One Choice Among Choices

Over at Where's Your Brain?, yesterday's little diatribe was on the misnamed School Choice issue. The argument for that blog's author and several others as well goes like this: Republicans (more so diehard conservatives) want to offer parents the opportunity to place their children in any school they want and have taxpayers fund it. Liberals, on the other hand, oppose this concept. Ergo

There has always been this very false perception that liberals are the champions for the poor, yet time and time again the facts prove otherwise. The facts continue to prove that it is the conservatives that are the true helpers for those in need. Republicans as a whole want freedom of choice in education; Democrats do not want freedom of choice. School vouchers provide that choice and Democrats hate the concept.

Let's deconstruct this argument to discern if it's true or not.

The supporters of the educational voucher program do, in fact, favor providing people with a choice, but in only ONE aspect. The only time that choice is an issue is when it comes to parents and students having the opportunity to choose a school.

They do not believe that taxpayers should be offered any choice in the matter. What if I don't want to fund a school that teaches apartheid or injects God into every issue? Do I as a taxpayer have a choice of which schools my tax dollars will support? Not on your life. In this instance, conservatives are staunchly against freedom of choice.

They also don't believe that members of the community should have a say in how a private is run or managed or the curriculum taught. What if members of the community want foreign languages such as Spanish to be taught and private school administrators are against the idea? Should the community have the power to impel Spanish classes? Not on your life. In this instance, conservatives again are against a community's freedom of choice.

What if teachers at a private school decide they want to form a union? Should they be allowed to? Heavens no. Again, conservatives are against providing teachers with freedom of choice.

Finally, should a private school be mandated to accept any student who has the requisite funds to attend? Well, of course not! Private schools have standards! If such a mandate existed, private schools would be no different than public schools. So, while proponents of school vouchers do favor providing families with the opportunity to apply to any school of their choosing, it is up to the schools themselves to decide if that opportunity will become a reality.

As you can see, the choice argument collapses upon itself. It really has next to nothing to do with providing people with greater options.

A Pocket of Overflowing Zeroes

Back in 2003, I led an effort before the Salem (Oregon) City Council to denounce Bush's plan to conduct a pre-emptive attack on Iraq. Over 180 citizens turned out to provide support and/or testify on the resolution presented. Not only did we make front page news in the Statesman Journal, but our effort was featured on PBS's News Hour with Jim Lehrer. (You can watch the streaming video here.)

Besides the event at City Council, many of us wrote letters to the editor. One of the points we hammered on was the potential cost to American taxpayers. We pointed out repeatedly that conservative estimates placed the price tag somewhere in the range of $100 - $200 million.

Well, you can guess what the response was from Bush supporters. "Those liberals are being overdramatic." "They're just trying to whip up hysteria." "It won't cost anywhere near that much and they damn well know it." "The president says it will cost far less and I believe he's being candid and honest." On and on and on.

According to an article in yesterday's Guardian, we hysterical liberals were indeed wrong! The "war" in Iraq isn't going to cost American taxpayers $100 - $200 million -- No, the bill will wind up being $1 - $2 TRILLION!!

The real cost to the US of the Iraq war is likely to be between $1 trillion and $2 trillion), up to 10 times more than previously thought, according to a report written by a Nobel prize-winning economist and a Harvard budget expert.

The study, which expanded on traditional estimates by including such costs as lifetime disability and healthcare for troops injured in the conflict as well as the impact on the American economy, concluded that the US government is continuing to underestimate the cost of the war.

Seems we weren't so hysterical after all.

Religion & the Concept of Exclusion

We increasingly find ourselves in an "us against them" world. While the Bush cabal uses this concept in an attempt to manipulate the American public to give their blessings on an ever-growing list of nefarious purposes, we would be shamely wrong to lay the burden of this mentaility at their feet. Neither Bush, Cheney nor Rove invented the "us vs them" scenario.

The Islamic fundamentalists who are warring against most things American utilize the very same rhetoric. And, if you look at almost any armed conflict throughout the eons of history, the "us vs them" theme is played out over and over again.

From whence does it come? Is it simply part and parcel of the human condition?

I'm sure there are many theories out there, but, for me, the impetus for this concept is borne of religion. While the Jews/Christians seem to hold a copyright on the term "the Chosen People", almost every religion sees their adherents in the same light (there are some exceptions like the Quakers or Unitarian Universalists). It should go without saying that, if their are CHOSEN people, then there are also UNchosen people.

(From a fundamentalist Christian perspective, this drive toward exclusivity has manifested itself both in the "war on terror" and the attempt to cast down the separation of church and state doctrine.)

In order to join the exclusive clique of true believers, one must purchase the moral cookbook and explicitly follow the recipe. If you decide to add a pinch here when it calls for a dash there, then you're informed that your souffle will fall and you can't even get a stinking refund!!

If, however, you're a good little boy or girl and you follow the recipe to a T, you're given the secret password to allow you into the celestial country club. Because you made it in, it's natural to look down on those who -- because of ignorance, apathy or willfulness -- didn't work as hard as you to follow the instructions.

You and your mates become the chosen people. Anyone not in the fold becomes a leper. By choosing to exclude all others, YOU have created your own enemies. If you look at what's going on in the world today, this explanation goes a long way toward defining the reason for the large amount of animus afoot.

This ongoing problem of willfull exclusion is one of the reasons I patently reject religion. Rather than bringing people together, it is a mechanism used to separate. Instead of being a methodology to create harmony, it is used to bring discord.

There is another way. Taoists (and others who completely eschew labels) view all of creation as being of one fabric. There is no genuine us or them, only we. There are no recipes to follow or, put another way, there are as many recipes as there are beings.

You can believe in Tao or reject it completely. You can try to live your life in harmony with Tao or ignore it. You can try to move close to it or run away from it. You can call it whatever you want.

In the end, none of these things matter. Tao just is and ALL of us are part of it.

We are ALL members of the same circle.

Hydrogen Boom or Bust?

I found a very interesting article at the Alternative Press Review. It covers a subject I know little, if anything, about -- the hydrogen economy. The author, Dale Allen Pfeiffer, argues that a shift toward hydrogen fuel is not all it's cracked up to be. What do you think?

Here's his opening salvo. Please visit his blog to read the article in its entirety.

There is a lot of talk about the hydrogen economy. It is at best naïve, and at worst it is dishonest. A hydrogen economy would be a pitiful, impoverished thing indeed.

There are a number of problems with hydrogen fuel cells. Many of these are engineering problems which could probably be worked out in time. But there is one basic flaw which will never be overcome. Free hydrogen is not an energy source; it is rather an energy carrier. Free hydrogen does not exist on this planet, so to derive free hydrogen we must break the hydrogen bond in molecules. Basic chemistry tells us that it requires more energy to break a hydrogen bond than to form one. This is due to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and there is no getting around it. We are working on catalysts which will help to lower the energy necessary to generate free hydrogen, but there will always be an energy loss, and the catalysts themselves will become terribly expensive if manufactured on a scale to match current transportation energy requirements.

All free hydrogen generated today is derived from natural gas. So right off the bat we have not managed to escape our dependency on nonrenewable hydrocarbons. This feedstock is steam-treated to strip the hydrogen from the methane molecules. And the steam is produced by boiling water with natural gas. Overall, there is about a 60% energy loss in this process. And, as it is dependent on the availability of natural gas, the price of hydrogen generated in this method will always be a multiple of the price of natural gas.

Ah, but there is an inexhaustible supply of water from which we could derive our hydrogen. However, splitting hydrogen from water requires an even higher energy investment per unit of water (286kJ per mole). All processes of splitting water molecules, including foremost electrolysis and thermal decomposition, require major energy investments, rendering them unprofitable.

Oh, the Bureaucracy!

For any organization to function well, there needs to be a strong administrative foundation. In other words, bureaucracy isn't inherently bad. That said, it can certainly be a royal pain in the butt as my wife found out this week.

Since we're new residents in the State of Washington, we needed to trade in our Oregon drivers licenses for the Washington version. We trotted down to the Department of Licensing (DOL) at Aberdeen's South Shore Mall (which, by the way, is NOT on a shore). In no time at all, we both had new drivers licenses.

However, once we arrived back home, my wife realized they had printed her birthdate wrong on her interim license. According to the card, she was suddenly 1 year younger!

She decided to return to the DOL the next day, thinking this would be an easy thing to correct. How wrong she was.

She pointed out the erroneous date to the DOL rep. She pointed to the correct date on her old Oregon license. The rep pulled up her name on the computer and informed her that the date on her interim card was what showed up on the screen. She, of course, pointed out that it was incorrect.

The rep told her that the screen he was looking at was from the Social Security Administration's (SAA) database. She would need to go to the SSA office in Hoquiam to clear up the matter. Fine, she replied.

So off she went to SSA. Within a short time, an SSA rep was looking up her record. Guess what they found? The SSA had the correct information and couldn't figure out why DOL was blaming this problem on them. My wife, being a savvy women, asked the SSA rep to provide her with a written statement that indicated her information was correct in the SSA database. Ok, this should clear things up now, my wife thought to herself.

Wrong again. Upon returning to the Aberdeen DOL office and presenting her old Oregon license AND the official statement from SSA, incredibly the DOL rep insisted that the record he had accessed was from SSA still showed the same birthdate, the incorrect one. My wife, by now getting highly frustrated, told this guy to look at the SSA document to see that SSA did in fact have the correct date in THEIR database.

He was unmoved. First, he suggested that maybe they had changed it to the correct date when she wasn't looking and then changed it back after she left. Next, he admitted that maybe the problem was that somebody at DOL had entered the wrong date. BUT, regardless of what the precise problem was, he wasn't going to fix it.

No, the only way the problem could be rectified is for my wife to shell out $12 to get Arkansas to send an official copy of her birth certificate.

My wife even tried to get this situation resolved by calling the DOL state office in Olympia. She received the same kind of runaround from them too

For us, the $12 is inconsequential. It's the principle at work that bugs us. Though the problem falls squarely on Washington's DOL, we have to jump through the hoops to fix it.

A Different Book

By now, almost everyone in the world has become all too familiar with the neocon's doctrines of pre-emptive war and an endless war on "terrorism". Under the [leadership] of the Bush cabal, the U.S. military has already laid waste to two nations -- Afghanistan and Iraq -- and there are many indications we're gearing up to attack a third, Iran.

Since Bush contends he is acting at the behest of the Christian deity, we must assume he's using the Christian Bible as primary source material. There is no question that selective parts of this text could easily be used to justify his nefarious actions. (Of course, there are just as many sections of the Christian Bible that would contradict his chosen course, but who pays any attention to THOSE parts, anyway?)

What if Dubya decided to use a different book as his blueprint? I'm sure there are scores of them that would lead the world down a different path. One of my favorites is the Tao Te Ching.

To always be the winner in conflicts with others is not the greatest skill. The sage knows to achieve goals without any conflict is the much greater skill.

Of This World

When people learn I'm a Taoist, a common remark goes something like, "Oh Taoism, yeah that's a religion from China." While there IS a religious form of Taoism -- it came along thousands of years later -- basic Taoist belief is philosophical. Hence, many people today refer to it as classical Taoism.

It's not a religion. In fact, many Taoists (like me) don't believe in religion at all. All religions share one thing in common -- The belief in something supernatural. Some are monotheistic, while others are polytheistic. Some have elaborate creeds, doctrines and rituals, while others are much less formal in their structure. Still, the tie that binds all religions together is this belief in a supernatural being that effects the world in some manner.

Taoist don't view anything as SUPERnatural. We view each entity that makes up the cosmos as part of the nature of the universe. If everything is part of one principle or force, then nothing can be above it. That's precisely what supernatural means -- above nature.

The Taoist view wasn't derived from ancient books handed down by the "Gods" nor from the words of a sage or two. We ground our view of the world in the world itself. As I've written before, everything is interconnected and an action in one realm causes a ripple effect throughout the whole cosmos.

When events occur that we don't easily understand, we don't presume that some benevolent or malevolent force is at work. We acknowledge that, as human beings, we are unable to grasp the breadth of the universe and so things that seem random to us are anything but random for the workings of nature. Somewhere there was a causative agent that set in motion the result that we experience.

It has been mentioned to me before that Taoism seems like a belief system bereft of joy. I think that couldn't be furthest from the truth. Watching a magnificent sunset, a caterpillar became a butterfly or the ebb and flow of waves on an ocean beach is like heaven to those of us who see ourselves as part of Tao, the one.

My major gripe with religion is that people spend all their time concentrating on what they can't see and experience directly, while basically ignoring the splendor that envelopes them. If more people would stop to smell the flowers and listen to the breeze rustling the leaves on a tree, they would fast discover that we each have far more in common with the world around us.

We are the world and the world is us.

The interconnected cosmos.

The one.

Tao.

No Wonder Dubya Doesn't Read the Newspaper

We've all heard the [p]Resident's comments that he doesn't tend to read newspapers. It's becoming very obvious why -- They write down what he says and then expose it when he does the opposite. Regarding the question of the legality of NSA domestic wiretaps, James Ridgeway reports in The Village Voice,

...the New York Times revealed Sunday that when Bush couldn't get top level clearance for the wiretaps from deputy attorney general James Comey, two aides -- Andrew Card, White House chief of staff, and Alberto Gonzalez, then White House counsel and now attorney general -- went to George Washington University Hospital here, in a circuitous effort to get Attorney General John Ashcroft, who was recovering from gallbladder surgery, to sign off on it

Moreover, the AP reports that Bush, in Buffalo in 2004, was asked about a remark he made at an appearance in support of the Patriot Act, the president said, "Any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap," Bush said, "a wiretap requires a court order." He added, according to the AP: "Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so."

Hmm. I guess if I had the propensity to twist words on a whim, I wouldn't read newspapers either.

A Very Quiet About-Face

One of Dubya's most oft used phrases is "Stay the Course". Anytime someone suggests bringing the troops home or ending offensive engagements, Mr. Bush sternly scolds, "Stay the course. Stay the course." Now, according to the Guardian Unlimited, our Commander-in-Thief has decided NOT to stay the course in one specific area -- Rebuilding Iraq.

The Bush administration has scaled back its ambitions to rebuild Iraq from the devastation wrought by war and dictatorship and does not intend to seek new funds for reconstruction, it emerged yesterday.

In a decision that will be seen as a retreat from a promise by President George Bush to give Iraq the best infrastructure in the region, administration officials say they will not seek reconstruction funds when the budget request is presented to Congress next month, the Washington Post reported yesterday.

So folks, there we have it. The country that we have willfully blown up and continue to blow up will soon have to rebuild itself. It is now painfully obvious that, what Bush stated in February 2003 in a speech at the Washington D.C. Hilton, is not the same as "Stay the course."

Rebuilding Iraq will require a sustained commitment from many nations, including our own: we will remain in Iraq as long as necessary, and not a day more. America has made and kept this kind of commitment before -- in the peace that followed a world war.

Obviously "sustained" means something different to this man. For most people, sustained means "ongoing, maintain or prolong" (e.g., the Marshall Plan) -- Staying the course. But for Bush, these words only apply to aggression.

I was vocally against this "war" even before it began and I remain appalled at our nation's continued use of unmitigated military force on the small nation of Iraq. We have a MORAL and ETHICAL responsibility to clean up and rebuild the destruction we've wrought. To do otherwise is beyond shameful!!

What a Pompous Ass!

Syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker is hard to categorize. There are times I feel she is dead on target and other times I think she borders on lunacy. Her current diatribe on the blogosphere falls into the latter category. In her most recent column, she unwittingly admits to having a class bias.

In her essay, "For civilization's sake, let's ignore the worst of blogs", she makes a few salient points like don't believe everything written on a blog.

Of course, that is plain commonsense. No one should accept anything carte blanche, whatever the source. While this is very true for blogs, it's just as true for the mainstream media.

But one part of her column exposes her as a classist (fill in the word you prefer most here).

I mean no disrespect to the many brilliant people out there --— professors, lawyers, doctors, philosophers, scientists and journalists who also happen to blog. Again, they know who they are. But we should beware and resist the rest of the ego-gratifying rabble who contribute only snark, sass and destruction.

First, she seems to be saying that only professional people should blog. If you have an advanced degree in a scholarly field, then blog away. However, if you only possess a B.A., high school diploma or less, then, by her strict criteria, you have no business expressing yourself in public.

How incredibly pompous can you get? Intelligence is not merely measured by the amount of college degrees a person possesses. I know of many people, with rudimentary formal education, who are great social commentators and offer keen insights on the world around us.

I'm not expressing this opinion as a defense mechanism. If I didn't hold a college degree, some might say that I feel attacked and must defend my honor. Quite the contrary. I've earned two bachelors and a masters degree. Yet, I understand that possessing these 3 pieces of paper doesn't necessarily make me any smarter than the next person.

The other obvious problem with Parker's formulation is that, just because a person is a "scholar", this certainly doesn't mean that they aren't consumed with ego-gratifying purposes. How we each comport ourselves is part and parcel of our unique personalities; it has nothing to do with our level of educational and educational achievements.

Psychologist Weighs In on Bush’s Pathology

I recently ran across an eye-opening interview in the Cascadian Journal of Forensic Science & Pathology. In this article, world-renowned forensic psychologist Dr. Herbert Cary explains his findings regarding a study of the pathology of President Bush. Below is an excerpt from the interview. (Note: I have yet to find a copy of the article on line.)

Interviewer: Dr. Cary, you’ve spent the past 5 years studying the behaviors of President George W. Bush. What conclusions have you reached?

Cary: The president exhibits an intersection of pathologies, a mix of several definitive classifications. However, since the president has steadfastly refused to sit down to talk with me, I am unable to say, with any degree of certainty, the root causes of these pathologies.

Interviewer: If you haven’t spoken with the president, how can you sit here today and discuss his alleged pathologies at all?

Cary: As a public figure, much of the president’s behavior has been captured both in the print media and on film. In addition, I have been able to interview many members of his family and several of his closest friends and associates. While, in a clinical sense, this falls short of the threshold needed to make a precise diagnosis, I believe I have gathered enough information to offer a general understanding of what drives the man.

Interviewer: In last month’s edition of this Journal, you wrote that the president has a pathology that is congruent with that of a serial killer. Would you explain?

Cary: The classic definition of a serial killer is someone who, on multiple occasions, is responsible for the murder of people previously unknown to the killer.

Interviewer: I must interrupt for a moment. As far as I know, George W. Bush has killed no one. How can you begin to lump him in with serial killers like Ted Bundy and the Zodiac killer?

Cary: While it is true that Mr. Bush may have killed no one by his own hand, he is personally responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Afghans & Iraqis, not to mention U.S. servicemen. And like several other serial killers I’ve studied over the past thirty years, his drive to have these people killed is classified as mission-oriented. He believes the killings are justified because their deaths will benefit society.

Interviewer: You said that Mr. Bush has an “intersection of pathologies”. What do you mean by that?

Cary: Most people responsible for the murder of five or more individuals are classified in one of three ways: serial killer, mass murderer or spree killer. In general, these are distinct classifications that define the motives and methods of the responsible individual. While there have been times that a killer might fall under two of these classifications, Mr. Bush is the first individual who meets some of the criteria of all three.

Interviewer: How so?

Cary: The sheer number of murdered victims lends itself well to defining the acts as mass murder. And, like a spree killer, the murders have occurred in different places and at different times. The very fact that, it could be argued, Mr. Bush meets some or all of the definitions of these three classification has motivated me to determine that we should now add a fourth classification to the list.

I have named this fourth classification dubyaholism. We can then refer to Bush as a dubyaholic.

Interviewer: What are the distinguishing characteristics of a dubyaholic?

Cary: A dubyaholic believes that God has ordered him/her to hasten the arrival of Armageddon by committing ritualistic murders across the globe. Because the individual believes he/she is receiving instructions from a higher authority, the person should not be constrained by earthly things like ethics, treaties, conventions, laws and constitutions.

This person will not actually perform any of the murders her/himself, but will possess the power to order others to do it. They will portray these acts of murder as being a mechanism to protect national security and national honor. And, anyone who disagrees with them will be labeled either as unpatriotic or an enemy sympathizer.

Interviewer: An individual such as that would be classified as insane, wouldn’t they?

Cary: Most definitely.

German Media -- Iran Next in Line

United Press International has reported that several articles in the German media are indicating the Bush Administration "is preparing its NATO allies for a possible military strike against suspected nuclear sites in Iran in the New Year." This comes on the heels of similar reports by the Turkish media.

The Berlin daily Der Tagesspiegel this week quoted "NATO intelligence sources" who claimed that the NATO allies had been informed that the United States is currently investigating all possibilities of bringing the mullah-led regime into line, including military options. This "all options are open" line has been President George W Bush's publicly stated policy throughout the past 18 months.

But the respected German weekly Der Spiegel notes "What is new here is that Washington appears to be dispatching high-level officials to prepare its allies for a possible attack rather than merely implying the possibility as it has repeatedly done during the past year."

The American public (that's you and me) have got to rise up before this war-hungry lunatic and his merry men start World War III. If Dubya has his way, he might actually usher in Armageddon -- which might be his ultimate plan anyway.

A Most Silly Holiday

Time is a human construct. It's a tool we use to help differentiate between various sequences, cycles and segments of reality. Were there no clocks nor calendars, the universe would keep right on ticking, not missing a beat.

For this reason alone, I have never been a fan of New Year's Eve. It celebrates nothing specific. It doesn't come at the end/beginning of a season. It has nary a thing to do with moon phases. There is nothing significant about the transition from December 31 to January 1. It's just an arbitrary dot on the map of human-created time.

I'm always amazed at the number of people who gather in Times Square (or wherever), waiting anxiously for the ball to drop or the clock to count down. When it does, they whoop, yell, cry, kiss, hug, set off fireworks and, a good many people, use it as an excuse to get drunk. And for what? One day becomes the next day.

Whoopie.

Putting Words in Your [Virtual] Mouth

One aspect of the internet that a lot of people never think about is that it creates a virtual paper trail of our thoughts, ideas and opinions. Every time a person posts an entry in a blog, makes a comment on a blog or website, or even sends an email, our words are captured and stored away for later referencing, sometimes by not very scrupulous people.

It’s bad enough that we may write something somewhere that we later regret, but, due to the ability by some commenting services (Haloscan comes to mind), the ability now exists for the authors of blog sites to edit the comments left on their blog. In other words, it is now possible for ethically-challenged people to have the ability to put “words in your mouth” that will be recorded for perpetuity.

Let’s say you visit a blog and, through the comments section, you get into a fiery political debate. If the blog host is an unscrupulous person and they use Haloscan (I’m sure there are many other such services as well), they could easily discredit you by editing a comment to read, “I love Hitler. He handled the Jews just right” and they could block YOU from making any changes.

Of course, this comment will be picked up by weblogs.com, technorati and lots of other services too. Regardless of the fact you never wrote these words, they will forever be attached to your name. You may receive angry emails denouncing “your” statement. Who knows? You might lose your current job or not be selected for a future job because someone found “your” statement on the internet.

The worse part of all this is how do you prove that your words were reedited without your consent? It’s like trying to prove a voting tally is incorrect where there is no paper trail. You can post all manner of statements all over the net disavowing the statement, but the statement itself will still be there.

I have no problem whatsoever with blog hosts having the ability to delete comments they feel are inappropriate. However, I have a serious problem with blog hosts who have the ability to “put words in my mouth”.

You can rest assured your words are safe on The Rambling Taoist. I have consciously chosen not to use Blogspot’s “Moderate Comments” feature and I almost never delete anyone’s comments either.

You alone are responsible for your own words here.

Whew! I'm Out of the Dog's House

Most people base opinions on some manner of a factual basis. While it's certainly true that we all are guilty of picking and choosing which facts we choose to utilize, it's still typical that SOME manner of fact is involved. This cannot be said for the blog, Where's Your Brain?.

As I've discussed here before, facts seem to irritate that blog's author to know end. Not only does it irritate her, but she has a penchant for removing fact-based comments from her posts.

Yesterday she slipped up somewhat by allowing me to post a comment. (She forgot that I had moved from Oregon to Washington and this meant she needed to change the IP address to be blocked.) In her entry of December 22, "A Merry Christmas -- Spy vs Spy", one paragraph states,

I have to admit I do a little of my own spying - like checking if people leaving hate comments on my blog are really that same person as someone else. I haven't had hate comments for many months - not since I exposed this jerk from Portland. He was coming in with the exact same IP address as others (with similar hate styles) yet claimed it wasn't him. So I banned his IP and BINGO - suddenly about 3 identities no longer posted.

Here was my response

You wrote: "I have to admit I do a little of my own spying - like checking if people leaving hate comments on my blog are really that same person as someone else. I haven't had hate comments for many months - not since I exposed this jerk from Portland. He was coming in with the exact same IP address as others (with similar hate styles) yet claimed it wasn't him. So I banned his IP and BINGO - suddenly about 3 identities no longer posted."

So, how many of us "jerks" have you banned? I know that I'm on your doggie "no no" list. However, since the person you refer to in this entry hails from Portland and until last month I hailed from SALEM, it's obvious you're talking about someone other than yours truly.

BTW, there is, of course, one OTHER explanation why 3 so-called identities quit posting. Since you have elected to screen comments left here, you could have just as easily deleted particular comments from different people so it would APPEAR that it all originated from the same source. Sort of like the Bush cabal.

Next came her rebuttal (which she edited and then reposted after my subsequent response to try to weasel out of an obvious lie):

Just you Trey. Portland? Well that's where you told everone on your site or comments or somewhere in that region - until you moved. Just another lie from Trey I guess.

No - the IP addresses matched exactly of all your identities. You posted your slams early in the am sometimes and the system log file showed when you entered and left - and you were the only one that left the comments.

This whining liberal scum tried to hard to slam me he even started a blog with a similiar name as mine - now closed because no one except 1 or 2 of his no-brain socialist wimps visited it.

You continue to lie - a common trait of socialist liberals - you just prove every point I ever post. Ah.. now to put your new IP on the ban list...

I then posted a follow up comment which explained that I have never lived in Portland nor have I ever claimed to live in Portland. Even further, whether or not I had made this claim was wholly immaterial because my IP header, which she "claims" was the basis for the block, would have indicated what city I was actually in.

Then I challenged any interested party to perform a Google Search using the search terms of "Trey Smith Oregon" to see if they could find any indications whatsoever that a) I had ever claimed to live in Portland or b) I had ever lived in Portland.

Since both JustaDog and I KNOW that such a search would have yielded no such information, she did the only thing a person not interested in factual information could do. She deleted the comment and banned my current IP address from future comments.

Consequently, we now know that the campaign of lies and distortions, in this particular instance, is not originating from the "socialist liberal", but from the "patriotic" conservative.

George Bush must be proud!

Little Security, Lots of Abuse

Over at the Uncommon Thought Journal, there is a superb essay on the spate of constitutional abuses perpetrated by the Bush Administration. Far from being an isolated incident here and there, the article aptly illustrates that the cabal has forged an eerie pattern, one that should alarm liberals and conservatives alike.

Below are some brief snippets. I strongly urge you to go to "U.S. Constitutional Abuses" to read the entire article. It offers keen insights and great analysis.

There are three critical "intelligence" events that have occurred undermining civil liberties and Constitutional protections: Bush's authorization of warrantless wire taps on U.S. citizens, the FBI's use of National Security Letters to avoid warrants, and the Pentagon collecting data on U.S. citizens and "dissident" groups. While these are three different agencies, the intent is clear and should be stated boldly. We are defined as enemies of the state...

All of these various activities are at the instigation of the Bush Administration. Everything is lumped under "national security" and the "war on terrorism." They show not respect for U.S. laws or the Constitution, and no respect for international laws and agreements. From a policy of preemptive war, to the use of nuclear weapons, to the Geneva Convention, to international bans on torture, the Bush cabal feels that they need to operate with total "freedom" and secrecy to "protect us." Well, I am not feeling "protected," I am feeling abused...

Some may be willing to trade freedom, and the protections from the abuses of government, for "safety." However, it is clear from every report, that such activities are not making us safer. The Bush "Plan America" is leaving us looking much more like Saddam Hussein's Iraq, than the "land of the free, home of the brave" United States. The oft repeated refrain from the White House in legitimating the ongoing war in Iraq is: "We are fighting them over there so that we don't have to fight them here." But what is now clear, is that "we" - the citizens of the United States - are "them" - potential terrorists.

Financial Advice from the Doggie Bag

One of my favorite fanatically conservative blogs is Where's Your Brain?. It's filled with rants against anyone who doesn't agree 100% with the blog's creator. Reading that blog generally leads any cogent person to ask, Where's Your Heart?

But, over the past 2 days, the annonymous author (who only identifies herself as JustaDog) has shown she does have a heart, albiet an extremely small one. She has chosen to offer her sage financial advice to help those buried under credit card debt.

Here's her formula:

1. Run up a credit card debt (not including a mortgage or car purchase) of about $80,000.
2. Locate a friend who will give you a job that pays $10,000 net per month.
3. Work at the job for 6 months and use your $60,000 in net wages to reduce your credit card debt by 75%.
4. Quit the job and use money from somewhere else (?) to pay off the balance.

Gosh! It sounds so darn easy. Before we know it, Justadog will be running fabulous infomercials on late night TV.

What Justadog has unwittingly admitted to is the formula that has made many a transnational corporation rich -- a subsidy. While she had the financial freedom to throw her wages into her egregious debt, SOMEBODY else was paying for all the necessities of life. Yes, either a spouse, partner, parent, child or rich pal was covering her rent/mortgage, utilities, food, insurance, clothing, travel (she's said on her blog that she loves to travel) and medical expenses.

Unfortunately, most consumers don't have this kind of luxury. Most consumers in debt must not only pay off said debt BUT also concurrently pay for the necessities of life. This is why it's difficult for people in the working and middle classes -- obviously Justadog is in neither of these classes -- to dig out from under debt.

This situation offers a quintessential example of how a rich person fails to understand the obvious head start they enjoy over the average person. Those who lick the silver spoon fail to comprehend what it's like for those without eating untensils. As Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, it's hard to pull one's self up by the bootstraps if said person has no boots.

Nothing Says "Merry Christmas" Like Spam

What with many of my cohorts off spending time with their families and many of the news services and/or email lists I subscribe to taking a needed break, I sort of thought the volume of mail hitting my in box would lessen greatly during the holiday season. WRONG! It seems the spammers of the world don't take vacations.

Over the past week, the overall volume of mail has only lessened slightly, but the percentage of spam has increased greatly. I shouldn't be surprised. According to The Register,

MX Logic, an antispam vendor, now estimates that 75 per cent of all email is spam, while in same article Postini Inc. jacks that number up to 88 per cent of all email. Think about that: only about 1 in 10 emails is legitimate.

Oh, wonderful.

Oops! Sorry 'Bout That

As a continuation from my previous entry, I'm going to offer but a few examples of human-caused unintentional consequences. Often, these consequences come about innocently...at least at the outset.

The European Rabbit is not native to the Australian continent. According to Wikipedia,

Rabbits were originally introduced to Australia by the First Fleet in 1788, but the current major infestation appears to be the result of 24 wild rabbits released by Thomas Austin on his property "Barwon Downs" (near Winchelsea, Victoria) in 1859 for hunting purposes. Many other farms released their rabbits into the wild after Austin.

Here we have a classic example of unintended consequences. A landowner decides he'd like to hunt rabbit. So, without giving any regard to the effects on the ecosystem, he sets in a motion a chain of events still ravaging Australia today.

Within ten years of the 1859 introduction, the original 24 rabbits had multiplied so much that 2 million a year could be shot or trapped without having any noticeable effect on the population size. Rabbits reached the New South Wales border in 1870. The Premier of New South Wales, Sir Henry Parkes offered a £25,000 reward to anyone who could come up with a solution to the rabbit infestation.

The effect on the ecology of Australia was devastating. One eighth of all mammalian species in Australia are now extinct (rabbits are the most significant known factor), and the loss of plant species is unknown even at this time.

English ivy makes for lovely ground cover. It's a very popular plant amongst gardeners in North America. Unfortunately, english ivy is not native to this continent. The United States National Arboretum cautions

In the Pacific Northwest, English ivy invades the forest floors. Its evergreen leaves smother other native forest plants by denying them light.

Like english ivy, asian carp is another invasive species that has caused great harm in the U.S. Some of the carp were released into U.S. waters by our own government and others escaped from aquaculture facilities.

All four of the Asian carps that are established in the United States spread quickly after introduction, became very abundant, and hurt native fishes either by damaging habitats or by consuming vast amounts of food. Common and grass carps destroy habitat and reduce water quality for native fishes by uprooting or consuming aquatic vegetation.

Bighead and silver carps are large filter-feeders that compete with larval fishes, paddlefish, bigmouth buffalo, and freshwater mollusks (clams). In addition, boaters have been injured by silver carp because they commonly jump out of the water and into or over boats in response to outboard motors. Black carp, which consume almost exclusively mussels and snails, may further threaten our already imperiled native freshwater mussels should they become established.

Dioxin is one of the world's most toxic family of chemicals. As explained by ActionPA,

Dioxin is a general term that describes a group of hundreds of chemicals that are highly persistent in the environment. The most toxic compound is 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin or TCDD. The toxicity of other dioxins and chemicals like PCBs that act like dioxin are measured in relation to TCDD. Dioxin is formed as an unintentional by-product of many industrial processes involving chlorine such as waste incineration, chemical and pesticide manufacturing and pulp and paper bleaching. Dioxin was the primary toxic component of Agent Orange, was found at Love Canal in Niagara Falls, NY and was the basis for evacuations at Times Beach, MO and Seveso, Italy.

Dioxin is formed by burning chlorine-based chemical compounds with hydrocarbons. The major source of dioxin in the environment comes from waste-burning incinerators of various sorts and also from backyard burn-barrels. Dioxin pollution is also affiliated with paper mills which use chlorine bleaching in their process and with the production of Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) plastics and with the production of certain chlorinated chemicals (like many pesticides).

As indicated above, no one set out to create dioxin. As scientists and inventors set out to develop new materials and processes to further the lot of society, they created material and processes that begat not only increased production but increased hazards. By the time the hazards were uncovered, the economics of the new materials and processes had become entrenched and now, despite the fact the hazards have been clearly identified, it is very difficult to convince the economic powerbrokers to move away from the very things producing the identified hazards.

To satisfy the thirst of millions of residents plus meet the needs of the agricultural sector, the Oglalla Aquifer is being drawn down at non-sustainable rates. As reported last year by the Environmental News Service

There are some areas on the High Plains where water is being withdrawn from the Oglala aquifer at rates greater than the aquifer is being replenished. In these areas, the aquifer will not be able to sustain withdrawals at current rates in future decades, new research by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has determined.

Underlying portions of eight states, including Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Texas, the massive High Plains aquifer, also called the Oglala aquifer, spans 173,000 square miles and provides irrigation and drinking water for one of the major agricultural regions in the world.

But USGS scientists have found a six percent decrease in the volume of water stored in the aquifer from the time groundwater pumping began in the 1940s to the year 2000.

Even Small Pebbles Can Yield Big Ripples

From the perspective of many Taoists, one of the worst legacies of the Christian belief system is the idea of humankind's separation from nature. When the Old Testament urged the “chosen people” to hold dominion over the earth, this directive initiated human actions set toward raping and pillaging the planet. Even today, as scientists sound the clarion call, corporate giants continue to pollute and destroy the womb of creation and sustenance like there's no tomorrow -- One day we will find that this is a self-fulfilling prophesy!

It is the Christian concept of dualism (i.e., being separated from anyone or anything else) that has led us down this road toward ecological and, hence, societal catastrophe. Dualism has spawned the hegemonic truth of individual and/or national isolationism. It's as if far too many Christians do not understand the simple lesson Lao Tzu learned eons ago – Far from being separate, everything that makes up our universe inextricably is connected.

Once we genuinely recognize this connection, then we come intuitively to understand that every action causes a ripple effect that is felt in some degree throughout the cosmos.

This is not true because I believe it. It is also not true because some ancient Taoist sage wrote it down. No, it’s true because we can see this truth at work every day in nature and, incidentally, in the conduct of human interaction.

The natural world is always changing and reacting as a result of everything that goes on. If one locale receives more rain than usual for an extended period of time, it sets in motion a chain of occurrences.

Certain species flourish, while others suffer mightily and some may face extinction. Some species may migrate to a different locale altogether. Rivers carve out new channels. The overall climate may become altered. All these changes and far more occur as a reaction to the excess amount of precipitation.

In this same vein, human beings – who are part of this connected cosmos we call reality – impact the world by the decisions and actions we take. Because none of us has the vision nor wisdom to understand the totality of our reality, every act that we undertake spurs a chain of events we typically refuse to acknowledge. In common parlance, this is referred to as the law of unintended consequences.

While it is certainly true that it would be next to impossible to completely rid our world of these unintended consequences, we could greatly reduce the propensity for such by simply acknowledging the connection between ourselves and everything else. If I acknowledge that my decisions will impact my brethren AND future generations, then I will be more careful and cautious.

In my next entry, I’ll provide some examples of how some well-intentioned, but short-sighted, decisions and/or policies have led to some rather nasty unintended consequences.