House of Eratosthenes

Just finished watching The Day After Tomorrow. Normally when a movie makes a profound effect on me I write up a quick review, but to be realistic this movie didn’t make any profound effect on me. That could be because of my mental handicap that compels me to get my science stuff from scientific things and my entertainment stuff from entertainment things; I’m not like these enlightened “nuanced” movie audiences who mix the two together.

However, I was inspired to write up a quick synopsis for a possible sequel. This probably would make only a limited amount of sense to someone who hasn’t seen the Emmerich movie.

(May Contain Minor Spoilers)

The events of the first movie, it is discovered, have killed off all the vegetation in the western hemisphere and therefore left that part of the world permanently uninhabitable. The United States of America is subordinated to a mere province of the “third world country” from which President Becker was speaking at the end of the film. The American dollar is devalued, discontinued, and replaced with scrip which Americans earn by making shoes, toiling in rice patties, and milking cows for the third-world people.

Global starvation ensues. The United Nations triples the annual dues that are requested of America, from 25% of the U.N. budget to nearly all of it, and sends the bill to the last known address of Congress. Naturally, it goes unpaid. Dennis Quaid is forced to move into a mud hut with his son Jake Gyllenhaal, ex-wife Sela Ward, Jake’s girlfriend, and Sela’s boyfriend who is played by Russell Crowe. He must beg and borrow, and pawn his pick-axe, until he can buy enough equipment to continue his research. Years roll by as he continues this terrible, demeaning process within a global society that no longer has an economy. After decades of building sophisticated instruments from natural resources like the Professor from Gilligan’s Island, he makes a startling discovery: The flash freezing from the first movie had NOTHING to do with any human activity whatsoever!

Starvation, and starvation-related diseases, sweep over the entire human race. Sela Ward runs off with her boyfriend, Jake Gyllenhaal dies of starvation in the arms of his father. In one of the dreariest, darkest endings of all time, Dennis Quaid finds himself in his deathbed, his ribs poking painfully through his skin, dying of black lung, gangrene and scurvy in the same room as President Becker who is in the same final stages. The two men commiserate about how terribly wrong they were to blame natural climate changes on the most productive people and corporate entities, which, on reflection, throughout history, have done so much to ease human suffering and so little to cause any of it. Both men wish they could go back and repeat history to avoid the terrible mistakes they have made. Reading the Bible that the atheist guy saved from the library, they come across the passage about coveting your neighbor and realize this is where they went wrong. They wish they had not been jealous of these corporations. They wish they had not been so quick to believe the scientists who chased federal research dollars with politically correct prejudices in their research, and so slow to believe the scientists who did not. They wish they did not base so much of their “science” on glossy Hollywood productions. Belatedly, they realize there WAS indeed a money-grubbing, greedy industry in Old America that was truly bad for humanity, which went completely unregulated. This was the movie industry. But it’s too late for any of this now.

The doe-eyed cancer patient from the first movie is sworn in as the new President. The poor fellow who was flash-frozen from the helicopter accident, is thawed out, and he becomes the Vice-President. Nobody cares very much now though, because the United States is made into a non-entity. The rest of the world rejoices about this, for a brief time, until somebody remembers there’s no food, no foreign aid, and no military strength to protect anyone from the gangs of thieving marauders who roam the wasted planet at all hours of the day and night. “Day After The Day After Tomorrow, The” is hailed by critics as deep-thinking, poignant, dark, moody, and thought-provoking. It is also the most depressing story ever told right after “Grapes of Wrath”.

Hey…Roland Emmerich can have an agenda, so can I.

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We’re Not Not Not Sorry You’re Sorry?
Saturday, November 27th, 2004

We’re Not Not Not Sorry You’re Sorry?

Nov. 16 I had an update that the “We’re Not Sorry” page, in which real Americans show their pride that the best man won the presidency, is no longer working. So at that time, the current situation was that the liberal dickholes had their “Sorry Everybody” page, where they photographically apologize to the rest of the world for the fact that there are less of them than there are of real Americans, and the real Americans had a “We’re Not Sorry” page that was out of commission while the dickhole page worked just fine.

Since then there are at least two interesting developments of which I’m aware…

…the foreign dickholes joined in the game with our domestic dickholes and put together an “Apology Accepted” page.

The good guys have redirected the defunct website to a brand-spanking new “You’re Welcome Everybody” page. Check it out.

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Bashing the Boy Scouts
Friday, November 26th, 2004

Bashing the Boy Scouts

All you lawyers out there, this is why your profession is not liked. Look what is going on here with the Boy Scouts, which tend not to be lawyers, and the ACLU, which are exactly those.

I’ll make it real simple, okay?

There are good reasons to like the Boy Scouts.

There are good reasons to like the ACLU…I suppose.

There are reasons…perceptions, really…to dislike the Boy Scouts. Some canard flying around about it being a hate group. I’ll debate that below.

There are good reasons to dislike the ACLU.

Which organization has to constantly defend itself?

And what is the ultimate effect of each. I know, out there in left-wing-nut land you can go on about the ACLU defending civil liberties, and the Boy Scouts fostering hatred and intolerance. But that’s left-wing spin and I don’t think anyone, even should they agree with the spin, would argue that. What happens when you consider both sides of each? The good and the bad done by the ACLU? The good and bad done by the Boy Scouts?

Come to think of it, to debate what I promised up above that I’d debate, what factual evidence do we have about any harm done by the Boy Scouts? I’ve heard the arguments, the theories, the hurtful invective about “hate groups” — which is an especially wicked moniker to attach to this venerable organization. What is the foundation? How would you argue this in court, you lawyers? I know you maybe get much more popular, and get invited to all kinds of more left-wing cocktail parties when you spread this hurtful propaganda about the Boy Scouts being a hate group — more of your left-wing Earl Warren thinking, “I said it’s a hate group now prove me wrong.”

Does it pass the “left nut” test?

Drop ‘em, and put your left testicle on an anvil. Are you willing to bet your left nut you can prove that the Boy Scouts fosters hatred?

Are you willing to bet your left nut that they do?

Of course not. It’s just a crazy, whack-job left-wing idea that gives you a hard-on when you go around thinking it.

But know this. A lot of people are willing to bet their left testicles that the ACLU does substantial harm. Some of them would be able to do this with the utmost confidence, since they have personally suffered the harm. Not just a few Boy Scouts officials, I am sure.

Some of our very most effective and benevolent historical figures in our nation’s history have been former Boy Scouts. Some of the most hurtful and disastrous ones have been lawyers.

Now the ACLU has achieved a widely reported “victory” by forcing the Department of Defense to issue a memo. The effect is much more pronounced in terms of P.R. than in terms of actual policy change, but that doesn’t stop the press from playing it up. And the lawsuits go on. To what end? Are you ACLU people just terrified of more young men learning to be trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent?

What’s the matter? Would this cut into the ranks of future ACLU recruits and left-wing nazi politicians?

Ever since the Supreme Court upheld the Scouts’ First Amendment right to bar Scoutmasters who are openly gay, the ACLU has looked for softer targets. The suit against the military is one of a series aimed at getting communities to deny access to public facilities. The original lawsuit also challenged the city of Chicago’s sponsorship of troops in public schools, another venue where sponsors aren’t always easy to find. The city settled.
In Connecticut the ACLU has succeeded in getting the state to remove the Scouts from the list of charitable institutions to which public employees may make voluntary contributions. And earlier this year it settled a suit against the city of San Diego, which agreed to evict the Scouts from a public park they have been using since 1918. The Scouts countersued, lost, and the case is now on appeal before the Ninth Circuit.

The question no one seems to be asking is, who’s better off as a result of these lawsuits? Surely not the 3.2 million Boy Scouts, whose venerable organization is part of the web of voluntary associations once considered the bedrock of American life. If anything, the purpose of the ACLU attacks is to paint Scouts as religious bigots. Other losers are communities themselves, which are forced to sever ties to an organization that helps to build character in young men.

You ACLU hacks either enjoy doing the work you do, or you can’t find a better way to earn a paycheck. Either way, you make me sick.

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Economic Turkey
Friday, November 26th, 2004

Economic Turkey

The nice thing about Thanksgiving is that it’s a time for us to be thankful for the love of friends & family, and on top of that, to be thankful for the more material things we have. Of course that is what Christmas is all about, but during Christmas we attach a stigma to the acquisition and possession of material largess, even while we celebrate having it. That’s why Thanksgiving kicks ass. There’s a certain sincerity about it. We don’t gather around and say “We have wonderful friends and hot food in our bellies and we feel really guilty about it” which would really be a crock of bullshit. Instead, we are thankful. We don’t feel like we’re better people than others who lack such essentials, but we don’t feel like we’re worse people either. The message is simply that we are blessed. It is one of the few holidays where we promote an attitude that is truly healthy, and from which we could learn much during the other 364 days of the year.

I’m thankful for the rare snippets of commentary like this one. It’s a little known fact that today, our perception of each of the 43 presidents our country has had, is mostly tradition. We have some really widely-disseminated common perspectives of some of these presidents, that are woefully out of step with historical reality. One of these perspectives is that the guy on the fifty-dollar bill was a bad president. Ulysses Grant was a great leader, wildly popular and for good reason, whose contributions to our country very likely saved it from ending altogether. Another far-flung perspective is that the guy on the dime, was a great president, who turned everything he touched into gold. Hey, great at some things, maybe. But some of his mistakes lengthened the depression, and were the result of misguided economic policy as well as vacillating leadership & lack of vision.

FDR�s �Thanksgiving economics� turned out to a real turkey. But it was emblematic of the misguided economic thinking put forth throughout his administration. FDR�s economics was about putting more control and resources in the hands of politicians and government bureaucrats. His policies and often his rhetoric attacked the businesses, investors and risk takers that create economic growth and jobs. That simply led to a deeper and more prolonged economic downturn. Rather than engaging in pointless efforts like changing the date of Thanksgiving, it would have been far more productive for FDR to roll back the enormous tax and regulatory burdens that he and his predecessor (Herbert Hoover) had placed on the private sector.

Ever since FDR�s time in the White House, too many people view the government as the driving force in our economy. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. Government has an important responsibility to protect life, limb and property, but then it largely needs to get out of the way. It is the innovators, the inventors, the investors and the entrepreneurs who produce economic growth and create jobs, and freedom allows them to do so. That is how we produce such a great bounty in this nation, and is something to be thankful for on the fourth Thursday of this month.

The simple fact of the matter is, the “Brain Trust” wasn’t responsible for creating the wealth that would ultimately end the Depression. The businesses that the Brain Trust was choking to death, get that credit.

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SUVs To Get Tobacco-Style Warnings
Friday, November 26th, 2004

SUVs To Get Tobacco-Style Warnings

Do-gooders in the United Kingdom, which is a country in Europe, which is that continent that doesn’t like America and which we’re supposed to be fabulously worried about because they don’t like the way we do things here in the U.S., are recommending that SUVs be required to carry health warning stickers.

Without having any access to irrefutable proof of the theory of man-made global climate change, since none exists, and lacking the authority to force SUV owners or manufacturers to carry these disclaimers around, the propeller-heads nonetheless blossomed forward with their proclamtions about what everybody should do and the British press gobbled it up. I’m glad they ran the story because it is wonderful entertainment.

Gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles, the increasingly popular all-terrain cars, should be forced to sport labels just like cigarette packs announcing their terrible health and environmental impact, a British think tank said Thursday.
Just like smokers in the European Union buy tobacco marked with “Smoking Kills” and other dire warnings, New Economics Foundation (nef) offered its own slogans for super-stickers which they said should be slapped onto the hoods and sides of cars.

“Global warming kills,” “Climate change can seriously damage your health” or even “Driving seriously harms you and others around you” were among the list of warnings proposed by the London-based think tank.

“SUVs are dangerous, fabulously polluting and part of a wider transport problem that is, according to the World Health Organization, set to be the world’s third most common cause of death and disability by 2020,” nef policy director Andrew Simms said.

There is something in the water in Europe and we do not want to borrow any more cultural values from this continent than we absolutely have to. Think about what is going on here. Person A is a white-coat-wearing-pinhead, Person B is not. Person B does something Person A doesn’t like. Here in the good ol’ U.S.A., Person A is required, by social customs if not by statute, to like it or lump it…get used to it, baby. Sure, a lot of times it gets way out of hand, but think about the alternatives. Over there, the social expectation is that Person A gets to waggle his Person-A-finger in the face of Person B, through their powerful nationalist agencies and the dictates & proclamations these agencies come up with hand-over-fist. Person A gets to make Person B do things. Person A gets to stop Person B from doing things. Person A gets to regulate every li’l thing Person B does and generally become a painful carbunkle in Person B’s ass.

Put this warning on your SUV. No drinking after dark. No guns. No swearing. No sandwiches. Ninety percent income tax after fifty thousand dollars a year, or something. Register. Apply. Apply. Register. Notify. Must. Should. Ought. Prohibited. Are not to be. Should, ought, must, ought, should, should, must, ought, should.

Remember this the next time some high-minded Birkenstock-wearing gray-ponytail hippie over here in the Land of Freedom and Plenty gets on his high horse about “in Europe, they don’t have our hangups & they let women sunbathe topless” or some such. Hey, bub, you want to talk about hangups. Why don’t you move there and then you can talk about hangups.

Don’t forget…politically powerful forces over here in USA, want us to do things here the same way those things are done over there. Scary stuff.

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Control Freaks
Thursday, November 25th, 2004

Control Freaks

Essay Completed June 27, 2004:

The older I get, the more aware I become of a salient fact: Most people are control freaks. It seems we find the decisions that concern things under our own control, decisions for which we�re responsible, boring. We like to decide things for the other guy. Our neighbor may have handicaps we don�t have; he may be accountable to other people to whom we don�t need to answer, under any circumstances. It doesn�t matter. We want things done by other people, done the way we think we would do them if we were they. Each year, I�m more convinced than I was the year before that all the world�s problems come from people like this.

In fact, watching people make decisions that affect a lot of other people, I see one common factor in the decisions that are most universally regarded, later, as bad ones. The factor is not poor judgment; it�s ignorance. Once our interest is piqued in how a thing is done, and we know someone�s doing it differently than the way we would do it, we all have this tendency to issue statements & commands when the wisest among us would be asking questions. If, that is, the wise would see fit to poke their noses into the matter at all. Lilliput wants Blefescu to open eggs on the little end. Left unasked is �exactly what catastrophe will ensue if they don�t?�

This is Kerry�s one shot at getting into the White House. Islamic terrorist thugs want us to do things the Islam way; Europe wants us to do things the European way. We have a bizarre political environment thriving right now, in which it�s perfectly okay to pontificate �Bush should have done this� and �Bush should be doing that.� And these statements at least have the makings of perfectly legitimate campaign issues. To evolve to that point, however, those statements have to mature into arguments, and before they can be reasonable arguments there are questions to be answered. What happens if he doesn�t, and why? What misfortune befell us when he did something, how do you link it to what he did, and where was the opportunity to avoid the misfortune? To say nothing of, Mr. Huffer-Puffer, how do you know all this?

In this way, the President�s most vocal detractors share some characteristics with the people our troops are fighting. This war started because Lilliputians don�t like the way we open our eggs. To them, words like �dominion,� �bailiwick� and �jurisdiction� are foreign concepts. They want things done their way. It matters not at all who�s doing them, or why, or how far-reaching the effect is.

Now admittedly, Iraq affects everybody � it is certainly not the President�s private breakfast, and the consequences of his worst decisions would be far-reaching. But the point stands, whether it�s a private affair or not, it�s still his job, and the respect for presidential authority in military matters has sunk to a depth I find rather shocking. The decisions we argue about interminably belong to the President. He heads up the Executive Branch � not the �Agent Branch�.

I�ve heard since before the invasion of Iraq, from many directions, that the President �rubbed nations the wrong way� when he didn�t �build a coalition.� That was all fine and good so long as it didn�t interfere with doing the job. But now, such military endeavor is made at the behest of several factions with disparate interests, and we�ve really hurt ourselves.

To start with, we�re losing momentum through the perception that we�ve changed the goal in invading Iraq. Weapons of Mass Destruction; Collusion with Al-Qaeda and other organizations; liberating the people of Iraq � which is it? This is a valid criticism. It�s a myth, however, that the goal has changed across time � the goal has changed across the several factions in the coalition we did build. The correct response is �of course we have several goals, what do you expect?� That�s the price of building coalitions. This seems to be one of the reasons why decades ago, wars were fought and won with clearer definitions of success. Back then, we installed a team � an executive team � and trusted them to do the job.

This is a political cost, not a tactical one. But the benefit of building a coalition was supposed to be entirely political to begin with, and although some may not be clear on how it�s so, a political misfortune can cost lives. Bush has incurred anger not through his failure to build a coalition, or to put it under the control of the UN, but from capitulating � successfully � to those who would require a coalition to begin with. The demands for a coalition belied underlying control-freakishness. I say that because, to the level of my own satisfaction, the �plan� leading from a coalition to a greater likelihood of tangible success, was never really demonstrated and I have serious doubts that it existed.

What we�re seeing here, is a lesson. Our most strident liberals, those so entrenched in the liberal mindset that they engage passionately in trying to sell it to people, hurt themselves when they use this situation to damage Bush. He has created a possibility of failure for himself this November, by behaving in a way that, according to them, is always correct. As resentment and recalcitrance rose to greet him, from out of nowhere came the idea that negative feelings could be mollified if he modified his methods. The lesson � and I really doubt Bush is learning it for the first time � is this. When people constantly criticize what you do, a lot of the time it has little to do with what you do, they just don�t like you. They�ve already made up their minds they want you gone.

This is true of most control freaks. It�s true of the people we�re fighting right now, and when John Kerry talks about what Bush should have been doing, keep in mind it�s true of Kerry as well.

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Separation of Declaration-of-Independence and State
Thursday, November 25th, 2004

Separation of Declaration-of-Independence and State

A principal in Cupertino has stopped one of her fifth-grade teachers from handing out exerpts of documents from the founding of our country, including the Declaration of Independence, because these papers mention God. The teacher has filed a lawsuit asserting he has been singled out for censorship because he is a Christian.

I hope this principal starts returning phone calls soon so we can know what her side of the story is. Unfortunately, I’m fairly sure I know exactly what she’ll say. How long have we got before the Constitution is ruled unconstitutional?

A California teacher has been barred by his school from giving students documents from American history that refer to God � including the Declaration of Independence.

Steven Williams, a fifth-grade teacher at Stevens Creek School in the San Francisco Bay area suburb of Cupertino, sued for discrimination Monday, claiming he had been singled out for censorship by principal Patricia Vidmar because he is a Christian.

“It’s a fact of American history that our founders were religious men, and to hide this fact from young fifth-graders in the name of political correctness is outrageous and shameful,” said Williams’ attorney, Terry Thompson.

“Williams wants to teach his students the true history of our country,” he said. “There is nothing in the Establishment Clause (of the U.S. Constitution) that prohibits a teacher from showing students the Declaration of Independence.”

Vidmar could not be reached for comment on the lawsuit, which was filed Monday in U.S. District Court in San Jose and claims violations of Williams rights to free speech under the First Amendment.

The Smoking Gun has the actual complaint here. On page 6 item 40, there is a list of materials Mr. Williams has been prevented from handing out, which is the following:

a. Excerpts from the “Frame of Government of Pennsylvania” by William Penn;
b. Excerpts from the Declaration of Independence;
c. Excerpts from various state constitutions;
d. A handout entitled “What Great Leaders Have Said About The Bible”;
e. “The Rights of the Colonists” by Samuel Adams;
f. Excerpts from George Washington’s journal;
g. Excerpts from John Adams’ diary;
h. Excerpts from “The Principles of Natural Law” by Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui;
i. A handout entitled “Fact Sheet: Currence & Coins — History of ‘In God We Trust.’”

It would appear from items (d) and (i) that perhaps the teacher is pursuing an agenda of promoting his personal feelings about separation of church & state or lack thereof. Liberal web sites such as Seeing The Forest, Raw Story and The Blue Lemur have siezed on this, calling banning of the Declaration “bogus” and “a lie”. As posted on Forest and echoed on Lemur –

The school did not “ban the Declaration of Independence” — that is just a lie. This story is like when you hear that a man was “arrested for praying” and you find out he was kneeling in the middle of a busy intersection at rush hour and refused to move.

I would have to agree with that, if the Declaration of Independence was not included on the list of banned materials. At this point, it seems pretty clear that whether or not the teacher abused his position and gratuitously handed out prosyletizing materials, thereby bringing down on himself this “short leash” list of contraband that pertained only to him, the fact is he was so restricted, and the restrictions included prohibition against handing out legitimate copies of founding documents.

So as usual, when the left bandies about the word “lie” they’re doing it a little bit too loosely.

Like I said, it would be good if we could hear from the other side to figure out what’s going on. Based on what we have now, we seem to have a situation where a teacher is being stopped from educating his students about the Declaration of Independence, because it mentions God, which is exactly how the situation was first promoted. To me, anyway.

Interestingly, item #60 in the original complaint, p. 8 (see link above) pretty much seems to nail this whole thing shut. Unless there’s a big piece of information somewhere I don’t have, the teacher’s case against the principal is air-tight:

60. California Education Code � 51511 states:

Nothing in this code shall be construed to prevent, or exclude from the public schools, references to religion or references to or the use of religious literature, dance, music, theatre, and visual arts or other things having a religious significance when such references or uses do not constitute instruction in religious principles or aid to any religious sects, church, creed, or sectarian purpose and when such references or uses are incidental to or illustrative of matters properly included in the course of study.

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Letter From A New Yorker
Wednesday, November 24th, 2004

Letter From A New Yorker

My thanks to Democratic Underground for making this frustrated lady’s thoughts visible by putting them in a prominent place where we can find them, and for providing me with such entertainment. My response to this misguided soul comes in this post, following the text of her letter:

I am writing this letter to the people in the red states in the middle of the country — the people who voted for George W. Bush. I am writing this letter because I don’t think we know each other.

So I’ll make an introduction. I am a New Yorker who voted for John Kerry. I used to live in California, and if I still lived there, I would vote for Kerry. I used to live in Washington, DC, and if I still lived there, I would vote for Kerry. Kerry won in all three of those regions.

Maybe you want to know more about me. Or maybe not; maybe you think you know me already. You think I am some anti-American anarchist because I dislike George W. Bush. You think that I am immoral and anti-family, because I support women’s reproductive freedom and gay rights. You think that I am dangerous, and even evil, because I do not abide by your religious beliefs.

Maybe you are content to think that, to write me off as a “liberal” - - the dreaded ‘L’ word - - and rejoice that your candidate has triumphed over evil, immoral, anti-American, anti-family people like me. But maybe you are still curious. So here goes: this is who I am.

I am a New Yorker. I was here, in my apartment downtown, on September 11th. I watched the Towers burn from the roof of my building. I went inside so that I couldn’t see them when they fell. I had friends who were inside. I have a friend who still has nightmares about watching people jump and fall from the Towers. He will never be the same. How many people like him do you know? People that can’t sit in a restaurant without plotting an escape route, in case it blows up?

I am a worker. I work across the street from the Citigroup Center, which the government told us is a “target” of terrorism. Later, we found out they were relaying very old information, but it was already too late. They had given me bad dreams again. The subway stop near my office was crowded with bomb-sniffing dogs, policemen in heavy protective gear, soldiers. Now, every time I enter or exit my office, all of my possessions are X-rayed to make sure I don’t have any weapons. How often are you stopped by a soldier with a bomb-sniffing dog outside your office?

I am a neighbor. I have a neighbor who is a 9/11 widow. She has two children. My husband does odd jobs for her now, like building bookshelves. Things her husband should do. He uses her husband’s tools, and the two little girls tell him, “Those are our daddy’s tools.” How many 9/11 widows and orphans do you know? How often do you fill in for their dead loved ones?

I am a taxpayer. I worked my butt off to get where I did, and so did my parents. My parents saved and borrowed and sent me to college. I worked my way through graduate school. I won a full tuition scholarship to law school. All for the privilege of working 2,600 hours last year. That works out to a 50 hour week, every week, without any vacation days at all. I get to work by 9 am and rarely leave before 9 p.m. I eat dinner at my office much more often than I eat dinner at home. My husband and I paid over $70,000 in federal income tax last year. At some point in the future, we will have to pay much more - - once this country faces its deficit and the impossible burden of Social Security. In fact, the areas of the country that supported Kerry - - New York, California, Illinois, Massachusetts - - they are the financial centers of the nation. They are the tax base of this country. How much did you pay, Kansas? How much did you contribute to this government you support, Alabama? How much of this war in Iraq did you pay for?

I am a liberal. The funny part is, liberals have this reputation for living in Never-Neverland, being idealists, not being sensible. But let me tell you how I see the world: I see America as one nation in a world of nations. Therefore, I think we should try to get along with other nations. I see that gay people exist. Therefore, I think they should be allowed to exist, and be treated the same as other people. I see ways in which women are not allowed to control their own bodies. Therefore, I think we should give women more control over their bodies. I see that people have awful diseases.

Therefore, I think we should enable scientists to try to cure them. I see that we have a Constitution. Therefore, I think it should be upheld. I see that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Therefore, I think that Iraq was not an imminent danger to me. It seems so pragmatic to me. How do you see the world? Do you really think voting against gay marriage will keep people from being gay? Would you really prefer that people continue to die from Parkinson’s disease? Do you really not care about the Constitutional rights of political detainees? Would you really have supported the war if you knew the truth, or would you have wanted to spend more of our money on health care, job training, terrorism preparedness?

I am an American. I have an American flag flying outside my home. I love my home more than anything. I love that I grew up right outside New York City. I first went to the Statue of Liberty with my 5th grade class, and my mom and dad took me to the Empire State Building when I was 8. I love taking the subway to Yankee Stadium. I loved living in Washington DC and going on dates to the Lincoln Memorial. It is because I love this country so much that I argue with my political opponents as much I do.

I am not safe. I never feel safe. My in-laws live in a small town in Ohio, and that town has received more federal funding, per capita, for terrorism preparedness than New York City has. I take subways and buses every day. I work in a skyscraper across the street from a “target.” I have emergency supplies and a spare pair of sneakers in my desk, in case something happens while I’m at work. Do you? How many times a month do you worry that your subway is going to blow up? When you hear sirens on the street, do you run to the window to make sure everything is okay? When you hear an airplane, do you flinch? Do you dread beautiful, blue-skied September days? I don’t know a single New Yorker who doesn’t spend the month of September on tip-toes, superstitiously praying for rain so we don’t have to relive that beautiful, blue-skied day.

I am lonely. I feel that we, as a nation, have alienated all our friends and further provoked our enemies. I feel unprotected. Most of all I feel alienated from my fellow citizens, because I don’t understand what you are thinking. You voted for a man who started a war in Iraq for no reason, against the wishes of the entire world. You voted for a man whose lack of foresight and inability to plan has led to massive insurgencies in Iraq, where weapons are disappearing into the hands of terrorists. You voted for a man who let Osama Bin Laden escape into the hills of Afghanistan so that he could start that war in Iraq. You voted for a man who doesn’t want to let people love who they want to love; doesn’t want to let doctors cure their patients; doesn’t want to let women rule their destinies. I don’t understand why you voted for this man. For me, it is not enough that he is personable; it is not enough that he seems like one of the guys. Why did you vote for him? Why did you elect a man that lied to us in order to persuade us to go to war? (Ten years ago you were incensed when our president lied about his sex life; you thought it was an impeachable offense.) Why did you elect a leader who thinks that strength cannot include diplomacy or international cooperation? Why did you elect a man who did nothing except run away and hide on September 11?

Most of all, I am terrified. I mean daily, I am afraid that I will not survive this. I am afraid that I will lose my husband, that I will never have children, that I will never grow old and watch the sunset in a backyard of my own. I am afraid that my career — which should end with a triumphant and good-natured roast at a retirement party in 2035 — will be cut short by an attack on me and my colleagues, as we sit sending emails and making phone calls one ordinary afternoon. Is your life at stake? Are you terrified?

I don’t think you are. I don’t think you realize what you have done. And if anything happens to me or the people I love, I blame you. I wanted you to know that.

And here is my response:

I am writing in response to your letter to the �people in the red states in the middle of the country � the people who voted for George W. Bush.� I am one of the latter, not one of the former. I cast my vote for Bush out of California. Before I lived in California, I lived in Michigan, and if I lived there now I would vote for Bush. Before I lived in Michigan I lived in Washington State, and if I lived there now I would vote for Bush. Kerry won all three of those regions.

The angry words you have written cause me to worry about you, as well as the many people whose sympathetic feelings are inflamed by your letter. I know there are many people like you, albeit not enough to sway an election. What causes me to worry about people like you most, is the way you think. How you think. Your ability, or what is left of it, to think. How your strengths and weaknesses in that area affect your ability to conduct a happy life. Let me explain.

Six hundred and eighty-one words into your 1,576-word screed, you begin to show some promise by articulating exactly what it is you have seen and how this affects the opinions you hold. This is a healthy sign, although you go nowhere with it. Example: �I see that we have a Constitution. Therefore, I think it should be upheld.� I agree with you in that regard. What has this to do with casting a vote against Bush? What parts of this Constitution are you afraid would not be upheld? Looking up those parts and seeing what they say, what do you think they mean? How do you think they should be interpreted? Based on your introduction, I figure your education and your profession, have something to do with law. It should therefore come naturally to pose an argument substantiating that Bush is some kind of enemy to the constitution, if such an argument can be posed. But you managed to avoid doing this. Why would that be?

You say, �I see that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Therefore, I think that Iraq was not an imminent danger to me.� New Yorker, perhaps it will help express my sentiments to you, and resolve some of the questions you have, if this time I tell you what people like me have been seeing. I saw that in the late winter of 2003 we argued, not about whether Iraq posed an imminent threat, but whether it was proper to take action against Iraq before it posed an imminent threat. You may have lost track of what exactly the hubbub was about; red voters, living in red states or in blue ones, did not. We know danger when we see it.

Did you know it is beyond any dispute that Iraq was armed, and it possessed munitions it was not allowed to have under international law?

Did you know it is beyond dispute that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before, and was trying to get them again?

You say, �I see that gay people exist. Therefore, I think they should be allowed to exist, and be treated the same as other people. I see ways in which women are not allowed to control their own bodies. Therefore, I think we should give women more control over their bodies.�

You should read that Constitution that you say you see. Gay people are already guaranteed equal protection under the law. And our government is not authorized to �give� people control over their bodies. What has this to do with a vote for the President of the United States? You do not say.

In fact, much of your letter deals with bad feelings you have, resentments, grudges, and blame � while going very light on any connection between these issues and who is to be our President. Eleven hundred and seventy-nine words into your lengthy dissertation, you abandon the promising thread about things you see and what you think, and lapse into the more comfortable region of what you feel. Lamenting the lack of safety that you feel, you say you �feel that we, as a nation, have alienated all our friends and further provoked our enemies.� New Yorker, what is the difference between a provoked enemy and an unprovoked one?

You personally witnessed the destruction caused by men who were willing to die for their cause, for their own feelings of anger, anger not unlike your own. They were provoked? Tell me please, you who are so finely tuned to your feelings of impending doom, that you keep running shoes on your desk: Let us say these deranged men are still present but no longer provoked. Let us say we mollify them instead. Appease them. Find out what it is they want, and give it to them. How safe does that make you feel?

You ask, �Why did you elect a leader who thinks that strength cannot include diplomacy or international cooperation?� I elected him because that is precisely what I think. Again, let�s spend a couple seconds thinking about what I have seen in my lifetime. I have seen our messiest wars, the wars that dragged on the longest, the wars that resulted in the most inconclusive, fragile and tenuous times of superficial �peace� � fought with the fingerprints of �international cooperation� all over them. Did you know the United Nations issued seventeen resolutions against Iraq, which Saddam Hussein then ignored, with little to no consequence? Did you know that the United Nations refused to enforce their own resolutions until George Bush castigated them for becoming irrelevant, and even then stood fast against doing anything about Iraq?

Did you know the United Nations member nations were bribed against enforcing these resolutions? Bribed with dirty �Oil For Food� money that was supposed to help poor Iraqis?

What do you suppose Saddam Hussein was doing that justified parting with billions of dollars in cash to bribe officials to look the other way? He probably didn�t spend billions of dollars just for fun. Does that make you feel safe yet?

You�re right; you don�t know us. I know you can form an opinion. But by failing to demonstrate any connection between the facts you have collected, and the opinions you have reached, you left yourself unable to assign any value, any weight, to those opinions. Faced with a choice where you find two opinions conflict, and you must maintain fidelity to one opinion while becoming an apostate of another, you�d be absolutely lost. Yet such a choice is something real adults must face all the time. This is the essence of making tough decisions, when you know valuable things are depending on the outcome of the decisions you make. By maintaining only a �collection� of cherished opinions, nursing ignorance regarding how much foundation each opinion enjoys, you have alienated yourself from this mindset and therefore the ability to think like an adult.

This I know, from reading what you have written.

Yet when you said �You think that I am immoral and anti-family� � and �You think I am some anti-American anarchist� � you had not yet read anything I wrote. You spun these beliefs about my thoughts out of whole cloth. Again, you formed an opinion without foundation. The opinions I have formed about you, I have formed as a result of the foundations that support those opinions.

That is why you don�t know us.

Even like-minded liberals chafe at the blistering close of your letter, in which you lay blame at the feet of voters such as myself for some future attack. May I assume then that logically, you are extending to us the credit that thus far you have not been attacked?

I hope your fears continue to pass into the ether of history, never having been realized. I hope you and everyone you love, enjoys a long, full, happy life. And to make sure that happens, since I know I haven�t a scintilla of hope of ever changing your mind, about anything, I hope every election you see disappoints you. I would so much rather see you inflicted with post-election depression, than killed.

And THAT is why I voted to re-elect George W. Bush.

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Turn Your Back On Bush
Tuesday, November 23rd, 2004

Turn Your Back On Bush

I just subscribed for e-mail updates to the “Turn your back on Bush” website, which is all about a synchronized about-face during the re-inauguration ceremony so that lots of people face away from the President as he drives past.

I just love liberals. They win by 50,000,000,001 to 49,999,999,999 and it’s “The Will Of The People”. If it goes the other way, you get this…

The election is over. The fight is not.

Bush’s election is bad for the US, and even worse for the rest of the world. But elections are only one part of democracy. We need to think strategically about direct action, learn from a rich history of nonviolent activism, and develop new tactics to take on this administration.

Let’s start from the start: Inauguration Day.

On January 20th, 2005, we’re calling for a new kind of action. The Bush administration has been successful at keeping protesters away from major events in the last few years by closing off areas around events and using questionable legal strategies to outlaw public dissent. We can use these obstacles to develop new tactics. On Inauguration day, we don’t need banners, we don’t need signs, we don’t need puppets, we just need people.

We’re calling on people to attend inauguration without protest signs, shirts or stickers. Once through security and at the procession, at a given signal, we’ll all turn our backs on Bush’s motorcade and continue through his speech and swearing in. A simple, clear and coherent message.

Join our mailing list to get updates on this action.

The stuff we’d be least likely to see, had the election gone the other way, is in bold.

I used to try to tell these people to get a clue, we hada referendum on this it’s called an “election,” there are more people like me than there are like them. I did that until, I think, the first weekend after election day or so. Now I just sit back and laugh…yes by all means, keep me posted on your “demonstrating.” We know what your opinion is, we know there are a lot of you but not enough to sway an election…so I’m curious as to what you think you’re accomplishing. But send updates my way. Please. Should be hilarious.

Anybody got any updates on “public dissent” being “outlaw[ed]“?

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Michael Moore Is Uninspiring
Tuesday, November 23rd, 2004

Michael Moore Is Uninspiring

Director Michael Moore, whose anti-Iraq war film “Fahrenheit 9/11″ sparked a firestorm of controversy before becoming a post-election footnote, topped an annual list on Monday of Hollywood’s “coldest” celebrities.

The outspoken documentarian, who seemed to be everywhere during the 2004 U.S. presidential campaign, urging defeat of President Bush, ranks No. 1 on this year’s “Frigid 50″ roster of lackluster stars published by online movie magazine FilmThreat.com.

The Web site, known for an anti-establishment take on the entertainment industry, said its list names the stars it found to be the “the polar opposite of the hottest celebrities: these are the least powerful, least-inspiring, least-intriguing people in Hollywood.”

Well, now this is a little more like it. I’m tellin’ ya, the end of the world is at hand. I’m running out of things to wish for that aren’t already going my way.

I know, there’s much more serious stuff

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The Day After The Day After Tomorrow: A SequelSaturday, November 27th, 2004

We’re Not Not Not Sorry You’re Sorry?Saturday, November 27th, 2004

Bashing the Boy ScoutsFriday, November 26th, 2004

Economic TurkeyFriday, November 26th, 2004

SUVs To Get Tobacco-Style WarningsFriday, November 26th, 2004

Control FreaksThursday, November 25th, 2004

Separation of Declaration-of-Independence and StateThursday, November 25th, 2004

Letter From A New YorkerWednesday, November 24th, 2004

Turn Your Back On BushTuesday, November 23rd, 2004

Michael Moore Is UninspiringTuesday, November 23rd, 2004

The Day After The Day After Tomorrow: A Sequel
Saturday, November 27th, 2004

We’re Not Not Not Sorry You’re Sorry?
Saturday, November 27th, 2004

Bashing the Boy Scouts
Friday, November 26th, 2004

Economic Turkey
Friday, November 26th, 2004

SUVs To Get Tobacco-Style Warnings
Friday, November 26th, 2004

Control Freaks
Thursday, November 25th, 2004

Separation of Declaration-of-Independence and State
Thursday, November 25th, 2004

Letter From A New Yorker
Wednesday, November 24th, 2004

Turn Your Back On Bush
Tuesday, November 23rd, 2004

Michael Moore Is Uninspiring
Tuesday, November 23rd, 2004