Something Must Be Done

The following corporations have something very important in common:

Eli Lilly
Angie's List
Republic Airlines
Finish Line
ACE Rent a Car
Steak 'n Shake
Marsh Supermarkets
Emmis Communications
Sun King Brewing
Applied Instruments

There are more, but those are the ones who leapt off the page.  What they have in common is that they are corporations who have their headquarters in Indiana.  The same Indiana that passed a law that now legalizes the discrimination against the LGBT community by businesses in the name of "religious freedom."  While there are 19 other states with such laws, since their elected leadership chose to take this stand in 2015, when the tide against such discrimination is finally turning, let us make this the battleground.

I don't use any of these corporations.  But if I did, I would immediately stop doing so.  The way to bring the government of Indiana to its knees is not through peaceful protests, or gatherings.  The way to effect change is through economic power.  The CEO of Salesforce, Marc Benioff made a public statement that he will no longer send employees or customers to Indiana.  We must tell the CEOs of every business of any size in Indiana that we will not spend a single dollar that will wind its way into their coffers until this law is repealed.

Eli Lilly is the company behind Cialis.  Imagine if every man in the U. S. who uses their product were to switch to an alternative like Levitra, and let Eli Lilly know the reason why.  If a large bloc of their two million subscribers were to stop paying them $10 a year, Angie's List might speak up to those elected officials.

Boycott Indiana and any Indiana-based Business until this law is repealed.  As to the other 19 states, we're coming for you after we finish with Indiana.

* * *

Will Bowe Bergdahl face a court-martial?

Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl has been handed a charge sheet, alleging that he deserted and engaged in misbehavior before the enemy; charges that could land him a sentence of life in a military prison.  The next step is an Article 32 hearing, the military's equivalent to a preliminary hearing.  Some liken it to a grand jury proceeding.  I don't find that accurate because grand juries meet in secret and unless there are issues involving highly classified information, Article 32 hearings are usually not done in secret.

Several of the members of Bergdahl's fire team have been outspoken about the need for him to be prosecuted for his actions.  I agree.  I also agree that the Obama Administration made bad choices for making it seem that Bergdahl's actions were heroic and that he served honorably.  Far too many men and women came home after serving with honor and distinction and their parents were not feted in a Rose Garden event.

Desertion is a crime.  Did Bowe Bergdahl commit this offense?  Time, and a court-martial, will tell.

* * *

Imagine that you're in a major cash crunch.  Your hours were cut back, or there were unexpected bills.  But it's Wednesday, and you get paid on Friday.  You'll be fine then.  On your way home, the car breaks down.  The mechanic will have it ready the next morning but you're $250 short of the cash you need to pay him.  If you can't pay, you don't get the car back.  None of your family members or friends can or will help and those credit cards in your wallet are as useless as a perforated prophylactic.  What do you do?

You go to the nearest payday lender.  You write them a check for $300, post-dated to Friday.  They hand you $255 in cash.  You get your car back, and everything is fine.  Your check clears on Friday when you get paid and you are okay.  Until the next cash crisis.

You just spent $45 to borrow $300 for 48 hours.  These loans range in length (for the most part) from 1 to 14 days, and the annual interest rate ranges from over 300% to over 500%, depending on how long you borrow the money for, and whether or not you can repay it on time. 

Take the scenario above.  You are getting paid on Friday but the rent is due.  So you can't pay back the loan and pay the rent.  No problem.  Write a new check for $300 and they hand you $255 in cash again.  You're good for another two weeks.  It is the worst vicious cycle imaginable.  Repeat payday loans generate over $3 billion in revenue for this industry.

Time for government to rein this in.  It's fine for people to make money lending money.  Just not with interest rates as high as these.

* * *

Random Ponderings:

The people who are whining that the MGM Grand company isn't going to let other hotel/casinos in Las Vegas show the Mayweather vs Pacquiao fight need to just shut up.  MGM has every right to restrict an event they are spending big money on.

ISIS may have gone too far by moving into Tunisian land that hard-core Star Wars fans consider sacred ground (some of the filming for the franchise was done in this area).

With all of the problems in our nation, the Republicans in the House found time to pass a bill banning the watching of porn in federal workplaces.  Clearly their sense of priorities is seriously flawed.

Why in the world would Bruce Jenner think that his now ex-wife Kris would leave him in place as the executor of her advanced healthcare directive?  My ex-wife is the last person I'd leave in charge of that.

I want to see the scene in "The Breakfast Club" that was cut, involving an actress who isn't seen at all in the movie.  I just read her story and I bet that scene was great.

Now that her conviction will remain forever overturned, can Amanda Knox fade into obscurity as she appears to want to do?  I hope so.

NBC is bringing back "Coach" after an 18 year hiatus.  Not enough new ideas in Hollywood?

I hope the thieves that stole over $4 million and spent part of it on a luxury suite for Atlanta Hawks games enjoyed it a lot.  They got 13 years in federal prison for it.

Here are a few stupid food laws:

Gainsville, GA requires you to eat fried chicken with your hands.
Maryland won't let you convert oyster shells into lime or construction materials, without permission in advance.
Concord, MA forbids the sale of single use plastic water bottles.
Wyoming bans fishing with firearms.
Wisconsin state prisons must serve real butter, no margarine allowed.

Yes, it makes sense that the fans of the Buffalo Sabres wanted their team to lose a game against the Arizona Coyotes.  It has to do with staying in last place and improving their lottery pick odds.  But you don't cheer for the opposition.  I want the Lakers to lose every game between now and the season's end, but I wouldn't root for their opponents were I to be at Staples.

That airlines didn't have to have two people in the cockpit at all times is frightening.

The first U. S. cent ever made sold at auction for more than $1 million.  The power of the penny indeed!

Time to clear this up once and for all

I overheard someone say the following at breakfast today.  "This is the United States, I can say whatever I want.  We have freedom of speech."  Yes I've ranted about this before; but in light of recent events, it is worth revisiting.

You can say almost anything without fear of the government taking action against you.  There's an exception carved out that makes it a crime to threaten the life of the president of the United States  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threatening_the_President_of_the_United_States.  There are others related to inciting a riot, making threats and so on.  But for the most part, you can say almost anything without fear of consequences from the government.

That doesn't mean you are free to say whatever you want without fear of consequence from private businesses, and other individuals or groups with no governmental affiliation.  If you walk into your bosses office and start yelling at them about what a major jerk they are, they can and will almost certainly fire you.  You can't sue for wrongful termination and claim your freedom of speech was violated.

If you say rude things to a business owner inside of their business, they can and will almost certainly invite you to leave.  Even if you are a member of a "protected class", you can't try to assert that in combination with your freedom of speech rights to force the business owner to serve you.

Which brings me around to the other reason this is on my mind.  I'm not so sure that even the "fighting words" exception to free speech rights gives a public university the authority to expel a student.  I don't disagree with the decision of OU president David Boren to expel the two SAE members who were leading that chant on that party bus.  I'm just not sure he had legal authority to do so.

* * *

Senator Ted Cruz is the first GOP candidate for that party's 2016 presidential nomination.  Much is being made of the fact that his wife, a managing director at Goldman-Sachs, will be taking an unpaid leave of absence to work on his campaign.  Which means that his health insurance, currently paid for by her employer, will be lost.

Or so the media is saying.  But they are ignoring an important fact.  COBRA, an acronym for the law that allows employees to maintain their coverage when they lose their job (or are on a leave of absence), allows Mrs. Cruz to choose to purchase the company's benefits at her own expense.  That can go on for at least 18 months for Senator and Mrs. Cruz.

Given Senator Cruz's firm stance in opposition to the Affordable Care Act, where he gets his benefits from is an appropriate topic for discussion.  But the whole point of the ACA is to get benefits for everyone, not to lower the level of benefits private employers provide.

Update:  Now Cruz is saying his family will get coverage through the ACA.  Hypocrite.

* * *

Random Ponderings:

Okay, if both David Hasselhoff and Ann Coulter are going to be killed in the next Sharknado movie, I'll have to watch it.

People need to get over Angelina Jolie's choice to have her ovaries removed.  Yeah, yeah, awful.  www.instantrimshot.com   Just push the red button.

A Chevron station owner in Santa Monica is suing Carson Daly over a fence that he had built between his home and the station.  The gas station owner claims the fence is on his property.  I'm just shocked to find a gas station in Santa Monica, given the value of real estate there.

Jon Hamm and Jennifer Westfeldt are asking for "...privacy and sensitivity going forward" with respect to Hamm having finished a stint in rehab.  Do we owe famous folk privacy at times like this?  I guess it is only the fame whores that don't deserve it.  Hamm isn't a fame whore.

The studded leather jacket worn by Kelly LeBrock is up for sale on EBay for only $35,000.  The owner does assure it is in excellent condition.  That's a lot of money for a jacket very few people can ever wear.

Kudos to TMZ for using the company featured in the commercial below in their story on a lawsuit about FOX's show "Empire."

No one should be allowed to donate secretly to a political campaign.  Especially Wisconsin billionaires with an agenda.

The media is covering the story of a police officer being killed in Northern California.  They're focused on the fact the suspect was reportedly armed with a "high-powered rifle."  As though a "low-powered rifle" is somehow less deadly.  BB guns kill an average of four people a year and they're less powerful than the low-powered rifles.

Let's check the records...wait, they were deleted

Records Management by Federal Agencies

(44 U.S.C. Chapter 31)

§ 3101. Records management by agency heads; general duties

§ 3102. Establishment of program of management

§ 3103. Transfer of records to records centers

§ 3104. Certifications and determinations on transferred records

§ 3105. Safeguards

§ 3106. Unlawful removal, destruction of records

§ 3107. Authority of Comptroller General

 

The full texts of these U.S.C. sections can be found here: http://www.archives.gov/about/laws/fed-agencies.html

 

I'm not sure that Congressman Trey Gowdy is the right person to be seeking an examination of the private email server of former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Given his role as chair of the House Committee on Benghazi, it is impossible to avoid having this appear as a witch hunt about Benghazi rather than as a legitimate search for the truth.

But he is absolutely correct that someone needs to examine this file server and ensure that none of the more than 30,000 emails that were deleted contain any information on any official business that Secretary Clinton was involved in while serving as this nation's Secretary of State.  The law is clear.  Records must be preserved until it is clearly established that they are devoid of any official government business/information.

Allowing someone who is a member of the President's Cabinet to conduct official and unofficial business via email through a private server, doesn't pass either the common sense or basic smell test.  It stinks to high heaven.  On the issue of the server's security, Secretary Clinton said "...the server had numerous safeguards" and she didn't "...send classified email to anyone."  That's tough to believe.  Not one single email went through that server that didn't contain one line of classified data?  I don't buy it.

Investigation is warranted.

* * *

There's a much better solution to the ongoing negotiations with Iran over nuclear energy and the possibility that they may someday gain the ability to develop a nuclear weapon.  Simply enforce the provisions of an agreement that is already in force.

Iran is a signatory to the Treaty for the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.  They have been found to be in violation of the terms of the treaty.  They are allowed to engage in peaceful, non-weapons-based uses of nuclear energy.  Simply insist on treaty compliance.  We don't need a new executive agreement, or a new bilateral treaty between the U. S. and Iran.

* * *

On a related note to the issue of the lack of transparency in Hillary Rodham Clinton's choice to use a personal, private email server for official government correspondence, I heard an interesting news nugget this past week. 

According to the Associated Press, the Obama Administration has set a new record for censoring government files, or denying access to them altogether.  His administration has taken longer to provide records, claimed more often than any other administration that it is unable to locate documents, and refused a record number of times to turn over filed more quickly when confronted with a request for especially newsworthy records.

The Obama Administration has acknowledged that more than one out of every three requests, an initial decision to deny access was improper; but only when faced with a challenge to the decision to deny.

In an era where the backlog of unfulfilled requests for records has reached all-time highs, the Obama Administration has made a 9% reduction in the number of full-time government employees across all levels of federal government who handle requests for records.

All this at a time when the number of requests submitted in 2014 actually decreased by 4%.  What I find really telling is that one sentence was blacked out on an email about who pays for the expensive clothing of First Lady Michelle Obama.  But the same sentence was not deleted on a subsequent page.  What did it say?

"We live in constant fear of upsetting the WH (White House)."

Most transparent administration in history my ass.

* * *

Random Ponderings:

I'm not surprised that Suge Knight fainted when he heard his bail would be $25 million.  No way he can post that.  Maybe he can hang on in the hospital jail ward for a bit.  The conditions he's being held in, for his own safety, do not sound appealing.

If Alessandra Ambrosio wants to bring her kids to a photo shoot where she's posing topless, who cares?  Now when she starts inviting fans...then people should care.

Today was the 9,875th consecutive episode of the Jerry Springer show where there was at least one reference to both strippers and lesbians.  No word on when this impressive streak might be broken (yeah, that's a moderate exaggeration).

Meanwhile, myself and other twisted fans of the Maury Povich show wait in hope of hearing Maury say the nearly impossible words "when it comes to six month so and so, you are NOT the mother."

This bulletin just in, the former LAPD probationary officer who is accused of allegedly murdering someone is to be considered armed and dangerous.  Really?  And we were all thinking he was as mild and meek as a lamb.

The L. A. Times is reporting that Bruce Jenner has purchased a 3,500 square foot home on an 11 acre plot in Malibu.  Well, he will be needing a lot more closet space...

I hope that Bobby Brown gets the miracle he is praying for, and that Bobbi Kristina Brown will wake up, but it seems awfully unlikely.  I do know I don't like those kinds of places, having spent nine months in one.

When Holly Madison tours in support of her new book, I will probably stand in line to get her to sign a copy for me.  I want to see if she remembers me from her days at the Hooters in Santa Monica.  I always sat in her section if she was working.  Loved seeing her move around the joint on her roller skates.

The neighbor of the Miamisburg, OH woman (she lost a leg last year) who left the nasty note regarding her misappropriation of the handicapped parking space needs to be publically identified and shamed for her rudeness and bullying.  So should anyone who assumes they can tell whether or not a person who has a handicapped placard does or doesn't need it.

Eva Mendes is wrong when she says sweatpants are the #1 cause of divorce.  The real #1 cause of divorce is Bigger, Better Deal (BBD) syndrome.  That is what leads to so much marital infidelity.

Trump for President? Why?

Without any experience in an elected office, once again Donald Trump claims he is giving serious consideration to running for the presidency of the United States in the 2016 election.  Is this a publicity stunt?  Perhaps.  Does he seriously believe that he could win such an election?  When you are Donald Trump and possessed of one of the biggest egos on the planet, of course he believes he could win the presidency.  He probably he can do just about anything if he puts his mind to it.  Except of course to win the Miss Universe pageant, but since he owns that, even that might not be beyond his grasp.

You have to go back to the 1950s to find a presidential election where the winner had no experience in elected office.  Dwight D. Eisenhower had been a military governor in post-WWII Germany, but his first election campaign was in 1952 and he won the presidency.  Every other president elected to the Oval Office has been either a state governor, U. S. Senator, or was the Vice-President before winning that ultimate electoral prize.  While Ronald Reagan might have been best known as an actor, Jimmy Carter as a peanut farmer and George W. Bush as the owner of a baseball team, all three were governors of states and achieved varying degrees of success in those roles.

Donald Trump says he is the only person who can make America "...great again."  The truth is, he is part of the problem and not the solution.  The biggest problem facing this nation at the moment is the growing inequality of income, which in turn drives the gap in the inequality of wealth to perilous heights.  Trump doesn't want the rich to take on a heavier burden in rebuilding our nation's economy.  He's just fine separating anyone and everyone from what they can earn and putting it into his own pocket.

Aside from the fact that he has no qualifications to be president (he has gone bankrupt way too many times to use his "business success" as a platform), he's also lacking in common sense.  He has a hair-trigger temper, not the kind of person well-suited to be in command of an arsenal of nuclear weapons.

Yes, his doomed-to-fail candidacy will be amusing.  Worse yet, it is frightening, because there are lots of gullible folks out there who think he is a genius.  Don't let this become a serious thing.  A Donald Trump presidency would be very dangerous, in my opinion, for us all.

* * *

"Empire" is a major success for the Fox Network and rightly so.  Great writing and acting, with discussion of relevant issues are almost always going to result in strong interest.  In the case of this program, having a gay male African-American character isn't a stunt to draw attention, but a real element of the story.  Better still, it is being handled thoughtfully and realistically.  At least from what little I know on the topic.

What would be really great though, is when we get to the time when such things are the norm rather than the exception.  What a great world that would be to live in.

* * *

Random Ponderings:

Could someone please hire a good publicist for Gwyneth Paltrow so she will stop saying really stupid shit?  Apparently she thinks the "common woman" doesn't blink at spending $45 for a "single color nail polish kit" and $1,795 for a jumpsuit with only one shoulder.

A woman being investigated for the murder of her deaf sister and the sister's dogs sounds like a perfect candidate for Jerry Springer, except for the fact she is a producer on the show already.

Robert Durst being in a psych ward sounds like a good thing. 

Creflo Dollar should learn to fly first class on a commercial airline.

Lots of things are interesting about celebrity gossip, but that Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes don't communicate isn't one of them.

I'll actually watch "Sharknado 3" if I find out that Ann Coulter will be eaten by one of the sharks.

I'm confused.  The people who are complaining the loudest about the rise in Ellis Act convictions don't like that law, yet they're the same ones who went around in the late 1970s and thereafter talking about how Rent Control is the LAW.  You either support laws or you don't.  Don't like a law, work to change it.

Did anyone really think banning new fast food restaurants in the South Los Angeles area was going to reduce obesity?  Especially since the ban only applied to stand-alone facilities?

Interesting how the White House is saying U. S. support for Israel at the UN is in jeopardy only after the Obama administration choice to win the election in Israel loses. 

The Culture of Apology

Levi Pettit is one of the two members of the University of Oklahoma chapter of Sigma Alpha Epsilon that was expelled for taking part in the now infamous racist chant on a party bus.  His parents said this after the other student who was expelled, Parker Rice, had released an apology:  “As parents of Levi, we love him and care for him deeply,” read the statement, viewed by the Morning News. “He made a horrible mistake, and will live with the consequences forever. However, we also know the depth of our son’s character. He is a good boy, but what we saw in those videos is disgusting. While it may be difficult for those who only know Levi from the video to understand, we know his heart, and he is not a racist. We raised him to be loving and inclusive and we all remain surrounded by a diverse, close-knit group of friends.”

Meanwhile, back in February, a student at UCLA was being considered for an appointment to a position on the Judicial Board of the Undergraduate Students Association Council (USAC) and when the USAC board met with her to discuss her fitness and qualifications to serve on that group, the subject of her being Jewish and active in Jewish organizations came up.  "Given that you are active in Jewish organizations, how would you maintain an unbiased viewpoint?"

The student who first raised that issue and the three that joined her in voting against the nomination of Rachel Beyda were forced to issue a written apology for their actions.  But a careful reading of that apology and a viewing of the video of this meeting where the issue of Ms Beyda's religion was subjected to scrutiny would indicate this apology to be at best, hollow and meaningless.

Nixon apologized.  Did it salvage his legacy?  Oh hell no.  He won't be remembered primarily for opening the door to Beijing, or for initiating détente with the Soviet Union.  Or for creating the Environmental Protection Agency, being the first president to discuss environmental concerns in his State of the Union address, or for supporting the establishment of OSHA.  He will be forever reviled for his role in Watergate, a debacle that we are reminded of whenever the media tags the latest scandal as _________Gate.

Apologies for minor transgressions can wipe the slate clean.  Accidentally cut someone off in traffic and offer a heartfelt apology and the matter is forgotten.  Unless of course you cut the same person off again.  My father apologized profusely to me for some serious transgressions and I did forgive him.  But during later disagreements, those past events might come up in the discussion.  He would ask me if I'd changed my mind about forgiving him and I would come back with "forgiven, but not forgotten."

The apology doesn't erase the action itself.  We can forgive someone a transgression, but we usually won't forget about it.  I wonder what Adam M. Smith, former CFO of Vante is doing these days.  Since the name doesn't ring a bell, perhaps his viral video moment will jog your memory:

I searched for him online, but found nothing to indicate whether or not he was able to secure anything close to his former position as a company's CFO.  All the apologies in the world won't make people completely forget what you did.

Mr. Rice and Mr. Pettit have apologized for the racist chanting incident.  Are they really sorry?  I'm sure they are sorry they got caught.  The more time passes, the more sorry they will be that they made such a bad choice.

Impropriety or Illegality?

Apparently the 47 United States Senators listed below have some spare time on their hands.  They've taken on the task of teaching comparative government to the leadership of Iran.  First, the names of these generous, sharing politicians:

Senator Tom Cotton, R-AR
Senator Orrin Hatch, R-UT
Senator Charles Grassley, R-IA
Senator Mitch McConnell, R-KY
Senator Richard Shelby, R-AL
Senator John McCain, R-AZ
Senator James Inhofe, R-OK
Senator Pat Roberts, R-KS
Senator Jeff Sessions, R-AL
Senator Michael Enzi, R-WY
Senator Michael Crapo, R-ID
Senator Lindsey Graham, R-SC
Senator John Cornyn, R-TX
Senator Richard Burr, R-NC
Senator John Thune, R-SD
Senator Johnny Isakson, R-GA
Senator David Vitter, R-LA
Senator John A. Barrasso, R-WY
Senator Roger Wicker, R-MS
Senator Jim Risch, R-ID
Senator Mark Kirk, R-IL
Senator Roy Blunt, R-MO
Senator Jerry Moran, R-KS
Senator Rob Portman, R-OH
Senator John Boozman, R-AR
Senator Pat Toomey, R-PA
Senator John Hoeven, R-ND
Senator Marco Rubio, R-FL
Senator Ron Johnson, R-WI
Senator Rand Paul, R-KY
Senator Mike Lee, R-UT
Senator Kelly Ayotte, R-NH
Senator Dean Heller, R-NV
Senator Tim Scott, R-SC
Senator Ted Cruz, R-TX
Senator Deb Fischer, R-NE
Senator Shelley Moore Capito, R-WV
Senator Bill Cassidy, R-LA
Senator Cory Gardner, R-CO
Senator James Lankford, R-OK
Senator Steve Daines, R-MT
Senator Mike Rounds, R-SD
Senator David Perdue, R-GA
Senator Thom Tillis, R-NC
Senator Joni Ernst, R-IA
Senator Ben Sasse, R-NE
Senator Dan Sullivan, R-AK

These fine men and women took it upon themselves to assume that a sovereign foreign nation doesn't have the ability to fully understand our system of government, and wanted to educate them on the difference between a fully ratified treaty and a mere "executive agreement."  So they wrote the following "open letter"

An Open Letter to the Leaders of :

It has come to our attention while observing your nuclear negotiations with our government that you may not fully understand our constitutional system.  Thus, we are writing to bring to your attention two features of our Constitution — the power to make binding international agreements and the different character of federal offices — which you should seriously consider as negotiations progress.

 

First, under our Constitution, while the president negotiates international agreements, Congress plays the significant role of ratifying them.  In the case of a treaty, the Senate must ratify it by a two-thirds vote.  A so-called congressional-executive agreement requires a majority vote in both the House and the Senate (which, because of procedural rules, effectively means a three-fifths vote in the Senate).  Anything not approved by Congress is a mere executive agreement.

Second, the offices of our Constitution have different characteristics.  For example, the president may serve only two 4-year terms, whereas senators may serve an unlimited number of 6-year terms.  As applied today, for instance, President  will leave office in January , while most of us will remain in office well beyond then — perhaps decades.

What these two constitutional provisions mean is that we will consider any agreement regarding your nuclear-weapons program that is not approved by the Congress as nothing more than an executive agreement between President ___________ and ________________.  The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.

We hope this letter enriches your knowledge of our constitutional system and promotes mutual understanding and clarity as nuclear negotiations progress.

Yes, I've made a few small edits.  I've removed every reference to Iran and the specific leaders involved in these negotiations.  Now I'd like you to engage in an exercise with me.  Fix my edits so that this letter is addressed to the leaders of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, headed at the time by President Mikhail Gorbachev during the 99th Congress, written by the Democratic majority at the time in the House of Representatives, led by the legendary Tip O'Neill.  At the exact moment when Presidents Reagan and Gorbachev were negotiating the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.  I'm taking a small liberty here, since the Democratic majority in the Senate would not reemerge until the 100th Congress, but bear with me.

Imagine the outrage the 47 Senators listed above would have expressed at the time.  They would have yelled that these elected officials are engaging in clear violations of the Logan Act, and should be arrested and charged with sedition.

The time for Senators to engage in political action in public, where they involve themselves in direct (and an open letter is clearly a direct act, even with the Rove-like spin-doctoring in this piece of crap) contact with leaders of foreign nations, is never.  Not while the President is so engaged.  These 47 fools will get their chance to refuse to ratify a treaty once it has been signed.  Not before.  As a nation, we don't need to be telling other nations how our government works.  It is beneath condescending.  It is downright rude.

I'm sure the 47 of you can find other, more productive uses of your limited free time than this exercise in probable illegality has been.

Them's fighting words

We're back to the First Amendment.  This time in Norman, Oklahoma, where the University of Oklahoma is located.  University President David Boren, a former United States Senator and Governor of Oklahoma has ordered the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity shut down.  Its members must move out of their house before Tuesday morning.

The reason for this is well known and I will not give the outrageous video any more play than it has already received.  Suffice it to say that the members of this group (and some women, allegedly from Delta, Delta Delta) were chanting a racial, hate-mongering epithet.

The conservative ideologues in the blogosphere are already decrying Boren's move as a violation of the free speech rights of these students.  Even if that's true (we'll get there in a moment) it is more important to focus on the fact that the national leadership of SAE is shuttering the U of Oklahoma chapter without regard to President Boren's actions.  I think he may have a tougher time expelling those involved, although on a personal level I believe such expulsions aren't just appropriate, but necessary.

Should a young adult's future be clouded, probably ruined, because of silly actions done while in college?  Decades ago, police officers often ignored DUIs and other offenses by frat boys, sorority girls and other students and just drove them home.  With a "don't do it again" chiding, their permanent records weren't indelibly stained.  But we no longer live in those times.  In December of 2011, USA Today published a story that claimed nearly 1 in 3 youths would be arrested by the time they turn 23. 

We cannot outlaw racism.  We cannot outlaw hatred.  Nor will banning such speech accomplish anything of value.  How one thinks is ultimately the sole decision of the thinker.  But we can express our outrage.  Rather than banning such a fraternity, what if those of us who abhor what they are saying were to mount constant non-violent protest, to tell these "men" that they have a lot to learn.  That hatred will no longer be tolerated.

It is critical to remember that the origins of Sigma Alpha Epsilon are in the Deep South.  It is the only social fraternity ever founded in the Antebellum South.  They must memorize their creed "The True Gentleman" as part of their initiation process. 

The True Gentleman is the man whose conduct proceeds from good will and an acute sense of propriety, and whose self control is equal to all emergencies; who does not make the poor man conscious of his poverty, the obscure man of his obscurity, or any man of his inferiority or deformity; who is himself humbled if necessity compels him to humble another; who does not flatter wealth, cringe before power, or boast of his own possessions or achievements; who speaks with frankness but always with sincerity and sympathy; whose deed follows his word; who thinks of the rights and feelings of others rather than his own; and who appears well in any company, a man with whom honor is sacred and virtue safe.

How in the world is using the N word to denigrate and describe how men of color are simply not going to get into this fraternity NOT making these men conscious of their supposed "inferiority"??

So why might President Boren be able to get away with his actions and not find himself being forced to reverse what he has done in the courts?  The fighting words exception to freedom of speech, which you are free to research on your own. 

I find it frightening that supposedly intelligent people, worthy of a college education in a public university, continue to find racism and hatred so easily acceptable.

Interestingly, I began this post precisely at 4:04 a.m.

It's Sunday, the one day each year we are forced to "spring forward."  I hate this day.  I lose an hour of sleep and almost annually, I have something going on that makes sleeping more difficult.  I may or may not come back to what caused me to be awake at this hour.

Apparently, retired neurosurgeon and potential presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson thinks (or used to think) that going to prison makes men who are straight become homosexual.  He made this idiotic statement and then quickly retreated from it when the predictable backlash slapped him upside the head.  Being victimized by prison rape is not a catalyst to alter anyone's sexual orientation.

Since others have made the predictable (predicktable?) offer to allow Dr. Carson to engage in a homosexual act with them and then see if he remains gay, I don't have to go there.  But I will ask him a question.  Doctor, odds are very good you will never become a prisoner in a prison here or anywhere else.  But if you were in that situation, and you were forced to engage in homosexual acts, would that alter your orientation?

He would of course deny that possibility.  Which is why the notion that sexual orientation can be altered through experiences is ridiculous.  If former prison inmates continue to engage in same-sex relationships after gaining their freedom, I have to wonder if that is because they are ashamed.  Because they feel they've been damaged.

Your sexual orientation was part of your life from the moment you were born.  It may have some flexibility, but it isn't going to go through a major change because you were raped.

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Currently, our nation's budget deficit is projected to be just under $500 billion for the current fiscal year.  That is slightly less than the total amount of unfunded non-pension benefits currently outstanding, some $530 billion.  You can read unfunded non-pension benefits as costs of providing healthcare to retirees. 

LAUSD and other school districts across the states will almost certainly seek to reduce the commitment to lifetime healthcare for their retired personnel; if not for all, than at least for new employees.  Between this and the billions in unfunded pension liabilities, benefit reduction is the only answer.  There is no source of untapped revenue to begin providing for these future expenses.

We have a historical example to see where this is going.  I enlisted in the Air Force in 1977.  At the time I enlisted, I was promised (in writing, I believe) free lifetime medical care, provided I put in the requisite years to reach retirement (minimum of 20).  And unless I had qualified for VA medical care, as I do, I'd be paying for part of what was supposed to be free lifetime care.

In additional to the "small" annual premium (roughly $280) per year, a deductible of $300 and there would be co-pays.  Dental coverage would involve additional premiums.

We promise people things to get them to sign up, and then wind up being unable to live up to those promises because there was no thought to future planning.  I wanted to use a video clip here of the paint store owner in "Saturday Night Fever" telling "Tony" that you can't 'fuck the future, the future fucks you' but the clip wasn't available.

One of the reasons we are still in a fiscal crisis in this nation is that we have said "fuck the future" as a society.  We've put off fiscal responsibility to the next generation and the next for so long, we've amassed nearly $19 trillion in public debt.  We have no hope of paying this debt off anytime in the relatively foreseeable future.  That's before we get to the unfunded pension and non-pension benefit liabilities.   If you think the financial system collapse of 2008 was bad, just wait.

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Random Ponderings:

I just re-read the essay by Katharine Zaleski ( http://fortune.com/2015/03/03/female-company-president-im-sorry-to-all-the-mothers-i-used-to-work-with/) and realized I agree with the critics.  While the importance and value of working mothers cannot be overstated, this isn't really an apology. It is a piece designed to promote her new business venture. 

22 veterans take their own life every day, on average.  But when a beautiful, young, female veteran does it, it's newsworthy.  Why is that?

Sean Penn clearly meant nothing insulting by his "green card" joke at the Oscars.  People should just let this go.

The people who package and market Khloe Kardashian are trying to position her to replace Kelly Osbourne on The Fashion Police.  They list her as "actress and producer."  She doesn't have a single credit for acting where she wasn't playing Khloe Kardashian.  That's not acting.

Someone needs to fix it up for Julio Iglesias and Larry King to do a duet of "To All The Girls We've Loved Before", with King dressed as Willie Nelson.  It would be epic.

If Hilary Clinton did nothing wrong involving her use of non-governmental emails, then release all of the emails.  At least release them to members of Congress who have proper security clearance.

A per mile driven tax to replace falling revenues from California's gasoline tax is a really bad idea.

There's a gym that allows people to use the locker room based on "...their sincere, self-reported gender identity" and a female member lost her membership over her complaints about the issue.  What if the gym required new members to gender-identify at the time they sign up??

There's something really wrong with Kaiser charging a patient $95 for a five gram tube of prescription cream.  Even worse is the fact Kaiser paid over $2,500 for the tube, when it is available in Canada (with prescription) for $35 without insurance.

Choices in Life and Death

My father used to pontificate that the word "can't" should not be a part of a person's vocabulary.  "Replace can't with can, will and do" was his mantra.  I heard and read him expound on this concept over and over again, particularly during the first few months of my military service.

My worldview has changed since those days.  I now know there are things that simply cannot be done.  There was a time whenI was at a conference on the East Coast, and I got a call asking me if I could step-in and take part in one on the West Coast, on the same day.  There was simply no way to be in both locations in such a short period of time.  Even with unlimited resources, it simply was not possible.  In fact, even if I could have convinced the U. S. Air Force to allow me to fly in one of the two SR-71s that were still operational prior to the year 2000, I still could not have taken part in both events.

So I accept the concept that there are some things that cannot be done.  What I struggled with is that William Shatner felt it necessary to tell the Twitterverse that he could not attend the funeral of Leonard Nimoy.  The two were the closest of friends.  How a person chooses to grieve is totally their prerogative.  I hate funerals.  I do everything I can to avoid attending them.  If he shares that feeling, that's fine by me.

I also get that Mr. Shatner was involved with a charity event in Florida.  A big event.  The annual Red Cross Ball, in Palm Beach, is the "event of the social season" in that area.  It raised hundreds of thousands for a very worthwhile charity.  It didn't start until 6 p.m. on Saturday night and was scheduled to run until midnight.  The funeral went off at 9 a.m. the following morning, a window of only nine hours to transit the entire width of the United States.

Like others, I posited that Mr. Shatner could have chartered a private jet and arrived back in Southern California with time to spare.  There are charter services in Miami that could have prepositioned a jet at Palm Beach International.  Mr. Shatner could have been airborne by 12:30 a.m. on Saturday evening after the charity event ended.  Even with bad weather conditions, the flight time from Florida to LAX is under five hours.  Which tells us that sometime during that nine hour window between the end of the charity event and the funeral, Mr. Shatner could have gotten himself to Los Angeles.

I'll even concede that it was not about money, or Mr. Shatner's willingness (or lack thereof) to spend whatever it took to get to LA for the service.  That would have been his personal choice, and none of anyone's business.  Until he tweeted this out:
          

"Dear @toddschnitt as previously stated must have missed your email offering to provide this jet. Please resend CC# so I can make a donation."

 

Shatner had noted in an earlier tweet that the cost of such a flight would be around $30,000.  How would he know this if he hadn't looked into it.  Now if he did that research and decided he wasn't willing to spend that much money to be at the funeral, I would NOT question that decision.  But I would point out that he should not be claiming he "can't" attend.  Clearly he could have attended.  He made a choice not to.  And in raising the issue of the cost of a charter flight, he himself made it about the money.

 

This justifies the question, why did William Shatner not charter a jet to get to his friend's funeral?  If the issue was solely the money, I'd have gladly donated to a fundraising campaign to pay for that flight.  In fact, to placate those who advance the thought that the late Leonard Nimoy would have preferred the money go to a charity instead, I'd have donated an equal amount to a charity.  If the issue was that Mr. Shatner felt he wasn't up to the rigors of such a trip, I would accept that.  He is in his 80s.  If he felt it was beyond his physical capabilities, fair enough.

 

Just don't claim you couldn't, when you could have.  That's an unfair, less than truthful explanation of why you're making a choice.