Juvenile delinquent found guilty of breaking and entering

Local authorities announced today that Goldie Lawks, 17, has been found guilty on one count each of breaking and entering and property damage. The charges stemmed from Ms. Lawks’ unlawful entry to the Baer residence on  the morning of February 19th, during which Ms. Lawks reportedly damaged at least one piece of the victims’ furniture.

Republican Party officials have pointed to the case as a damning indictment of President Obama’s policies, suggesting that the President is ‘soft on crime’. Newt Gingrich in particular was vocal, promising to make lowering crime rates the centerpiece of his campaign. When it was pointed out to Mr. Gingrich that his campaign has no centerpieces, only far-rightpieces, and that he really just needs to shut up and go away, he vowed to stay in the race “all the way to Tampa” just to prove his limitless ability to get on people’s nerves.

A third charge of petty larceny did not succeed; the Baers also accused Ms. Lawks of stealing food during her visit, but forensic evidence was deemed inconclusive.

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A better incentive to serve

Considering the increasingly obvious phenomenon that the officials we elect to represent us are largely unable or unwilling to do so, I would like to propose the following legislation. In keeping with the cockamamie names often bestowed upon Acts of Congress, I hereby present the Compulsory Limits on Earnings, Assets and Numerous Ulteriors Pending Year End Reporting Act, otherwise known as the CLEANUPYER Act.

–

Be it resolved that:

a. Upon election to office, an officeholder’s assets shall be placed in a savings account and will lose or gain funds at the end of the officeholder’s term according to the following principles:

1. For each percentage point gain in the median household income during the officeholder’s term, there will be a corresponding percentage point increase in the saved funds; and
2. For each percentage point drop in unemployment,  there will be a corresponding percentage point increase in the saved funds; and
3. For each percentage point increase in the high school graduation rate,  there will be a corresponding percentage point increase in the saved funds; and
4. The reverse case of all of the above will lead to a corresponding decrease in the saved funds, and;
5. For each ‘earmark’ requested by an officeholder, there will be a percentage point decrease in the saved funds, and;
6. Should Congress declare war and the President execute same, there will be a percentage point decrease in the saved funds for every 3 months of the war’s duration; and
7. Should any legislature adopt this Act, the officeholders voting ‘aye’ will receive a twenty-five point increase in the saved funds in addition to the above provisions.

b. Elected officials shall receive a stipend not to exceed twice the median income of their constituents.

c. Elected officials shall for a period of one year after leaving office be ineligible to take positions with either lobbying firms or industries which have directly benefited from legislation enacted during their term of office.

d. On election day, prospective officeholders will report to a neutral area to await results, refusing contact from lobbyists or other parties which may seek to influence forthcoming legislation.

e. In addition to the existing reporting of campaign contributions, any unaffiliated entity will also disclose the sources of its funding.

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It is my fervent hope that there will one day be a government which would pass this Act. Perhaps then I would even begin to trust my government.

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An open letter to the liberal left

I hear you’re feeling very disillusioned with President Obama lately.

Allow me to remind you of a few notable accomplishments:

1. Passed credit card reform.
2. Passed Wall Street reform.
3. Passed health care reform.
4. Repealed DADT, and is dismantling DOMA.
5. Ended the Iraq war.
6. Restored the standing of the United States with allies Bush alienated.
7.  Passed a stimulus package which almost certainly prevented a second Great Depression.
8.  Got Osama bin Laden.

And all of this in the face of an ineffectual Senate majority (Dem) and obstructionist House majority (GOP), and laboring under an economy wrecked by eight years of Bushism.

Many of the Presidents in our history books would would have been lauded as heroes had they accomplished this much in eight years, and Obama has done so in three. And here you are saying it’s not enough.

There is still a lot of work to do, and a lot about the nation which could be improved. But for crying out loud, let the man do his job. You supposed “progressives” are whinier than John Boehner, and your inability to take the long view is becoming almost as obnoxious as Rush Limbaugh.

I still believe in Yes We Can… because we have.

I still believe in Yes We Can… because we still can.

I will be voting for Obama in 2012… because if I stay home the way many of you are talking about doing, I will not delude myself into thinking I am making a statement, and will richly deserve President Gingrich, President Santorum or President Romney.

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An open letter to the 2012 GOP candidates

Dear Sirs,

Now that the only one of you with any decency has departed the race, I feel compelled to make the following assertions to you:

• I will support keeping government out of our boardrooms the day you support keeping it out of our bedrooms.
• I will believe in corporate personhood the day you make corporations subject to all the restrictions and penalties imposed by law as well as the benefits conferred by it – up to and including the death penalty. Speaking of which…
•  I will believe that you are pro-life the day you vote to repeal not only Roe v. Wade, but also the death penalty and the Second Amendment. I will believe you are pro-life when you stop trying to gut the EPA and start trying to gut Halliburton Corp. I will believe you are pro-life when you stop saying “Kill America’s enemies” like a brainwashed jihadi.
• I will believe you are pro-family the day you do something which benefits all America’s families rather than merely the ones you personally find acceptable.
• I will believe that you are protecting the institution of marriage when a committed couple of 30 years can finally get married for love but Kim Kardashian can’t do it to get a headline.
• I will believe that you support the free market when you stop rigging it in favor of your campaign donors.
• I will believe that you want to rein in government spending when the Department Of Defense has to publicly disclose all of its accounting.
• I will believe that you are in favor of individuals’ freedom when you begin to not only respect but insist upon the separation of church and state.
• I will believe that your party is worthy of governing when it is no longer (by its own admission!) prioritizing defeating the opposition over bettering the lives of Americans.
• Last but by no means least, I will consider voting for you when you stop telling me what’s bad about the other guy and start telling me what’s good about you – assuming there’s anything to tell.

President Obama is far from perfect, but as things currently stand, he is still head and shoulders above all of you.

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Santa now subject to TSA screenings

WASHINGTON (AP) – A controversial decree issued Tuesday by the Federal Aviation Administration designates reindeer-powered aviation vehicles as falling under the purview of the Transportation Security Administration. This has led to a variety of problems for North Pole residents. Powerful unions such as the Workshop Elves Local #252 have decried the decision as extremely invasive, for a variety of reasons including but not limited to the humiliation undergone by elves who wish to perpetuate the convenient fiction that elves have no reproductive organs of any kind.

Santa himself will be subject to a TSA screening each time the sleigh moves across state lines; short rooftop-to-rooftop hops are considered sufficiently low security as to obviate the need for such scans. Nevertheless, this means a minimum of fifty-one scans added to Santa’s annual odyssey.

Americans are asked to avoid leaving any alcoholic treats for Santa, so as not to add to the time required for the TSA to conduct their screening processes. “Drunk in charge of a sleigh is a serious offense,” said Mr. G. R. Inch, a TSA representative. “Infractions of this nature could lead to Santa’s inclusion on the ‘no-fly’ list.” As it is, Rudolph and Blitzen will have to remain home this year, since their names are believed to be on a list of known Nazi sympathizers.

Claus: Potential terrorist?

The extraordinary quantity of carry-on baggage necessary for Santa to continue operating under his current business model has also presented difficulties. “During Santa’s early-December dry run,” says Inch, “he was asked to empty his sack. We failed to anticipate the magical properties of the sack, and the sheer number of packages involved led to a level of delay unacceptable even by our generous standards.” Henceforth, Santa will be accompanied on his journeys by two TSA representatives using a handheld version of the scanner, so that packages can be scanned at destination prior to what the TSA designates their ‘structural entry point’ and the rest of us call a ‘chimney’. The handheld scanners produce the same objectionable images which have caused uproar among airline passengers, and as such have instantly become this year’s highest-demand gift, particularly among teenage boys and representatives of the pornographic movie industry.

North Pole Workshops Corporation (currently headquartered in Delaware for economic reasons), while grateful for their recent tax breaks and happy to contribute to certain political campaigns since the Citizens United decision, have complained bitterly about the extra security measures, saying that the extra time added onto Santa’s travels will require additions to headcount. A elven spokesperson for the corporation, Mr. K. E. Ebler, informed the AP that many tiny tots will not receive visits from Santa himself this year, but will have to content themselves with receiving service from Dave Claus. Dave Claus has only recently received his sleighing license, but has risen high in the organization due to family connections. The A-list band of elite reindeer will also have to be separated between the two teams, meaning that all Christmas 2010 operations will be forced to include second-tier reindeer. “This is the price of doing business in the modern world,” Ebler supposes, “but it’s hard to explain that to the kids who won’t even know the names of the magical creatures on the roofs of their homes.”

It is unknown whether Dave Claus has yet been vetted by the TSA. Recent incidents where TSA employees’ stockings were hung by the chimney with care and found to be full of reindeer excrement well in advance of Christmas have further complicated matters, though as yet nobody has been charged with any crime.

Other groups have expressed concern about overreaching by the TSA – specific issues include the possible hampering of cross-continental travel by the Easter Bunny, Mr. Sandman and the Tooth Fairy. The State Department has already contacted these individuals to warn them of possible disruptions, according to a highly secret cable posted online by WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange could not be reached for comment.

 

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The Geek Shall Inherit The Earth

Today, the White House is hosting a science fair, inviting competition winners in math, science, engineering and technology from schools around America.

While this of course makes for excellent press at a time when Democrats sorely need this, it also underscores a commitment to putting his ideals into practice. It is not enough to say that America must improve its educational curriculum in math and science – it needs to be made real.

As Obama put it recently, if the NCAA championship winners get to come to the White House, so should the best scientists and mathematicians in schools.

And yes, that’s Adam Savage from Mythbusters up there with him. The President will be ON MYTHBUSTERS next month, which is simply awesome.

Obviously you can’t fix a war and a recession with quick publicity blasts like this, else he’d have had those squared away within the first week of his presidency, but it’s nice to see that the “smaller” things aren’t being forgotten about. Long after Obama leaves office, the kids who will benefit from his support may be in a position to avoid another war and/or recession because of what they learned.

Plus, of course, it’s nice to have a President who would rather blow shit up on Mythbusters than, say, in the Middle East.

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My new guilty pleasure

Sometimes, a movie or TV show is so ridiculously over-hyped that one feels more inclined to gouge out one’s own eyes than bother watching. Case in point: I have yet to watch an episode of LOST, largely because during its run so many people of my acquaintance entirely failed to shut the fuck up about it for more than an hour or two. Now that it is over, I may opt to see what all the fuss was about. Maybe.

And then there is Glee.

Glee has been over-hyped the bejesus out of. (I’m fully aware of the grammatical inconsistency of that sentence, but am including it in homage to a similar phrasing used by my boss recently.) The trailers I saw made the show look so bad that the prospect of watching a full episode seemed a torture worthy of Abu Ghraib.

And yet, against my will, it has become my guilty pleasure.

It is by no means a televisual phenomenon on a par with The X-Files or Firefly or The West Wing. With any of these shows, I can rewatch an episode several times, dissecting and discovering, coming up with new evidence of the sheer genius with which the show was done. These are the literature of television.

Glee, on the other hand, is the novel you buy at the airport while your departure time whooshes by with nary a call for boarding. It’s a fun, largely surface-level diversion which is certainly worthy of the time you invest in it, but is unlikely to stay on the shelf to be watched time and again. Refreshingly, it doesn’t try to be anything more than that.

The music and choreography is (largely) very well executed, the cast is (again largely) talented and the balance between humor and melodrama is (etc.) well maintained. There are a few moments of painfully obvious auto-tune, or where even the greatest suspension bridge couldn’t quite hold up the disbelief, but on the whole it is done well.

Plus, even were I inclined to give up at this stage, the prospect of an episode directed by Joss Whedon and guest-starring Neil Patrick Harris and Idina Menzel would keep me going for the next however-many episodes it is until then.

So… yeah. I guess, on top of being a “believer”, a “Browncoat” and a “Wingnut”, I am now officially a “Gleek”.

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Where Is Everybody?

The physicist Enrico Fermi once said “Where is everybody?” – specifically asking why, if the universe is filled with civilizations, we have yet to confirm or even detect their presence in any reliable fashion.

I’ve given the ‘Fermi Paradox’ a lot of thought over the last few years, and ironically the best answer I can come up with owes more to Star Trek than to astrophysics.

In the eighth Star Trek movie, First Contact, the human race is first contacted by another spacefaring civilization when we are finally at the point of developing faster-than-light (FTL) travel (in this case, warp drive). Indeed, until we have such a thing, any kind of cultural intercourse we could have with any extraterrestrial civilization would be one-sided. The ability to venture forth into the black in search of new horizons and new life is a necessary step to becoming part of any interplanetary community.

On a deeper level, it seems to me that the ability to build such a wonder would require a unification of purpose between the various races of humankind, since no single nation is likely to have the resources to build and operate a space station and interstellar vehicles by itself. Thus far, we have yet to advance sufficiently as to effect such unification. We engage in petty squabbles over post-tribal god-images, we scrape and claw at each other over abstract numbers which provide a mass illusion of wealth, we divide ourselves against each other over ideological differences which would be dwarfed by our unity of reason if only we allowed ourselves to see the latter.

Were you a member of a hypothetical alien race, would you look upon us as a species worthy of moving into the neighborhood?

In all likelihood, the first impulse we would experience upon contact with intelligent extraterrestrials would be to try to destroy them out of fear.

Is it any wonder that we have heard nothing?

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Another Explosion At Ground Zero

Seems lots of people are up in arms over the proposed building of the Park 51 Community Center, aka the “mosque at Ground Zero”. Of course, this is far from surprising, considering the Islamophobia which has held much of the nation for the last decade.

The people wishing to build the mosque were no doubt aware of the furore which would ensue over this, and it cannot be denied that they were willing to provoke anger. Having said that, if after our near-demolition of Baghdad, a group of American missionaries attempted to build a Christian church there, we would see them as heroes.

Perhaps we should ask ourselves how we justify holding this moral double standard. The 19 hijackers actually involved in the 9/11 incident are hardly going to be worshipping at this mosque.

What would we say of the hypothetical missionaries above? “Despite almost crushing adversity, this brave band of people labored to build a place where Christians could worship in safety and tranquility, a place from which they could bring the local populace to understand that their purpose is not to maim and destroy but to foster peace and understanding.”

How many of our national news outlets are using language such as this to describe the builders of the Ground Zero mosque?

Let us consider for a moment the other establishments in the vicinity: an off-track betting parlor, a Starbucks, a strip club, a McDonald’s, and of course a shitload of street hawkers selling cheap plastic 9/11-themed tchotchkes. If this is to be considered ‘hallowed ground’, as Sarah Palin put it recently, let these also be removed from the vicinity.

Anything else is just pure Islamophobia.

This all comes back to our psychological tendency to see labels. We cannot look at a DeShawn or a Danisha without seeing ‘black’, at a Chihiro or a Chung-Tah without seeing ‘Asian’, at a Faroukh or a Fatima without seeing ‘Arab’.

If you assume a priori that a Mohammed is more likely to tarnish American society than a Masao, Malachi or even Mike, you’re in the label trap.

Regardless of what the President may have to say in favor of it, regardless of what the hysterical wing of the GOP may say against it, regardless of what Jews and Muslims at large may think of it… get out of the label trap and see for yourself.

Allow a small group of people to show you that Islam is not all about evil, and show them in return that you’re not all about prejudice.

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Farewell, Senator Stevens

The political news out of Alaska is a lot less amusing today than usual.

A small plane carrying former Senator Ted Stevens (R) and seven others has crashed near the town of Dillingham. A family friend has confirmed that the 86-year-old senator, who served in public office for 60 years, was among the dead.

I never liked Stevens much as a politician; I disagreed with most of his political positions and was no fan of most of his budget appropriations. However, it is still saddening to hear of his passing.

Also, it is always disconcerting to hear of a plane accident causing the death of a public figure; there have been far too many of these for it to be a statistical accident.

Let’s hope that for all of the online mockery surrounding his ‘series of tubes’ comment, the media attempts to treat him with some respect and dignity, for the sake of the friends and loved ones he left behind.

Let us also hope that his former colleagues on both sides of the partisan divide can lay aside the politics of the moment and honor his memory rather than tarnishing it.

Last but not least, let us hope that those who passed along with him are not forgotten.

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