we elect a guy who wants to “spread the wealth around” and who believes that health care is a “right”, it is likely that we’ll be moving a lot closer to that socialist ideal of a government that is very large, very expensive, and very involved in every aspect of the lives of its citizens.

I just don’t know if it’s going to make us happy.

The sun begins to set on another great civilization

2008-10-08T18:38:00.001-04:00

If there is one thing that is becoming increasingly clear in this season of election year politics and financial catastrophe it is this: the Great American Experiment is rapidly drawing to a close. Representative democracy was a nice idea on paper, and we made a pretty good run of it, but ultimately it seems to be unsustainable.

Its basic flaw has become obvious – it invests too much trust in human nature. The individuals who drew up the plans for our form of government were a unique collection of intelligent, self-sacrificing souls who sought to create a nation that would encourage all its citizens to live and work as they saw fit without interference from their government. They had witnessed firsthand how the human spirit is constricted and deformed by an all-powerful, self-serving form of government and they wanted to show the world a better way.

I believe they would have been astounded by how well their plan succeeded. People have been flocking to our shores for over 200 years because it’s hard to keep it a secret when you create a place where people can build a good life for themselves by the sweat of their brow and even worship God in whatever manner they choose without fear of getting their head chopped off. Most of us don’t appreciate how unusual that opportunity is, but few people who have lived on this earth have ever experienced it in the abundance that we have.

And now, I fear, we are members of the generation that will see that dream come to an end. For some time we have demanded that our government provide us with a cure for all our ills, and anyone who advanced a claim that he could cure those ills was rewarded with a plush seat in the halls of power. The price for those cures has proven to be much too steep, but we have long since abandoned the long view in these matters.

People weren’t saving enough for retirement, so the government created a mandatory retirement program. Older Americans and the poor could not afford health care, so the government created a mandatory health care program to take care of them. They also created programs to “fix” the education system, the environment, the housing industry, and on and on. Billions of dollars (much of it financed with deficit spending) is spent each year to solve every crisis, and every new crisis (the War on Terror, hurricane relief, big business “bailouts”) demands a new solution and more money that we don’t account for.

Watching the presidential and vice presidential debates is severely distressing for anyone who believes that our biggest problem is our own failure to shoulder sacrifices and accept responsibility for our shortcomings. The Democrats proudly carry the standard of government in the role of a compassionate Big Brother and the Republicans give lip service to their long-dormant principles of small government even as their actions brand them as hypocrites. (Note how quickly the GOP’s principled stand on the $700 billion bailout of the financial industry crumbled as another $100 billion in pork was added to buy enough votes to pass. Of course it worked. It always does.)

No matter who wins the election in November, the course of the nation is already set. The government will continue to try and spend its way into our hearts until the deficit falls over and collapses on top of us. At that point the consequences of our collective irresponsibility will begin to dawn on many more people, but there won’t be much we can do about it then except to take our place next to other great civilizations that have collapsed after rotting from the inside.

A bad case of election year apathy

2008-10-08T18:36:00.000-04:00

Usually when we’re this close to a major election I use this space to praise a candidate I favor or (more often) to slam one that I think is especially deserving of my wrath. But not this year. I hate to admit it, but I feel so disconnected from the political process and the direction our country is heading at this point that I can’t generate much interest in this election or in any of the people who are running for office.

I think the massive failure of our financial system and the government’s “let the taxpayers bail us out, again” response to it has proven to be the last straw for me. I believe we are traveling down a path from which there will likely be no turning back, and at the end of this trip I fear that we will not recognize the country we are living in.

If you’ve read any of my previous columns, you already know that the federal government’s out-of-control spending and our crushing national debt has long been a major issue for me. So you can probably imagine my dismay in the wake of this recently announced plan to dedicate nearly a trillion more dollars that we don’t have to bail out a bunch of big corporations that have been run into the ground.

Frankly, I can’t even wrap my mind around the kind of thinking that leads a supposedly intelligent, well-educated group of adults to conclude that this is a wise course of action, but really this is a fitting final chapter for an administration whose mantra has always been “spend, spend, spend…and by the way here’s a tax cut.” And it wouldn’t be Bush program unless it included a little nose-thumbing directed at the US Constitution. Consider this quote from the treasury secretary’s draft proposal for the bailout plan:

“Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.”

Go back and read that again. What that is saying, very plainly, is that the secretary of the treasury would have absolute authority to spend $700 billion of your money as he sees fit and would be answerable to absolutely no one. Period.

What country are we living in here? It can’t be the United States of America, can it? To be sure, it is not the country that our founders envisioned. They came up with an excellent plan, and so long as we followed it we were, I believe, as close to an ideal place to live as the world has ever seen.

But that nation no longer exists, and the Constitution does not seem to be any sort of obstacle to those who wish to manipulate our finances and personal lives as it pleases or benefits them. Neither of the two major parties has shown any inclination to arrest that trend, and thus neither of them deserves my vote.

Is this the end of American Dream? Are we truly witnessing the final phase of the “Great Experiment”? Perhaps, but I hope not. I believe there is some possibility that the storm that has begun raging on Wall Street and in Washington DC (one that I believe is going to get much worse in the coming years) could, at long last, convince a majority of Americans that our government is truly broken and in need of an overhaul.

I don’t think that such an overhaul is going to occur while our government is in the hands of those individuals pleading for your vote during commercial breaks from “Dancing with the Stars.” We need change all right, but all we are getting from Republicans and Democrats is more “nanny state” nonsense wrapped in different packages. And I just can’t distinguish the lesser of evils anymore.

Who is really holding the glass ceiling in place?

2008-09-10T19:58:00.000-04:00

The nearly-successful campaign of Hilary Clinton and John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate have put the issue of the proverbial “glass ceiling” back on the front burner of the nation’s consciousness. Women are closer than ever to climbing to the top rung of power in our country and we are all being forced to confront any gender bias we might be harboring.

That bias might just show up in places where you wouldn’t expect it. Numerous polls have shown that women are more likely than men to express reservations about voting for a female president. It’s enough to make you wonder just whose hands are holding that glass ceiling in place.

And politics aren’t the only place where women may have some issues with other women in positions of authority. There are signs of disturbance in the workplace as well.

A new study done by Scott Schieman and Taralyn McMullen at the University of Toronto and published in the September edition of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior suggests that women are generally happier working for male bosses than female bosses.

Thousands of men and women who worked for either male or female bosses had their stress levels monitored in the survey, and the results showed that men experience about the same level of stress whether they are working for a man or a woman. Women, on the other hand, reported experiencing far more stress when working for female bosses.

The study offered no explanations as to why that would be the case, but I have my own theory, and since you’ve come this far you might as well read on and see what it is.

Stress is closely related to our emotional state, and men and women are very different creatures when it comes to how we deal with, and are affected by, our emotions. Women are much more complex than men in many ways, and that is certainly apparent when it comes to how we relate to other human beings on an emotional level.

Men, for example, generally deal with interpersonal conflicts by seeking to avoid them if possible or at least resolve them quickly and move on. Women, on the other hand, tend to demand more satisfying resolutions to disagreements and do not seem to be able to let go of conflicts nearly as easily as men.

What does that have to do with bosses and the work place? Well let’s face it – work is often an inherently stressful place. And if there is any sort of friction between you and your boss, the stress can quickly intensify.

Men tend to let such conflicts come and go rather quickly and forget them soon afterward. Disagreements between men and other men are resolved so quickly they can usually be measured in seconds. Conflict between men and women is somewhat more complicated, but most often the man either gives in or gives up, and the woman generally realizes the futility in a one-sided argument and moves on.

When two women are in the picture, conflict resolution is anything but simple. You have two emotionally complex creatures, one in a position of power over the other, who may hold on to disagreements over long periods and fight many subtle battles that never truly get resolved. No doubt it can become exhausting and frustrating.

Does that mean women shouldn’t work for other women? Of course not. It’s just an aspect of human nature we have to be aware of and deal with as best we can. Women work together and accomplish great things every day, and usually manage to avoid killing each other or having a stroke in the process.

And one day in the not-too-distant future I am sure we will see a woman in the White House. But she should probably choose a man as her running mate. That job is stressful enough as it is.

Pull up your pants, son – you’re in Warner Robins

2008-08-27T22:12:00.000-04:00

I realize that I’m a little late to the party on this one, but some issues are so important, so crucial to the public interest and our way of life, that they must not be allowed to pass without comment. I am referring, of course, to the passing of the sagging pants ban by the Warner Robins city council last week.

The ordinance that was passed on a 4 -2 vote makes it illegal to be nude in public (who knew that wasn’t already against the rules?) and also makes it a crime to let one’s britches sag more than 3 inches below one’s beltline. And all across the city, young men who spent lots of money on fancy boxers they planned to show off with a “sag” wailed their disapproval.

Much has already been said about this momentous piece of legislation, and the council has received a lot of flack on these pages for outlawing what basically amounts to a questionable fashion choice. Some people have even questioned the council’s mental faculties, especially given that a call for a ban on cell phone use while driving, a practice that has been shown to endanger people’s lives, wasn’t even given serious consideration at the same meeting.

I for one am also unhappy with the ordinance, but not for the reasons most of its detractors are.

Council was correct in banning the sag - the look is an affront to both decency and aesthetics. My problem is that once they made the decision to take a stand on proper attire, I think they should have gone all the way with it. They missed a golden opportunity to implement a strict, city-wide dress code that could have made Warner Robins the best-dressed city in the USA.

Wouldn’t it be nice to live in a city where everyone dressed modestly and appropriately at all times, and where offenses to the gods of fashion were consistently punished with fines and prison time? Call me a dreamer if you will, but the bold move by the Warner Robins city council has inspired me.

In their next meeting, I propose that they consider adopting a more ambitious ordinance mandating proper attire within the city limits. And to give the new rules some teeth, they should establish a brand new branch of the city police department to enforce them. All around the International City tacky dressers will learn to fear the iron fist of the Warner Robins Fashion Police (WRFP).

Here are my suggestions for some additional rules that should be added to the city dress code for the WRFP to enforce:

- Tight and/or revealing clothing should only be worn if you have the body to pull it off. Unless you have the body of an Olympic athlete, it is best for all concerned if the finer details of your physique are left to our imagination.

- T-shirts with slogans on them should not be profane or inordinately stupid. Any guy who wears a shirt that says “I can’t help it if your girlfriend won’t stop staring at me”, for example, is a danger to himself and others and is in need of correction.

- If you are wearing shorts and socks at the same time, the socks must be white. (People over the age of 65 would be exempt from this one.)

- If you are a 12 year-old girl you must dress like a 12 year-old girl, and not a 21 year-old girl who might possibly be a street walker.

- This isn’t exactly clothes-related, but it needs to be a law nonetheless – no comb-overs! Once and for all guys, get it through your head – you aren’t fooling anyone.

- Unless you are a resident of Texas who is visiting the city, the wearing of cowboy boots with a suit is not permitted. (Sorry, Mayor Walker!)

Running into middle age

2008-08-13T20:14:00.000-04:00

Like most people, I find that I am getting older every day. And like most people, I’m not too thrilled about it. Unfortunately I don’t have a lot of say in the matter, so I am learning to cope.

I think when I passed 40 the reality of aging really began to set in. I don’t consider myself to be “old” just yet, but I can now see senior citizenship on the horizon. There’s no changing reality of course, but I decided that it was time that I put more focus on my health so that I can increase the odds that I will age gracefully.

The most significant thing I have done along those lines is to start exercising regularly again. It had been at least 10 years since I had a regular exercise routine when I made that resolution, but when I started a new job this year that included free membership at a gym I decided that it was time to get back into it.

Back in the 70s and 80s I was caught up in the jogging craze that swept the country. If you’re my age or older I’m sure you remember how popular it was back then. A lot of us could be seen wearing warm-up suits and headbands as we trotted alongside the shoulder of the roads in our neighborhood. I was running up to five miles 3 or 4 times a week at the time and I actually enjoyed it.

So naturally when I thought about exercising again I wanted to include running as part of my routine, but I wondered if I might be too old now for that sort of thing. Would I have a heart attack after the first half-mile? Would my knees give out within the first month? Would water aerobics be a more realistic regimen for a man my age?

I decided that the best way to find out would be to give it a try, so I went out and bought a new pair of running shoes and hit the indoor track. After about two months of running three times a week I’m happy to report that both my heart and my knees are holding up just fine.

And this week I came across a news item that made me feel very good about my decision to get back into running. A study from Stanford University School of Medicine seems to indicate that people who run regularly in their middle years are more active and have fewer disabilities than non-runners when they reach their 70s and 80s and are they are also 50% less likely to suffer an early death. Even knee-related problems were more common for relatively inactive test subjects than for people who ran for exercise on a regular basis.

This study is just latest in a long string of them that suggests that regular vigorous physical activity is the closest thing there is to a fountain of youth. The most significant cause of disability as we get older is not the passing of time, but inactivity. People who exercise regularly do feel the effects of age, of course, but the declines are far more gradual than they are for sedentary people.

I realize that it gets harder to do just about everything as you get older, and exercise is certainly no exception. But as we need to keep in mind that if we don’t push ourselves to get off the couch and move around we will be spending more and more time confined to that couch and eventually we won’t be able to get up from it without assistance.

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.

Timmy and the Magic Money Machine

2008-07-30T20:02:00.000-04:00

On a recent trip to our nation’s capital I went on a tour of the some of the major buildings where our federal government conducts its business including the Supreme Court, the Capitol Building, and the White House. At the end of the tour, our guide (an affable fellow named Ted) asked if we had any questions.

It turns out there was a precocious young man in the crowd named Timmy who looked to be around 12, and he had some rather interesting questions for Ted. The following is how their conversation went, to the best of my recollection.

Ted: Now are there any questions about anything we saw on today’s tour? Yes, young man?

Timmy: Yeah, how come we didn’t see the Magic Money Machine?

Ted: The what?

Timmy: The Magic Money Machine. I asked my Dad where the government gets the money for all the things it spends it on every year, and he said they must have one of those.

Ted: (Chuckles) No young man, your Dad was pulling your leg. The government actually has to collect money from its citizens, the taxpayers, to finance all the neat things it does for us.

Timmy: Oh, I see. (Thanks for making look like an idiot, Pop.) So that’s how the government decides how much to tax people, then? By how much it spends each year?

Ted: Oh heavens, no. The government spends a lot more money than it collects in taxes most years. It’s called “deficit spending.”

Timmy: It sounds like we’re getting back to that Magic Money Machine thing again.

Ted: Not exactly. The government actually has to borrow the money from investors and pay them interest on it.

Timmy: Hmm. So each year the debt keeps building up? And the interest we have to pay on that debt keeps going up too?

Ted: Yep.

Timmy: But isn’t that kind of…stupid? If you keep doing that, you’ll eventually have more debt than you can keep up with, and the interest payments alone will be more than you can handle.

Ted: That’s true. But it’s even worse than that. We also have huge entitlement programs called Social Security and Medicare that pay benefits to retired people. We’re about to see a huge wave of people hitting retirement age, and we’re going to have a lot less people working and paying taxes and a lot more people clamoring for these government benefits. No one knows how the government is going to stay afloat financially when that happens.

Timmy: You’ve gotta be kidding me dude! How can that happen? Isn’t it illegal or something?

Ted: Nope. There’s nothing in the Constitution that constrains the way Congress handles our finances. The only limit on their spending habits is their own consciences. Which is to say there is no limit.

Timmy: How do these people SLEEP at night? Can’t they see how badly they’re screwing the country?

Ted: Have you seen the people who run things around here, son? Most of them are over 50 and they aren’t likely to be around when the financial time bomb finally explodes. They’re leaving it for your generation to deal with. And they keep getting reelected, so they figure the voters must feel the same way they do.

Timmy: WHAT!?!? What is WRONG with you people? (He had turned red and was glaring at the adults in the crowd, most of whom were avoiding eye contact.) Why do you keep electing people who are hosing your children and grand children with these hare-brained financial decisions?

At this point most of the adults in the crowd had started to slink away and Timmy’s embarrassed parents were tugging at his arm, trying to drag him off. But I stood there, transfixed by his youthful indignation, and he noticed me staring at him.

He pointed at me and said “Well, what have you got to say to the younger generation, Mister?”

I just shrugged and said “Hey, don’t blame me kid. I vote Libertarian.”

Is Barak Obama a marked man?

2008-07-16T20:59:00.000-04:00

It’s not unusual to hear supporters of Barak Obama admit, usually in a low voice, that they are worried. They are worried about his safety. Racism is still alive and well in America, they say, and it’s not hard to imagine some nut job taking a shot at him sooner or later.

I wish I could say that those fears are unfounded, but I can’t. I believe people are generally a lot less closed-minded on matters of race than they were a few decades ago, but I don’t think we will ever completely stamp out bigotry. It’s an unfortunate but undeniable part of human nature.

But according to some observers, racists aren’t the only ones who may have it in for Mr. Obama. (If you’re a Barak fan and you’re also a natural worrier, I suggest you read no further.) He may have some dangerous enemies most of us haven’t even thought about yet – Muslim extremists.

You’ve probably heard that Obama was born to a Muslim father, a man from Kenya who was not really involved in his life. Obama claims that he has never been a Muslim himself, and I’m inclined to take him at his word. However, that may not make much difference to some of the more conservative practitioners of Islam.

According to some interpretations of Islamic doctrine (and you know when it comes to religion there is always more than one point of view) a man who is born to a Muslim father is automatically a Muslim himself. For life. If he chooses not to practice Islam when he is an adult that does not mean he was never a Muslim, it means he is an apostate. And of course the penalty for apostasy is death.

And so we have to face the possibility that our future president could be seen as something much worse than an infidel in the eyes of the eyes of some Muslims. That might not, obviously, be a good thing in terms of Mr. Obama’s personal safety.

It also might not be a good thing in terms of our relations with Muslim countries. It has been assumed in some quarters that replacing the evangelical Christian we currently have in the White House with a liberal Christian with a Muslim-friendly name and family history would automatically ease tensions between the US and the Muslim world. Perhaps not. Perhaps an America led by a man who had abandoned the faith he was born into would inspire even more condemnation than we are already experiencing.

I don’t think anyone can say how these sorts of things will work themselves out with any certainty. Human beings, and the governments they spawn, are quite unpredictable by nature, and much depends on circumstance and the personalities of people as they interact with one another.

The big question is - should we let this sort of thing influence whether or not we vote for Obama? Given all the challenges our country currently faces, can we really afford to elect a president who might spend his time in office dodging bullets and causing even more friction between us and the Islamic world?

I submit that we had better not start thinking like that. Barak Obama has every right to be where he is and to do what he is doing. In America we believe in freedom of religion, and if someone has a problem with that, they are the ones with the problem. They are the ones who need to “change.”

I’m not an Obama supporter and I don’t plan on voting for him in November. But that has nothing to do with fear for his safety or worry over how he might be perceived in the Muslim world. We’re supposed to be electing a leader after all, not a spokes-model or a goodwill ambassador.

Leaders look forward, not back over their shoulders. We should all try and do the same.