Hope springs from the pools of Beijing

My best man and I fancy ourselves intellectuals. Much of our youth was spent pontificating on the state of the world. Lately our conversations have centered around an apathetic public that has allowed itself to be spoonfed lie after lie, a complicit press corps, and the overall fragmentation fo the attention of the American public.

The basic contention is that there is so much information and distraction available for the population we have collectively lost our ability to focus on what's important. Our economy is in shambles. Despite the most advanced health care system in the world, we prevent those in the greatest need from having access to it. Last but not least we are mired in an ill conceived, fraudulent war that is crippling our ability to defend ourselves and our position on a global stage.

America has lost focus. We are all so busy struggling to survive we stopped caring about each other. We haven't had a thing to come together about in a long time. 9/11 was seven years ago and the aftermath became a twisted heap of collective grief and not something we could all look to as something positive.

Last night I played poker at the Marietta Billiard Club in Marietta, GA. I play there quite often and have marvelled at the odd cross section of humanity that joins me at the tables. From a demographic perspective you cannot find a more diverse group. With a group that diverse you will find a variety of interests and opinions. Last night however, there was a singular focus. That focus was on the far wall where a projector usually shows the Falcons, Braves or NASCAR. Last night the massive picture showed 6'4" half human, half dolphin Michael Fred Phelps and when he and his band of reknown hit the screen everything stopped.

No cards were dealt. No pots were splashed and no one complained of the infamous bad beats you take when you play free poker. The focus was on the 22 year old human fish from Baltimore and his quest for the improbable. The crowd roared when Aaron Piersol hit the water. Piersol's leg was strong and Hansen, who has had a rough Olympics really held his own giving Phelps a real opportunity to pull ahead. Phelps first 50 meters was just ok and for a moment he fell behind the Australian. Then, in the second 50 he surged ahead, each stroke pushing him further and further in front. When the American anchor, Jason Lezak hit the water the crowd's individual chants had morphed into a continuous repetitive cheer. GO! GO! GO! When his outstretched hand touched the wall and Phelps and America were once again champions the crowd erupted as one.

Michael Phelps' excellence unified a bouillabaisse of people last night, bringing their focus to something positive and helping people that have little in common connect. It was beautiful and in a small way gave me hope.

No 1 of Consequence

The bell rings... or maybe tolls for America.

The Iowa Caucus takes place soon and the starting bell for the next presidential election will ring loudly across the land. Does the election matter? Is it possible for anything to change for the better? Daunting questions, to be sure, but hope springs eternal in my mind that we can achieve something as a united American people.

Meanwhile the disenfranchisement of the American voter continues. (I apologize for the USA Today link) Here is an article about how the caucuses actually prevent participation from interested Iowans because of the stringent voting restrictions.

This is a great piece of writing from Michael Moore. It sounds like Moore will endorse John Edwards if Gore doesn't get into the race. In my opinion if Gore doesn't get into the race soon it will be too late. The former VP recently accepting a partnership at Kleiner Perkins (a leading investment bank)makes me think he isn't running.

I am currently reading a book that was written to scare the living daylights out of Americans. Maybe that wasn't the intent of the book, but it is scaring me pretty badly. I will be delving into it in greater detail as I get further into it. The book is call The End of America, A Letter to a Young Patriot, by Naomi Wolf. I am about 25% through it. I recommend it highly.

No 1 of Consequence

Alberto Gonzales, see ya

Alberto Gonzales resigned. Democrats are criticizing him as he goes. Republicans are giving him very subdued thanks. If you follow this administrations myriad mistakes you are aware that Alberto Gonzales has made a number of them. If anyone thinks that his actions are independent of this administration's policy of oppression they are sorely mistaken. President Bush and his cronies have declared war on civil liberties in this country. Alberto Gonzales was acting in the service of his king... so called king, self crowned king... facist leader. Should he have risen above the administration and led the Department of Justice on a just path? I think he should have. Am I even remotely surprised he didn't? Not even a little bit.

No 1 of Consequence

No mas, I give up.

Back on August 6, I posted about a law that basically usurped the 4th Amendement rights from a lot of Americans. I intimated in this post that the democrats were asleep at the switch while this legislation was being pushed through.

No Best Man of Consequence sent me an e-mail last night quoting a New York Times article:

Congress accidentally gave President George Bush the power to conduct warrantless searches and seizures when it passed a wiretapping bill earlier this month. Democrats are embarrassed they voted without understanding language that would allow—among other things—some physical searches, and the collection of business records, without a court order.

Another quote from the Times:

“We did not cover ourselves in glory,” said one Democratic aide, referring to how the bill was compiled.


________________

This is sickening on a number of levels. How does one accidentally give broad powers in violation of The Constitution to the executive? How is a bill accidentally passed? I am certain I saw a Schoolhouse Rock episode once when I was a kid that detailed how tough it really is to get a law passed.



That YouTube video is 3 minutes long. Longer than anyone spent reading this pathetic piece of legislation. It also demonstrates that Congress doesn't actually debate laws anymore. They just sign them out of fear.

Scaredy cat signing quote from the times:

Though many Democratic leaders opposed the final version of the legislation, they did not work forcefully to block its passage, largely out of fear that they would be criticized by President Bush and Republican leaders during the August recess as being soft on terrorism.

Once again we have checkers playing politicians in a chess playing world. This isn't even hard folks. I bet if I asked my 13 year old son how he would handle this kind of criticism he could easily come up with a deflection strategy that would be viable.

How about this, and keep in mind I 've spent exactly 3 minutes thinking about it.

Hypothetical politician responding to hypothetical criticism that he is soft on terrorism when faced with passing legislation that significantly impacts the rights of American citizens.

"When taking my oath of office after the citizens of (insert state here) saw fit to elect me as their representative I swore to uphold The Constitution of the United States of America. This legislation, while it may be expedient, does not protect the bests interests of Americans because it impinges upon their civil liberties. Voting for legislation that oppresses law abiding citizens is a violation of my oath and I will not sign, EVER. This administration has refused to do what's hard, which is protect Americans from terrorism without infringing upon the freedoms that make this country what it is. Until President Bush and the republican party take freedom as seriously as I do, and are willing to do the hard work involved in protecting that freedom, we will not be safe from ourselves, much less terrorists."

Think that would send any critical right wing elements scrambling? I do. Imagine what someone who does political spinning professionally could come up with.

No 1 of Consequence

More baseball. Yes, I know it is December

I read this very sad article about Mark McGwire last week and wanted to wrtie about it, but I have been absolutely swamped at work. The article is long, but the general gist is that Mark McGwire has faded completely out of the lives of everyone he ever knew before the steroid scandal. He doesn't see his old friends from home anymore. He doesn't talk to his former teammates, agents, or coaches anymore. He lives in a gated community and plays golf and is trying to live as quiet an existence as possible.

This is only relevant because he recently became eligible for the baseball Hall of Fame. There has been great debate lately on blogs, on the radio, on ESPN etc as to whether McGwire should be elected to The Hall, whether he will be elected to The Hall and what is going on in the minds of the voters.

Most people I know don't think about this or care about this. I am not sure I particularly care either, I just hate hypocrisy when I see it. For all the talk about cheating and degrading the great game of baseball the facts seem to support that the press and MLB management knew about the steroid problem long before the ridiculous congressional hearings. They knew about it before BALCO. They knew about it before Barry Bonds passed Babe Ruth's home run total. They knew about it before McGwire was humiliated in front of the nation. The press and management knew and collectively did nothing.

Why?

The 1994 baseball strike crippled the business of baseball. It alienated the fans and tarnished the game for a LOT of people. The 1995 season saw significantly depressed attendance. merchandise sales were way down, television and radio ratings were off and ownership was in a panic. Things started to come back in 1996 and 1997. Then we reached the golden summer of 1998 when baseball recaptured America's sporting heart. Mark McGwire & Sammy Sosa's home run title chase became the only story of that summer. McGwire's fist pumps and Sosa's heart and finger kisses were on Sportscenter every night, in every magazine, on every newspaper. As McGwire got closer to 61 home runs the brought out Roger Maris' family to celebrate in pomp and circumstance of a sport reborn.

Sure, McGwire weighed about 65 pounds more than he did when he was a rookie and looked to be bursting out of his uniform. It was true Sammy Sosa looked like he had been inflated with an air pump. Yeah, Barry Bonds looked like a human bobble head doll. Who cared? Sportwriters wrote about the glorious romance of baseball's resurgence and the ownership breathed a collective sigh of relief as fans flooded back to the stadiums and people turned on ball games in record numbers.

Any baseball writer who wrote about the glory of the summer of 1998 who deson't vote for McGwire's candidacy is a hypocrite. Any baseball owner who talks about how steroids soiled the game are also hypocrites. That Mark McGwire has been humiliated to such a degree that he can't even talk about baseball with his neighbors is an absolute shame. It is a crime against baseball and baseball fans.

In the grand scheme of things is this important? Not remotely, but the article made me sad for the big guy.

No 1 of Consequence

Begrudging credit where it currently appears to be due.

Anyone who reads this space knows I am no fan of the current President of the United States and could never, under any circumstances, be considered a republican. However as an American I have an understanding of the organizing priciples of this country, one of which is land ownership. To that end, the latest trend of abuse of "eminent domain" has been especially apalling to me. The condemnation of land for uses other than the public good (public transportation, power generation, parks etc) is a sick abuse of power by corporate demagogues who have no interest in helping the public and significant interest in exploiting the public.

Today, President Bush issued an executive order that would effectively prohibiting the use of eminent domain for uses other than those described above. It is strongly worded and unabiguous as I understand it. As I describe myself as an open minded individual I must give credit to this administration for taking steps to protect the public.

Well done.

(I reserve the right to shift position on this if I find out it was total crap and there are secret loopholes that continue to let the American people get screwed)

***UPDATE*** Once again it is important to have readers who are smarter than you are. What No Best Man of Consequence pointed out in his comment is that this executive order does nothing to stop the proliferation of state and local governments stealing land from the general population. I hereby exercise my reserved right to shift my position and say this executive order, as well as this post, were nothing but a complete waste of time and energy. Apologies.

No 1 of Consequence

JFK teaches us, every day.

If this nation is to be wise as well as strong, if we are to achieve our destiny, then we need more new ideas for more wise men reading more good books in more public libraries. These libraries should be open to all-except the censor. We must know all the facts and hear all the alternatives and listen to all the criticisms. Let us welcome controversial books and controversial authors. For the Bill of Rights is the guardian of our security as well as our liberty.

- John Fitzgerald Kennedy

I just watched a compelling documentary called Unconstitutional: The War on our Civil Liberties.

I highly recommend it, whatever your political viewpoint.

No 1 of Consequence

Intelligent Design vs. Evolution

Intelligent Design vs. Evolution

aka

(Creationism) vs. Evolution

aka

The Constitution vs. The Christian Right

Or as Bill O’Reilly would have you believe;

The Secular Progressive Elitist Press vs. All good Reasonable Christian Peoples

Can I get an Oy Vey!

Today a judge in Pennsylvania ruled that teaching creationism would violate the Constitutional separation of church and State. Well duh! Of course it violates the separation of church and State. I am a person of faith. I believe in a higher power, G-d, something greater than ourselves. I also believe in an evolving global/universal ecology based on Einstein and Darwin’s theories. I believe scientific theories should be taught in schools. I believe that religious theories should be taught in the home or in church/synagogue/mosque etc. Or, if you want your children to be taught both sides in school, send them to private religious schools. I have no problem with both sides of coin being taught in religious schools, but religion has no place in democratic/representative government or public education.

They say, “No1!!! You can’t do that!! That’s not possible!!! How can you do that it goes against both theories?!? You heretic!!”

I say, “Bite me… Or, you can listen to what I have to say and either agree or disagree with me.”

Let’s briefly (extremely briefly) define both theories for the purposes of the hypothesis I lay before you.

Creationism, Judeo-Christian origin, as told in the Old Testament, Genesis, G-d created the heaven and the Earth and on the seventh day he rested.

Big Bang/Evolution, infinitely dense singularity in space explodes into an expanding universe. As our sun and earth cool organisms evolve out of some primordial ooze, leading to multi-celled organisms, leading to, leading to, leading to…

Clear? No? Well, me either, but let me try and reconcile the two for you without going into Talmudic commentary or the Vatican Archives.

You have to lose all presumption of the divine. What does this mean? It means you have to reject the possibility that you can understand G-d’s time table versus human perception. If you have a literal interpretation of the bible I just lost you. However, if you don’t, if you think that human understanding is greater now than it has ever been you have to accept the fact that biblical texts may not mean exactly what they did to those who lived when they were written. If the bible was revealed to Moses on Sinai is it reasonable to postulate that G-d, while giving an explanation of things, spoke generically and relatively simply to Moses? I think it is. Is reasonable to presume that we have a true understanding of time as G-d understands? I don’t think so. Therefore, the seven day creation period described in Genesis could very well have taken millions of years as humans understand them. That fits Big Bang/Evolution into Creationism.

Let me see if I can get the scientists to a place where they have to admit that some things are beyond scientific understanding. The Big Bang postulates that an infinitely dense singularity of space and matter exploded at a finite point in time to create our expanding universe as we know it today. My question to you is this; Where did that infinitely dense singularity come from? The answer, obviously, is you don’t know. I don’t know, no one knows where it came from. Therefore, you cannot reject the existence of G-d or a higher intelligence that created that singularity. That my friends, fits Creationism into Big Bang/Evolution.

For those who take the bible word for word literally. I give you the words of the great Aaron Sorkin, from an episode of the West Wing:

President Bartlet (sarcastically): I like how you call homosexuality an abombination.
Jenna Jacobs: I don't say homosexuality is an abomination, Mr. President, the Bible does.
President Bartlet: Yes, it does. Leviticus.
Jenna Jacobs: 18:22.
President Bartlet: Chapter and verse. I wanted to ask you a couple of questions while I have you here. I'm interested in selling my youngest daughter into slavery as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. She's a Georgetown sophmore, speaks fluent Italian, always cleared the table when it was her turn. What would a good price for her be? While thinking about that, can I ask another? My Chief of Staff Leo McGarry insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly says he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself or is it okay to call the police? Here's one that's really important because we've got a lot of sports fans in this town: touching the skin of a dead pig makes one unclean. Leviticus 11:7. If they promise to wear gloves, can the Washington Redskins still play football? Can Notre Dame? Can West Point? Does the whole town really have to be together to stone my brother John for planting different crops side by side? Can I burn my mother in a small family gathering for wearing garments made from two different threads? "Think about that, will you? Oh, and one last thing. You may have mistaken this for your meeting of the ignorant tight-asses club, but in this building when the President stands no one sits."

___________________________________________________

Can’t we agree at this point that literal interpretations of the bible lead to unreasonable behavior by today’s standards and it is only through reason and acceptance of more than one idea that we will have a comprehensive understanding of one another and further advance as a global society?

No matter what you believe though, The Constitution is clear that church and state shall be separate entities and no religious ideology shall be imposed by government institution. Debates like that belong in homes, in the news, in places of worship and here, in the blogosphere, where all minds can be free to express their ideas and be heard.

No1ofConsequence

DBA's rock, the Jets do not & Politics A Go-Go

I love my job. I work for a growing company that is really on the verge of something special. However, as with all growing companies we are experiencing some growing pains, specifically with our website performance and our ASP application. We recently added a new database administrator to the staff and there were great promises made about what he could do for the company and how he would single-handedly improve the performance by reorganizing the data. You hear things like this and you nod along. You hear things like this and you roll your eyes. Promises have been made in the past, you see, and nothing has ever improved the situation. Usually we muddle through and fight onward. However, when I got in this morning, the promise had been delivered upon. My backside application is working with a fluidity that I have never seen and our front side, client facing application, is absolutely smoking fast. The new DBA has not come in yet, he probably is taking a comp day after working the whole weekend, but when he gets in he is getting a major high five from No1ofConsequence.

Onward to far less important things.

In other news, the Jets snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. This, of course, plays right into the duality of Jets fandom, yes, obviously you want them to win as many games as possible, but once they miss the playoffs and there is no hope of Super Bowl dreams being fulfilled, you kind of, and I say this gently, want them to lose every week so they get a good draft pick. I know, I know, I am a bad person for actually being happy that they blew the Dolphins game this weekend, so be it. Now, of course, you don’t want them to throw games, because that damages the integrity of the league, but when you have the opportunity to land a Reggie Bush, you want to get him.

This leads me to a knucklehead conversation my brother and I had while he was visiting me a couple of weeks ago. Millions of Americans participate in Fantasy Football. I haven’t really enjoyed it since Barry Sanders retired, but I am still in about three different leagues on Yahoo. You play head to head against other people in the league, with your players and their players accruing points. At the end of the season the best two teams play in the Fantasy Super Bowl for that league and the winner takes home the top prize, usually some cash. However, the two worst teams also play head to head that same final week and the winner is crowned the Toilet Bowl Champion. The loser usually wins some money also.(about the price it costs them to enter the league) How have we not instituted this in the real NFL? The two worst teams play the Sunday before the Super Bowl and the winner gets the top pick in the draft. Who would be against this? The players would get an extra pay day, the league would have something else to promote and the week before the Super Bowl would not be dark. Also in terms of sponsorship, American Standard, Kohler and any other bathroom fixture company would go crazy to sponsor an NFL sanctioned toilet bowl. It would be a bonanza, plus, you know Vegas would love it.

Politics - a go go

I am not going to write much about President Bush’s speech last night. I don’t like to dive into the political realm without having well researched data to support my contentions. I just don’t have that kind of time right now. I will ask this, has there ever been a less inspiring speaker in the history of the White House? You would think after 5-6 plus years (including campaigning) the guy would loosen up in front of a camera, but President Bush continues to be a complete stiff. There is a new parody on Jib Jab. If you haven’t checked out their stuff it is pretty clever, usually.

No1ofConsequence