Wednesday, April 30, 2008

On Clobama

At the end of the day, both Hillary and B. Hussein Obama are bad news - the both of them. Hillary we know by her actions, B. Hussein Obama by his associates. On the other hand, McCain isn't exactly any gold-plated prize his own self.

However, after much painful thought I have come to two conclusions.

1) We're going to be a tiny bit better off if McCain wins in November. Not much, but a tiny bit.

2) Towards that end, it is in our best interests as a nation that Clobama vs Clobama be a knockdown, dragout, crotch-kneeing, eyeball-gouging, wedgie-giving dust up right up till the last day of the Democratic Convention, ideally with Clobama delegates brawling drunkenly with each other in the streets and being arrested for goat-molesting.

It seems unlikely we'll see (2) in all it's glory, but we can hope, and whenever we see any hint of a democrat wanting to vote their "true beliefs" we can encourage them, and urge them to "make a difference" and not let "back room politics corrupt the process" and give a close nomination to the *candidate they don't like* just because "big business bought them out". Superdelegates are bad, m'kay?

Let us encourage every democrat we meet - it'll be almost as much fun as encouraging them to vote for Nader in 2000.

Romantic Prospects...

At a certain points, the odds diminish to the absurd and a certain resignation becomes prudent. It's a hint when the eye-catching are all batshit crazy, interested in whatever gender you're not, involved, or attached to sufficient drama that frantic flight is the most prudent response.

It's another hint if the ones that are interested are either batshit crazy, 20 years older, of the gender that doesn't interest YOU, or attached to frightening amounts of drama.

You're either fishing in the wrong pond, or that pond is done fished out. Better to spend your time on the range or with a good book at that point. Less potential for harm, and with the batshit crazy ones you're safer standing at the busy end of the range than dating them - at least it'll be quicker than the death of a thousand insanities.

Good News

Was over at B&N and H. Beam Piper's novel Space Viking is back in print...highly unrecommended...but I admit I'm enough of a primitive that the feeling of a bound book is, to me, just a better experience...

Thoughts on Passages

For the geekish and non-geekish among us, there are some prudent stops to make prior to passage or incapication - some fairly well established, some fairly new. As I've discussed, my father passed this last December after a long illness, and browsing Slashdot this morning brought several thoughts more or less together.

Namely, that there's more to the whole project of getting dead these days than simply keeling over and discovering objective evidence of the afterlife. Let me note early on that I am not an attorney, I am not writing as an attorney, nor do I play an attorney on television - I'm merely writing as a son who has and is jumping through the hoops of his fathers passing.

It used to be that you'd (if you were prudent) make out a will and pretty much be done with it. Then, with advances in medical science, living wills (aka, a "pull the plug NOW" document) became increasingly popular and now seem a downright basic document to accompany a will. With advances in non-medical technology, yet a third layer (and maybe fourth) of document seems increasingly wise.

You (and hopefully your attorney) write a will to allocate your assets, settle your estate, and stop potential fights among heirs. Simply put, "who gets what, when, and where is that what?". A nice accompaniment, if you can pull it off is a pre-planned pre-paid funeral that is locked down to a fare-thee-well with the most complex decision available to heirs the choice of flowers at any ceremonies - if folks are ever going to fight, when they are all wrought up and grieving is one of the very most likely times for them to do it seems only prudent to short circuit that entire process before it begins. Think prevention. Old-fashioned, but still necessary stuff.

Depending on what state you have the misfortune to get laid up in, living wills and their various co-conspirators by other names vary in their validity from being legally binding to mere moral requests, the difference being that a judge will back up the first, and we'll all think mean'n'nasty things about you in the second case (but not much else bad will happen). Still, even in states where "moral suggestion" is as good as it gets, something is better than nothing when it comes to facing the potential of months and years of inescapable misery as ones relatives and associates stand around fretting about what to do, yet without the authority or gumption to actually make a decision. Someone who has the gumption, who knows your desires in advance, and who has if at all possible the authority to carry them through is clearly a good thing.

Finally, the new part that the Slashdot article addressed - someplace safe, and with a degree of security you feel comfortable with, keep a collection of your userid's and passwords to your emails, to online investment portals, to your physical computer(s), etc.

Don't create the mystery hard drive layout of doom, where the Top Level Directory is AAA, and the directories beneath it are labeled "aaa1", "aaa2", "aaa3" with no explanation left behind - and then tuck all of your investment, tax, and personal records into PDF files that you then drop into this structure that only you understand. Unless you're in some kind of black hole environment where such things are required, don't do it - think of the nice folks who will have to find such records for your survivors!

Should you be struck by lightning or have a bus fall upon you from the skies - it makes things much easier and cheaper for your survivors, and cuts way back on the amount of quality attorney and courtroom time/expense (or time/expense with forensic IT folks) if you've tucked away a complete list of your computer, online, and other userid/passwords carefully away.

Probably the best scheme I've heard of was when a gentleman was notified he was terminal, he took out a number of post office boxes and safe deposit boxes for friends (in his name) which, the last I heard, they have then kept up with cash only payments in the years since his death...and his widow never had to worry about lawn mowing or handyman repair issues. Not everyone is quite that enthused about their privacy, but it's still out there if you want to work for it - less creative and resource-intensive measures do exist.

In short, getting dead responsibly is somewhat more complex today than it was even a few years ago - you can make things a lot easier for them as survive by providing them with viable means to get at not just your physical information (files and such), but your electronic data as well once you've gone.

Here's hoping none of us need worry about it in any immediate sense for a good long while.

Sunday, April 27, 2008

Again, with the FLDS

Now, this may shock a few as read my wee blog, but there exists a short list of things as leave me twitchy.

About the time anyone uses phrases like "we all know", "for the sake of the children", "common knowledge", or "common sense" my skepticism kicks into overdrive, simply because of the sheer number of times such phrases have been used to whip up more or less allegorical lynch mobs or justify illegitimate actions over the years . They just don't sit well with me, kind of like a 6-star curry.

When you play roulette, if you spin the wheel enough times, sure enough you'll win - but in roulette, just like when we hear those buzz words, it's a better bet that you're getting your chain jerked than hitting a jack-pot.

Malice and/or incompetence is not required. Humanity is. It is *easier* to believe the worst of those we already dislike or fear than it is those we either revere or simply discount as "just another joe normal" - and then it becomes easier to ignore relatively petty things like due process, constitutional rights, and other annoyances in the service of a greater good. It merely takes humanity and a quick screamed "for the sake of the children".

Moving right along, numbers catch my eye. Specifically numbers of persons held in incommunicado in custody without charges brought against said individuals as multiplied by the number of hours such persons are held. My eyebrow raises in direct ratio to the number of persons.

Similarly, I'm generally pro-cop and anti-criminal,on occasion rather grimly so. However, amidst my usually zealous enthusiasm...we stumble across one or two of my other points o' twitchiness.

My support dwindles at just about the point when the ancient question Quis custodiet ipsos custodes kicks in. Loosely, "who will watch the watchman?" And I readily acknowledge that from time to time there are situations where the right or best tactical answer to ensure the best chance of both officers and persons of varying guilt/innocence all go home with more or less the same physiological arrangement they came to the party with...may bear a strange resemblance to those very criteria that rattle my cage in this arena.

As many police organizations (not all, not even a majority, I don't believe) drift away from the "Officer of the Peace" model and towards more paramilitary and interventionist organizational philosophies, I'm not left re-assured. It doesn't feel like a trend towards either freedom or a nice place to live, and it leaves me nervous. Waco and Ruby Ridge spring to mind.

Finally, I'm predictably pretty much of the view that what consenting adults do amongst themselves that doesn't get their individual and collective either studied by epidemiologists or hauled off by the big van with the flashy red lights and the funny staff'n'snake thingy on the side is pretty much their own business.

While the whole multi-spousal thing doesn't look awfully workable to me, or anything that at this moment I'd care to participate in - I'm fairly certain that between consenting adults it's none of my business (nor anyone elses beyond the participants, not least not the governments). Thus, the only appropriate response when I'm told that polygamy is to ask where to sign up to repeal that law - it's none of the governments business within the aforementioned broad limits, and any misery suffered by participants is first their own damned fault and second part of the price we pay for being let the hell alone - freedom.

If either the "consenting" or "adults" tests are failed, we have a whole different ball of either case laying hands upon those believed guilty and ensuring such proposed felons are out of circulation in the short term, the long term, or both as determined by a judge and jury. If consent does not exist, well hell, that's rape. If one or more of the players is not of locally determined age of consent* or not competent to give consent, we return to "well hell, that's rape."

With my relevant pre-existing prejudices carefully admitted to, let us move on to the FLDS festivities.

To start the fun, lots of those suspicious buzz words have been and are being flung about. Not, by any means, a sure thing.....but enough to throw at least the hint of that tangy scent o' skepticism in the air.

Then we have over 400 folks hauled off against their will and kids separated from their families in what we will laughably call a hearing. Umm. Excuse me?

Maybe I'm just a wild-eyed libertarian, but it seems to me that those kids and their families are entitled to individual hearings before shipping them off to god knows where until their parents can prove themselves innocent of wrongdoing. I'm not sure, but I think there's some legal principal about "innocent until proven guilty" laying about someplace that might perhaps be applicable.

In other words, I have some issues with hauling off 460-some folks not charged with any crime and then depriving them of the ability to communicate (see the awe-inspiring court order authorizing seizure of all potential electronic communications devices). Can we say "overkill"?

I can support hauling off a bunch of under-17 mothers for questioning in a state where age of consent is 17; I may have some qualms about "harassing the victim", but nothing I can't live with. Seizing all the children in sight, rather larger qualms. Seizing all those persons of non-male gender and hauling them off...oh, I have great thumping big qualms and I would hope others would, as well - particularly if the seizure and detainment contain significant periods where the detainees are kept from communications.

At that point my preferred mode of support for the police and the courts is on awfully shaky ground. At least partly because precedent, once created, has a nasty way of coming back to haunt one. As an example, let us examine the response if some Austin judge determined that abuse had occurred in the home of one or more TSRA's homes - and that as a result, all TSRA member's children and womenfolk would be dragged off for questioning till the guilty could be found.

I learned a long time ago that if you had to have a nasty was almost always better to do it on someone else's turf, as it cut down on the damage to one's own real estate. In this case, the FLDS (as weird and dysfunctional as I believe them to be) is "someone elses real estate" - I'd much rather they set the legal precedent that "overkill=bad" in the courts...than be within miles of any case concerning me or anyone I care about having to attempt to prove such a principal.

We, as a nation, have increasingly discarded the restraints on government intervention - I suggest it is time to start putting them back.

*Age of Consent is one of those hotly debated things that I don't voluntarily touch until and unless and god forbid I'm elected to a legislative body. I have my personal views on such matters, which are usually more conservative than local law. I will admit to a belief that some folks should just be kept in barrels to keep all of us safe. In the meantime I'll stick to obeying local law (perhaps a bit over enthusiastically, adding extra years beyond the local standard for my own sanity) or if I just can't agree with it, moving someplace I can agree with local law.

Sunday, April 20, 2008

A letter to the editor...

After a recent shooting incident at a known drug/party house over in W. Seattle I'm afraid my ability to resist writing the Editor grew a bit...strained. Thus, below...

One option is to team up with neighbors and sign a contract with a local security service (, for example) to provide a much heavier visible patrol presence in your neighborhood until such time as the threat abates.

The Seattle Police are largely an exceptionally professional group of men and women deeply understaffed and under supported by a Mayor and City Council that would rather spend limited resources on gun control and greening the city than on nuts and bolts public safety issues.

This has reduced the professionals of the Seattle Police to an ever more reactive role, rushing from crisis to crisis. Without the officers necessary to perform preventative patrol and (outside of high-kvetching areas) and officer-intensive community contact duties (foot patrol, horse patrol, bicycle patrol) on a routine basis, we can only expect more of the same.

Until such time as we remove Nickels and his cronies from office, our best hope rests in banding together to hire private security if we want some kind of preventative patrol...and if we're concerned about personal safety, to explore the options lawfully available to us. For that last I recommend Gila Hayes out at SFA 360-978-6100...

So how's that Victim Disarmament thing working out for you?

It seems that Chicago is having one of those weekends one only sees in towns with vicious anti-gun policies that ensure that potential victims of predators (two-legged and otherwise) are as helpless and vulnerable as it is humanly possible to make them.

Thirty-two shot, six stabbed, and two dead (and counting) this weekend. And it's still early afternoon on Sunday. How's that whole gun control thing doing? The Violence Prevention Center and the Brady gun control types rushing to your city to fling themselves between harm and potential victims?

Not so much?

All those bad naughty people proudly displaying their Firearms Owner Identification Card, their gun registration and such before rushing out to do their bad naughtiness? What? You tell me that *gasp* criminals *shocker* don't obey the law?

Chicago gun laws bar any concealed carry by private citizens, require registration of all firearms, require possession of a Firearms Owner ID prior to the purchase of firearms or ammunition, and stop just short of requiring gun owners to have "Bad Gun Owning Troglodyte" tattooed on their foreheads. At least, so far.

And for this, the citizenry of that fine city gets mayhem in the streets and in their homes and the privilege of being warm fuzzy liberals. Perhaps not the best of deals...

Could it, just perhaps, be that the citizens of the Chicago and the State of Illinois would benefit far more from laws that enhance the risk to violent criminals, actual law enforcement focus on violent crime rather than harassing citizens interested in self-defense, and taking note of some of Professor Lott's more intriguing studies illustrated by this interview from the University of Chicago?

Seattle to Secede? "The City and County of Seattle"

Over lunch this last Thursday, Mayor Greg Nickels proposes Seattle secede from the Union, because he's unhappy he's not getting a large enough ration of boondoggles and nannyism from a state government with both houses of the legislature and the Governors chair all held by tax and spend Democrats, and the Fed's aren't making up the difference. Not satisfied with ruling merely Seattle, though, he proposes taking the entire region (probably King/Pierce/Snohomish counties) into his little nanny-state fiefdom of ecotopic bliss.


From the Union might be a bit much, and a regional gambit a bit overzealous, a more limited sense, even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Perhaps Seattle needs precisely what Nickels proposes - to be isolated in its' own little economic and ecological paradise where they can't bother the rest of us with their odd notions. I'd suggest stealing a somewhat modified page from San Francisco's handbook and re-chartering the City and County of Seattle as a wholly self-contained administrative district that within the bounds of the Federal and State Constitutions elects its own officials, taxes itself, and receives neither funds nor a voice at the state level, its' former state legislatures relegated to City Council membership.

Granted, I do favor a rather broad definition of civil rights and Seattle has, in fact, been the ramrod for that across the state. However, Seattle has also grown a positively strange liberal cult that seems to operate on "mother knows best" with a hearty helping of contemptuous paternalism towards both its' own citizens generally, and the poor benighted souls outside of city limits with especial vigor.

Let Seattle set its own course as a trade off for butting out of the rest of the state. For once, Nickels may not be entirely clueless. Good riddance.

Saturday, April 19, 2008

The Sonics

Let it be clear I am not a sports fan, and I am actively hostile to spending tax dollars on sports palaces and similar bribes to keep assorted for-profit professional sports venues in town. I get positively cranky when the citizenry votes overwhelmingly against such bribery/extortion and city leaders rush to the legislature to get the deal rammed down the throats of the citizenry on an "emergency" basis that precludes the voters from staging a referendum. Let the team owners and their fans pay for their own damned toys - they can throw bake sales for all I care.

Further, when the stadiums bugger up traffic in all directions for miles with badly behaved fans trying to get to the games or go home half-drunk...I begin to contemplate initiatives proposing defenestration as an appropriate deterrent to such bad behavior by public officials.

That said, this one time I'll come down on the side of the team owners. The Sonics ownership has paid out a boat load of money over the years in salaries and to buy the team itself (along with its associated trademarks) and frankly, it IS their team. Yes, they have a lease with the city for 2 more years for Key Arena - but it's not in the interests of the city to have a team with actively hostile membership playing here.

Mr. Bennett - notify the NBA that you are forfeiting all home games in Seattle for the next two years...and ask to be allowed to play makeup games in Oklahoma. Then strike the word "Seattle" from all team regalia/publicity/materials, and finally, begin a "Seattle is a rotten place to do business" publicity campaign that you continue until such time as the city recognizes you're ownership of the team. You may be obligated to pay them rent, but as far as I can tell that's the only obligation you have.

Seattle's liberal establishment has needed a good solid kick in the slats for a number of's hoping you'll volunteer to apply it.

Friday, April 18, 2008

With Raised Eyebrow....

Generally, I tend to be rather supportive of the boys and girls and assorted others gathered together in the vast and mostly fraternal embrace of that noble field, law enforcement. However, now and again, a sufficiently egregious example appears of "headus-up-assus" appears that no matter how kindly inclined towards the badged brethren one might becomes difficult to explain away or fail to notice.

While thus far the evidence is inconclusive, from this distant location it is looking more and more like a largish portion of Texan representatives of the fraternity and/or their leadership have implanted their cranial appendages into their excretory orifice with such vigor as to cause a run on non-toxic latex-friendly lubricants and full body condoms.

Any time a law enforcement agency stages a massive "secret" raid barring the presence of media, packs of hundreds of folks, and seizes/destroys videos taken of the event by the targets or others (can we all say "destroying evidence of potential misconduct"?) any reasonably alert sort should be just a wee bit suspicious that something illegitimate is going on off in the land of the pretty flashing blue lights. When they do it with such vigor that nostalgic visions of Ruby Ridge and Waco go dancing through questioning heads, suspicion is clearly in order.

When the same decision is then rendered in 416 cases to separate 416 children from their families based on a now-suspect tip, and only 20 cases where allegedly anything like evidence of maltreatment have appeared - with all those cases decided by a single judge, in a single hearing, best described as chaotic, with hundreds of attorneys participating in this so-called hearing - one doesn't precisely become less skeptical.

Then when the Texas Child Care sorts announce as to how they are better able to get the testimony they want if they separate the children from their parents, the question of contaminated testimony starts to come into play...

Finally, Tam graciously brings out the question of why an APC from Midland was on site...something I'll gladly leave to her snark talents...

In short, while initially disturbing...the stench from this one seems increasingly pungent and indicative of a vast and mighty need for some of those who made command decisions on this raid to spend time in their very own pokey...

The FLDS may well be mightily weird, but they are no less entitled to equality before the law than anyone else. And I would suggest that means that you only get to bust the ones you have *actual evidence* of wrongdoing on, and that "guilt by association" is not a valid evidentiary standard any more than "we think they are odd and do not like them, we do not".

Civil rights lawsuits, anyone?

Update 4/19 0117: After reading another blog with a slightly different view of events, let me be painfully clear in a clarification - if one can show probable cause that local statute has been violated re: doing bad things with kids, then by all means hustle that individual or group of individuals in front of a jury of their peers and hang'm high if found guilty. HOWEVER, you WON'T have my support doing the same thing to their associates or co-religionists unless you can ALSO indict and convict them to the precise same high standard.

In light of that, I would suggest their are several hundred kids that need to be re-united with their folks *unless* you can prove they are in clear and present danger of harm, and do it in front of a court that isn't best described as a parody mounted on a railcar.

Your Kid, Not Mine.

Simply because you have hatched a rug rat does not give you a special right to inflict said ill bred and badly raised screaming monster upon the general public. If your child can't sit in a restaurant more sophisticated than McDonalds, concert, or theater without shrieking, howling, running around, or standing on the furniture - your child has no business in those venues, and you have absolutely no right to inflict your shrieking monster on otherwise innocent patrons of those venues.

Let me be painfully clear - the blame is not upon the child. It is upon you, as a bad parent and irresponsible adult, when a child incapable of appropriate conduct (routinely or temporarily) is inflicted on the general public. You and your partner either played bump-uglies or adopted this child, not the rest of us. If your kid is tired, habitually loud, or badly behaved - basic consideration dictates order-out at KFC for the duration - it's not our problem, it's not our responsibility, and your bad choices and bad parenting are not good reason for the rest of us to suffer a howling child over dinner.

You made your choices, now take your consequences.

And frankly, if you can't bear up under being a good parent and a considerate adult, take a long cold look at placing your kid with someone who can - your kid will have a better chance to make something of themselves with someone who can spell the world "discipline", and the rest of us will be grateful that you've taken steps to ensure that your child will grow up with rudimentary respect for others.

If you fail in this consideration, do not be surprised when suddenly you're surrounded by hostile folks discussing bad parenting skills. Don't be shocked at dirty looks. And if you're in a non-nanny state, don't be surprised when the venue owner asks you to leave.

In the meantime - I know I and my friends are looking for 21+ spaces (i.e., taverns in name only) where we can get a reasonably peaceful meal without piercing preteen shrieks driving through our ears like red-hot twenty penny nails.

Monday, April 14, 2008

Surely Spring must come along sometime...

"First of May" is a relatively, um, adult celebration of the rites of spring. NOT work-safe. However, with the gloom/rain/snow/wind/crud about just is a note of non-pc cheer for one and all.

Monday, April 7, 2008

Uncle Risks

Last Tuesday, it being spring break and all, I took a day from job hunting and my Mom and I took the nieces out for a day - Mom's biggest outing since Dad passed away.

We had a grand time, starting out with Niece The Younger at Pike Place Market w/ hot cocoa at the Tully's out at the North end of affairs, meandering through the market, and then having piroshky (a delightful Russian pastry filled with meats/veggies/spices/cheeses) for lunch with "monster cookies" baked fresh at the Market for dessert, followed by rushing off to pick up Elder Niece from band camp before catching a showing of "Spiderwick" downtown.

For a youth-aimed film, Spiderwick was a welcome relief from the typical sugary leftist pap commonly ground out by the entertainment industry. With a plot, conflict, good vs. evil, and a fun set of's surprising it comes from Hollywood.

Wednesday I woke sick as a dog, and thus the dearth of blogorama - I don't do my best work when running a fever, and given the levels of snark I achieve under such circumstances, it is usually best I avoid keyboards for the duration.

Am feeling somewhat better today, but recovery remains an ongoing project. Niece the Elder has already come out the far side of this crud, so I am hopeful I will as well.

Thank y'all for your patience, and I hope to be blogging more regularly right soon.