Jindal Jabber

When Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal delivered his rebuttal speech to President Obama’s address to Congress on Tuesday night, I was reminded of Sheriff Andy Taylor delivering one of his homespun homilies to a contrite Barney Fife. Except, of course, that Jindal’s speech contained a lot more bullshit and made much less sense than anything Sheriff Andy ever said to his numbskull deputy.

Before Jindal finished telling his disingenuous story about how he and real-life Sheriff Harry Lee defied FEMA bureaucrats to come and arrest them for trying to rescue people from rooftops in flooded New Orleans, another memory began to surface; something about Jindal’s face looked eerily familiar. But, as the Governor’s speech went from lame to lamer and my outrage over his remarks inferring that volcano monitoring is unnecessary spending threatened to make my head do a Mt. St. Helens, I temporarily lost that train of thought.

Hey, if the cost of volcano monitoring displeases Jindal so much, maybe he could apply that same reasoning to other early warning systems; think how much money the government could save if it cut off funding for NASA, USGS, NWS, USFS, and other organizations tasked with gathering information that has the potential to save people’s lives. Applied evenly, Jindal’s logic could turn everyone’s life into a crapshoot (or a crapchute—take your pick). And I’m sure that billionaires would appreciate the resulting tax breaks. But, I digress.

The following day, many of the blogs I follow featured a portrait photo of Bobby Jindal, and the memory I spoke of earlier once again tried to surface. Then—suddenly—a random thought, summed up in a single word, made the memory complete. Freckles! Simply add a sprinkling of freckles to Jindal’s face and you’ve got a near-perfect likeness of Mad Magazine’s poster boy.

In fact, the resemblance is so striking that I now propose that all future displays of Bobby’s portrait photos be accompanied by the caption, “What, me worry?”

And when Bobby Jindal and Sarah Palin campaign for the Presidency in 2012, they can do so using the campaign slogan, “What, us worry?”

I’m still undecided if this is something I should worry about.

The Beginning of the End . . .

Environmental degradation, global climate changes, pending food and water shortages, a looming energy crisis, a burst housing bubble, massive (and growing) unemployment, unrelenting war, a pending transportation crisis, crumbling infrastructure, and a foundering economy based on unsustainable revolving credit should be enough to tell us we’re doing something wrong. Is anybody paying attention? Probably not, at least not until this season’s reality TV shows have run their course.

A perfect storm of calamities has overtaken us, and none of the proposals so far put forth by the President, the House, the Senate, Wall Street buff . . . er, tycoons, the Federal Reserve, corporate CEOs, and all the other pay-to-play or paid-to-play performers in the powerbroker hierarchy are ambitious enough or smart enough to head it off or to even mitigate some of the damage it’s causing.

Politicians afflicted with tunnel vision and an ingrained belief that political expediency is the best tool for addressing whatever problem arises are as much to blame for this perfect storm as the people who set the various components of the storm in motion by manipulating the economy for personal gain. If they realize that dealing with the core problem, the economy, in exactly the right way will cause all related problems to resolve themselves, they’re keeping it a closely guarded secret.

In regards to the economy, forget about recession; that car went behind the pit wall a long time ago and a full-blown depression replaced it. As our economic engine continues to lug down to a standstill, what we need, now—more than a gear change to bring the engine back up to speed—is a complete change of vehicles. Maintaining the status quo is not a viable option, and doing more of the same things that got us into this mess is not going to get us out of this mess.

While most people who are in a position to do something about it agree that some type of stimulus spending package needs to be implemented quickly, few agree as to how much money to spend and what to spend it on. Rather than entertain ideas that will actually work, the GOP (Greedy Obstructionist Politicians) snipe at Democratic proposals while arguing (erroneously and disingenuously)) that free markets and tax cuts for the wealthy are the best solutions.

Meanwhile, the Democrats steadfastly refuse to grow the spines and/or the balls necessary to tell the Repugthuglicans that they’re no longer in charge. Did Rome burn while Nero fiddled around? As a matter of fact, it did, and much the same thing seems to be happening here, only on a larger scale.

The key to getting the economy back on track is to get money moving again, and only banks and government have the financial clout to make it happen. Middle-class/working-class people can’t and won’t be much help; until their jobs are secure and future paychecks guaranteed they aren’t likely to spend money on anything but absolute essentials—the most basic of basic necessities. One-time stimulus payments are more likely to end up buried in the back yard than they are to flow into the economy.

Letting the banks fail would have dire consequences for the economy and therefore is not an option, but before forking over huge amounts of the taxpayers’ cash to bail them out, government should reinstate all of the regulations that were removed since the beginning of Reagan’s deregulation orgy and impose a few new regulations to insure against further abuses.

As it stands, Timothy Geithner’s bank rescue plan is a formula for failure. At the least, government should nationalize the failed and failing banks, fire the executives responsible for this disaster, cancel all bonuses and “performance” awards, sell off the fleets of corporate jets and executive limos to someone who can afford to waste the money, and do whatever else it takes to restore solvency and put the banks back on the path to profitability.

What we are witnessing now is nothing less than the end of life as we know it, and the situation is sure to get worse before it starts to get better. That’s just the way these things work. But the end doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing; the end of one thing could be the beginning of something new, of something more equitable and fair for everyone, of something that measures wealth not in terms of money but in quality of life.

In the end, reality will trump political ideology. In the end, we will either get it right or we won’t. If we get it right, the end will signify the end of the beginning and suspend the game of politics as usual. If we don’t, the end will be just that—the end of everything human.

Cynic that I am, at this point in time I’m betting on won’t.

B.A.D.! B.A.D.! B.A.M.!

It all started Sunday afternoon when I landed on Chuck for . . . to play a little catch-up. When I finished reading Chuck’s latest post, I could barely see the top of a graphic posted right below the heading Blogroll Amnesty Day, but it grabbed me, so I scrolled a little further down the page to see what it was all about. And before I realized that I was about to open a can of worms, I opened the can of worms.

Not long after, I arrived at Jon Swift, where I learned even more about Blogroll Amnesty Day and how bloggers use it to promote other blogs while promoting their own blogs in the process. From there I made my way to Skippy the bush kangaroo, where I let the ‘roo apply some polish to my newfound knowledge until I was convinced that that blog, too, should become a full-fledged member of my blogroll. And from there . . . well, that’s where the aforementioned can of worms comes in. But more about the worms in a minute.

As it turns out, promoting one’s blog the Blogroll Amnesty Day way is nothing more complicated than adopting a liberal blogroll policy; simply blogroll lots of B- and C-list blogs, and get them to blogroll yours in return. In other words, it’s all about exchanging links, much like knowledgeable Webmasters have done to promote their Web sites since the second Web site went online.

Although I think that Blogroll Amnesty Day (B.A.D) is a bit of a misnomer and that it should be renamed Blog Appreciation Day (also B.A.D.) to better describe what the event is about, I understand that it’s an event steeped in years (2) of tradition and that the founders may not be willing to let go of that.

From my standpoint, however, a simple name change may not be enough. Because I do everything slower these days (often, a single blink turns into a two-hour nap), an extended duration for the event would be most welcome, too. Perhaps we could call it Blog Appreciation Month (B.A.M.), instead. More time in which to get things done will give me more time in which to get things done. Or more time to procrastinate; I’ll be happy either way.

In the spirit of Blogroll Amnesty Day, I’m resigned to dedicating the entire month of Feb-roo-air-ee (as Hart Williams admonishes) to adding more blogs to Frieddogleg’s blogroll. I’ll be looking for and adding blogs and contacting those bloggers as time permits. And that brings me back to the subject of worms.

Oh, yes, about the worms. They’ve insinuated themselves into my daily routine, subverted most of my plans for the year, wormed their way into my heart, and generally become the most delightful nuisances I could ever imagine (but can’t imagine doing without). I’ve already introduced you to a few of those worms; I’ll introduce you to many more in the days to come.

And if you’re a blogger who has added this worm to your blogroll, let me know so I can return the favor. E-mail me at peteyATperfecttextDOTcom (mention “blogroll” in the subject line), or post the necessary information in a comment to the latest entry at Frieddogleg.

Don’t let your blog get left behind. Today is B.A.D., and a better day to begin an aggressive blog promotion campaign may or may not loom on the horizon. Don’t miss this opportunity for self-aggrandizement; get started now. You know you want to.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

One thing I’ve learned since getting high-speed Internet service a few weeks ago is that I’m now able to waste vast amounts of time more efficiently and much faster than I could using a dial-up connection.

Another thing I learned is that making the switch from dial-up to cable isn’t comparable to, say, trading up from a 1947 Chevy to a Porsche 911 GT2, as I’d been led to believe; it’s more like trading up from a ’53 Chevy to an ’86 VW Scirrocco 16-valve, a car that falls far short of Porsche’s brute performance but which, nonetheless, is seriously capable of striking fear into the hearts of passengers when driven at or near its theoretical limits by a competent driver (and capable of striking even higher levels of fear into the hearts of passengers when driven by an incompetent one). But enough of this Internet access-as-car analogy.

20/20 hindsight once again brings into perfect focus the many downsides that always seem to accompany even the most benign of technological advances. For instance, YouTube videos never presented a problem before high-speed; at roughly 11 minutes of download time to gain one minute of play time, they simply weren’t worth the required time investment, and so I rarely engaged in watching them.

But now that video download times outpace playing times by a factor of three- or four-to-one, I can—and do—watch numerous videos every day. So, there’s no time-savings here. In fact, there’s a net time loss. Or should I say a ‘Net time loss?

Then, there are the many visits to the many Web sites I never frequented because they took too much time to load. Well, that’s not a problem now, either. For example, I gleefully spend hours on the Girl in Short-shorts blog because, since incorporating high-speed service into my game plan, the page—with its numerous delightful photos—loads in just under 20 seconds as opposed to . . . well, I don’t know, for sure; I never hung around longer than about ten minutes, which was scarcely enough time to download the photos to mid-page. But now, thanks to Comcast, that’s all in the ever-more-distant past.

Because the time required to access various other blogs and Web sites is now a fraction of what it formerly was, I access more various other blogs and Web sites more often—and spend more time on them—than ever before. But, I suppose, with high-speed Internet service, I can justify just about anything. What I can’t do is reconcile the advantages of a faster Internet connection with the lost productivity that came along with it.

If these “fer instances” prove anything, they prove that modern technology is not always a good thing, that technology, in solving one set of problems, quite often and unexpectedly delivers another.

And so, the bottom line is that nothing’s changed; things are the same way now as they’ve always been.

The hurrier I go, the behinder I get.

An Affair to Forget

The good news is that, at least for the time being, Sam Adams will remain Portland’s mayor despite pressures from The Oregonian and Willamette Week, et al, to step down.

To his credit, The Oregonian columnist Steve Duin encouraged Sam to stay and duke it out, as did many of Sam’s more hardcore supporters. We've got more important things to do than worry about whether or not someone has a sex life and whether or not they lie about it (almost everyone does, if not to embellish an otherwise dreary sex life by admitting to affairs that never happened then to cover up affairs that did, or to maintain secrecy about kinky sexual proclivities deemed too embarrassing to talk about). The elephants in the room have been screwing the donkeys for years, but most people are disinclined to even raise an eyebrow—not to mention debate—over that.

What kind of people demand to know the lurid details of another person’s sex life? Nosey thrill-seekers desirous of satiating their prurient interests while paying homage to voyeuristic tendencies, to be sure, but also opportunists hoping to create a scandal for the purpose of taking down a rival, and those mentally challenged insecure souls who leap at every opportunity to vent their self-righteous moral indignation against people with whom they happen to disagree. But mostly it’s people who expect to be lied to—who enjoy being lied to—that delve into the private sex lives of public figures. Why else would you even ask the question when you know that it’s guaranteed—guaranteed—to precipitate a lie?

The whole sordid story of Sam’s brief affair with Beau Breedlove smacks of character assassination for political purposes, and it prompts me to ask these few questions:

Who leaked the story? How was the story leaked? Why was the story leaked? When was the story leaked? Who benefitted from the story being leaked? Was anyone other than consenting adults involved? Who are the aggrieved parties (other than the willing participants whose privacy was invaded)?

The answers to these questions can reasonably be expected to reveal the identities—and the motives—of those with axes to grind.

Does an expression of affection (such as a kiss) between a forty-something adult and a seventeen year-old minor constitute a sex crime? Before you answer, make sure you know the differences between forcible rape and statutory rape; the distinctions between them are huge. Oh, and if you’re a parent be careful how you answer, lest you inadvertently put yourself in the position of having to defend against the criminal charges of rape, pedophilia and incest at some point in the future merely because you desired to express love and affection for your child. You, too, can become a victim of someone’s malevolent intent.

Did Sam make errors of judgment in responding to the allegations? Of course he did. Rather than lie, he could have said, “I won’t dignify that question with an answer” or “My sex life is neither appropriate for nor open to public debate” or “I’ll tell you mine if you’ll tell me yours—you go first” or, to put it in terms that leave absolutely no room for ambiguity, “My sex life is none of your fuckin’ business.”

Despite what Sam’s detractors say, Sam hasn't broken the trust of the people. On the contrary, the people of Portland have broken Sam’s trust in them, and in the process made it extremely difficult for him to do his job, which is to conduct the people’s business.

How Sam conducts his personal affairs that are unrelated to the people's business is none of the people’s business.

Aye, Barack Who's Sane Obama . . .

Except for a minor stumble when Barack took the oath of office, yesterday’s eggnogregurgitation . . . no, wait, that’s a Christmas event . . . inauguration, that’s it . . . went off without a hitch. Regardless of whether you call it a bumble, a fumble, or a stumble, or a glitch, a hitch, a stitch or a sonofabitch, it was no big deal. Of course, that didn’t stop the media from trying to spin it into something bigger than it was. You’d think yesterday was a slow news day, or something.

When you put the historical significance of the event in proper perspective, it’s easy to understand why something as simple as reciting an oath of office might run off the rails, so to speak. Tensions, excitement, anxiety, and emotions all run high at times such as these, interrupting trains of thought. Let’s just give those guys a pass and help them go on about the business of healing the country.

Besides, two hundred years from now no one is going to remember that, for however brief a time, two men—one a Supreme Court Justice, the other taking the final step to becoming President of the U.S.—were temporarily out of sync.

Barack Obama, with eyes slightly glazed over, was probably thinking, yippy-ki-yay, muhfuh, I’m being sworn in as the nation’s 44^th President. How cool is that? Meanwhile, Chief Justice John Roberts, with eyes slightly glazed over, was probably thinking, yippy-ki-yay, muhfuh, I’m swearing in the 44^th President of the United States. How cool is that? Neither one of these guys was reading the body language, nor the subtle facial cues, of the other, making a hiccup in the proceedings all but inevitable.

But, hell, I almost didn’t notice. With eyes slightly glazed over, I was thinking, yippy-ki-yay, muhfuh, George Bush is gone, the Bushwhacker is history.

How cool is that?

Murder on the Disorient Express

The following is part of an e-mail message from ColorofChange.org that landed in my in-box this morning. After taking the liberty of editing it for clarity and continuity, I took the liberty of posting it here. Yeah, it's that important!

"On New Year's Eve, Oscar Grant was shot execution-style by transit police officer Johannes Mehserle in Oakland, California. He was shot in the back while lying face down on a subway platform, unarmed and restrained by other officers.

Despite damning video evidence, it took nearly two weeks for the District Attorney to arrest Mehserle and charge him with murder. The DA admitted that it was only due to massive public pressure, including more than 20,000 ColorofChange members speaking up, that he moved even at that pace.

That's why it's so important for each of us to commit to staying involved. Johannes Mehserle's arrest is important, but it's only the first step. In cases like this, history has repeatedly shown that as soon as the public eye turns away the prospect of justice fades.

In 14 years as Alameda County District Attorney, Tom Orloff had never before charged a police officer for an on-duty shooting. And when asked, several legal experts were unable to come up with any examples of officer-involved shootings becoming murder cases in California.

But overwhelming public pressure made it impossible for Orloff to ignore Oscar Grant's murder. He said that "because of the intense public interest I think more resources were put into wrapping this up than would be put in in other situations." Orloff made it clear that because enough ordinary people spoke out, he poured investigative resources into this case that his record tells us he never would have, otherwise.

We've exposed a chink in the armor of a system that protects trigger-happy cops instead of regular folks. Now there's a real opportunity to create systemic changes that would introduce transparency and accountability to police forces across California, and especially to the BART Police Department. We need to keep the pressure on Tom Orloff to make sure he keeps devoting time and energy to Mehserle's prosecution.

We need you--and so does Oscar Grant's family. Making sure the prosecution does its job and pushing for much-needed reforms requires your voice. Help honor the memory of Oscar Grant and others who have fallen victim to police violence."

Please, join me in standing up for justice in the murder of Oscar Grant.

Thanks.

Subverting Marijuana Mythology*

Forget everything the government has told you about marijuana (except that it's currently illegal). The government was wrong when it made its bogus case against marijuana 71 years ago, and it's been wrong ever since.

Some basic research into marijuana reveals the following:

• "Marijuana" is a Mexican slang term for the dried leaves and flower tops of cannabis sativa, the common hemp plant.

• Marijuana has demonstrable medical uses and benefits, despite government claims to the contrary.

• Cannabis hemp was a mainstay of economic activity on the North American continent for more than 200 years.

• Unlike alcohol and tobacco, both legal substances that are collectively responsible for as many as 500,000 health-related deaths annually, marijuana has never been shown to be a primary cause of death among its users.

• Cannabis hemp has the potential to reshape and revitalize the economy in myriad ways, including revamped paper and textile industries, new biofuels production facilities, and manufacturing of products for domestic use and for export.

• Society has not collapsed in any country where cannabis is legal.

Despite reams of empirical evidence to the contrary, the U.S. Government persists in perpetuating the myth that marijuana—cannabis hemp—is far too dangerous to be allowed a legitimate place in civil society. And too many fools persist in believing everything the government says is gospel truth.

If marijuana were legalized, the worst that could happen would be the unleashing of a mindstorm of creativity. We might be able to figure out ways to fix our broken political system, our broken educational system, our broken healthcare system.

And the best that can happen? Surely, the best that can happen will arise out of the worst that can happen. Energy independence, a healthier environment, a sustainable culture based on sustainable economic policies and practices are but some of the possibilities.

In short, cannabis legalization—marijuana legalization—would signify the return of sanity to a society gone seriously awry.


*This brief article originally appeared in Petey's Pipeline E-zine, Issue #24, February 06, 2006.


Register your vote for cannabis legalization, today. Visit Change.org/ for more information.

The Problem with Problems*

Global warming, environmental destruction, polluted water, depleted fish stocks, an endangered food supply, an energy crisis, a shortage of affordable housing, poverty, education funding shortfalls, rising healthcare costs, declining numbers (relative to the population) of living-wage jobs, war . . .. These are among the most egregious, most vexing, most persistent problems that plague society today. What are we going to do about them?

The conventional mindset is that if society's problem solvers throw enough money at a problem, or do something equally stupid, the problem will just go away. Sorry! Reality doesn't work that way. In reality, one must attack the source of a problem if one has a serious desire to solve the problem.

Everyone has their own ideas about how to remedy society's most pressing problems, but that, in itself, creates another problem. Most remedies postulated by concerned citizens and well meaning (or not) politicians concentrate on treating the symptoms, not the disease. These are nothing more than feel-good solutions that dull the pain of failed policy while ignoring the underlying cause. They give the illusion of making progress, but deliver nothing of substance.

Feel-good solutions are band-aid solutions; they're stopgap measures at best. The sore that is the crux of the problem continues to fester under the band-aid until the band-aid falls off, at which point the original problem becomes a little more difficult to deal with.

Virtually all of the problems mentioned in the first paragraph of this short essay stem from one source—overpopulation. Until all members of society, from the movers and shakers to the moved and shaken, can recognize, understand and accept this simple truth, and will themselves to act in concert to end our collective nightmare, the nightmare will continue, unabated, to its ultimate, frightful, painful conclusion.

We can take decisive, positive steps to limit population growth by placing sanctions and controls on the front end; we can implement harsh, brutal, extreme measures on the back end; or, we can do nothing, thus letting the status quo prevail. We can do it the sane way, we can do it the insane way, or we can let Mother Nature do it her way. That, too, is a choice. The only certainty is that we, as a species, will either live or die by the choice we make.


*This brief article originally appeared in Petey's Pipeline E-zine, Issue #17, October 17, 2005.

Customer service, please hold . . .

You can always tell when a company doesn't want to deal with customer service issues. The first thing it does is fire all the customer service representatives who take phone calls and replace them with a rat's maze of touch-tone options that were designed by the devil for the sole purpose of driving people crazy.

Around and around you go, pushing a phone button whenever the recorded message pushes one of your buttons, tit for tat, until you forget what your reason was for calling. Somehow, you maintain your sanity until you miraculously stumble across the message that says, "If you're stupid enough to still be on the line and you wish to speak to a customer service representative in person, press '0'." You take a deep breath and press '0,' . . . only to hear another recorded message say, "We're sorry, all customer service lines are busy at this time. Please hold until the next available customer service representative can take your call. "

By now, you're 23 minutes into what should have been a four-minute call. And, you're not done yet. For at least the next 18 minutes, at 30-second intervals, the last recorded message repeats, "We're sorry, all customer service lines are busy . . .."

Finally, a customer service rep answers your call, only to dash your hopes of a quick resolution to your problem against the rocks of frustration when you realize that she probably took her first English lesson at about the same time you started this call.

But, hey! The company already has your money. That’s the only business it cares about.