Blue Team, Rose-colored Glasses

V.P. Dick Cheney: Gay marriage is a state issue that the federal government should not get involved in = horrible policy and enemy of the "good."

President Barak Obama: Gay marriage is a state issue that the federal government should not get involved in = hip hip hooray, the "first gay president" and this Newsweek cover.

Is this partly on Newsweek?  Sure.  Is there some leeway for other parts of what they probably believe (Cheney that homosexuals are probably bad people, though his daughter is a homosexual; Obama that it is perfectly acceptable), yes.  But the policies and the way they want the issue treated is essentially the same.

If anything, I think Obama is cast in a worse light, since he was for gay marriage before he was against it and then in favor of it and supports federal intervention into such issues, whereas Cheney, as far as I know, has been consistent in his position and is generally in favor of state resolution of such issues.  Obama essentially came over to Cheney's position and got praised for it, while Cheney was demonized.  People love to talk about making politics more congenial, but its not only the demonizing that adds fuel to the fire.  This type of deification for taking a non-position that is already the position of the opposition doesn't help.

So... its not so much that Obama is great and Cheney is the devil as it is that Obama is a Democrat and Cheney is a Republican.  Got it.

The Beastie

Turns out, Oprah (in a kind of pre-"Oprah" Oprah mode) and Tipper Gore revealed the true turning point in society in 1986.  It was the Beastie Boys.

Yes, even in 1986 it was impossible to raise Christrian children in our X-rated society.  It's sad that so many of those now 30 yearish old kids have all turned to Satanism due to our society and are wildly accepting of whatever denigration is put in front of them.  So much so that children these days have no boundries or rules and essentially run wild in the street in their rag clothes, clutching knives to their chests - but only when they can't afford guns.

I wish I could write like this

This article by E.D. Kain pretty much nails how I feel about Libertariansim, including both its pros and cons. I highly recommend the article, which is very accessible, I think; even to those who aren't politically inclined. I wish I could write this well about my beliefs.

The whole thing is worth reading, but I liked the following:

Libertarianism, if we are to practice it honestly, requires as much self-denial as possible, as much abandonment of special interest as possible.

Only 37% of all people have a freezer; really?

Is that possible? According to this chart that I borrowed at the every fascinating Bleeding Heart Libertarians, it is:


That just jumped out at me as an odd stat.

The point of the post was that if you look at how the poor have fared since 1984, things aren't really so bad. Almost none of the poor had computers, cell phones, microwaves or clothes dryers and less than half had air conditioning. Not all of those are life changing. But computers almost certainly are. Computers - hand in hand with the internet - open a vast world of education and knowledge to the poor that they would have almost certainly been locked out of in the past.

Microwaves, clothes dryers, and cell phones, while not life changing in the same way, certainly are time savers, allowing the poor to work longer hours, or to have more leisure time while working the same hours. Air conditioning, although largely taken for granted, is a life-saving invention. And I'm not being dramatic. It literally saves lives.

The author of the post also notes that while many "experts" lament how wages have been largely stagnant over the last 20 or 30 years, that isn't the whole picture. As computers and cell phones and microwaves have become cheaper we now live better lives, even if we make the same money, than we did 30 years ago. Not only that, but thanks to microwaves, VCRs, the internet and things like dryers, we have more free time, and more entertainment options available to us.

So it's not really fair to simply lament that wages have largely remained the same over the last 30 or so years, because in the big picture, our lives are vastly easier than they were 30 years ago, and we have access to a much wider array of entertainment and educational options.

Time for a divorce, indeed

Sometimes, doing what is fair or decent or even nice isn't what is right or proper. Sometimes, to do what is right, you have to look beyond your own prejudices and beliefs and micro-systems and look at the system from a macro level. bub

It's a testament to your ability to reason that you take a position antithetical (Position A) to your own actual position (Position B) because you believe that while Position B is the nice and fair outcome, you realize that Position A is proper under the circumstances.

Sometimes, many times even, Position A and Position B are the same position. Women and African Americans should have the right to vote. Legislation ensuring those rights fulfilled both the "fair" outcome that you root for (Position B) as well as the "proper" one (Position A).

On to the point of the post: I've often been at odds with myself because I strongly believe that the fair, nice and decent thing to do is to allow gay marriage. If its going to have to be a legislative action, then to that extent I strongly support legislation raising gay marriage to the level of hetero marriage.

On the other hand, I can't wrap my mind around how its a constitutional issue (though the courts don't seem to agree with me). As I see it, the constitution doesn't guarantee marriage at all. I don't see that anywhere in there. Nobody else does either, apparently, because its not argued as a point. I don't see the "victories" in the court cases as all that good a thing, because while Position A B wins, I fear Position B A loses. In the long run, Position B A is much more important. Every time Position A B irrationally wins over Position B A, the system becomes that much more contorted. Anyway, back to the issue at hand.

Rather than argue that gay marriage is constitutional in and of itself, people argue that the "equal protection" clause requires that a gay individual be allowed to marry another gay individual. But that "gay" man/woman already has the right to marry another woman/man, just like a heterosexual does. To me, extending it like that necassarily leads to all kinds of problems. Like, where do you stop the progression? What about bestiality? What about incest? What about pedophilia? What about polygomy.

While we are on the topic, what about polygomy? Because, under the above formulation (equal protection), I'm not sure how you argue against it. All the evidence (i.e. - divorce rate, broken marriages, cheating spouses) suggests that monogomy doesn't work that well. Its rare in nature (and apparently humans), as well. I'm actually OK with that outcome, but its still not an argument I'd make to reach that outcome (there is the Position A/B thing, see, it does all come around). And I used the easy example, because the arguments against polygomy are pretty weak. The harder core situations I mentioned above become very iffy using the equal protection logic. There is a group called NMBLA (or some such) that supports and promotes man-boy love. Its a lifestyle choice and natural, they argue. Aren't they entitled to equal protection?

That leads me to the point of my post: All this could be avoided if we divorced the state from the marriage business. As the article points out, if we didn't have "state sponsored" marriage, two individuals (or more) could sign a contract with whatever (probably mostly standardized) terms they agreed too, call it whatever they wanted, and be on their marry way. Call it marriage, call its a union, hell, call it a balzag (well, don't call it that).

Instead, we have small/minority two groups trying to push what they think the outcome should be onto the rest of us. One wants marriage limited, the other wants it to extend to gays (but, apparently not to polygomists, based on the legislation and court arguments). That's just two groups that currently have power trying to enforce their will.

There is a better way: remove the ability to "enforce" the will of anyone. Get the government out of the marriage business.

UPDATE: Think of the Position A/Position B thing like a tower. Sure, you can probably build a really tall tower quickly, but you want to make sure its on solid foundation and well built, otherwise it all comes tumbling down at the smallest shift in the ground. I'd rather forgo the really tall tower, and slowly build a well-built tower. It might take me years to get where you'll be in a couple months, but 10 years from now, my tower will be around; will yours?

Dealings with the Dalai Lama

Not personal ones, unfortunetly. That would be pretty cool though.

But on to the point of the post. Interesting article the the Dalai Lama, some of his recent statements, and the author's reaction to said statements are here. Its of special note because I'm reading the Art of Happiness.

Read some of the comments on the article for some... uh, criticism ... of the Dalai Lama's viewpoint. Some of it is even justified.

Anyway, take a read and come back. I'll wait...

-------

Done? Okay then. My problem is this - In my view, religious leaders often get stuck in a sticky web string of "touchy feely" philosophy rather than actual thought. The Marxist idea of everything to everyone get endorsed, despite never having worked anywhere and being responsible for some of the most heinious acts of man imaginable i.e. - N. Korea, USSR, China, et al. The fact that Capitalism has raised the fortunes of 1,000s is ignored. The Dalai Lama even acknowledges Capitalism's positive impact in China, and then dismisses it for the touch feely Marxism.

Part of the problem is that Marxism seems great at the moment if you apply it to a Capitalist made society that is promoting work and productivity because its already established a Living Standard A that can be distributed to all. But once you really start seeing the unintended consequences of a "from each, to each" philosophy, you realize that you now have a Living Standard B that will soon disintegrate into Living Standard C, on and on in a perpetuating cycle.

To me, the Devil is in the details. How much more "moral" can the system be, if it leads to the poverty - to the point of starvation - of thousands, if not tens of thousands? I suppose the Dalai Lama isn't all that worried about poverty - excepting starvation. But putting you in a more productive, prosperous place makes it that much more likely that another person, either through productivity or your generosity, can also be in a good place.

The second part is that it ignores that Capitalism does indeed have a moral underpinning. It suffers from having a title that isn't associated with a person's name, but it does have a moral underpinning.

Having said all this: The DL does seem to make some insightful points - mainly that Marxism/socialism has focused too heavily on destroying the successful class/ruling class and that as a result, when the revolution comes, there isn't much left to distribute. He suggests, instead of a resentful jealousy of the ruling class, that we employ a more compassionate stance overall.

I'm on board with that. I think there are rich that don't deserve their riches just as there are poor who don't deserve their poverty, and I'm not going to say either are totally deserving or undeserving of their lot. Nor am I going to pretend that being poor is the most horrible thing in the world or that being rich makes everything better. Both come with their own problems.

Food choice, schmood schmoich, apparently

Reason.com has an interesting article of the White House's recent anti-obesity initiative and a peak at the newly redesigned food pyramid, along with the usual anti-government seasoning.

I've got some thoughts at my other blog.

I try not to cross post too often, but part of this blog's 1000 & 1 things is health & fitness. So I thought I would expand upon my other post.

So here goes: Don't even get me started on the food pyramid. It was a staple in schools and on food containers while I was growing up. Nice orderly progresssion from grains/carbs at the bottom (base), progressing up through fruits and veggies and meat and finally ending up in the smallest, topmost portion with fats and sugars. It was very nice.

And pretty much completely wrong.

Turns out, the carbs and grains that made the base of the pyramid really shouldn't form the base, because outside of a few whole grains and vegetables, carbs shouldn't be the base of your diet. Why not? They are mostly empty calories, and worse yet, they are relatively calorie dense and don't fill you up like, say fats and protiens. And lets just forget that the smallest part of the old pyramid makes a demon out of "fats," despite that saturated fats are probably one of the more healthy things you can eat.

So you see, the pyramid was pretty much entirely ass backwards or upside down, take your pick.

To make matters worse, based partly on that pyramid and party on advocacy from decades earlier, companies started abandoning fat at all costs. The result - trans fats and low-fat foods with high calorie counts. Both have since been discovered to be evils in the battle of the bulge.

Oh, and I forgot the best part of this little cross-over article: it gives me a place to crow about the fact that I'm down from 230ish pounds to 220 pounds. Almost all of it fat, as far as I can tell. And while on vacation R. and I worked out and I took a "fitness test" offered by one of the treadmills. It rated by VO2 Max as "above average."

Here I come, 210.

Everybody Draw Mohammad Day

By way of a little back story, Islamic extremists threatened South Park-creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker for using a representation of Mohammed in their cartoon.

So, someone with just my sense of humor, passive-aggressiveness and ideals has named May 20 as "Everybody Draw Mohammad Day" in support of Stone and Parker. Genuis.

I plan on posting a drawing. I'll do this despite the fact that - my former incarnation as a graphic designer for a newspaper not withstanding (Photoshop/FreeHand/Adobe can do wonders) - I'm not a very good artist I'm no Darby Conley.

As a journalist, I kinda feel its my professional duty to the First Amendment. As a human being I kinda feel its my obligation to my fellow man. As a rationale egoist, I kinda feel its my obligation to myself.

I'm all for believing that such an image is against the will of your Man in the Sky. I'm all for forgoing such conduct yourself. I'm all for barring such conduct from fellow followers. Where I draw the line is dictating adherence to such a policy to nonbelievers.

If you don't want to curse the Man in the Sky, fine; but you can't ask someone else to forgo the same.

If I end up in hell, I won't send you a postcard.

I only ask that if you end up in hell, you return the favor.

Happy Birthday!

No, not to me. You're a little late if you are thinking that.

Today (April 13) is personal favorite/hero Thomas Jefferson's birthday.

From whitehouse.gov:

"Freckled and sandy-haired, rather tall and awkward, Jefferson was eloquent as a correspondent, but he was no public speaker. In the Virginia House of Burgesses and the Continental Congress, he contributed his pen rather than his voice to the patriot cause. As the "silent member" of the Congress, Jefferson, at 33, drafted the Declaration of Independence. In years following he labored to make its words a reality in Virginia. Most notably, he wrote a bill establishing religious freedom, enacted in 1786."

Jefferson was a year younger than I am now when he drafted the DoI.

My Theory

I've started The Art of Happiness. The fact is, I generally respond to questions of "how are you" with the response "excellent." Honestly. There are times when I'm so overwhelmingly happy that my insides feel like they will burst. Or melt into some kind of cosmic glow. And not just when I'm drunk - though I'm an exceedingly happy drunk.

Not to brag, but I really feel like I've had almost no bad breaks in life. Good jobs that I've never lost and always loved. Great wife who has a good job she likes and who is just as silly and generally as, or more, optimistic than me. Sufficient income. Nice house. And perhaps most importantly - good to great health. It really is all about having good health. If you are in pain and sick all the time, all those other things mean mostly, well, squat.

Maybe some of that is the choices I've made. Certainly some of it is luck and birth place and family. Some of it is that I'm a master at exclusion. I simply exclude that for which I have little time, or interest, or which is a drag on my happiness. I'm also a pretty good at parrying. I think I have a keen ability to to take most of what would derail me and - like a good karate block - us its own momentum to safely direct it away and around me.

Having said all this, I should note that I'm also sometimes worried that this means that I've got something very dark in store for me down the road. Hopefully it just means that I appreciate what I have and can block out bad stuff. But I'm still sometimes suspicious. And frankly, typing this isn't helping. Its making me nervous. Its like saying Beetlejuice three times. That summons him, right?

So I'll now move onto the real purpose of my post. I was a strong Republican through high school and into the early parts of college. From the last half of college onward though - and I don't remember the exact moment, but Ayn Rand was a key part - I have slowly moved further away from Republicans and more firmly into the Libertarian/libertarian/liberty camp. Some of my distancing from childhood beliefs is probably just natural growth into adulthood from a conservative upbringing. But some of it is the feeling that some of my childhood beliefs were based on lies.

So much so that while I was a huge anti-drug advocate in high school, I've now become disallusioned with the entire anti-drug crowd and now support drug legalization. So much of it seems like lies now that I have the whole truth.

Anyway, that isn't even the real point of the post. I've really come to believe that any use of force, except in self-defense, is a bad idea. Force - and force is almost always the taking something from someone for yourself - represents evil and darkness 99% of the time. Whether it be theft, or preventing gay marriage, or drug prohibition, or book burning, or racism. Sometimes the force is obvious - as in theft - and sometimes its just implicit - drug prohibition, book burning - and sometimes its just covered by a thin veil of morality - racism, preventing gay marriage.

Anyway, my theory: You should strive to be as liberty and openness loving as possible for your own personal place in the world. Maybe you can't bring yourself to support drug legalization for whatever reason. But you should always be open and accepting of those more open than yourself and mostly reject those more restrictive than yourself.

Maybe you don't support drug legalization, but you should always consider it a goal and possibility and option. Maybe you can't get comfortable with gay marriage (and shame on you, if you can't - that's me rejecting the more restrictive point of view) but you should allow it for the sake of liberty and openness.

I know - pure acquintances, mostly from message boards - some anarchists, or minarchists. And while I don't think anarchy has any chance of being imposed in any reasonable, not world destroying, way, I can accept their position and can see it and can wish that it would be possible. I wouldn't support its application here today, as we stand, because I don't think it would work, but I have no problem working toward its implementation. I reject all efforts at more restrictions, however. Its funny, because I've always rejected the "Indians knew best and were perfect" thinking. Until recently. When I've come around to the idea that maybe, just maybe, we would all be better off if we lived, not like them, but more like them. Keep the technology. Lose the subsistence living. Keep the dispersed, underpopulated nature. Its actually quite Jeffersonian, who believed we should be a nation of yeoman farmers and warned against cities.

Anyway, that's where I stand. I know this was long. And somewhat rambling. And somewhat pendantic, perhaps. And somewhat preachy. And not at all peachy - though click-and-sniff internet hyperlinks would be awesome and absolutely have to be the next thing people work on. I hope you managed to read all this and didn't quit. I feel like it was something that I needed to say and put out there. If only to have said it and explained it and made it clear to myself.

Also, I'd kinda like a critique or thoughts about my "more free than you" theory.

Vonnegut short story - Harrison Bergeron

Awesome.

Damn it! And 2010 was going so well, too.

I said before that I sometimes don't know whether the evidence suggests we are getting closer, or further, from armegeddon (well, actual armegeddon, anyway, the fiscal one is on our doorstep as certainly as I'm taller than 6 feet tall).

Evidence now comes - in the form of a very sad story about the loss of life caused by the war on drugs - that we are in fact closer. Its here.

Considering that I could marijuana in probably 5 minutes, if I really wanted it, and any of the more hard-core drugs in say, 15 minutes, the war on drugs has to be considered a colossal failure.

Add in the loss of lives from absolutely stupid situations like those in the story, and Man In The Sky is it infuriating.

Oh, and adding to my indignation this wonderful Friday is this story of a man who was hit by a car driven by a federal officer while crossing the street. The government was, of course, apologetic: The federal officer didn't declare himself at any point, and based on "eye witness" reports, the victim was cited for "jay walking" - on a different street than the accident occured on.

Oh, and somehow, 20 percent of conservatives apparently say they like socialism.

If my own personal life weren't actually very good and fulfilling... well, its hard to contemplate what my world view would look like in that case.

Well, make me into a tiny metal ball & slap me silly, Tommy

At one time, pinball was banned in many large U.S. cities.

Some things make me think the apocolypse is either getting further away or is imminently close. At the same time. This is one of them.

I had to read the article twice because I thought that - though the site isn't really the type to run a crazy-fun-fake story - that it just might be made up.

I was so credulous, I did some research. And sure enough, from the 1940s to the mid 1970s, pinball was banned. At one time, New York was such a haven of safety, security and prosperity that its police force had time to hold alcohol prohibition-style raids on dangerous pinball houses. New York didn't overturn its ban until 1976.

Which, also similar to prohibition, simply forced pinball underground into ... speakeasies? Balleasies? Slapeasies? They were hidden in pornography houses, for The Man In the Sky's sake.

The story of the fall of the NY ban, #6 on the list of the things you didn't know about pinball here, is pretty amazing. The NY ban was eventually overturned when the council was convinced, largely by luck, that that game is one of skill and not actually luck.

More amazing: Nashville, Tenn., just overturned its ban recently and it's still illegal to play the game on Sundays in Ocean City, N.J.

Think poker will eventually come to the same resolution?

2010, thou hast possibly redeemed thyself

First, my book order, scheduled for delivery by USPS on Tuesday, Jan. 19, arrives Monday, Jan. 18. A holiday Monday, nonetheless. My books are here, yeah! The government mail service actually did something with some competency: color me surprised.

Then, the nationalized health-care bill all but dies after a Republican upsets a Democrat for Kennedy's Mass. Senate seat on Tuesday. Now, I'm no fan of Republicans or Brown himself, but a victory in a battle, even if its just an enemy of my enemy, is a victory. The small"er" government crowd wins one!

Next, the SCOTUS finds that statutory limits on corporate, union and other "groups" spending for politicians and during campaigns is unconstitutional under the First Amendment's "Congress shall pass no law ... abridging the freedom of speech" language. A victory for free speech!

Finally, on Thursday I start in on The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris and I absolutely love it. Its some pretty good prose, and the concept is already pretty interesting. Its one of those books where - 14 pages in - I'm sad the story will eventually have to end. I like the characters that much. And I've only really been introduced to two of them. So maybe my reading funk was more what I was reading than actual reading.

And now, I find out as I'm typing this post, that the surgery on R.'s eyes have them at 20/25, and that they will probably improve all the way to 20/20.

So, 2010, I guess you're not off to such a bad start after all.

Reinventing the wheel

Another delayed post.

This from an analysis of the great Aristotle on a Stanford website:

The good of a human being must have something to do with being human; and what sets humanity off from other species, giving us the potential to live a better life, is our capacity to guide ourselves by using reason. If we use reason well, we live well as human beings; or, to be more precise, using reason well over the course of a full life is what happiness consists in. Doing anything well requires virtue or excellence, and therefore living well consists in activities caused by the rational soul in accordance with virtue or excellence.

And this from Gretchen Rubin's Happiness Project on Slate.com:

Act with energy. We think we ACT because of the way we FEEL, but often we FEEL because of the way we ACT. Trick yourself into feeling energetic by moving more quickly, pacing while you talk on the phone, and putting more energy into your voice.

Similar, me thinks.

How we learned to hate the Nuke and ruined (?) our own environment along the way

This is a bit late, but I didn't want to step on the feet of my UnChristmas Story, nor Christmas itself.

The answer to the titular question is: 1970s environmentalism. At one point in the 1970s, it was hoped that 200 "breeder" reactors would be online by 2000, which would have reduced our carbon output by 1/3.

Sadly, President Carter, aided no doubt by a 1973 lawsuit by the Natural Resources Defense Council and Scientists Institute for Public Information, killed the plan.

Of course, back then nuclear was the Devil, the environment was the Endangered One. Now, carbon is the Devil, and the environment is the Even More Endangered One. Sadly, if we had only chosen the proper course 30 years ago, we might have been able to knock a prefix and suffix off of endangered (that's a beginning and an ending; for those of you who might not get it - that means we'd be left with simply Danger.)

Choices choices. And of course their consquences, people.

Here's the reason link from pre-Christmas week.

A UnChristmas Story Part II: Scrooge, The Destroyer of Christmas

Awesome post by Peter Foster at the Washington Post. Its regarding the new animated movie "A Christmas Carol," but the point stands and it lets me build on something I was thinking about while watching the 1984 version of A Christmas Carol starring George C. Scott.

Indeed, does nobody notice the irony that capitalism has unleashed the consumerist cornucopia and charitable sentiments that were A Christmas Carol’s
ideal?

Poverty is portrayed as rampant, or at least very present, in A Christmas Carol. And certainly poverty is bad. But saving and being pennywise is portrayed as bad as bad as well. In fact, lavish spending and consumerism is exactly what Scrooge is encouraged to do. Its the "ideal" that Scrooges nephew represents. Its exactly that type of spending - the debt that Scrooge complains about - that drove us into our current economic struggles.

And hey, one wonders how much Scrooges' nephew might have been able to help the poor had he not had to pay a servant to open the door for him. Was opening doors much harder back in the day? I know Scrooge's office had a door that required both he and Bob to duck to enter. Maybe most were also so poorly hung that you needed special servant powers to open them?

Anyway, now, people complain that Christmas is all about spending and buying gifts. There is a whole song about how that isn't the true meaning of Christmas. And while Scrooges' redemption isn't entirley based on his new found spending and commercialism, its at least a part of it.

Further:

"Would the world have been better without Scrooge? Did he force people to do business with him? Was Bob Cratchit not free to find better employment elsewhere? And if no such employment was available, was that Scrooge’s fault?"

In reality, without having amassed that wealth, Scrooge could never have purchased the prized turkey for the Cratchits. In fact, its unlikely he could have afforded to pay Bob Cratchit if he lived life prior to that night as he did after it.

I'm not saying Scrooge was perfect. Surely, he was a surly individual. Unfriendly and miserable. And his redemption from these qualities is a great accomplishment. But its hardly the political indictment it has become.

An UnChristmas Story Part I: Scrooge: The original environmentalist?

Ebeneezer Scrooge:

"Coal burns. Coal is momentary and coal is costly. There will be no more coal burned in this office today, is that quite clear, Mr. Cratchit?"

It could be ripped out of a news story from today. Or from the President's most recent speech. I'm certainly not the first to note it, but Scrooge shared environmentalists' hatred of coal's use, saying

"These are garments, Mr. Cratchit. Garments were invented by the human race as a protection against the cold. Once purchased, they may be used indefinitely for the purpose for which they are intended."

Scrooge: The original environmentalist? Environmentalists would probably sympathize with old Ebeneezer, that's for sure. Wearing warmer clothing in the winter and using less heat, and using a lot less air conditioning, would be right down both their alleys. Politics makes for strange bedfellows.

So was Scrooge the first environmentalist? I'm not saying he was; I'm just saying.

CDC's Frieden to fry fast food?

I'm not a huge purchaser of fast food. But I like me some Arby's Roast Burger.

Meanwhile, Slate.com reports that the new CDC, despite his introduction as a swine flu expert*, actually is the man behind trans fat bans and the attack on salt. Look, trans fats and salt in large quantities probably aren't good for you. But trans fat was industries reaction to the horrors of sat fats. And salt is just yummy.

I know there is some question about food, obesity and epidemics, but I think the links are weak. What's more, I'm not sure the links mean we should attack fast food establishments. Lazy overeaters who are overweight aren't suddenly going to be thin and munching celery just because Frieden flunked Friendly, or 'Bama bans BK .

I'm a big boy and can pick my food for myself; thank you very much.

Whole thing here.

* Unless this sickness I seem to be coming down with is swine flu, has there ever been a more overblown epidemic? Oh, right. Avian flu.

This just didn't seem like the place ...

... so I'm going to start posting my more political rants on the Optimistic Libertarian. It'll mostly be a link site, with some venting thrown in.

Here's the first of many to come.