Royale with Cheese

Today, I am an extremist.  I haven't posted in quite a while, but I had to do a short post in response to what I read today.

"The question is not whether we will be extremist, but what kind of extremist we will be.  Will we be extremists for hate or extremists for love?  Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice --- or will we be extremists for the cause of justice?"

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Attend your local TEA Party tomorrow.

Fouad Ajami has a wonderful piece in the OpinionJournal today about a very recent development in American politics - large crowds gathering around a candidate.  A brief excerpt:

Save in times of national peril, Americans have been sober, really minimalist, in what they expected out of national elections, out of politics itself. The outcomes that mattered were decided in the push and pull of daily life, by the inventors and the entrepreneurs, and the captains of industry and finance. To be sure, there was a measure of willfulness in this national vision, for politics and wars guided the destiny of this republic. But that American sobriety and skepticism about politics -- and leaders -- set this republic apart from political cultures that saw redemption lurking around every corner.

His point is that typically, crowds of screaming sycophants have been associated with third world countries.  Lately, this has really started to leach into the American psyche, and though his argument limits it to Obama, I think it applies to both parties - though the unrealistic expectations are probably better applied to Obama, who seems to be all things to all people.

Look at this... it's a critical media portrayal of Obama.  And coming from Europe of all places.

Worth reading the entire article, but I'll excerpt a bit below.

"And it came to pass, in the eighth year of the reign of the evil Bush the Younger (The Ignorant), when the whole land from the Arabian desert to the shores of the Great Lakes had been laid barren, that a Child appeared in the wilderness."

Awesome.

Not really, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't tempted after reading this.

Apparently, it is late enough in the election cycle for liberal celebrities to begin threatening to move out of the United States if the Republican candidate is elected.  According to Liz Smith over at the always trustworthy New York Post, Susan Sarandon has said that if John McCain is elected, she will move to Italy or Canada.

Is that supposed to be a threat?  Whatever would we do without a spoiled entitled celebrity to tell us how to live our lives?

Also - has anyone ever followed through on this threat?  I seem to remember Alec Baldwin saying the same thing prior to the 2000 election, and I'm quite certain that several actors/actresses said it prior to 2004.

UPDATE - That handsome devil over at What Would Tyler Durden Do has a take on this as well, and confirms my suspicions about Alec Baldwin.  He also mentions that Ms. Sarandon said the same thing in 2000 and 2004.  I guess when you make a living playing pretend, you have a hard time distinguishing reality.

Today's Quote of the Day comes from Marci Hamilton at the Cardozo Law School, who says, in regards to the FLDS child custody raids:

"There is nothing in the First Amendment that says that any religious group has the right to exist, no matter what they do."

Nope. Nothing at all in the Constitution covering religion. I can see no problem with that quote.

Wait... what?

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

I know that we have a new interpretation of the Constitution as a living document and all, but that language seems pretty unambiguous to me. How can a lawyer read the First Amendment and decide that nothing in it indicates that a religion has a right to exist?

To beat the proverbial dead horse, let's recap the concept of the Constitution. The fundamental rights that are protected by the Constitution are rights that all human beings have been endowed with by their creator. The Constitution does not grant rights, but merely protects certain rights from infringement by the government. As a result, there are lots of things that can be considered fundamental rights that are not protected by the Constitution. It is faulty logic to assume that because the Constitution does not "grant" a right such right doesn't exist. Such rights are not necessarily protected from infringement by the government, but they still exist. In this case, the water isn't even murky. It is shameful that a lawyer can get away with this type of dead-wrong interpretation of the foundation of all laws.

An epidemic of witchcraft in Congo.

I'm glad I live in the US where you only have to worry about a crazy lover slicing it off.

Two weeks ago, an army of enforcement agents from the Texas department of child and family services descended upon the YFZ Ranch, a commune owned by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints ("FLDS").  Purportedly, the agents were searching for a 16-year old girl, dubbed "Sarah," who claimed sexual and physical abuse at the hands of her much older husband.

In the process, the Texas authorities removed 416 children from the custody of their parents and placed them into temporary state custody.  To be clear, 416 children were placed into state custody because of a single claim of abuse.  This is tantamount to taking an entire neighborhood's worth of kids into state custody based on one abuse claim in that neighborhood.

Of course, "Sarah" has not yet been found, and there is some question as to whether she even exists.  Apparently, when current and former members of FLDS are asked about the manner in which Sarah spoke and her selection of words, they are completely inconsistent with the terminology used by the members of FLDS and are more consistent with language used by the secular population as a whole.  The example used in the article above is that non-members of FLDS are referred to as "gentiles," but Sarah called them "outsiders," which seems like it's right out of Big Love.  Now there is a criminal investigation into a woman in Colorado Springs who the Texas Rangers think may have made false abuse claims against FLDS.

Since this incident started, I've wondered about the authenticity of the claims and the reaction of the authorities.  It seems an extreme overreaction to take away 416 children, NONE of whom claimed abuse.  This new information seems to confirm my suspicion that these people were targeted because of their religion and not because of any abuse.  This has shades of Waco and Ruby Ridge (luckily without the associated deaths) and raises some serious questions about government tyranny.

Hopefully, over the next few weeks, the truth will come out about this action.  A judge recently ruled that the children will stay in state custody and will be subject to genetic testing to determine parentage.  This seems like a stall tactic to keep the children in state custody as long as possible.  These children should be returned to their parents immediately, unless there are articulable, provable claims of abuse.  It seems to me like these parents are losing their children because of their religion, which the Constitution expressly prohibits.

Again - I'm playing a bit of catch-up here, so you'll have to forgive me for commenting on week old news.

As was all over the news, there were worldwide protests last week as the Olympic torch made its way across Europe and North America.  The torch carrying the "eternal flame" of the Olympiad was extinguished multiple times by protesters as the torch progressed through the cities of the Western world.  For once, I agree with protesters - as does Joseph Farah of Worldnetdaily.

The decision of the Olympic committee to hold the Olympics in China this year was incredibly short-sighted, and shows that the Olympics are all about money.  Human rights continue to be neglected by the oppressive Chinese government, and freedom of speech and information is continuously suppressed.   In fact, based on this posting, I'd be willing to bet that my blog is not the "no-view" list in China (though, I might have pissed them off before now... I'm actually probably lucky I'm still viewable in this country).  Add in the religious persecution of the Dalai Lama and his followers, and you have a level of injustice which is unacceptable for a honor like hosting the Olympic games.

I would not suggest that our government prevent our athletes from participating in the games.  Not only is it unfair to the athletes, it might not have any impact at all.  I do, however, strongly urge President Bush and our other officials and dignitaries to not participate in the festivities and to speak publicly and condemn China's human rights abuses and persecution.

In a new movie, appropriately titled "Zombie Strippers," two of my favorite things, zombies and strippers team up in the most terrifying strip club experience ever.  Well - maybe second most terrifying... there was that dancer with the C-Section scar... <shiver>.  Anyway - Robert Englund and Jenna Jameson star.  Trailer may contain blood, gore, nudity, and explicit language... but not as much as the movie will contain.



I'm surprised that this trailer didn't air during the Grindhouse intermission.

Will I be seeing this... yes.  Unfortunately, it looks like it's set for a very limited release, and probably won't hit a theater near me.  Netflix ahoy!

Ahhh... the words of everyone's mother.  How many times did you mom tell you that life wasn't fair?  Usually, this was a response to a statement of "It's not fair," when something did not go your way.

The Congressional equivalent of "it's not fair," is legislative action, in the form of the ridiculously named Fairness Doctrine.  For those not in the know, the Fairness Doctrine is essentially government control of the way that political issues are presented by those broadcasting on the public airways.  Let's say that you own a radio station that focuses on political talk.  If the FCC determines that your station is not presenting views in an honest and balanced manner, you can be forced to give free airtime to the "other side," whoever that is, regardless of whether or not the listening audience demands (or even listens) to that equal time.

President Bush, who, for the majority of his second term, has been dead wrong on just about every important issue, is dead right on this one.

Supporters of this regulation say we need to mandate that any discussion of so-called controversial issues on the public airwaves includes equal time for all sides. This means that many programs wanting to stay on the air would have to meet Washington's definition of balance. Of course, for some in Washington, the only opinions that require balancing are the ones they don't like.

Why should we give more authority to Washington to dictate what we see, hear and read?  Don't we have freedom of speech in this country?  Ann Coulter makes the repeated point that when liberals can't use the free market or the polling place to get their way, they run to the courts.  This is simply a derivative of that.  Air America failed miserably, and I haven't heard anything about Algore's TV channel.  Americans will not choose to consume liberal propaganda, so the liberals try to use the FCC and legislation to force that propaganda down our throats.  Oppose reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine.

Guess who's back... back again.

Work has been slamming me, so I haven't been blogging much... or even reading other blogs.  Things have cleared up a bit, so I'm back for a while.  I have a entire back catalog of stuff that I've been meaning to blog about, so some of this might seem a bit dated.

One of my favorite columnists, Professor Walter Williams (who fills in for El Rushbo on occasion) wrote a column about the big lie that is ethanol.  Since this blog is essentially devoted to exposing the big lie, I'm obligated to comment on it.

First, the raw statistics.

"Ethanol is 20 to 30 percent less efficient than gasoline, making it more expensive per highway mile. It takes 450 pounds of corn to produce the ethanol to fill one SUV tank. That's enough corn to feed one person for a year. Plus, it takes more than one gallon of fossil fuel - oil and natural gas - to produce one gallon of ethanol. After all, corn must be grown, fertilized, harvested and trucked to ethanol producers - all of which are fuel-using activities. And, it takes 1,700 gallons of water to produce one gallon of ethanol. On top of all this, if our total annual corn output were put to ethanol production, it would reduce gasoline consumption by 10 or 12 percent."

That's right.  The United States is the single largest producer of corn in the world.  We produce 50% of all corn produced worldwide.  That means that unless everyone in the world dropped everything and started producing corn for ethanol, we could never produce enough to alleviate the fossil fuels problem.  On top of all of that, it's not any more environmentally friendly than gasoline to produce (and corn destroys the earth where it is planted).

So, why is ethanol the solution?  If you guessed special interests, you get the gold star.

"Ethanol is so costly that it wouldn't make it in a free market. That's why Congress has enacted major ethanol subsidies, about $1.05 to $1.38 a gallon, which is no less than a tax on consumers. In fact, there's a double tax - one in the form of ethanol subsidies and another in the form of handouts to corn farmers to the tune of $9.5 billion in 2005 alone."

Professor Williams neglects to mention the tax on gasoline, which applies to those gallons containing ethanol just as equally as those without.  We're not even that good at producing ethanol.  Brazil does it with sugar, much more cheaply and efficiently.  But, we can't import that, because "Big Corn" has Congress in its pockets.

Add in that it is causing the price of food to increase, and things start to look bleak.  See, people eat corn, but when there is a huge subsidy on ethanol, it's much more cost efficient to produce that.  Cattle eat corn too, and now it costs more to feed cows.  As a result, the price of meat, milk, and cereal have all gone up significantly.

Here's the root of the problem.  Jack and Jill America think that things like ethanol will help to lower the amount they pay at the pump.  What they don't realize is that all of these alternative fuels (biodiesel, ethanol, etc.) all are going to cost more than a gallon of gasoline costs today (even at $4 a gallon).  What they don't understand is that special interests (Big Corn, environmentalists, etc.) aren't interested in saving them money, but only in achieving their own goals.  We have used some form of combustible oil (from whale oil to kerosene) to power our machines and light our houses for centuries.  The world is going to be hard pressed to find a cheaper method, and the sooner that the average person understands that, the easier this will be.

On a semi-regular basis (read: when I have time at work), I read a blog published by the Gawker Media empire called "The Consumerist."  This is a consumer-oriented blog and gives quite a few useful tips and tricks for making sure that you get what you want from the giant faceless corporations.  As of late, a recurring theme has popped up on the site, which I feel very conflicted about.

Anyone who has been to an electronics store in the last year has probably seen this phenomenon in action, specifically, the checking of your receipt at the door before you exit the store.  It takes all of ten seconds, and is purportedly designed to reduce the stores' shrink from theft.  I would never have expected this to be as controversial a topic at is seems to be.  My position has been to just show my receipt and proceed to my car.  There are some, though (as noted in the link above), who believe that it is an infringement on their freedoms, and consider it to be unlawful detainer if they are stopped from leaving the store for failure to show their receipt at the door.

Setting aside the complete ludicrousness of the 4th amendment argument made by many of the commentators (the 4th Amendment only restricts action by the government, not a private party) - it does raise an interesting issue about whether or not this is one of those incremental losses of freedom that I complain about so much.

Starting from a legal perspective, in order for a "shopkeeper" to legally detain a customer, there must be a reasonable suspicion that said customer has stolen something from the store.  If there is no reasonable suspicion, the shopkeeper would be liable in a civil action for false arrest and any associated crimes like battery (an unwanted touching).  In the cases where the individuals were prevented from leaving (and in the Wal-Mart example where force was used) that shopkeeper would be liable for the damages caused.

However, does it really make sense to resist here?  I understand the various arguments about willfully surrendering freedoms, but how much freedom are we really giving up?  Is there some inalienable right to not be delayed?  The crux of this issue, I believe, is an overinflated sense of self-importance on the part of the customers who were delayed.    Your time is no more valuable than anyone else's.

I think that the stores can resolve this quite easily.  Make all return and exchange policies contingent on the possession of a receipt with a stamp on it.  That stamp is applied when the employee at the door checks the receipt.  If you don't have a receipt with a stamp, no refunds or exchanges.  This will allow those who want to pass without getting their receipt examined to do so, while protecting the store.

I'm actually very interested to hear the thoughts of the forum on this one, since I'm pretty conflicted, but believe in the "go along to get along" school on minor stuff like this.  What are your thoughts?