Icky L'Uomo, Or Are You Kidding Me?

According to an article in the Chicago Tribune, "[t]hey had sex. She got pregnant. She sued for child support. Now, he's suing back, claiming that men have a constitutional right to 'avoid procreation.'"

Matthew Dubay, 25, of Saginaw, Michigan, claims he had a discussion with his then-girlfriend wherein he told her he was not ready for the emotional OR financial responsibilities of parenthood. She allegedly responded that she was infertile and using birth control "just in case" anyway. Of course, she got pregnant. She did not want to give up the child. After her little girl was born, she got a court order requiring Dubay to pay $500.00 a month in child support.

He doesn't want to pay, so he is (largely at the behest of the National Center for Men, which has wanted to make this case for over 12 years) suing back, claiming that under the equal protection clause, he has a right "not to be a father." [The National Center for Men more properly should be called the National Center for Boys, as what they really want is to play without paying.--Ed.]

Arguments favor both sides. As a practical matter, once the woman IS pregnant, if the father does have a constitutional right not to be, would that mean he could compel her to have an abortion? That certainly isn't going to sit well with a lot of people. Or does it mean that he has a right not to support that which he helped create? That, too, is BAD social policy. All it does is pass the financial burden onto the rest of us while letting the man have his cake and eat it, too.

On the other hand, when couples create test-tube embryos but then decide to go their separate ways, courts have ruled that the father can stop the mother from using the embryos to get pregnant.

A simple solution to this conundrum exists, however. It comes down to the facts of the case. If the man relied on the woman's assertion that she used birth control, he accepted the risks--both the risk that she was lying and the risk that she was telling the truth but the birth control failed. In that case, he reaps what he sows, literally. He is responsible.

On the other hand, if he takes the initiative and provides additional birth control, and his partner gets pregnant anyway, he may be able to make the company providing the faulty birth control at least partly financially responsible for the results. [Not that that would ever happen in the current pro-business-profit, anti-business-responsibility environment.--Ed.]

But there's an even easier answer! All you men out there: think with your brains and not your gonads. If you are not willing to accept the consequences of your actions, DON'T DO THE DIRTY DEED IN THE FIRST PLACE.

You don't want the burdens of being a father? Then don't have sex. The ONLY 100% effective method of birth control is abstinence. So grow up, kwityerbitchin, and accept the facts. If you insist on having sex, you have to take responsibility for the consequences. You don't get to dance without paying the piper when the tune is done.

What's Wrong With This Picture?

The Omaha World-Herald reports that the federal government is cutting back on a USDA nutrition program for low-income families. Two years ago, the program helped 536,196 households; after June 1st of this year, the number will be cut to 477,187. That doesn't seem like a lot, but more than 50,000 households nationwide means over 1,000 per state will lose vital assistance. According to federal regulations, the vast majority of those losing aid will be the elderly, because federal regulations require the assistance go first to women and children.

One measure of a society is how it cares for its members who are least able to care for themselves. By that measure, we collectively are failing miserably. This is inexcusable. It differs only in number, not in kind, from the 19th century British passive genocide against the Irish during the potato famines. Other food was there, but the British exported it and sold it, letting the Irish starve while they made money . . . and gained even more property in Ireland as its native owners died.

The official justification was that the only people who starved were the ones too lazy and shiftless to take care of themselves. Right. And I have a bridge to sell you. Even in the face of credible eyewitness reports of people eating grass in their desperation, the British government refused to assist the Irish.

The British government's stand was utterly reprehensible. And so is our government's stand today. Dubya's projected budget for 2007 is even worse: it will eliminate the program entirely, not just the help for our seniors. We spend and spend and spend for (among other questionable things) the quagmire in Iraq--and I wouldn't even be upset about that if the money were going where it was needed, to wit: to our troops and to their equipment and protection. An awful lot of the money seems to be disappearing, however, most probably into the pockets of those committing contract fraud . . . and more scarily, perhaps even into the hands of those who will use it to do us harm.

What's worse, the money for the war in Iraq isn't even in the regular budget to begin with, so the federal government's spending crisis is even worse than the "official" figures suggest.

Part of the money being cut had paid farmers for their crops, thus putting foodstuffs directly into the hands of the needy. These cutbacks therefore will also hurt an already-reeling agricultural economy. Yet the total amount of money involved is a microscopic pittance of the multitrillion dollar deficits Dubya has run up. "But we have to cut unnecessary spending," she said, sarcasm dripping from her lips.

Let's face it: the poor, even the elderly poor, are invisible to this administration. When Dubya can have his scripted, audience-pre-selected "public" appearances, during which an elderly white male (well-dressed and obviously well-off) claims that the new Medicare drug "benefit" worked well for him, Dubya does not get an accurate impression of the plight of the elderly in this country. Of course, how would he know anyway? Despite his pseudo-folksy manner, he's a child of privilege. Remember, his father--20 years ago-- didn't even know about UPC scanners in grocery stores.

It shouldn't surprise me that Dubya doesn't want to see what's really going on. He certainly doesn't want us to see what he's really doing, either. He gutted the terms of the release of presidential papers; he instructed the NSA to illegally wiretap Americans; his appointees make their departments ignore the Freedom of Information Act; and the government is classifying a geometrically-increasing percentage of its documents. All this in the name of fighting a war on terror wherein he has not even directly engaged our principal antagonist.

It's beyond shameful. It's inexcusable. Nevertheless, I do not see any hope for improvement unless the Democrats can come up with candidates who can articulate a sensible, coherent vision for the future of America and at the same time not be perceived as being soft on defense.

I'll take your bids on that bridge I'm selling now.

Flash!

Herewith some updates and clarifications on the Bare Bottom Bandit story (and, yes, the pun in the title was intended).

First: he didn't catch his pants on the broken glass; he caught it on the security bars he squeezed through after he broke the glass.

Second: he didn't pull up his pants because he either knew or feared that a motion detector alarm would go off with that much activity on his part. That's also why he crawled on the floor, to stay "below the radar" as it were.

Third: the fact that the Tobacco Hut's advertising slogan for years has been "The Best Butts In Town" had absolutely nothing to do with it. Too bad.

Fourth: he was arrested Thursday, and in an interview on Friday with one of the local TV stations admitted he was drunk out of his mind at the time. He said he'd had an entire liter bottle of rum. He says he drinks like that frequently. He's 21 years old. This moves the story from the silly to the sad. The very, very sad.

Fifth: he will return the money he took. I am sure the judge will further order him to make restitution for the property damage he caused. The total for both is in the neighborhood of $1,000.00 according to the Tobacco Hut's owners.

Finally: Just don't smoke!

From The Ridiculous To The Sublime To The Sad To The Silly

I see that Omaha is getting more national attention for an odd local robbery . . . or more correctly, for the odd local robber. He recently broke into a Tobacco Hut by kicking in the glass. When he crawled through the opening he'd made, his pants must have snagged on some of the shards. Security tapes show him scuttling around the store on his knees with his pants down and his rear assets visible. [I can't help but think of an old "Designing Women" episode, wherein Annie Potts's character talks about plumbers and notes that they give the newspaper headline "America's Crack Problem" a whole new meaning.--Ed.]

He has been nicknamed The Bare-Bottom Bandit. Local TV newscasters are asking anyone who recognizes either end of the bandit to notify Omaha police.

The local NBC affiliate won't air the security tapes, saying they are not fit for broadcast TV. The local ABC affiliate, on the other hand, aired them with strategic pixel distortion. The local CBS affiliate showed the tapes with a fuzzy spot in the critical area. I was too afraid to see what the local Fox affiliate showed.

* * * * * * * * * *

I am still reeling at the news of the deaths of baseball Hall-of-Fame outfielder Kirby Puckett from a stroke and Dana Reeve, widow of Christopher Reeve, from lung cancer. Puckett was a geniuinely talented fireplug of a player and a truly nice guy. Dana Reeve had marvelous courage in the face of the crap life threw at her: her husband, paralyzed in a horse-riding accident, used his fame not just to fund spinal cord research but to speak out about the inequities of the US health care system (and she was 100% by his side as he did so); a life-long non-smoker, she contracted lung cancer and knew she was going to die; she knew she would leave behind a teen-aged son . . . and yet her spirit and optimism never wavered. She was an inspiration. Somehow I think her son will be just fine.

Billy Joel was right. Only the good die young.

* * * * * * * * * *

The jury must NOT give Zacarias Moussaoui the death penalty for his being an adimtted Al Quaida member and alleged co-conspirator in the 9/11 attacks. (He claims he was training to fly a plane into the White House on a different day. Like that should give him brownie points.)

All his antics during his trial have been calculated to tick off the jury and get him the death penalty so that he can become a "glorious" martyr for his "cause." He has repeatedly ignored instructions from the judge, repeatedly condemned his own attorneys, and pumped his fist in apparant satisfaction when the horrors of 9/11 were recounted to the jury.

The LAST thing we need to do is make him a martyr for radical Islam. Let's give him life in prison without parole and see how he likes it as his name and deeds and intended deeds fade from the collective American consciousness. Being forgotten but not gone would serve him right.

* * * * * * * * * *

The weekly Bellevue Leader includes a column during the school year called "KIDspeak." Local elementary school students are asked a question, and nine of the best/most typical/most interesting responses are published with the students' names and pictures.

Sometimes the questions and answers are cute. For Valentine's Day, for instance, many of the kids said their mom was their favorite valentine. But this week, the question was "What makes a perfect husband or wife?"

After reading the responses, all I could think of was "it starts early, doesn't it?" The boys all thought that part of being a perfect wife was doing the cleaning and other chores and catering to the needs of the husband. One of them even said that included financially, as she was supposed to have a good job in addition to feeding him and keeping the house and laundry clean.

The girls, on the other hand, thought the perfect husband would gladly help with the chores and raising the children and generally be kind and caring. One went so far as to say that the perfect husband would also be rich and take her shopping. (No, her name was not Anna Nicole.)

I think they ALL need a reality check.

One Ringy Dingy . . .

Lily Tomlin's Ernestine must be waxing rhapsodic. AT&T has just reached terms to buy out Bell South, reuniting virtually all of the old Ma Bell under one corporate roof--and thus undoing much of the judicial decision in the 80s to break up the Bell monopoly.

I, for one, have been on record for years stating my belief that the Bell system shouldn't have been broken up in the first place. "But don't you believe in the Sherman Anti-Trust Act?" you ask. Yes, I do. But I also have always believed that telephones are in fact (though not in name) a utility, not an optional household expense. Try having a medical crisis and getting help without a phone, if you doubt that a telephone is a necessity in the modern world.

Still, I am not sanguine about this merger. I realize the business climate for telephone systems is not the same as it was in the 80s (due largely to the break-up of Ma Bell to begin with) and I know that there are economies of scale that only enormous companies can attain. However, less competition is in general not a good thing. Besides, the tendency lately is for companies to use the cost savings they gain by mergers to improve their bottom line, not decrease costs to their customers.

True, that is not a bad thing from the corporation's viewpoint. The corporation's goal is to maximize return for its shareholders. That's its job. But there are larger societal implications than making the most money possible. There are not-necessarily-tangible gains to be had from running a business with "enlightened self-interest." Maybe the corporation makes a little less money in this fiscal year--but then it also stabilizes its existence and ensures a steady, long-term income stream by maximizing the number of people who hold jobs, and who thus can afford to buy what the corporation sells.

For the same reasons, I have shaken my head in disbelief at (for just two examples) both the proponents of extreme logging and the airline pilots who propose striking Delta right now. Once all the trees are gone and once Delta ceases to exist, none of them are going to have any jobs. What is wrong with giving a little to get a lot more over the long term in return?

Of course, this all goes back to the current political climate. An awful lot of people who hold powerful political positions seem to have forgotten that the genius of the American system is compromise. They all want their own ideas implemented 100% and don't seem to be willing to give an inch. On ANYthing. Which is downright unAmerican, if you ask me.

Have none of you heard of the concept of a pyrrhic victory? What's the point in winning a short-term goal if you all ultimately go down in flames?

How can you tell if a compromise is a good one, anyway? Simple: if everybody is mad, from the farthest right to the far-outest left, you've achieved a workable solution. Not necessarily the best solution, but a workable one. And that historically is what has made America function.

Our collective loss of memory about the viability of compromise threatens our system, our safety, our security, and our whole way of life far more than Al Qaida ever could. We need to relearn why America survived its first two hundred years and get back to implementing what has made America work if we are to survive another two hundred.

Baked Beans Are Off

I hope you have been watching "Monty Python's Personal Best" on PBS. It is a real joy to see humor that has stood the test of time. So far, individual episodes have focused on Eric Idle, Graham Chapman, John Cleese, and Terry Gilliam. I know many people who watched Monty Python when PBS first aired it in the 1970s and who enjoyed it just because it was silly . . . but there's much more to it than that. Monty Python aired some of the most potent social satire of the day. And while some of the political references may be dated (e.g., "Margaret Thatcher's brain"), the sketches are still funny.

Some of my personal "best of the best" sketches that have already aired include "The Lumberjack Song," "The Philosophy Department at the University of Wallamaloo," "Wink, Wink, Nudge, Nudge" (Eric Idle); "The Dead Parrot," "The Penguin on the Telly," "Spam" (Graham Chapman) [How can you NOT love a sketch that gave a name to a whole category of unwanted internet emails?--Ed.] ; "Confuse-A-Cat," "The Upper Class Twit of the Year" (John Cleese); and the entire hour of animation, but especially "Conrad Poohs and His Dancing Teeth" (Terry Gilliam).

One oddity: 3 of the 4 episodes aired so far have included "The Fish-Slapping Dance." Don't get me wrong: I adore "The Fish-Slapping Dance." When viewed in the context of other great confrontations, like Bugs Bunny's "The Rabbit of Seville," "The Fish-Slapping Dance" comments succinctly on the futility of arms races. But is it the best Monty Python sketch of all time? It's the only one so far to be included in its entirety in more than one episode. Maybe saying it's "the best" is a bit strong. Perhaps saying it's the "all-time favorite" of the Pythons themselves is better.

I eagerly await "Hell's Grannies," "The Killer Joke," "The Piranha Brothers," "The Spanish Inquisition," and "Election Night Special," among other gems yet to air. Heck, just thinking about them makes me giggle.

"Monty Python's Personal Best" also reminds me that: (1) "Saturday Night Live," notably in its first incarnation with the Not Ready for Prime Time Players, among other shows, owes an incalculable debt to the Pythons; and (2) even the Pythons owe a debt to Ernie Kovacs.

Kovacs did it first; Kovacs did it better (just imagine what he'd have been able to accomplish had he lived long enough to use more recent technologies); Kovacs knew whereof he spoke when he said "Television is a medium because it is neither rare nor well done."

"Monty Python's Personal Best" may be television, but it is rare, and it is very well done indeed. If you haven't been watching, see the additional airings. You won't regret it.

The Debate Is Settled

One of the great questions of the day is whether Dubya and his minions are evil or just stupid. I haven't commented much on Dubya's administration's antics of late, because it seems as though no more can be said, but after what I heard on NPR this morning, I just had to say this:

They definitely are clueless, if not outright stupid. True evil is in general not so bumbling.

What did I hear, you ask? A recounting of Dubya's trip to India, wherein he said in his own words that India is "a great democracy where people of different religions live side by side in peace and harmony."

All I could think of was, "Oh, so that explains Kashmir."

But then again, I tolerate irony better than a lot of people.

Dubya went on to talk about how the outsourcing of US jobs to India is good for trade, thus good for us. I'd like to see him go into an American town and say that to the workers who've lost their jobs due to outsourcing. Or to those of us who have suffered through nearly incomprehensible customer service calls routed to an Indian telephone center. Between bad phone connections and too heavily-accented speech, such calls are not worth the time they take and the frustration they cause. Let's face it: Indians who speak English well and clearly are in professions, such as law or medicine. They are not slaving away at a cubicle in some sweatshop call center.

And don't even get me started on the putative UAE-company-[read "UAE," as the company is owned by the government--Ed.]-managing-the-the-US-ports deal. This is truly delicious for those of us who enjoy the taste of irony. Dubya may very well be right on this one, but he has handled it so-ham-fistedly that he's turned it into yet another strike against the competency of his administration. And for him to be complaining about people judging others based on racial/ethnic/religious stereotypes after some of the things he's said and done is entirely ludicrous.

If I weren't so afraid for my country and its future, I'd be ROFLOL.

I am quite sure that Dubya stopped paying attention to American history after he learned that Calvin Coolidge said that "the business of America is business." Someone needs to remind Dubya that just because a president said it doesn't make it right. Or true.

That same person also ought to remind Dubya that just because a president did it doesn't make it right. I do dearly wish Dubya's defenders would stop pointing to Abraham Lincoln's abuse of civil liberties in the North during the Civil War as justification for Dubya's illegal NSA wiretaps and whatnot. Lincoln is criticized to this day, and rightly so, even though he had much more justification than Dubya could ever muster for his excesses in the name of the "War on 'Terra.'" [Thank you, Molly Ivins. Not only did you capture the essence of the accent, you made a multilingual pun that accurately describes what Dubya and his gang are really doing.--Ed.] After all, Lincoln's governmental capital was located in essentially hostile territory. Not to mention all the other differences others have rightly elucidated.

But Dubya's belief seems to be that all is OK if pursued in the name of Free Trade. Thus his continued insistance on tax cuts for the rich in the face of truly ridiculous budget deficits--run up by him and his minions, to boot. All I can say is that anyone who clears less than $75,000 a year who buys into that is delusional. Don't kid yourselves, folks. The economic class divide in the USA is real, and widening. And if we get more and more "concealed carry" gun laws passed, the economic war may turn into a shooting one . . . on ourselves, by ourselves, for ourselves.

That most definitively is NOT what Lincoln was thinking about when he wrote the Gettysburg Address.

Bragging Rights

I see that the University of Nebraska College of Law is trying to get a special program in space law set up/endowed. More power to it--but I must note that back in the Dark Ages (1978, that is), in an undergraduate International Law course, I wrote a term paper on aspects of space law.

Yes, I got an "A," even though everyone in the class, the instructor included, thought I was nuts.

'It's not easy to be a visionary," she said, tongue imbedded firmly in cheek!

Running Rings 'Round The Omaha World-Herald, Logically

In a recent (Sunday, February 26) editorial column, the Editor of the Omaha World-Herald opined that a main engine of ever-rising health care costs is "Americans' preferences[.] We as a society avoid shopping for care (because we want constancy in our providers) and have distorted insurance from a backstop against disaster into a 'prepaid medical' plan."

WRONG.

What acutally has happened is that technology totally outstripped planning. Illnesses, accidents, and assaults that used to kill people--and quickly--now can be managed medically, as chronic medical conditions [consider Lee Harvey Oswald: if he'd been shot nowadays, he'd not have died from a single gunshot to the abdomen.--ed.] . . . which means continual care, which means high long-term costs. None of the health insurance plans I know of were created in this context. Medicare, for just one example, will pay for a lot of procedures when done to someone who is an inpatient, but will not cover the very same things when the patient is at home. The costs of being an inpatient are much higher, as they include the hospital room, meals, and a lot of other things that the patient is already covering as ordinary costs of living while living at home.

This obviously makes no sense. To some degree, Medicare and other insurance plans are beginning to recognize this, as they are modifying and adapting their coverages to include certain preventative care tests and procedures because a problem caught early is, as a rule, a problem less expensively resolved than a problem caught late. But getting the insurance industry as a whole to totally revamp itself is a haphazard hope at best.

Besides, the people most often in immediate need of health care are not in a position to shop around for it. If one has spiked a fever of 103°, one isn't going to go calling everyone in the phone book to find the cheapest treatment: one is going to the first place one finds. One doesn't have the luxury of taking the time to shop around.

Furthermore, who has a crystal ball to determine in advance what kind of health care/insurance one needs? My own example is telling: I, a lifelong NON-smoker, have a chronic and ultimately terminal pulmonary disease. Before I was diagnosed, if I were shopping for health insurance coverage, I would not have chosen a plan with a lot of pulmonary coverages had it been cheaper not to include that in the plans from which I was able to choose. And I'd have been sunk once my disease manifested. Which I nearly am as it is, so I know whereof I speak.

Thus is revealed the fallacy of running health care as a for-profit business. The free market is not a panacea for every economic problem plaguing mankind. When one is talking about health care, one is talking about life itself, the most fundamental of our inalienable rights. Second, the people who need health care the most (especially under the current system, where preventative care and early detection are not necessarily covered) are the least able to afford it--for they are already ill.

The entire point of insurance is to spread the risk so broadly that everyone's costs come down. This won't happen under present "health-care reform" suggestions like health savings accounts (HSAs). Those who don't need health care will amass savings, while those in the most dire need are unable to, because whatever money they have is already paying for prior health-care services rendered. The net result? A segregated society: those who have good health and money on one side; those who have poor health and no money and declining care due to same on the other. In the long run, this will be slow genocide, or Social Darwinism run entirely amok.

If the goal truly is to solve the problem, a national health insurance plan that covers everybody is inevitable. That is the only way to spread the risk widely enough to ensure that no one is bankrupted by one debilitating, chronic illness . . . which is all too often exactly what the chronically ill are forced to suffer now. Which means no more "for-profit" health care, which means government must run the program. (1) National problems require national solutions; (2) "government" is not a dirty word; (3) therefore, if we truly are united in society to further our collective rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," we need to start thinking and working together to solve the problem instead of limiting ourselves to letting "the market" literally kill off the unlucky.

An Olympic Observation Of Little Or No Consequence

Did anyone notice that the Italian National Anthem sounds an awful lot like an opera chorus?

Actually, I thought the Italians did a lovely job of hosting the recent Winter Olympics. I just couldn't help but giggle quietly to myself whenever their anthem played. I kept expecting to see "The March of the Toreadors" from "Carmen" . . . or Spike Jones's version of same . . . or PDQ Bach's "Hansel and Gretel and Ted and Alice, An Opera In One Unnatural Act" . . . or Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd performing "The Rabbit of Seville."

I am totally ashamed of myself.

As well I should be.

I'm continuing to giggle anyway.

A Darwin Award Candidate In Omaha

OK, so technically the guy doesn't really qualify as a Darwin Award candidate. He destroyed neither himself nor his ability to produce progeny. Still, if he keeps doing the kinds of things he recently did, he'll get there soon enough.

Our hero was working on his car in his detatched (thank goodness) garage one recent morning. It was cold, and he had a propane heater on in the garage. He decided to warm a can of red (of course) spray paint before using it to touch up the front end of his car by leaving it atop the propane heater.

You can guess what happened.

The can exploded, knocking the garage off its foundation, buckling the garage door, displacing part of the garage roof, giving our hero second degree burns on his hands and face, and imbedding itself into a cross beam in the garage's ceiling.

The warning on the can that its contents are both flammable and under pressure is easily read on the part of the can protruding from the cross beam.

Masking tape that our hero had placed on parts of his car also caught on fire, which our hero dutifully extinguished before he was taken to the Nebraska Medical Center by ambulance.

He is lucky to be alive. The auto insurance industry is again vindicated in its collective decision to charge drivers of red cars higher rates, as they tend to take more risks than most people.

I wonder whether our hero's vechicle was a sports car, a truck, or an SUV.

In any event, if the rest of us are lucky, we won't (literally) run into him when he decides to make his candidacy for a Darwin Award more than the "honorable mention" kind.

Some Questions I'd Like Dubya To Answer

So the State of the Union is very good? Which Union is that, anyway? Certainly not the one I'm living in.

Dubya said last night that the US economy was robust and that our collective economic endeavors more than doubled those of the EU and Japan combined. And that we created an ungodly number of new jobs in the last year.

OK. But is creating a bunch of minimum-wage, no benefits jobs really better than losing all the high-tech jobs that US companies are outsourcing to other countries?

And is our economic performance so great when everyone I know is saying that they are having to work harder and harder, and do more and more tasks, in less and less time and with less and less support and benefits, just because the corporate powers that be are trying to improve their bottom lines?

And why is it that executive compensation packages keep getting better and better while more and more and more companies are announcing plant closures, layoffs, and other cutbacks?

What about the drag the federal deficit is putting on the economy? And why is it better to whittle away at the edges of the deficit by trying to minimize, restrict, or even curtail the already too small programs that really help people and then undoing any miniscule good that that might have done by increasing tax cuts for the already very, very rich?

And why is a 4% COLA in Social Security benefits such a good thing when the costs of things like Medicare premiums is at the same time raised by more like 33%?

Why is it that you persist in saying the free market is the best way to run health care, when it obviously does not work? People can't shop for medical procedures the way they can shop for cars--when they need services, they are not in any position to take their time, shop around, and bargain for the best price. The free market may work for people who are in excellent health and who just want to get the least expensive health care policy premiums possible, but in this day and age, with the very medical technologies we have to save and prolong lives that just a few years ago would have been lost, does that description even fit a majority of the population?

I'll say it again: health care, because it deals literally with people's lives, is part and parcel of the most important of our unalienable rights--those being "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"--thus it violates our birthright as Americans to put health care on a "you can get what you can afford to pay for" mentality.

It may not be a conscious decision, but to act in ways that will eventually limit health care to those incredibly lucky few who do not need it will have the same effect as out-and-out euthanizing the entire population of the disabled. Talk about Social Darwinism run amok!

(Silly me--I thought Social Darwininsm had been thoroughly discredited as a way to run a society.) Welcome to George Orwell's Brave New World, indeed.

Everyone Knows It's Wendy's

(With apologies to The Association)

Wendy's got a lot of sympathy last year once the news was out that the "finger in the chili" was a fraudulent extortion attempt.

Wendy's just wasted all that sympathy--and more.

Dan Mirvish, former Omahan, former speechwriter for US Senator Tom Harkin, and current independent film producer, recently got royally dissed at a Wendy's in Park City, Utah. He was there to host his annual Slamdance Film Festival, in conjunction with the more well-known Sundance Film Festival. He's also in a wheelchair at present, thanks to a broken leg.

He wanted a hamburger before going to attend one of the several late-night parties associated with the festivals, and the parking lot was icy, so . . . he wheeled up to the Wendy's in his chair. The dining room being closed, he did what any hungry and enterprising soul would do, and moved over to the drive-up window, which was still open.

The cashier then informed him they weren't allowed to serve "walk-ups" at the drive-thru. [What's wrong with this picture?--Ed.] So, he went off to his party, gathered together several of his filmmaker friends--with cameras--and then returned to the restaurant, whereupon restaurant manager "slammed the window literally in our face," according to Mirvish.

As if that weren't bad enough, the manager had also called the police, who drove up, lights flashing, and demanded that "You in the wheelchair--pull over!"

The police thereupon ordered Mirvish and his companions to leave.

Mirvish is considering filing some kind of complaint or lawsuit against Wendy's for violating the Americans With Disabilites Act. I say more power to him!

It would have been different had the Wendy's dining room been open, but under the circumstances, it's a slam dunk that Wendy's failed the ADA's requirement that commercial establishments provide "reasonable accomodation" to those with disabilities.

Wendy's spokesman Bob Bertini only made matters worse when he tried to defend the restaurant manager's behavior by saying that the "no walk-ups" policy had nothing to do with the ADA, and that it rather was a matter of public safety and security "particularly late at night, for employees and customers as well." [How nice that he included customers in his comments, considering that customers are the entire driving engine of Wendy's business.--Ed.]

Everything Bertini said is probably true, but is so insensitive as to be absolutely crass. I, for one, no matter how much I like Wendy's chili on a baked potato, will not buy from Wendy's again. Please join me in my boycott.

Back To The Future . . . Again

Did you watch "Lincoln" on the History Channel last Monday night? It was a 3-hour psychological biography, an extravaganza of speculation with a paucity of documentable fact. Still, it did have some good points. The most notable of these was Gore Vidal pointing out that Lincoln's abrogation of civil liberties during the Civil War was valid and genuine (after all, the Union's capital city was surrounded by if not "officially" enemy territory, "enemy sympathizer" territory). Most unlike Dubya's so-called War on Terror, making the point that citing Lincoln's behavior in support of Dubya's illegal wiretaps and other present excesses is both improper and invalid.

(Are you listening, Dick Cheney? Probably not, but that's OK. Jay Leno noted last night that having a bad boss increases one's risk of heart attack by about 33%. Cheney is certainly in trouble now.)

Anyway, back to the History Channel. I found a lot of things NOT to like about the program, the least of which was the use of wrong pictures to illustrate battlefield horrors. An oft-published picture of dead Confederates at Gettysburg was used during talk of the battle of Cold Harbor, for instance. There also was entirely too much MTV-type camerawork, hand-held and shaky, ostensibly giving us what Lincoln himself saw on the last day of his life. Trying to outdo Ken Burns, are we? This is not the way to do it.

My most serious complaint, however, is the amount of time wasted on speculating whether Lincoln was gay. The world was a very, very different place in the 19th century; the fact that two males shared a bed for years--and were open about it--most emphatically proves they were NOT gay. All things sexual were taboo in the Victorian Age. The very fact that we know Lincoln and Joshua Speed shared intimate quarters establishes that there was nothing at all sexual in their relationship. Besides, many practical reasons existed for sharing sleeping quarters in those days: heating systems were not so good as they usually are now, for one thing. And in hotels and rooming houses and the like, it was much more affordable to share a bed than to rent two. Heck, we have copious examples of Victorian Age men and women sharing beds without the benefit of clergy, and we know there was absolutely nothing sexual about it in those cases, either. Why should this be any different? To interpret this one case differently because a venerated American was involved smacks more of the interpreter's political agenda that it does of valid historical exegesis.

As for the admitted sentimentality and emotionally open nature of their personal correspondence? Well, again, the 19th century was a different age. Sentimentality was a prized Victorian Age virtue. The fact that men could express their emotional attachment for one another does NOT indicate that they had some deep sexual relationship. It means they were best friends during the middle of the 19th century.

Our rush to put a Freudian interpretation on everything does not serve us well. It speaks volumes about our own collective hang-ups and enlightens not at all when applied to history. We need to remember that Groucho Marx was right: sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

I must admit that the History Channel did include one historian who noted that all this business was speculative and in the eyes of most traditional historians not worth much, as it has little (if any) support in traditionally-used documentation/evidence. This opinion was, however, insufficiently emphasized given the overall perspective of the program.

One final complaint. The program glossed over much too glibly about how Lincoln had to struggle to get ahead of the curve of public opinion on the issue of slavery and the rights of American blacks. It suggested that Lincoln was always opposed to slavery per se, which is not true. He began his political career opposing not slavery, but the expansion of slavery into what were then US territories. He most emphatically hated Stephen A. Douglas's Kansas-Nebraska Act, which opened the slavery can of worms in territories North of the Mason-Dixon line, undoing the infamous Missouri Compromise of 1820 and ultimately precipitating the Civil War, which actually if not officially started in "Bleeding Kansas" in 1857.

Lincoln's own pre-1860 speeches and writings establish that he did not consider blacks either the social or civil equals of whites. That Lincoln moved so far ahead of popular opinion in such a short time, and in fact by the end of his life supported voting rights for blacks, was not given enough attention. The program implied he was there from the beginning, and that just isn't correct.

Still, I can't complain entirely. The History Channel did note that it was Lincoln's final public speech, from the balcony of the White House shortly before he was killed, advocating giving voting rights to blacks (OK, black men), that got Lincoln killed in the first place. John Wilkes Booth was there; he heard that speech; he was an avowed racist; he thereupon said that that was the last thing Lincoln would ever say on the subject; he then carried out his heinous plot to assassinate the president.

I must also note that the (mostly black) historians who castigate Lincoln for not being totally against slavery from Day One are just as wrong as are those who omit the evolution of Lincoln's opinions on the matter and who call him the Great Emancipator from Day One. Lincoln was a product of his age, after all. He was born in a slave state (Kentucky); he had his prejudices and misconceptions, as do we all.

Nevertheless, he learned. He grew. He changed his mind as he realized the greater significance of events. Furthermore, he was willing to say so unambiguously and in public. This is what sets Lincoln apart, and this is why I for one admire him so much. He was not perfect. No one is. [As my mother is fond of saying as she stretches her arms from side to side like a cross, "Remember what they did to the last perfect person."--Ed.] But he embodies that striving for "a more perfect Union" that is the very underpinning of the American Experiment.

So the History Channel program was worth watching, and I do recommend it to you when it re-airs, but please: watch it with a sufficiently skeptical eye and your mind engaged.

Riddle Me This

I was watching The Tonight Show last night, which featured Jay Leno's "Jaywalking" segment. In case you don't know, this is where Jay goes out on the streets of LA and asks people questions. The answers (the ones aired, anyway) are usually ludicrous, and very often really, really dumb.

There is some greater significance behind this, however. I'm just not sure what it is. Is Jay implying that this is OK because the viewing audience can pat itself on its collective back for being way smarter than these people? Or is Jay implying that it's OK to be a total idiot because it will get you on TV?

I do not think that the people "featured" are just smart-mouthing stupid answers to get their 15 minutes of fame. Frankly, none of them look smart enough to be that devious/clever.

No wonder Dubya is president. >>>shudder<<<

Puh-leeze!

Craig Ferguson (The Late Show, on CBS) has called the History Channel "The Hitler Channel: All Hitler, All the Time." That, I like. It's funny. But then, so is most of Craig's stuff. Nevertheless, it is not in the strictest sense true. For example, the History Channel frequently airs various programs explaining and extolling the virtues of the so-called "Bible Codes."

I don't pretend to understand the details, but these "Bible Codes" have to do with groups of connected words found hidden within discrete biblical passages when one uses a computer search engine and considers letters a set distance apart. (The searcher sets the distance in each instance; the only rule is that once the distance is set, it cannot be changed within the confines of that search.)

Proponents of these "Bible Codes" say that they are so complicated and detailed that they cannot be accidental, that the hand of God is obviously at work, and that no other literary work can duplicate or even come close to producing similar results. I know of at least one group of scientists who disproved this last point using Moby Dick, but there are substantial other reasons to doubt the presence of the hand of God in these "Bible Codes."

For one thing, just because we can look at clouds or stars and see pictures, patterns, or constellations, does NOT mean that those things are there. They came from our own individual creativity/imaginations.

For another, I cite the magician Penn Gillette, who said (regarding Nostradamus, but the point is just as well taken in reference to the "Bible Codes") that if these things were really there, we should be able to use them to predict, and thus forestall, impending disasters. But if we can see the events only after their occurrence, we again are imposing our vision on something that may or may not--but most probably does not--predict anything.

Hindsight is, after all, 20-20.

So why is it that the History Channel can go from running the occasional informative, smart, and insightful program to running this crap over and over and over? Doesn't anyone there exercise any editorial discretion?

* * * * * * * * * *

I do not frequently find myself in disagreement with Rainbow Rowell, but her column in today's Omaha World-Herald disappointed me. The students at Bellevue East (my alma mater when it was just plain Bellevue, by the way) staged a protest when the faculty and staff started strict enforcement of the school's dress code, and last Friday sent home everyone wearing ripped jeans.

The poor babies! About 200 of them staged a protest on Monday. While I do agree with Rainbow that their organizational skills are impressive, I find I have absolutely NO sympathy for the students and their alleged plight.

I guess I am turning into an old geezer or an old coot, but I remember when the Bellevue Public Schools dress code would not let females wear pants--even in freezing cold weather, girls were not allowed to wear pants while walking to school, even if they changed into proper dresses once at school.

In the ensuing decades, the dress codes have gone from being overly strict to being utterly non-enforced. Now, the pendulum is swinging back to center, and the students of 2006 are paying the price.

Even Rainbow had to concede that jeans so ripped that one's "unmentionables" were visible should not be allowed. I hope that she'd further stop to think that there's no easy way to draw up a dress code that would allow for SOME but not all ripped jeans . . . and so the smart and simple thing to do is to ban ripped jeans, period.

OK. I know the ripped jeans of the "Oughts" are the long hair of the Sixties. Still, long hair could be kept neat and clean, which by definition is impossible to do with ripped jeans (clean, maybe . . . neat? No). I also know that kids want to bug their elders, that they need to bug their elders, and that every generation finds its own "badge of honor" with which to do so.

Doesn't mean I have to like it. I think ripped jeans show an incredible lack of respect for not only the school and one's fellows, but mostly for one's own self. I am appalled that these kids' parents are supporting them and casting aspersions on the school.

On the other hand, I have always said that the Baby Boomers did a generally horrid job raising their children . . . mostly because we wanted to be their friends, not their parents (which doesn't work), and now our children's children are even worse off than we made our kids.

I thus am now officially a coot. Does this mean I have to relocate to Possum Lodge?

(In any case, I still don't see what's wrong with wanting to present oneself with a little dignity, class, and good taste. In that respect, at least, as compared to the students of 2006, who want to be different just like everyone else, I am still an iconoclast. Thank goodness!)

My Best Christmas

In the winter of 1964, when I was 7 1/2 years old, my parents and I lived in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Every Christmas we spent there was glorious, but 1964 was my favorite. You see, that was the year I first started having doubts about the existence of Santa Claus . . . and my parents conspired to reinvigorate my belief in that Jolly Old Elf . . . and it worked.

One of our family's Christmas traditions was to drive around town after dark on Christmas Eve, looking at everyone's lights and outdoor displays. In 1964, just as we climbed into the car, my dad ran back into the house to get his wallet (or so he said). He was gone for no more than one or two minutes, I swear. (Remember, being a Type A baby, I have always had a very accurate sense of time passing.) After he came back, he drove us throughout town, and finally up into the mountains to look over the entire city. It had snowed quite a bit that year, and it was beautiful, ethereal even.

Lo and behold! When we got back home, all the presents were under the tree!

I confess to being dumbfounded. My belief in Santa was solidified, for at least another year.

I found out only years later that my mom and dad had prepared all the presents and hidden them very close to the tree (which mystifies me to this day, as there wasn't really any place in the house we lived in to do that), and Dad had just moved them under the tree in one swoop whilst allegedly getting his wallet.

It was a magical Christmas, and to this day, remains my personal favorite.

I wish you all equally wondrous holidays!

This May Be Why Shakespeare Said "The First Thing We Do Is, Let's Kill All The Lawyers"

Have you been following the US Supreme Court case about whether colleges and universities can keep military recruiters off their campuses because of the military's policy of excluding openly gay people from service . . . without having to give up the federal funds and research grants they receive?

I do not like the military's main argument on the subject, which comes down to "you cannot discriminate against us just because WE discriminate." I do, however, confess to having some sympathy with the notion that the universities do not have any entitlement to get federal funds if they don't let the military recruiters do their jobs on campus on an equal footing with other potential employers.

The only possible saving grace for the universities' position is Justice David Souter's key observation that governmental restrictions on giving federal monies to universities which wish to protest the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy infringe on First Amendment free speech rights.

Still, it's a post-9/11 world, and a Neocon Gilded Age to boot. Methinks the putative free speech rights of a bunch of allegedly "wild-eyed" left-wingers will be trumped by the practical reality that no institution has a RIGHT to get research grants and funds from the federal government. This is not unlike the case of unfunded federal mandates, wherein the government threatens to withhold, say, highway funds from any state not participating in some grandiose federally sanctioned goal, like "No Child Left Behind." No one is required to participate, but no one who refuses to participate gets any of the goodies tied to participating. It's the state's or university's choice. [Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.--Ed.]

Of course, as a further practical matter, no university can afford to forego the massive amount of federal funding it receives. The federal government pumps something on the order of $35 billion--with a "B"--into supporting American colleges and universitites every year.

So the federal government's position is little more than legalized extortion. The most amusing aspect of this is that the Neocons don't like unfunded federal mandates--when the mandate is for something the Neocons disagree with on a philosophical level. Despite what they claim, they are not opposed to unfunded mandates per se.

Another hard case is going to make bad law. First Amendment considerations should be paramount, but since the military is involved, and we are in a post-9/11 world, national security and the adverse effects of the universities' stands on military recruiting may tip the balance. I can see the Supremes ruling in favor of forcing the universities to shut up and accept the monies and the recruiters, or to keep protesting and take a catastrophic hit in their budgets.

What we really need to do is elect people who can force a change in the "don't ask, don't tell" policy. How many "Rs" are in "fat chance"?

Requiescat In Pace

Last night's Omaha World-Herald reported the death, at age 89, of Dr. James A. Rawley, professor emeritus of history at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. I am deeply saddened by this news. I took a 400/800 Civil War seminar from Dr. Rawley in the second semester of my junior year at UNL; his own specialty was Civil War politics, and one of the requried books for the course was his own analysis of politics in bleeding Kansas between 1857 and 1860. He was an exceedingly kindly human being with a beautific smile, but a tough, tough instructor.

He bled red ink all over my term paper for that class, wherein I had explored whether Lincoln had maneuvered the South into firing the first shots of the Civil War, and whether it was a good or bad thing that he did so. I came to the conclusion that he didn't, but that the question was actually irrelevant anyway, and supported that notion with a great deal of deductive reasoning from the evidence I'd discovered in the source documents I'd used in my research.

Despite the red ink, Dr. Rawley gave me an A, and told me I was a born historian . . . doubtless the greatest compliment I've ever received in my life.

He was a treasure and an inspiration. He will be missed.

You Are Sixteen, Going On . . .

Stupidity. My apologies to Rogers, Hammerstein, Julie Andrews, and all the other cast and crew of The Sound of Music.

There's been a bit of a dust-up in the Letters to the Editor of the OmahaWorld-Herald lately, all about whether there exists any right to privacy in our system of government.

While the consensus seems to be "No," and while that concensus is wrong, the arguments for and against it are both totally incompetent.

This is news?

One writer claimed there should be a right to privacy because no one needed to know or care about what prostitutes do . . . and the stinging reply, from a 16-year-old girl, says that since no one wants to commit crimes except in private, "of course there is no right to privacy."

Both writers missed the point. Criminal laws, enacted by the legislature of the appropriate jurisdiction and enforced by the police apparatus of the said same jurisdiction, supercede any right to privacy that exists for those activities.

However, there are in addition many, many things that people want to keep private that are NOT statutorily defined crimes, and thus are protected by a right to privacy that I, for one, believe exists. (More on that in a moment.) I don't want anyone watching me while I am doing my business in the bathroom--no one else wants to watch, either, believe me--but that does not mean that I have no right to privacy in that space, as long as what I am doing has not been statutorily defined as being a crime.

In other words, it works very much like the 10th Amendment: whatever is not specifically defined and allowed or defined and forbidden is left to the people.

The Founding Fathers did not live in the 21st century: they did not think with a vocabulary that included "privacy" the way we use it nowadays. That does NOT mean, however, that they did not intend for us not to have any right to privacy. Consider the Bill of Rights. If one looks at govnermental behavior that is prohibited, a lot of it has to do with intrusions on an individual's home or person. If the government cannot force you to house soldiers without your consent, and if the government cannot force you to testify against yourself, that means that you can keep the government out of aspects of your life (that aren't specifically defined as being criminal, that is). What is privacy if not that?

Besides, there's always that pesky 10th Amendment to consider. And since "privacy" is nowhere in the US Constitution mentioned as being subject to governmental restriction, it therefore is left as a right to the people. How's that for using the argument of "original construction" against those who mistakenly perpetrate it today?

If the Constitution cannot live and breathe, it can no longer govern us effectively. It is not the same world it was in 1789; unless you're willing to go back there, in ALL things, you cannot restrict the document to what its words meant in 1789 . . . the Founding Fathers were not omniscient, and they, at least, were smart enough to know that. Which is precisely why they drafted the Constitution as they did, so that it could flex and grow and still be relevant as the world changed around it. Heck, if we are going to limit ourselves to original intent, we do not need a judicial system at all. Why people like Antonin Scalia cannot figure that out is beyond me.