You, Dear Reader, Are The Enemy

You are the enemy. You probably didn’t know that, but your government reminded me of it just recently.

Lance Corporal Joshua Bernard was killed in Afghanistan the other day. So what? So this. An Associated Press photographer caught his death on film. And the AP sent out the pictures for publication.

Secretary of Defense Gates was shocked, shocked! that such pictures would be published. “Because they are upsetting to the the soldier’s family.” Well, la dee dah. In fact, double la dee dah.

Yes, They’re Going To Pull Grandma’s Plug

No, Virginia. There is no Santa Claus. And YES, Virginia. They are going to pull grandma’s plug. You are a child, so I’ll say this slowly. Your parents, and their adult co-conspirators, have peppered your tiny brain with stories. Really stupid stories. And you believed them because you’re a child, and like children everywhere, you don’t have the foundational experience or the practice in logical thought that grownups are supposed to possess.

It’s Not In the Bill. I Promise. I’m Lying.

We don’t have a health care reform bill. We have about a hundred of them. And when THE bill finally gets to the president’s desk, it won’t look like any of them. So, pardon me if I don’t take anyone’s word for what’s in the bill. Least of all, the president’s word. He will say anything to get “health care reform” passed. The reason that’s in quotes is that from the president’s perspective, it truly doesn’t matter what’s in the bill or what’s not in the bill. And in this context “reform” takes its literal meaning – to make a thing different – rather than it’s implied meaning – to fix something. It doesn’t matter because a bill is not an end, it is a means.

Health Care – Fake Debate, Fake Choices

Some middle-aged men wile away their spare time fantasizing about nubile swimsuit models jumping on  trampolines. I, on the other hand, fantasize about free markets and living in a world chock full of them. This can probably be explained by my love of freedom, and my distaste for trampolines.

We need a free market in health care, as we do in everything. In the past, we have been a country of innovation and accomplishment. Even the limited amount of free market activity we were able to squeeze out between the cracks of our economic meshwork was enough to make us exceptional. But we are no longer able to sustain. We have been overtaken by an ideology that used to be considered both foreign and undesirable. The reasons are clear. By creating an unstable base of operation for our lives, government and its corporate partners have cast a pall of hopelessness over us. All thick and blankety.

Separation Of Church And State And Me

Separation of church and state. A lovely little phrase made popular by Thomas Jefferson when he posited a “wall of separation between church and state” in his letter to the Danbury Baptists in 1802. This principle, sort of enshrined in the First Amendment to the Constitution, has been operative, also sort of, ever since ratification. I say sort of because a foolish consistency may be the hobgoblin of little minds (Emerson), but an honest, intelligent consistency has never been the hobgoblin of our Supreme Court. In fact, our Supreme Court has always had ample anti-hobgoblin spray on hand when it comes to any type of consistency at all.

So, we sort of have this wall of separation. However, if you watch Huckabee, a Fox News (?) Channel show named for Huckleberry Hound, since he’s the host (go ahead, just try to tell me that guy doesn’t look like Huckleberry Hound), then you’ll discover all manner of guests who will swear up and down on a stack of religious paraphernalia that Jefferson was indeed a believer in Jesus Christ and never meant to say any such thing.

Actually, they are partially right. Jefferson indeed believed in Christ. But his version of Christ was very different than today’s evangelical “buddy-Christ.” He was not a purveyor of a Christ who served as your imaginary friend, that Christ who you converse with about the vagaries of your day in the darkness of your room before you jot it all down in your Hello Kitty diary.

My God Is Better Than Your God

I go to political meetings. Lots of them. And they always start with the obligatory Pledge To A Piece Of Cloth, followed closely by an invocation.

Here is the first Merriam Webster Dictionary definition of invocation.

Invocation: 1. The act or process of petitioning for help or support, a prayer of entreaty (as at the beginning of a service of worship).

But I like the second definition a lot better.

Invocation: 2. A formula for conjuring.

See what I mean? That second definition adds some perspective on what’s actually happening, doesn’t it? Conjuring. It fairly reeks of snake oil salesmen and medical side shows from the 1800′s. Doesn’t that fraud John Edwards conjure spirits from the “other side?”

A Floor Beneath Our Rights

Sometimes people get all tangled up in legaleze. I suppose it makes us feel smarter when we can successfully wade through the maze of judicial opinions and technicalities. Law is transformed into some kind of religion, and only those with special knowledge can decode its secrets. I know I’ve been guilty of this at times. (In fact, just yesterday I wrote a long winded blog here that contained a whole lot of nonsense concerning the failed Thune Amendment.)

But when it comes to our rights, I think we need a much simpler, more secular standard.

Liberty Is Beautiful

Enrico Fermi is one of the greatest minds who ever lived. He died just about the time I was being conceived, and everyone should demand a recount. Worst trade since Eve bartered away paradise for a lovely piece of fruit.

Not only was Fermi brilliant, but he was also quite unusual. There have been a limited number of geniuses in this universe, and most of them are geniuses in a limited sphere of human endeavor. Brilliant physicists are usually brilliant in either theoretical or experimental physics, but not both. Fermi was unusual because he was equally brilliant in both, as well as being a brilliant mathematician.

Einstein was a theoretical guy. Didn’t do experiments. But Fermi could do it all. His early work was integral to the development of the first nuclear reactor and the atomic bomb. He also contributed heavily to quantum theory, and nuclear and particle physics.

So, why the lesson in scientific history?

Tax That Fellow Behind The Tree

The title of this blog post is part of an incredibly unclever rhyme created by former Senator Russell Long. He has a building in Washington D.C. named after him. And a famous fascist/populist father who has had more than one movie made about his life.

Don’t tax you. Don’t tax me. Tax that fellow behind the tree.

See what I mean? Lamest poem ever. Longfellow has this guy beat by a full “fellow” when it comes to poetry. Probably would have been a better senator, too. My Head Explodes Blog rule of thumb: Any senator or congressman who has a building named after him, in Washington D.C. or anywhere else, stole a whole lot of money for one state and screwed forty-nine other states.

Mr. Smith DOES NOT Go To Washington

In the Frank Capra Classic, Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, Jimmy Stewart plays Jefferson Smith, an everyman do-gooder appointed to be a U.S. Senator after a sitting senator dies.

Great movie. One of the best ever made. The final climactic one-man filibuster that brings Smith’s corrupt co-senator and political patron to tearfully confess his many sins is just amazing. And it’s all bull refuse. Every stinking bit of it. Great movies are nothing like reality. If reality was so amazing, we’d have people running around filming real people’s lives and showing it on . . . oh crap. Now I have to explain something. “Reality Shows” are also not real. Every one of them is staged and in no way resembles real life. You did know that, right?