It May be Time To Enter The 21st Century

In my very first post in this blog I described myself as a Luddite. By today's standards I certainly am. It's not that I'm against the advance of technology, mind you. After all, I am writing to a blog on a decent laptop computer. I do use tools I need to do things I want to do. But when it comes to things like cellphones, I am very reluctant to get a "smart" phone.

Here's why: while they are incredibly useful things, I think that people don't talk to each other enough. It's a text-based world anymore, and smart phones facilitate that by being huge, clunky machines that aren't particularly good at being a phone but are great at being pocket computers, complete with easy to use keyboards. But texting isn't talking, it's expressionless communication with a total lack of nuance. You can't divine intent on a keyboard. Further, when you don't want to communicate anymore you just stop sending messages. When you talk you have to actually interact, and that teaches people how to engage and disengage from other people. Also, text speak is stupid and insulting to me, and it bleeds over into real world communication far too often. I am bearing witness to the dumbing down of America. I don't know that I want to be a part of that.

I live my life this way. I have used a "dumb" phone from the beginning. Most people send more texts in a day than I have in my entire life. But now my phone has died. After around 4 years with this particular phone it has failed and needs to be replaced. Now seems to be a good time to decide if I want to stick to my principles or accept the utility of a smart phone and learn to adapt to modern life. I find myself leaning that way, but my principles continue to get in the way.

Oh, hell. I'll just get one of the damned things and use it my way. But when I don't use it to text I'll be wasting one of the main capabilities, so what's the point? Damn it, I'm getting a dumb phone. But then when I want to look something up I'll have to borrow someone else's phone. Fine, smart phone, here I come! But I just need a simple communication device... see what I mean? That's what is going through my head over and over again.

What a pain in the ass this decision is going to be. And I need to make it quickly. What shall I do? When it comes to phones I am an analog man in a digital world. It's long since time to join the 21st century. Will I do it? Only time will tell.

The Steelers Are Going To Be Beast This Year

Last year the Steelers started off terribly and then made a monster comeback, missing the playoffs only because Ryan Succop, Mr. Irrelevant 2009, can't kick. Oh, and the refs blew not one but two calls. Yeah, I know, the Steelers should have just won more games, then they wouldn't have needed the Chiefs scrubs to stand on their heads and almost beat the Chargers' first team. Alas, it doesn't work that way, not for anybody.

It's clear, though, that this year's team isn't going to start off the same way. The second preseason game is in progress, all the starters have been pulled, and the backups are fighting for their careers, so now seems as good a time as any to look toward the regular season.

First, Ryan Shazier is everything that was advertised, and then some. He had 9 tackles and a great coverage interception. He seemed to be everywhere. Where he wasn't Troy Polamalu and Jason Worilds were. The starting defense is as swarming as ever, and the secondary looks to be at least adequate to the task. The defense isn't exactly the Steel Curtain, but it should bounce back from last year's letdown and once more be one of the premier units in the league.

As for the offense, Ben Roethlisberger looks to be as good as ever. The team is trying to re-establish the run, and Le'Veon Bell has the skills to go for a thousand yards. That should open up the pass, and Antonio Brown looks like he's primed for a big year. The offensive line, after more than a decade, looks like it might be better than the local high school JV team, with Maurkice Pouncey and David DeCastro anchoring a solid unit. Heath Miller is 100% this year and Markus Wheaton looks like he will fit in well as the 2 receiver. Dri Archer is a rocketship. He'll break a few this year with his speed and shiftiness.

The big question, as always, is the backups. If Ben goes down the Steelers are done. Bruce Gradkowski is just barely capable at best and Landry Jones is a bum. The fill-ins on the offensive and defensive lines will make things very interesting, to say the least. The receivers are a talented grab-bag, you never know who will show up. Of course, if they were good enough to start they wouldn't be backups, so a letdown is expected. Unfortunately, the difference between the starters and the backups seems pretty big, so every game will be an exercise in holding my breath and hoping for the best.

In the end, though, the Steelers ought to win the division. The Browns are still the Browns, the Bengals and Ratbirds are hampered by their average-at-best quarterbacks (especially Baltimore, where Flacco's contract killed their salary cap), and Pittsburgh's third-place schedule is fairly easy. They have the Saints and the division games along with one against the maybe-not-for-real Chiefs and a handful of sub-.500 teams from last year. With their starting roster, aging though it may be in key positions, they ought to win at least 10 games. They could easily start 10-1 if I give a win to the hated Ratbirds. I mean, who will beat them? Cleveland? Jacksonville? Tampa? The hapless Texans? Anything can happen, of course, but come on, those teams chomp royal.

So here's to another division championship. The Steelers are back to being the Beasts of the AFC North, and with that comes the opportunity to make another run at the Super Bowl. All they have to do is make it happen. I, for one, can't wait to find out if it does see it.

Washington DC's Gun Laws: Carry At Your Own Risk

There has been an interesting development this week regarding the state of concealed carry, this time in Washington, DC. In the case of Palmer v. DC, the US Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that DC's ban on carrying firearms is unconstitutional. With this decision, barring a stay, so-called Constitutional Carry becomes the law, meaning that any non-felon resident with a properly registered gun can carry it, and any non-resident can also carry under the same conditions. Additionally, Cathy Lanier, Chief of Police, issued an order allowing for carry under those circumstances. Given the state of DC's laws less than a decade ago this is nothing short of shocking. But, and you knew this was coming, it's still not a good idea to carry in DC.

Let's start with the non-resident. I have my concealed carry permit, and as such I can now carry in DC. But the courts did not say that I could carry on Federal property, which precludes museums, monuments, and the like. Since the only reason the average non-resident would go to DC would be for tourism, it doesn't benefit them. Also, DC is surrounded on 3 sides by Maryland, which complicates things as they don't recognize a CCW permit from any other state. Step into Maryland, even by accident, go the wrong way on the Metro, anything, and you're an instant felon. Sound like a bad idea? It is. Also, who wants to be the first to test the law? I'm certainly not clamoring to be that guy.

The same restrictions go for residents, but they have another issue to contend with: exceedingly few of them have a gun to begin with due to DC's onerous registration scheme. The DC government complied with Heller inasmuch as it is possible to get a gun registered, but they made it as difficult and expensive as possible to dissuade people from actually following through on it. Also, as known gun owners, the potential carriers face harassment from the police. Oh, sure, they're supposed to allow it, but does anyone really think the police will just shrug and act like they're OK with it? Not a chance, not in DC, a majority minority city not noted for its even-handed application of law.

This has a long way to go yet. That said, every state in the Union now has a mechanism for concealed carry, some more permissive than others. There will come a day when every state will be "shall-issue", though. Eventually the Supremes will have to weigh in on the circuit splits given that they Incorporated the right, and when they do it looks more and more like they'll have to use strict scrutiny as anything less will undermine McDonald, and that means either "shall-issue" or unrestricted carry, something I find unlikely to be applied universally due to public policy differences across regions.

So stay tuned, and don't do anything stupid like carry in DC. If you do, you do so at your own risk. Want to be famous? Now's your chance, and good luck to you. Alan Gura's got your back.

So, Who's Been Reading This?

When I started this blog I figured it would be a good place for me to unload some of the more weighty things on my mind, and maybe a few flighty ones. My output hasn't exactly been prolific recently, though it's not from a lack of things to say. No, I've started about 5 other posts that I discarded simply because I couldn't make sense of what I wanted to say. Did you ever have an idea about something that made perfect sense to you yet no sense to everyone else? I got halfway through them when I realized that my ideas were actually not so good, requiring some very tortuous justifications. When that happens it's time to re-evaluate, and that's diminished my output considerably. I suppose that's better than publishing them and pissing everybody off, right? On the Internet every person has a shot at fame, and I'd prefer that my shot not come in the form of someone glomming onto something stupid I wrote and having it go viral.

I mention that possibility because someone is reading this. I got a large burst of readers once when I pimped it to my friends on Facebook, and I put it in my profile on (shameless plug) Fark.com, one of my favorite websites, which resulted in a few looks. My curiosity has gotten the better of me, though. Are the rest of the views just random, or does anybody actually trouble themselves to read what I write? Are there any repeat readers aside from my wife and a couple of friends? What should I be writing about that I'm not already?

In any event, I'm not going anywhere. Tilting at windmills is my thing, and what better place is there to do it than a blog? Maybe I'll look over some of the stuff I scrapped and see if I can make it make sense. Or maybe something will inspire me today. Who knows? Regardless, thanks for reading.

What Is Patriotism?

It's the 4th of July, and as usual we have the patriotic displays, from the reading of the Declaration of Independence to the fireworks to the races complete with military men and women in attendance and flyovers from the local Air Force wing. It's enough to inspire you to think that the US is the greatest nation on Earth and its people are its backbone. That may very well be true, but it still leads me to wonder about it.

It used to be easy for me. Patriotism to me was love for my country and a willingness to do anything for it. I never thought to question its leaders. Why would I? After all, they were elected, thus representative of the will of the people, a perfectly logical conclusion to come to. I did my duty over the course of 12 years, was a constant volunteer, and answered the call every time I was asked to. I thought we were doing the right thing when we invaded Afghanistan, and I believed it when we were told that there were weapons of mass destruction in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. When they failed to materialize I started to have my doubts, and they have not left me since.

That was the catalyst for my questioning of what patriotism really is. Is it unthinking deference to our government and its policies? I simply cannot do that anymore, not with the revelations regarding the NSA, not with the continued existence of the prison at Guantanamo Bay, not with the economic recession, and certainly not with the polarized state of our legislatures and an understanding of how it came to be that way. It's not so much my education that caused me to change my mind as it is my ability to think. It is an uncritical mind indeed that looks at the state of our country and thinks that everything is OK. I'm not blaming anybody for this, there's enough blame to go around, but in the end we still have people who wave the flag, talk about supporting the troops, and hurl jingoistic epithets while claiming that the United States is the best country in the world, a spurious claim in 2014.

None of that really answers the question, though. I now consider it my duty to question my government and its actions, which brings us full circle on this Independence Day as that is precisely what the Declaration of Independence was, a statement of reasons defining the political separation from England. I suppose that makes me as patriotic as the America: Love It Or Leave It crowd, but somehow it doesn't feel that way.

I suspect I'll never really get a satisfactory answer, but until I do I will always have trouble understanding what it means to be a patriot even as I do my best to fulfill the oath I took when I enlisted (even as I am no longer legally bound by it), to defend the United States from all enemies, foreign and domestic. While I may not do that in a military capacity anymore, I can advocate for causes, I can vote, and I can work for change. In the end that will have to be good enough.

What Difference Can One Man Make?

Tomorrow is the 100th anniversary of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, archduke of the Austria-Hungarian Empire, and his wife. Sure, there was a genuine conspiracy to kill him, but in the end it came down to one man, Gavrilo Princip.

When he shot Archduke Ferdinand, it set into motion the deaths of untold millions. World War I was just the beginning of it. Trench warfare, chemical weapons, tanks, machine guns, all created to fight a war which need never have happened. Men were mowed down by the numbers trying to fight an old-style war with modern weapons. Empires fell, revolutions changed countries, borders were altered. When it was all over everybody said it was the war to end all wars and set to ensuring it would never happen again. To that end they wrote the Treaty of Versailles, putting the screws to Germany. Had they but known what they were doing they would have done anything else.

Thanks to that treaty, Germans spent the next 15 years simmering in resentment, culminating with the rise of a former Austrian corporal who was always mindful of what came to be known as the stab-in-the-back legend, the idea that Germany didn't lose, their politicians simply quit. Yes, World War I was instrumental in the coming of Adolf Hitler. Perhaps you've heard of him.

So now we have World War II and more untold millions killed, finally ridding ourselves of the future potential for disaster by totally destroying Europe and dividing Germany for the next 45 years. Except that we didn't rid ourselves of anything, because World War I was also instrumental in the ascension of the Bolsheviks and the formation of the Soviet Union. They also killed millions, as did we through the proxy wars of Korea and Vietnam, along with several other skirmishes through proxy states and the like.

So, what can one man do? Gavrilo Princip might not have been the person that created the political environment that ultimately precipitated vast death and destruction lasting to the present day, but he was the catalyst for it. Don't ever underestimate your potential. You too can change the world. Only in your case, try not to kill the wrong guy.

Resolved: The Civil War Was About Slavery

Today I came across the commonly-offered argument that the Civil War wasn't about slavery, but "states rights", a term that has regained currency in recent years. I consider this to be extraordinarily disingenuous, an attempt to whitewash history. And whitewash is definitely the term to use in this case.

The reason, of course, is because the war was about states rights. Unfortunately for the people who argue that, they never finish the thought. The end of that is "to own slaves". That's right, the Civil War was about the southern states' right to retain the "peculiar institution" of slavery. To argue otherwise ignores the known history of the abolitionist movement and everything leading up to the Civil War. Should we ignore the Missouri Compromise, the Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the Dred Scott decision? Should we ignore the aftermath of the war, when the South fought Reconstruction tooth and nail until it was ended as a result of the compromise that installed Rutherford B. Hayes as the President? How about Jim Crow, Plessy v. Ferguson, separate but equal, the "Lost Year" in Little Rock, and the necessity to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965?

Shall I go on? I didn't even scratch the surface of the virulent racism in this country, both before and after the Civil War. But we are expected to believe that the Civil War was about non-specific states' rights that were being abridged by the northern states, ones that have never been named? Sure, we ought to just take their word for it in this case.

The Big Lie: it works everywhere it's tried. Goebbels had nothing on the good ol' boys. Only in this case, it's a lie that doesn't go away. It didn't die with a Confederate defeat, it didn't die with integration, it didn't die with legislation. And it's still passed around as absolute truth.

There is only one bit of good news: anybody who says it identifies themselves as a racist and an idiot. And that's no lie. Thank God for small favors.

Just Put The Gun In Your Mouth And Kill Yourself Already

I have had about all I can stomach with regard to the recent spate of mass shootings. What motivates these people to kill a bunch of other people? In Elliot Rodger's case, he hated women. He couldn't get a date, he couldn't find someone to have sex with him, in Southern California, not even trolling around in an expensive BMW that daddy bought for him, something that (according to legend) absolutely melts panties. Guys, I just had my 12th wedding anniversary and I still occasionally get women that hit on me, and I am not exactly a superior specimen. I'm overweight, I have plaque psoriasis, I'm a confessed alcoholic, and my job isn't what you would call high-paying. I was a solitary person growing up, I didn't relate well with people, and I suffered from a fairly moderate case of depression. Somehow I managed to impress a woman or two.

I only mention this because the person in question this time lacked something that I have. For all my faults, I am a caring individual, almost to a fault. It shows in the dedication I have at my job, the mannerisms I display, and my interactions with others. In other words, I am not a raving lunatic. This guy was, and the most obvious explanation for why he couldn't get laid is because he scared the living hell out of every woman he encountered. There's an old axiom about this: if you think that everyone around you is crazy, you're the one that's crazy. Instead of recognizing this fact for what it was, he decided to become the American Marc Lepine and take it out on a bunch of innocent women.

This is just the most recent incidence of loons going crazy and seeking some sort of revenge, closure, I don't even know what to call it. Suffice it to say that it simply doesn't make any sense to the rest of us. So I humbly submit a proposal: rather than killing a bunch of other people, stick the gun in your mouth and pull the trigger. It would save us all a lot of handwringing, it would spare the families of those killed a never-ending feeling of loss, and it would solve your problem, all in one fell swoop. It's what you want anyway, so do it and get it over with. Some people simply cannot be saved. Let's save our time, resources, and sympathy for those we can and give the rest the way out they so clearly desire.

One thing we should not do, even as I do it myself, is let these people occupy any part of our time or our thoughts. We should reinstate the old Roman policy of damnatio memoriae. Don't name the person, don't put his picture up, don't pay any mind to lunatic "manifestos" that are nothing of the sort. Treat the killer as an object rather than a person. When they do these things they are of no more value than the half-ounce piece of lead they put through their deranged brains. Maybe then we can eliminate these idiots, these attention-whoring nutjobs that shoot people up because they have no other way to become famous.

In any case, stop shooting people. Do yourself and let the rest of us live in peace.

E-Cigarettes: A Public Health Solution Beset By Politics And Vengeance

Cigarette smoking is a scourge. Over the last century millions of people have destroyed their lungs, wasted away to nothing, and died horrible deaths. Those who do not die of lung cancer or related diseases suffer from emphysema, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, loss of lung function, heart disease... the maladies are myriad and well known. I could raise the point that nobody could reasonably believe that inhaling burning plant matter could ever be good for you, and I may at a later time, but the simple fact is that lung cancer is almost exclusively a smoker's disease that causes people to die by the numbers. Anything that reduces the consumption of cigarettes is therefore a good thing.

Unfortunately for us, there is a groundswell of opposition to e-cigarettes. An e-cigarette in its simplest incarnation consists of a battery, an atomizer, and a fluid. The fluid is heated, reduced to a vapor, and the result is inhaled. There is no burning organic plant matter, no smoke is produced, no overtly offensive odors are created. So what's the problem?

The problems are threefold. The first issue is that the e-liquid typically contains nicotine, a highly addictive substance, and the one thing that smokers have the hardest time kicking. Second, the basic e-cigarette that you get from the corner mini-mart looks and functions like a traditional cigarette. Third, non-smokers hold the whip hand. After years of having to endure smokers acting like jerks, lighting up wherever they feel like it and causing their clothes, cars, and everything else to stink, the tables have turned. Now they get to exact revenge on their tormentors.

What they either don't realize, fail to realize, or don't care about is that e-cigarettes are clearly better for everybody involved. The smoker that switches to an e-cigarette no longer inhales 4000 different chemicals. They no longer exhale carcinogenic smoke. They can breathe easier, they don't suffer from smoker's cough, and they regain the ability to exercise for more than a few minutes without passing out from exhaustion due to reduced lung capacity. The ingredients in the e-liquid are vegetable glycerin, propylene glycol, nicotine, and flavoring. Aside from the nicotine, every ingredient is on the FDA's Generally Recognized As Safe list. In the end, what is exhaled is little more than water vapor, a far cry from the bad old days of carcinogenic secondhand smoke.

There are legitimate issues, to be sure. The biggest issue is the availability to children. E-cigarette and e-liquid manufacturers are being accused of marketing to children by creating flavors like Cotton Candy and the like. As I said in a previous blog entry, we put too much stock in doing things "for the children", but in this case it's a good idea. There is no need to create a new generation of drug addicts. This is easily remedied (though not so easily applied) by simply passing a law regulating e-cigarettes as devices for adults only. Second, while nicotine isn't a carcinogen it is still toxic at fairly modest levels, which means that it should be stored and handled with care. In the hands of adults that's not really a big deal.

Instead, we see blanket bans on usage that rival those of tobacco cigarettes. We see them classified as tobacco products, even though there is no tobacco and nothing is burning or emitting smoke. We hear complaints that the scents emitted are offensive, as if the perfume we smell and the car exhaust we breathe aren't just as offensive yet somehow more acceptable. Of course, bans will prevent people from switching, because the short-term effects of smoking aren't particularly dramatic, and so why switch when cigarettes are good enough? Worse yet is the inevitable taxation, which will undoubtedly be punitive in nature as befits a vice. God knows the government doesn't really want people to stop smoking, they're addicted to that sweet, sweet tax money raised on the backs of drug addicts.

We can save lives. We can do it today. If everybody switches tomorrow we can virtually end lung cancer in an instant. What a gift we have, right in our hands. This gift will be destroyed at the hands of politicians scrambling for money and overzealous prohibitionists smugly proving their control over you by having e-cigarettes banned. What a tragedy that will be. In the meantime, I will be enjoying the end of my second smoke-free year thanks to e-cigarettes. Were that everybody could enjoy the freedom from the devil weed as I do.

The Quandary Of Politics

Tomorrow is Pennsylvania's Democratic primary to select a candidate to face Tom Corbett in the upcoming Gubernatorial election. There have been numerous debates, the money has been spent, the ads have been run, all that is left is to determine who it will be. The overwhelming favorite is Tom Wolf, a prominent businessman and former PA Revenue Secretary. With Governor Corbett having a truly miserable first term he is perhaps the most vulnerable Governor up for re-election this year, so the choice is not merely one of who to throw to the wolves. The winner tomorrow will have the rare opportunity to unseat an incumbent.

The candidates, however, have not exactly covered themselves with glory. There is little to distinguish one from another. Inevitably, with nothing to disagree on, they have turned on each other. Mr. Wolf has "loaned" himself $6 million for his campaign, which in politics is red meat. He has been accused of trying to buy the office, an accusation that on the face of it seems to be true but for the fact that all of the other candidates have been trying to do the same. As money is the mother's milk of politics, the winner typically ends up being the biggest spender, and if the other candidates had the means to toss that kind of money around they would certainly be doing so.

The other big accusation thrown out came courtesy of Rob McCord, current Pennsylvania Treasurer. He accused Wolf of supporting Charlie Robertson, disgraced former mayor of York. Several years ago Robertson was chased from office when his role in the York race riot of 1969 was exposed. He incited people to riot with chants of "White Power!" and told police officers to "kill all the n_____ you can!", something made even more egregious by the fact that he was a police officer himself. He was later arraigned for the murder of Lillie Belle Allen and ultimately acquitted. As a result of these revelations he did not stand for re-election. Wolf claimed that he counseled Robertson not to stand for re-election and to leave quietly. That this would come out during the Democratic primary isn't surprising, because Democrats, being the party that champions minorities and minority issues, are absurdly sensitive to any accusation of racism. Mr. Wolf surely lost some votes on that issue.

The last accusation is a minor one, again against Mr. Wolf. U.S. Representative Allyson Schwartz has asserted that she has the experience in government and that he is unqualified to be Governor because he lacks her level of expertise. I suppose we could look at the current Congressional approval ratings to gain insight into her experience and ability to get things done, but ultimately this is a somewhat petty complaint. Surely Rep. Schwartz wasn't the expert she now claims to be when she was first elected, and rather than condemning Wolf it actually undermines her own campaign as she is being dominated by a political neophyte.

You will note that each of these accusations were hurled at the front-runner. I suppose it makes sense that it would be this way, as the only way to win is to knock the top dog off his perch, and picking on backmarkers like Katie McGinty won't accomplish anything. Still, the nature of the accusations go a long way to demonstrating something I have long observed, as follows:

The candidates that we are given to choose from are self-selecting. Nobody is compelled to run for office, every one of them run of their own accord. Virtually all of them come from money and/or successful careers, most have professional degrees, and most of them are outwardly nice people. Yet they think they know what we need and are willing to spend untold millions in their quest for elected office. They put their families through the wringer, they expose their children to criticism, their every action is put out for everyone to see.

These are not actions of normal people. These are actions of people with massive egos that need to be fed. They attack each other, they claim that they have the answers, and by the way, won't you please vote for me? If I came to you and told you that you are doing everything wrong and that you should not only give me a hearing but obey my wishes you'd look at me like I was crazy. Yet isn't that exactly what politicians do? These are people you wouldn't willingly invite into your home under any other circumstances, but you would seat them into positions of power and allow them to influence your lives.

Additionally, we decry money in politics, yet were I to run for office the only votes I would get are my own and (maybe) my wife's. We measure suitability by success, and we measure success by money. We can't understand why rich people with no understanding of our plight are the only people that run for office. The simple fact is that the average person wishes to live a modest, quiet life, wanting for little more than security and perhaps a modest amount of comfort. They have no desire to expose themselves to endless humiliation. The rich have no such aversion, simply because if it all goes wrong they're still rich. They have less to lose. They are shameless.

Remember when you vote that the person you're voting for doesn't know you, doesn't care about you, and would sell you out if it would net them two other voters. What do you matter? You won't vote for them anyway! Yet you vote, because the other party's candidate would really stick it to you if you didn't. So you vote for the lesser of the two evils because there's simply no other choice.

What a quandary we find ourselves in.

Do It For The Children

Is there anybody that doesn't understand that the future of any country lies in its younger generation? You don't have to like kids to recognize that when you get older and retire someone has to pay to support you. You don't have to have kids to accept that other people's children are vulnerable and should be protected to a greater degree than that of an adult who is capable of taking care of themselves. None of this comes as a surprise. You were a kid once, after all.

None of that justifies the long-standing trend of someone proposing something and claiming they are doing it "for the children". Everything that comes down the pike these days is for the care and protection of our most precious resource, meaningless tripe that is intended to pull at our heartstrings in order to obtain our consent. Your failure to consent therefore demonstrates what a monster you are, how you don't have any feelings within you, how callous you are in the face of the poor, suffering kids.

Let's face it, folks: you're being used.

Is there really a need to pass laws that provide more funding "for the future of our children"? School funding has vastly outpaced inflation for decades now. Even with the recession-driven cuts in school funding the inflation-adjusted dollars per student still far exceed the dollars spent on education for previous generations. Is it really so monstrous to say that we are throwing money at schools in a vain hope for improvement? It's abundantly clear that it doesn't work, but to say so is the epitome of cruelty.

Is there really a need to increase penalties on child molesters, kidnappers, and other violent crimes committed against children? "Getting tough on crime" is all well and good, and there's no doubt that it plays well in Peoria, but in the end it deters nothing. People still kill other people even when they know that if they are caught they will have a date with the needle. But to oppose such measures for pragmatic reasons simply shows everybody how little you care about the beautiful, innocent little angels.

E-cigarettes could conceivably be the salvation for millions of smokers, a way to stop inhaling burning plant matter that causes cancer, but because of the possibility that a child might one day pick up an e-cigarette they should be banned. Gun bans are pushed by people who parade their dead children in front of us. Every single day a politician gets in front of the camera and tells us we should support their pet proposal "for the children".

Few among us wish to hurt children. If you do, if that's your thing, if you have an overwhelming desire to hurt a child, you're a psychopath. It's that simple. The people who use this tactic know it, yet imply in the most cynical manner that you will be counted among them if you dare to reject their maudlin appeals.

The irony of this is that for all of our appeals, for all of our solicitousness toward children, we don't really care about them. We prove it every day with our failure to raise taxes, cut spending and fund infrastructure, when we overfund and stuff people into prison for the pettiest of crimes, when we turn police forces into paramilitary units, when we make arbitrary determinations that fetuses are nothing but clumps of cells, when we turn children into prizes to be won by squabbling parents in courtrooms. Where is our concern for the welfare of our children then? If they are of such paramount importance, none of those things should be in question.

I despise being manipulated. Most people do. So fight back. Reject these appeals to emotion. Tell these hucksters that they can't use you anymore by tugging at your heartstrings. Examine their proposals with calm, clear rationality and judge them accordingly. If you won't do it for yourself, at least do it for the children.

I Still Have No Idea What I Want To Be

Every child dreams of being something special. When you ask a child what they want to be, you invariably get a litany of things, each one more absurd than the next. At some point I wanted to be a doctor, lawyer, professional baseball player, celebrity, actor, and general man-about-town. It didn't matter what it was, just as long as I had piles of money and didn't really have to work. The dreams of youth are amusing indeed, every parent has a little chuckle at the things their child aspires to. The important thing is that they have some sort of aspiration.

My aspirations ran headlong into paralyzing fear. I'm not sure when that happened, exactly, but somewhere along the way I realized a few things about myself. First, I couldn't hit a baseball. When the adults were pitching to me I was Babe Ruth reincarnated. Unfortunately for me, there came a time when I had to start facing other kids, some of whom were bigger than I was. My first at-bat in the "big leagues", as it were, I took a pitch to the ribs, instantly freezing the bat on my shoulder. On the few occasions I mustered the courage to swing I missed the ball by a mile because I bailed out so dramatically I was halfway down the baseline by the time the pitch arrived. I would have needed a telephone pole to get a hit. So much for the fame and fortune of professional baseball.

I could have been a doctor. Without a doubt I have the intelligence and work ethic to be a doctor. Then the fear once more got in the way. I blanch at the sight of blood, so much so that I invariably panic. I can't even hunt, simply because the act of field dressing the animal is something I am incapable of. Now, given the necessity, I'm sure I could overcome that. Alas, I would be destroyed the first time I lost a patient. It would be a failure that would shatter me like a piece of glass.

Celebrity? Actor? Not a chance. It's only been a few years since I learned to speak in public without feeling like I was about to pass out (which has actually happened to me). So that's out.

Lawyer? Yeah, that's exactly what the world needs, another lawyer. The academics? No problem. Preparation and ethical representation? With a moral compass like mine, I couldn't do it any other way. Crushing debt? Killer. I still mull it over from time to time, but I simply can't find a way to justify the cost, especially with my eternally-tenuous finances and responsibilities. Maybe if I win the lottery I'll go that route. Of course, if I win the lottery I will have no need to become a lawyer. Catch-22.

I did 12 years in the Pennsylvania Air National Guard, achieving the rank of Technical Sergeant and reputation for being technically proficient, and I really thought that was it. I was on track for a good shot at a full-time job, but that went away with my alcoholism. What a weird lesson I learned from that: no matter how hard you work, no matter how much you want something, you can lose it overnight. Naturally, that fed into my already crippling fear.

For virtually my entire adult life I have worked in a restaurant. I make good coin for restaurant work, and I'd like to think that I am exceptional at my job, but in the end there is nowhere to go. The boss is also the owner, and so I have peaked. I suppose I could continue on indefinitely, and in fact I probably will in some capacity because I still very much enjoy my job, but I find myself restless.

So here I am, 38 years old, a veteran of two wars, holder of a Bachelor's Degree in Political Science, and I have no idea what I want to be. As an adult I find myself having much the same imagination as I did when I was a child. I'd love to open a gun shop, learn how to fix cars professionally, open my own restaurant, a few other things. Then I think about what it would take and the fear engulfs me again. I am many things, but the one thing I fear the most is failure. I don't want to be a failure. But I don't want to take chances, either.

Sooner or later I'll have to take a leap. It's either that or I content myself with being a Renaissance Man, all the knowledge in the world and nothing to show for it. Maybe on the day I do finally decide I'll do it with the optimistic exuberance of the child I once was and can remember being, but cannot emulate.

Why GM, Ford, Toyota And Audi Didn't Do Anything Wrong

By now you're all aware of the GM ignition switch controversy. If you haven't been watching, here's a quick recap: In certain GM models, notably the Chevrolet Cobalt and Saturn Ion, the installed ignition switches are prone to failure when too much weight is applied to them (read:too many keys hanging from the keyring). This failure results in engine shutdown, loss of power steering, and failure of the airbags to deploy.

I am cognizant of the grief that the families of the victims are feeling (13 deaths reported to this point), but when you think about it, it's not a number of any significance. About 1.4 million cars have been subjected to the recall, a large number of which have already been wrecked or scrapped. As the Cobalt, Ion, HHR, and Pontiac G5s are all inexpensive compact cars, they have all put on a ton of mileage. When the incidents are calculated as a function of miles driven, they are statistically insignificant. Additionally, around 45,000 people die on US highways every year. 13 deaths isn't even a blip on the radar.

Except it is. The reason why is easy to see: since Ralph Nader made a name for himself taking a run at GM in 1966 with his book Unsafe At Any Speed, it's almost become a sport to attack automobile manufacturers. You could say that it was well-earned, what with Detroit's long-ago reluctance to engineer any sort of safety into the cars (seat belts were once an option in cars) and their focus on power and styling at the expense of the passenger. That said, we have had some famous incidents that didn't merit the level of anger they received. Some examples:

Chevrolet Corvair: The first and perhaps most famous thanks to the aforementioned Nader book. It was an air-cooled rear-engined car, which naturally increases the weight bias to the rear of the car. With the original swing-axle independent suspension, it had a tendency to oversteer, much like the original Beetle and Porsche 911. Nader's book took aim at the design, declaring it to be unsafe. Later testing determined that it was no more unsafe than any other car of its era, but the damage had already been done.

Ford Pinto: The old joke was that the Pinto was "the barbecue that seats four". A few incidents of the sort happened, but they were high-impact events. That said, Ford made the mistake of committing a cost/benefit analysis to paper in cold, corporate language. Mother Jones magazine came into possession of a copy and printed it. Just like that, the Pinto got a reputation as an unsafe car, which it really wasn't.

Chevrolet C/K Pickup Trucks: Dateline NBC did a straight-arm piece in 1993 where they rigged Chevrolet trucks to blow up on demand, set up by a for-hire witness against GM. The apology was loud and public, but GM still had to offer $1000 toward the purchase of a new truck to any C/K owner to stem the bleeding.

Audi 5000: Audi was an up-and-coming luxury marque in the US when 60 Minutes did a piece on unintended acceleration issues. The report caused Audi's business to decline by about 80%, which took Audi 15 years to regain. It also destroyed the resale value of the cars. As a result, Audis were about as welcome to US consumers as plague rats. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) released a report that vindicated Audi, declaring that almost every case of unintended acceleration was user error.

Ford Explorer: The Explorer was the best-selling SUV in America for a long time. All of that changed when they started to roll with alarming frequency. The Firestone tires that came with the vehicle were delaminating and/or rupturing, resulting in loss of control of the vehicle and potential rollover. In the end the blame was placed on the tire's construction combined with the natural tendency of an SUV (with a high center of gravity) to roll to a greater degree than a car. There was nothing inherently wrong with the vehicle, just bad tires and people ill-equipped to deal with the characteristics of an SUV at critical times.

Toyota Prius: Again, unintended acceleration. The blame was placed on Toyota's "fly-by-wire" program and shifting floormats. Again, vindication, though the damage had once more been done. Toyota went from being the number one automaker by sales to number three, and has yet to regain the top spot.

All of these things had one thing in common: a hostile press. Reporters have long had a mantra: if it bleeds, it leads. What could be more bloody than people dying in accidents that could be attributed to a greedy, penurious automobile company that only thought about profits? It doesn't matter if it's true or not. With few exceptions the retraction has been a few column inches buried in the middle of the paper or a few muttered words at the end of a broadcast. Everybody remembers the accusation, few remember the retraction.

As for the recent GM "crisis", my mother and my Driver's Education teacher taught me long ago not to put a ton of keys on the keyring. Why? Because it would damage the ignition switch. This advice came more than 20 years ago. Who would have thought that people could be so insightful? Furthermore, there are still many thousands of these vehicles on the roads, and until now they were deemed perfectly safe. Yet almost daily there are people coming out of the woodwork wringing their hands about their now-unsafe cars. Nothing has changed but the attitudes of the people, and the press has been aggravating the situation.

Is that the function of a free press, to act as rabblerousers? I thought the function of a free press was to act as informers, not inciters. The car companies didn't do anything wrong, but you'd never know that, because the people you trust to inform you have been negligent in deference to sensationalism for, well, ever. Even when it's important, like with Watergate, Vietnam, 9/11, whatever, it has been sensationalist in nature. I suppose it's to be expected that the people they "serve" would take their cues from that and act the same.

The Best Free Speech Money Can Buy

When it comes to politics, money is power. If there were ever any doubt of that, ponder this: Let's say you gave $50 to Barack Obama's campaign in 2008, maybe again in 2012, and what did you get in return? If you were lucky you may have received a form letter thanking you for your donation, printed on plain paper and sent out via bulk mail. Now, let's say someone gave the maximum to Obama's campaign, as well as donations from 10 other members of their family with their money. You can be certain that such a donor does not receive a form letter in the mail. No, that donor receives a personal phone call, because to do otherwise constitutes a grave insult. It's the political equivalent of calling your grandmother to thank her for her fine Christmas gift, a personal touch is sometimes required lest you seem ungrateful.

With that donation, therefore, comes access. They now have the ear of the potential President, for however fleeting a time that may be. They can use that time to raise an issue that they find important, which will be duly noted and assigned for research and future action to a staffer, who will from time to time offer a reminder. As every politician wishes to be re-elected, that issue will carry significant weight, because with it comes further donations that cannot be ignored.

In the meantime, our $50 donor writes letters, sends e-mails, and has serious and sincere concerns that they would like to see addressed. In the grand scheme of things, though, such a paltry donation isn't particularly meaningful. Now-President Obama only has so much time, and someone who offers such a pro-forma donation simply doesn't rate. This person may become upset and refrain from voting for Obama again in the future, but what's one voter when 125 million turn out to vote and Obama's re-election is not in doubt?

Last week the Supreme Court decided McCutcheon v. FEC in a 5-4 decision, with the Justices splitting as they often do and Kennedy providing the deciding vote as he often does. Prior to this decision, the maximum donation of $2,600 per election cycle could only be given to 9 candidates, limiting the type of access described above. Following the decision, a sufficiently wealthy donor can give the maximum to as many candidates as he wants to. Said donor can now gain access to every single member of Congress at their leisure. Naturally, a Democratic donor will not be giving to Republicans, but if they hit every Democratic candidate the donor will have the ability to influence all of those candidates, thus having the ability to not only influence lawmaking but also to essentially write the laws themselves. Rare indeed is the Congressman who has the fortitude to defy his largest donors, and with so few donors capable of doing something like this, more power is concentrated into the hands of a select few whose interests rarely coincide with those of the average citizen.

And yet, the decision by the Supreme Court was the right one. Free speech is free speech. We would not tolerate any limits on our speech, or our right of association, yet we would impose those limits on others. Even if the reason is well-intentioned and ultimately beneficial to society as a whole, it is still impermissible.

So now we are left with an untenable situation. As citizens we have a right to expect that the people we elect will represent us honorably even as we know that not only can they be bought but the buyers are not likely to have our interests in mind. It has always been that way, just not so blatantly. Perhaps it is time to amend the Constitution to limit campaign contributions. The obvious problem is that amending the Constitution typically requires a Congressional supermajority, and what Congressman wants to kill the golden goose? For that matter, national offices aren't the only ones that require money to win, and state Congressmen aren't any more likely to vote to ratify such an amendment.

For the average person, their free speech costs them nothing, and as such is valued as nothing. Speech is only as valued as that which accompanies it, and when it comes with loads of money it has significant value indeed. It is the best free speech money can buy.

Here We Are Now, Entertain Us

20 years ago today the voice of my generation was silenced by his own hand. I remember it like it was yesterday, like my parents remember where they were when they heard that Kennedy had been assassinated, Lennon had been murdered, and from earlier in my generation the Challenger disaster. I was sitting in the lunch room at Boiling Springs High School in my usual seat with my usual guys, not having any idea that Kurt Cobain had just killed himself on the other side of the continent. When I found out a few days later that he had died, sitting in exactly the same place doing exactly the same thing, I managed to ask myself through the shock and pain one simple question that I still can't answer:

How could a man so beloved, so revered by every alienated young man in the country, the man who gave voice to everything we felt, have gone three days before anybody found his body?

When one speaks of music, you often hear about integrity, that they were what they wrote about. In that context Kurt Cobain had more integrity than any musician of all time. Every alienated rock star writes about depression, anger and sadness, it's their milieu. Not everybody writes a song titled "I Hate Myself And Want To Die" and follows through with it. It came through in his performances, every one of his songs were delivered by someone who sounded like they were breathing their last. Every lick on the guitar sounded like it came from a guy who was trying to destroy the instrument with his bare hands. When I heard this it was a revelation, someone who was as angry and alienated as I was. People like that didn't exist, did they?

And so Nirvana became my favorite band, remaining in the upper echelon to this day. The music still has the same impact every time I hear it. And yet, even as I listened to what amounted to album-length suicide notes, it never occurred to me that he would do it. All the signs were there, why didn't we see it? He was a dopesick, depressed man, and in the end, after all the cries for help he committed to record, he died alone, feeling unloved. He escaped from a rehab and nobody thought to check his home? Nobody?

He and I had more in common than I ever imagined. The difference is that he couldn't listen to himself and find solace in his music, whereas I and everybody like me did. His music affected an entire generation. It changed music forever, took us from the vacuousness of the '80s and set the tone for the '90s. Everybody since has been trying to capture the same lightning in a bottle and can't do it because they lack sincerity, something manifest in Nirvana songs. Who believes a rap star talking about poverty while rolling in a Bentley with half-million dollar earrings and a designer suit?

So, here we are, 20 years later. His death still affects me profoundly. And the lesson he taught me still lingers: there is always someone who cares about you, you need only extend your hand and someone will grab it. The tragedy is that he never learned that, and the world has been a poorer place for it. He was the voice of my generation, and nothing has ever been the same since he died. In a world saturated with Katy Perry/Lady Gaga/boy band vacuousness and hip-hop poseurs, we need someone like him to save us, again put a voice to what we are thinking. We're here, Kurt. We wish you were, too.

Reflections On Basketball And Why I Can't Stand It Anymore

When I was a child I used to love basketball. I'd play it all day, I watched it every weekend, it competed with baseball for my affections. Now, all these years later, football is my passion, baseball is a distant second, and basketball isn't even a blip on my radar. With baseball it's easy to explain why I lost interest: the 1994 strike. You just don't cancel the World Series. That was the first, though not the last, loss of a postseason in a major North American sport. After that I decided to boycott the greedy bastards, and when I made it a whole year without watching so much as a single game I didn't look back. It didn't help that my once beloved Pirates embarked on setting the all-time record for futility, only broken last year. But basketball was different, and I walked away from it completely. I've asked myself why for a while, and I guess now is as good a time as any to work through why that might be.

The accusation is usually that I have some latent racism, that basketball is primarily an urban sport played by black people and therefore it's because I don't like black people that I don't watch anymore. Back in the 1980s I was a Boston Celtics fan, largely because of my uncle, and the great players on that team were Larry Bird and Kevin McHale, indeed white men, but also Robert Parish and Dennis Johnson, very definitely black men. I was excited for 24 hours like everybody else when Len Bias was drafted, only to have it all come crashing down thanks to cocaine and cardiac arrhythmia. Even so, I couldn't get enough of Michael Jordan, and though I despised the Lakers like any proper Celtics fan I still admired Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, James Worthy, and Magic Johnson. There was also Hakeem Olajuwon, Moses Malone, Karl Malone, etc. The list is endless. All were great, all remain great. I can still watch pre-1995 basketball and enjoy it.

But you know, there may be something to that accusation, however small. My waning interest seems to coincide with the ascension of gangsta rap to the forefront of popular music. It seemed to me that the players started to turn into tattooed, gang-color wearing, jive talking caricatures of the players I grew up with. They all had entourages, they were always getting into trouble, and they were all intent on showing off instead of showing up. Everybody remembers Allen Iverson's famous "Practice?!" comment, right? Well, to me that was indicative of the me-first attitude that contrasted directly with the team concept I always played under. Then my idols, Magic with his philandering and contracting AIDS, Michael getting buried deep under gambling debts and quitting the game for two years to pathetically dabble in baseball, Reggie Lewis collapsing and dying... I was becoming disillusioned with it all.

I didn't get any better from there. There was the Pacers-Knicks series where there always seemed to be fights with Spike Lee spouting off from the sidelines, the Malice In The Palace, Javaris Crittenton and Gilbert Arenas with guns in the locker room (Crittenton is now facing murder charges), Chris Andersen (incidentally, a white man) turning into a disgusting tattooed freak having them up to his chin, LeBron and "The Decision"...

I may not be a political conservative anymore, but I am personally conservative. I am still very much the Catholic boy who grew up learning to be respectful and dignified, feeling shame when I failed to live up to the lessons that I was taught. It causes my wife no small amount of amusement. Everything I have mentioned to this point simply offends my sensibilities.

To be fair, all of these things happened in the past. No game is innocent of shady characters. Not even my beloved Steelers are immune, with Ben Roethlisberger's shady behavior, Hines Ward getting a DUI, and James Harrison hitting his wife. Weird that I don't hold them to a higher standard, isn't it? But to me basketball is a finesse game, a beautiful dance of five players working in concert to win games, whereas football is organized violence. It makes sense to me that football players would be goons. The guys in the trenches aren't exposed for everyone to see, you don't ever feel like you know them. Basketball players, however, are almost completely exposed, and with fewer of them any failure from one of them is an indictment of all of them. ESPN revels in their failures, reporting them with glee. Pundits on sports talk shows go on and on about everything. Invariably, though, with sports it always comes back to race when discussing the nature of the reporting. Not even journalism is immune to the accusation.

You can be sure that I don't dislike people because they are black. I wasn't raised that way, and I don't know that I am capable of it. But I don't like people acting like goons and criminals. In the end, though, I do have some biases. I would like to think that I can be fair, but it seems that I cannot be. Perhaps it's just a bridge too far.

I simply cannot tolerate basketball anymore, and that's my failure. It just isn't the game I remember. In the fullness of time, I might realize that it never was. Maybe then I can start again and enjoy the game for what it is, not what I wish it would be.

Guns: Colorado's Rocky Road

Following the mass shooting at the Aurora, Colorado theater on 20 July 2012, Colorado's legislature made the decision to introduce various gun control initiatives. Among them were a ban on "high-capacity" magazines holding 15 rounds or more and expanded background checks such that any transfer of a firearm except to certain family members required a NICS (National Instant Criminal Background Check System) check. As gun laws are entirely within the purview of state governments provided they comply with the McDonald decision, Colorado's legislature was not exceeding their authority by imposing such restrictions.

Nevertheless, this ignited a firestorm. Last year two legislators, State Senator Angela Giron and State Senate President John Morse, were recalled due to their support for the more stringent gun control measures. Another State Senator, Evie Hudak, resigned before she could be recalled to preserve her seat for the Democratic Party. Gun rights groups filed a lawsuit in an attempt to have the laws overturned as unconstitutional, which was heard today in federal district court.

I am having a hard time wrapping my head around the rationale behind this controversy. It is the job of the legislature to introduce legislation, is it not? The recall constitutes the most egregious corruption of a system that was created precisely to combat corruption I have ever seen. Recall elections should NOT be used to target legislators who do something you do not like. Think about how profound the chilling effect is on lawmakers. Notice has been served: if they do anything that even remotely impugns the rights of a group they face the business end of a recall petition. The incentive to stick their necks out, already small thanks to the never-ending desire to be re-elected, has now been stifled to such a degree that they will do nothing that entails any sort of risk. The legislature of Colorado has been effectively crippled by a minority of a minority.

Additionally, while I think the magazine capacity law is pointless, the background check law is perfectly reasonable, a remarkable thing in this contentious political climate. Regardless of what I think, though, this is what lawmakers are supposed to do. I cannot fathom how these laws will be struck down, the magazine capacity law is even less stringent than the expired Assault Weapons Ban of 1994 and the background check law certainly seems to be a "reasonable restriction" permissible under McDonald.

As a gun-rights supporter, I am certainly on board with the idea that the Colorado legislature overreached. But there is a proper way to correct that overreach, and initiating recall elections is not it. Nor is filing a lawsuit that will almost certainly fail to achieve the desired result, thus damaging the very cause the plaintiffs support. No, the proper way is to introduce legislation repealing the restrictions. It may succeed, it may not. Doesn't matter. What matters is that we remain a society of laws, not reactionary, petulant children who punish people who don't do their bidding. Doing your job does not constitute a crime. Unless you're a Colorado legislator, that is. For them, doing their job is the easiest way to lose it.

As If I Needed A Reminder, or Nothing Good Happens After Midnight

So I'm sitting in my living room, half-watching King Arthur and surfing the Internet in the usual places, when suddenly I hear a bevy of police cars coming my way and getting louder by the moment. Then comes the loud crashing sound, shaking the neighborhood and abruptly ending the chase. It seems that someone decided that it would be a good idea to try to outrun the police, forgetting the fact that even should you be able to get away from one officer you can't outrun their radios. Then I looked at the clock, and a series of horrible memories came flooding back.

You see, I am a recovering alcoholic, and my mind immediately went back in time to the day that has changed my life in so many ways: 25 November 2010. Thanksgiving morning, 1:30 a.m. It was then that my life was put on pause, my finances came completely unraveled and have yet to recover, and my military career, the one thing I valued more than anything else, came to an ignominious end. It was that night that I got liquored up and decided it would be a good idea to go to Sheetz for some food, and proceeded to wreck my car right in front of a Pennsylvania State Trooper. It was my second DUI in 18 months, and it signaled the end of my precipitous, seemingly irrevocable dive into the bottom of a bottle. It was the last night I ever consumed alcohol, but as with everything else, once the damage has been done there is nothing left but wreckage and the aftermath. Sleepless nights, crushing depression, fear and anxiety, those were my constant companions. Rehab was my home for the better part of a month, sitting in a room filled with human wreckage, wondering why I was there, until it dawned on me that I also was a devastated shell of a human being.

The best that can be said about the whole situation is that I didn't kill anybody. Every day I say a little prayer thanking God for that gift. And it was a gift. I was a menace on the road, a motorized bullet cocked-and-locked, aimed at a random target. I received one last chance, a final reprieve, the chance to live and a chance for others to live instead of dying at my hands.

I bring this up only to qualify what I am going to say next, and that is this:

Nothing good happens after midnight.

If my experience teaches you nothing else, it's that when the alcohol starts flowing and the judgment disappears, people are playing with cosmic dice when they get behind the wheel of a car. The person tonight, with the incident happening during prime drinking hours, was almost certainly drunk. It's a lesson (s)he never learned. Please do us all a favor, learn it now. Otherwise, next time it may be you driving into a telephone pole, sitting in the hoosegow with your head in your hands, wondering where it all went wrong. Or worse, you may never get the chance for remorse, you may be sitting on a gurney in the hospital or the morgue, lying in repose next to your victims.

Now I get to try to sleep, my nightmares of that event ever reminding me of what I have lost, and what I could still lose should I again be tempted by the demon rum. Wounds may heal, but the scars are ever present.

Dianne Feinstein: A collection of contradictions

Dianne Feinstein is in the news recently for what can only be called outrage over the Central Intelligence Agency's alleged domestic spying. As head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, she has been the Democratic point-woman on allegations of torture while engaged in the so-called War On Terror during the George W. Bush administration. Apparently the CIA allowed some documents to be released to the committee which were classified yet deemed not relevant, and so they "hacked" committee computers to remove access to those documents.

Feinstein was understandably furious. The CIA, in doing what they did, provided tacit evidence of a domestic spying capability, which is illegal. Furthermore, it arguably constitutes obstruction of an investigation under the auspices of a committee that has oversight on the CIA's activities.

Unfortunately for Senator Feinstein, this newfound concern for the sanctity of computer systems and access directly contradicts her well-documented support for the NSA's domestic spying program. She voted in favor of  the FISA Improvement Act, which allows for warrantless surveillance and the compilation of a database accessible to law enforcement agencies. She has long run interference for the NSA, rubber-stamping virtually every request that comes her way. But now, when she is the victim of these same activities, it is beyond the pale? Perhaps the crocodile tears come a bit late.

But wait, there's more! Senator Feinstein has long been a proponent of gun control. In fact, she is virtually synonymous with it. To the average American she is known as the lawmaker who authored the Assault Weapons Ban of 1994 and the one who tries to have it reinstated every single year.

To be fair, I know when her crusade began: 27 November 1978. That was the day that George Moscone and Harvey Milk were assassinated in San Francisco's City Hall by Dan White. Senator Feinstein heard the shots and got to witness the carnage with her own eyes, in addition to getting an unwanted promotion to Mayor of San Francisco. I am not unsympathetic.

My sympathy, however, does not extend to dishonesty. "Assault weapons", a term manufactured by gun-control advocates specifically to create fear, uncertainty, and doubt in order to justify a ban, are used in less than 2% of all violent crimes. You could argue that 2% is still too many, and while I am loath to disagree with that it's also worth noting that 2% of anything isn't particularly significant. Yet she persists in trying to ban them, regularly making assertions that do not bear scrutiny. She has gone further, mind you. In an interview on 60 Minutes on 5 February 1995, she said the following:

"If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States for an outright ban, picking up every one of them . . . Mr. and Mrs. America, turn 'em all in, I would have done it. I could not do that. The votes weren't here." 

For all of that you might expect that she would never own a gun, that the very sight of them would disgust her. And you would be wrong. Senator Feinstein once possessed something akin to unobtanium: a license to carry a concealed weapon in the city of San Francisco. Further, she said this about it:

"I want to just give you a personal anecdote about terrorism, because less than 20 years ago, I was the target of a terrorist group. It was the New World Liberation Front. They blew up power stations and put a bomb at my home when my husband was dying of cancer. And the bomb was set to detonate at two o'clock in the morning, but it was a construction explosive that doesn't detonate when it drops below freezing. It doesn't usually freeze in San Francisco, but on this night, it dropped below freezing, and the bomb didn't detonate. I was very lucky. But, I thought of what might have happened. Later the same group shot out all the windows of my home.

And, I know the sense of helplessness that people feel. I know the urge to arm yourself, because that's what I did. I was trained in firearms. I'd walk to the hospital when my husband was sick. I carried a concealed weapon. I made the determination that if somebody was going to try to take me out, I was going to take them with me."

I suppose it's only human to be inconsistent. But we ought to demand more of our lawmakers than the sort of cognitive dissonance that would imply that they are somehow immune to actions that they approve of wholeheartedly when the target is us. Dianne Feinstein should know better. Physician, heal thyself!

Top 10 List: Best Steelers of All Time

As referenced in a previous post, the Steelers are front and center this week on the NFL Network. They produced a show ranking the top 10 Steelers. Their list was as follows:

10) Jerome Bettis
9) Lynn Swann
8) Hines Ward
7) Troy Polamalu
6) Mel Blount
5) Jack Lambert
4) Rod Woodson
3) Franco Harris
2) Terry Bradshaw
1) Joe Greene

It's hard to argue with that list, but because I like to I certainly will. My list, with annotations:

10) Mike Webster- "Iron Mike" defined the center position almost from the moment he assumed it. A center pulling on a run? Who did things like that before Mike Webster? Also notable was his longevity and durability, and though it all ended tragically it's not too much to say that he was the best center of all time. His protege, Dermontii Dawson, is also in the Hall of Fame, having learned his craft at the hands of the master. Until recently the center position in Pittsburgh changed about as often as the head coaching position, and Webster had everything to do with that.
9) John Stallworth- Everybody remembers Lynn Swann and his fantastic circus catches, but quietly Stallworth had by far the better career. Additionally, he made just as many circus catches as Swann ever did, and he played at a high level for much longer. I could probably rate them both together, in which case they'd be higher, but I think 9th place is a pretty good spot.
8) Jack Ham- Another player who was overshadowed by some of the other greats, he was probably the second-best linebacker of the '70s and arguably better than more famous legends like Butkus and Nitschke. His problem? See number 2.
7) Ben Roethlisberger- Big Ben makes the list not because of numbers but because he has played his entire career behind papier-mache offensive lines and has taken a never-ending series of punishing hits, yet rarely fails to get back up and go back for more. His statistics make him one of the premier quarterbacks in the game, and he has shown consistent improvement throughout his career. He is well-known for shrugging off tackles that would bring down lesser players and making things happen. And the biggest thing he has going for him: the Steelers recent run of excellence began the day he first found himself under center. Between him and Bradshaw there was a procession of mediocrity, Brister, Malone, Tomczak, Maddox, the other guy whose name I will never say... he solidified the quarterback position for more than a decade and can still add to his already stellar reputation. His personal life certainly wasn't everything it should have been, and he certainly wouldn't have been ranked had any of it put him in jail, but it didn't, and as such we can rate him as a player much more easily.
6) Hines Ward- An undersized ex-quarterback became the best receiver in Steelers history, a Super Bowl MVP, and the single best blocking receiver in football history. You could always count on Ward when the game was on the line. Somehow he also got a reputation as a dirty player, which I think is unjustified. His crushing blocks, notably on Keith Rivers, demonstrate how complete his game truly was. Other players didn't like being shown up by a runt who was always grinning ear to ear, which is where I think the reputation came from.
5) Franco Harris- Franco gets a big rep for his statistics, and everybody remembers the "Immaculate Reception", so he's a tough one to place. Franco also came through in big games, evidenced by his performance in the 4 Super Bowls. His problem was that he wasn't really a bruiser, he was more of a finesse back. As a result, his career was stutterstep-dance-tackle for 15 carries and then a few big payoff runs. He's unquestionably a great player, but I have a hard time ranking him higher.
4) Mel Blount- He so completely changed the cornerback position that they actually changed the rules to stop him. The "Mel Blount Rule" prevented cornerbacks from jamming receivers after 5 yards. So what did he do? He changed his game and remained the premier cornerback in the league for several more years. He was the first "shutdown" cornerback. If you went against him you had the worst game of your career.
3) Terry Bradshaw- Yes, I know what his stats were. I know he was benched at times for Terry Hanratty and Joe Gilliam. I know all the stories about how dumb he was alleged to be. Well, dumb old Terry Bradshaw shined when it mattered. Put the ball in his hand when the game was on the line and you were rarely disappointed, with 4 rings to show for it. In that category I'd put him only second to Montana.
2) Jack Lambert- THE best middle linebacker of all time, bar none. He was completely undersized for the position, but mean, nasty, toothless Jack Lambert overcame that by playing with abandon. He was superlative on the blitz and in coverage.  Few people intimidated like he did, and even fewer backed it up for an extended period of time.
1) Joe Greene- How could it be anyone else? The Steelers' path to greatness started the day he was drafted, only hours before Chuck Noll was hired to be the head coach. He simply owned everybody he was faced off against, and when he started out he was just mean. When he learned to control his temper he became even more unstoppable. He was the foundation of the Steel Curtain, the unquestioned leader, and simply the best Steeler to ever play the game.

As you can see, they somewhat align. Still, think of how hard it is to make this list. For every non-'70s Steeler you have to leave off a Hall of Fame player. It boggles the mind. L.C. Greenwood, Ernie Stautner, Lynn Swann, Jack Butler, John Henry Johnson... how do you leave them off the list? Troy Polamalu? He might one day be there for the amazing things he does, but he doesn't displace anybody yet, especially because he has a history of performance-sapping injuries that have taken large parts of seasons away.

One person that will never make my Top 10 list is Rod Woodson. Yes, he was great. Yes, he might have been one of the best players of all time. Yes, he made the NFL Network's list. But dammit, he won a ring with the hated Ratbirds. For that single fact alone I can never forgive him.

So there's my list. Feel free to contribute yours, even if you're a Ratbirds fan. I welcome the challenge.

Military Injustice

Over the past year sexual assault and various other sex crimes in the military have been spotlighted, led by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, D-NY. She is of the belief that by continuing to have all aspects of military justice in military hands certain crimes are being ignored, that the military leadership is opting to keep it quiet and failing to prosecute, often to the great detriment of sexual abuse victims.

It made sense that the military would want to keep matters in-house, as it were. It has always been that way, for one, and there has long been an undercurrent of "us versus them", the military against the civilian people who demand things of the armed forces yet have never served and have no understanding of why things are done the way they are and why things should not necessarily be done the way the civilians might want them to be done. As a result, there is resentment when either faction tries to stick their nose in matters that don't necessarily concern them.

In this case, though, Senator Gillibrand has a point. Statistics bear out that between 25 and 50 percent of all female servicemembers face some sort of sexual assault at some point in their military careers, yet little is done with regard to prosecution or mitigation. There is sexual harassment training, of course, and there are reporting channels, but there is no confidence that the chain of command will do anything about it. Worse, the most effective method of reporting requires the victim to sacrifice their anonymity to their commander, which opens them up to the possibility of reprisal. One does not "snitch" on their fellow servicemen lightly, and since the military is still essentially a "man's world" many victims are reluctant to work through the chain of command.

So, with that in mind, what are we to make of the most recent high-profile case of sexual abuse? Brigadier General Jeffrey Sinclair was put on trial for numerous crimes, including forcible sodomy, that could have put him in Fort Leavenworth for the remainder of his life. He openly admitted his acts in court. The evidence against him was overwhelming. Yet he was allowed to plead down to mistreatment of his accuser and, laughably, adultery, without a doubt the single most anachronistic crime listed in the Uniform Code of Military Justice and so common that the military would be reduced by at least half should everybody guilty of it be charged.

Even with the plea he still faced up to 20 years in prison and dishonorable discharge, a fitting punishment for a commander who took advantage of his subordinates. And what did he get? A Letter of Reprimand and a fine. An LOR? That's IT? Servicemembers get LORs for showing up late to work too often, not for "forcible sodomy" or violating female subordinates! Oh, in the end he will be retired, probably reduced in rank to Lieutenant Colonel, and then he will go about his life with a not-insignificant pension and a job with some think-tank or defense contractor. Had he been an enlisted man he'd be in Kansas right now with a big P on his back breaking rocks. As always, officers take care of their own.

This is such a miscarriage of justice one scarcely knows where to begin. A good start, however, would be to back the efforts of Senator Gillibrand, because God knows if the military is going to let things like this go with little more than a wink and nudge justice is NOT being done, and if they can't be trusted to police their own someone else has to.

Until then, though, crimes will continue to be committed, and grave injustices will continue to be done.

Guns: The Theater of the Absurd

Today's silliness comes courtesy of Pennsylvania State Representative Mark Keller (R-Landisburg). PA House Bill 2011 would allow any citizen of Pennsylvania to challenge any local gun law. On its face that sound reasonable enough: every person should have the right to challenge their local government pursuant to their Constitutional rights. When you dig deeper, though, this proposed law doesn't make any sense.

Here's why: In 1993, Pennsylvania passed a law that applied preemption to municipal gun laws. What that means is that municipalities cannot enact local ordinances that forbid or otherwise restrict the sale, possession, or carrying of guns. All gun laws in Pennsylvania must be enacted by the state legislature.

That makes a lot of sense when you think about it. What is legal in Cumberland County should also be legal in Allegheny County, Erie County, Potter County, etc. There is no patchwork of laws that might cause an otherwise law-abiding citizen to fall prey to some overzealous law enforcement agency and end up in the pokey simply for unknowingly entering the wrong town.

Therefore, this proposed law addresses a problem that does not exist. Let's take Philadelphia, for instance. A few years back they enacted a couple of local ordinances heavily restricting guns and gun ownership. You know what happened after that? Nothing. A great big collective yawn. The state told Philadelphia that their laws were nullified by preemption and that was that.

So if this passes, citizens will have the right to challenge laws that cannot be enforced. What's next, a challenge to some archaic, long-lost anti-miscegenation law even though they were long ago overturned by the Supreme Court in the Loving decision? Hey, let's challenge anti-sodomy laws while we're at it! Let's clog up the courts with utter nonsense. Let's have cash-strapped municipalities spend even more of our own money to defend themselves against laws that cannot be enforced.

I'm all for challenging restrictive gun laws. I am not, however, interested in some guy proposing something silly just to get his name in the paper and gain a reputation as a friend of gun owners during an election year. Politics is often the theater of the absurd, especially when it comes to guns. Let's hope this particular play ends up being a comedy, because if it passes it will be a political tragedy.

It's Steelers Week on the NFL Network!

Could it be any better, really? All Steelers, all the time. Features, Super Bowl replays, interviews, NFL Films... this may be the best week ever!

Right now I'm watching a film about the Steelers' 1978 season. I'm not old enough to remember it, but watching this I can't help but be wistful about what I missed. It's like a who's who of Hall of Famers, and when they stop focusing on the truly great players like Mel Blount, Lynn Swann, Terry Bradshaw, Jack Ham and Jack Lambert, they go to guys like Rocky Bleier, Randy Grossman, and a young Tony Dungy, who were merely fantastic.

That team was stacked. How they ever lost a game is incomprehensible to me. Every loss they took from 1974 until 1979 constituted a major upset. If the offense was poor the defense was indomitable. If the defense lagged the offense put up 30. It's simply incredible.

The sad part is that such a team can never exist again. There was a sea change in the relationship between players and owners in the 1970s in all sports. Free agency, something that had never truly existed thanks to something called the reserve clause, became the norm. In football it was limited thanks to the Rozelle Rule, which required compensation in the form of draft picks in exchange for any free-agent player, so for the duration of the '70s player transfers rarely happened, but now players move freely once they become unrestricted free agents. With every player looking for the big payday and the implementation of a salary cap, dominant teams simply cannot be held together for any extended period of time. The economics of the collective bargaining agreement simply won't allow it.

I'm sure it's better for the players, and for the fans of all the other teams who are sick of seeing their teams destroyed and humiliated year after year it's absolutely a good thing, but football just isn't the same. You could get behind a team and it would always be the same core players, like a family, people you grew up with and got comfortable with. Now such loyalty is rare, and teams shuffle players in and out like commodities.

Still, we have film, proof that such greatness existed. Without it, who would believe that great dynasties like the Packers of the '60s, the Steelers of the '70s, and the 49ers of the '80s were anything but mythology?

Russia: Back to the Bad Old Days

Those of you of a certain age will remember when nuclear war with Russia was an inevitability, when people built bomb shelters in their basements, when "duck and cover" drills were de rigeur in schools, as if diving under desks or leaning against the side of the interior hallways would save us from a megaton airburst. The very notion is ludicrous, yet we did it anyway because Civil Defense was everyone's responsibility. My grandparents first faced it during the Truman and then the Eisenhower administrations, then my parents throughout the '60s and '70s, and then it was my turn. As a child during the '80s, we thought it was ludicrous that the Soviets would ever launch an attack, so the drills were great fun that served only to take time away from classes, always a winner with schoolkids. Little did we know about Able Archer 83 and the close calls that happened due to mutual mistrust and incompetence.

Europe, on the other hand, wasn't too concerned about nukes. No, they were concerned about a fragmented Germany, particularly the island of democracy known as West Berlin, the perpetual thorn in the side of the Evil Empire. They were concerned about tanks and troops massing in the satellite states of Eastern Europe and pouring through the Fulda Gap.

Then, wonder of wonders, the Soviets came to us hat in hand. Gorbachev met Reagan at Geneva in 1985, later in Reykjavik, and the result was a lessening of tensions. The Soviet Union, with little choice, implemented the famous policies of glasnost and perestroika. It didn't matter what they meant, God knows we had no idea, but in the end we felt like we had won, we made the sinister Communists back down. Later the Berlin Wall fell, Germany was reunited, and the Soviet Union collapsed of its own accord, a rotten shell. One wonders why we were ever afraid. All they had were nukes, and nobody would ever end the world for laughs.

Well, now we remember why we were afraid. The Crimean Peninsula, legally a part of Ukraine, is now in dispute. The government of Ukraine, the second-largest former Soviet republic, is in shambles. And all of this is happening because Vladimir Putin decided that Ukraine should remain in the Russian sphere of influence. It was all I could do not to type "Soviet sphere of influence", because this whole fracas resembles nothing so much as the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 and the violent end of "Prague Spring" in 1968. Putin, a man who has gone to great lengths to hold on to power through more or less legal means by subverting the intent of Russian elections, resembles the Soviet strongmen of old. And now, with Ukraine mobilizing and Russia occupying land that isn't theirs, albeit with significant ethnic justification, the potential for a reunion between Russia and Ukraine (who doesn't stand a chance if it comes down to a shooting war) is high.

Russia is getting the band back together. Welcome back to the Bad Old Days.

Welcome, and an introduction.

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. My name is David Cartwright, and this is my very first attempt at blogging. It can't be that difficult, right? Every idiot that knows how to click a mouse button has one.

Well, not me. I am, as they say, somewhat of a Luddite. I don't have a smart phone, my car has a manual transmission by choice, and while I have embraced the Internet out of necessity I still believe that we all spend altogether too much time staring at a screen finding out about the newest rumors regarding the celebrity flavor of the month. I think stranger danger is a myth and that kids should only call home if they won't be back by dinner, I think parents should actually blame their children and not their teachers when they fail, and I think... well, I suppose you'll find out what I think. I'm certainly not shy about offering my opinions.

This blog will be full of my personal musings. That is what a blog is for, after all, and since I am under no illusions that anybody will ever read this I do not feel restrained in what I say. My interests are myriad, but the things I am most vocal about are politics (my degree is in Political Science), guns (I am very much a gun rights supporter), cars (I am slightly more than a shadetree mechanic and a bit of a gearhead), and my true passion, the Pittsburgh Steelers. The Penguins and Pirates will probably get some time as well, but it wouldn't be too much to say that I bleed Black and Gold.

The title of this blog, Holding Forth, is indicative of what I do in my life. Yes, it annoys the hell out of people then, too. I tend to speak at length about anything and everything without regard to the idea that someone might not want to hear what I have to say. In that respect this medium is perfect for me because if you're reading this you're here by choice, and if you don't like it there's that little red box with an X in it that you can click at any time.

With that, I think I've set up a pretty good stage for my views. Maybe someone will read this, maybe not. Either way gives me an outlet for all of the things I typically want to say but can't find the appropriate place to say it. This is perfect: my sandbox, my rules. More will be forthcoming at my leisure.