Dave's Droppings

Marie wrote:

Dear Mr. and Mrs. G.H.W. Bush,
Once again, it is that time of year when we update the
parents of our students on their child’s
progress, and we regret to inform you that your son,
Georgie, IS DOING FAR BETTER then we’d hoped and
expected when he embarked on his four-year program at
our school.
As you are well aware, Georgie was installed as class
president at the start of the school year, despite the
fact that the majority of his fellow students

in some of the more populated classrooms 

 did not vote for him.

But of course this is inline with our school constitution that helps ensure that bigger classrooms cannot BULLY the smaller classrooms and thereby negate their ability to have a voice in our democratically elected Republican form of government. 

 We foresaw problems immediately, but
were assured by several school board members (who, as
we understand it, are friends of your family) that
this would not result in any real difficulty.
Fortunately, WE have been proven wrong.
In the area of scholastic achievement, despite our
best efforts, Georgie is still reading and speaking at
a grade level far below our usual standards. At this

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This posting certainly does not belong on the “Funnies” listserv since this guy, Bill McKibben, certainly exemplifies the old saying of…

“There are three types of lies – lies, damn lies, and statistics.”And his ability to simplify the “Gospel of Christ” while leaving out its complexities is truly astounding.  His ranting would be more appropriate on a listserv dedicated to the spreading of falsehoods and half-truths.

See comments in context below…

At 02:21 PM 8/8/2005, you wrote:

http://www.harpers.org/ExcerptTheChristianParadox.html

The Christian Paradox
How a faithful nation gets Jesus wrong
Posted on Wednesday, July 27, 2005. What it means to be Christian in
America. An excerpt. Originally from August 2005. By Bill McKibben.
Sources

Only 40 percent of Americans can name more than four of the Ten
Commandments, and a scant half can cite any of the four authors of the
Gospels. Twelve percent believe Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife. This failure
to recall the specifics of our Christian heritage may be further evidence
of our nation’s educational decline, but it probably doesn’t matter all
that much in spiritual or political terms. Here is a statistic that does

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without even a background check or American citizenship. Mr. Cipel,
however, was vastly qualified for his job compared with Michael Brown, who
didn’t know the difference between a tropical depression and an anxiety
attack when President Bush charged him with life-and-death decisions.

How simple life must be for Democrats when they don’t allow facts to get in the way of their preconceived and prejudged world view.

While Brown appears to certainly not have been very “proactive” in moving aside the Governor of Louisiana when she REFUSED to allow the Red Cross and the Salvation Army) to bring supplies to the Superdome and the Convention Center before and after the Hurricane struck and when she REFUSED to back up the ineffectual Mayor in enforcing the mandatory evac order BEFORE and AFTER.  Of course the Mayor also needs to be slapped silly for not using the 1,000 buses at his disposal to move those poor people that had to then endure those refuges of “last resort” as their disaster plan called for and where in fact used as refuges of first resort – the Superdome and the Convention Center.

Brown does have a distinction that almost no other political appointtee in the Bush Administration has enjoyed.  He was confirmed to his FIRST position in FEMA by a Democratic controlled Senate.  That confirmation by the Democrats was UNANIMOUS.

“…”Not only was Brown confirmed,” noted York. “But he was apparently confirmed by a unanimous voice vote — when the Senate was controlled by Democrats. . . .

“The whole affair, including tributes from Brown’s home-state senators, apparently lasted less then an hour, and ended with [Sen. Joe] Lieberman saying, ‘Mr. Brown, I thank you very much. I will certainly support your nomination. I will do my best to move it through the committee as soon as possible so we can have you fully and legally at work in your new position.'”

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Marie wrote:

Gee, 3 years after “Mission Accomplished”: Inactive US marines face call-up

There have been numerous missions.  That “particular” banner referred to So-Damn Insane having been removed from power.  Therefore the banner was correct.
The BBC in typical fashion are wrong in how they reported this issue.  My Dad had “hip-pocket” orders when he retired from flying for the US Army as a Major in 1981. He kept his IRR orders in a glass frame in his civilian office with a sticker on it saying “In Case of War Break Glass”.
The BBC writes “Now inactive reservists obliged only to report one day a year may be recalled – against their will if necessary.”
To say it is an “in-voluntary” recall to duty is even more dishonest than your harping on the Mission Accomplished banner by referring to everything up to an including establishing a new government in Iraq.
For your continuing education the IRR is a voluntary status that members leaving the service can choose (isn’t choice a wonderful thing?) to be part of whereby they can continue to fulfill their service obligation they voluntary entered into at the start of their service.
As the BBC story clearly states:
“Under a general contract, a marine serves four years on active duty, and then a further four years in the reserve forces. For this final four years, they can either elect to join the regular reserves – where they are paid and train regularly – or choose to join the IRR.”
Note that the IRR stands for Individual Ready Reserve.  Note that “Individual” means the Soldier/Sailor/Airmen/Marine as a person the word “Ready” means that you are able and the word “Reserve” means you are standing by if needed.
I don’t see calling up the IRR as desperate but rather as a sign that the third string team can carry some of the support load while the first (active duty) and second string (regular reserves) concentrate on the primary mission.  Note that most of the soldiers and marines recalled from the IRR is a pretty small number and the jobs they will be doing are in more of a support role rather than a combat role.

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It must be nice to live in a fantasy world of your own making (or to believe without question the pap fed to you by a basic public school education)
For the record (and for your continuing education) see below in context…

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF JOE

Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards.

The Environmental Protection Agency was created by Richard M. Nixon. You know that scary nasty Republican President.

 With his first swallow of coffee, he takes his daily medication. His medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to insure their safety and that they work as advertised. All but $10 of his medications are paid for by his employer’s medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance – now Joe gets it too.

Thank goodness again for Republican Presidents.  First with Lincoln for setting up the Bureau of Chemistry that evolved (1906, 1927 and 1930) into the FDA under Republican Presidents Teddy Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover.
An economics lesson:  It is not an “employer’s medical plan”.  The Employer is not funding it out of the goodness of his heart but rather is paying his employee less so that he can afford the premium to the Medical plan company.

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June 2003

What am I missing? Seems to me that we may have seen a recent Federal District Court decision rendered in New Orleans that could provide a simple roadmap to the much anticipated pronouncement later this fall from the nine wise souls sitting on the Supreme Court regards McCain-Feingold.

The plaintiffs in the battle to strike down what they view to be limits on speech need to get GE, Viacom, Disney and any other companies that own large media outlets to join the battle on their side, or maybe not. The argument the big guys could make to strike that horrible law down could probably be better made just as well by a small family owed TV, Radio or Newspaper outlet too, heck even a website could join the argument.

The case in question that provides the needed illumination dealt with two business partners, Josh and Anne, who wanted to open a bookstore in New Orleans. To buildup enough capital for their business to be able to afford a store front they wanted to sell books as street vendors on the corner. The perfect American success story, I can see a movie of the week on Lifetime somewhere in there. Well the big bad bureaucracy in the Big Easy wouldn’t let them. The City, with no law against public intoxication and seemingly even against public nudity, would not let these poor partners sell books. I guess if they wanted to have a bar or open a strip club on the pavement next to the school zone crosswalk that would have been ok.

After fighting City Hall and getting nowhere in their mission to bring their books out of the shelves and into the open they filed suit in Federal Court on First and Fourteenth Amendment Grounds. In a decision of great clarity, that shows that at least this Judge had read a book or two, heck he may even have glanced over the Constitution once or twice, he found for our erstwhile street hustlers.

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July 2002 

The question playing on the news today is “SHOULD THERE BE SECURITY CHECKPOINTS AT AIRPORT ENTRANCES”? Are you kidding? Let’s use some logic and examine how the “Law of Unintended Consequences” would play out here.

I flew domestic out of LAX a few months ago and the line outside the terminal to get into the building took half and hour! A gunman in a taxicab could have driven by and opened fire and killed many people. Moving the line from the building to the street so that we wait in our cars will not help and will in fact hurt because does anyone think that the lines at the terminal will now vanish? Security screeners are missing test weapons being carried in a couple of carry-on pieces of luggage at the x-ray machines in the air conditioned terminal, do you think they will stop anymore standing around curbside under the hot sun or pouring rain? Anyone remember the gunman (a “middle-eastern” man between the age of 20 to 50) that walked down the line of cars outside of CIA headquarters while he shot and killed people in their cars as they waited for the light to change? Plus how much “road rage” will we see as the lines of cars backup at the entrance to the airport and out onto surface streets as cars are bottlenecked trying to get through.

Life is not a safe warm blanket and never has been. Will bad (and good) things happen to people? Yes. Can we take proper precautions against harm? Yes. I tell my kids to look both ways before they cross the street. In this instance my kids are “profiling” for autos not other pedestrians in determining level of danger so the sooner we as a society get over this ridiculous nonsense that profiling is bad the sooner we can begin to establish prudent security.

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May 2002 

What do the recent elections in France, our own Clean Elections regime in Arizona and the law of unintended consequences have in common? They show that our Founding Fathers were far wiser than we can ever begin to appreciate.

Reading the news reports out of Paris one can only laugh at the cheese eating surrender monkeys (as the National Review likes to refer to the French) if it were not so close to the farce that we have forced on ourselves.  In France a candidate at least needs to get 500 elected officials to sign a petition to get his name on the ballot to run for President while now through the good graces of our legislature (that teetering tower of financial restraint) it only takes a similar number of citizens to part with a measly $5 to force open the Public Purse and make our elections process a literal free for all so that that every fringe candidate on the margin with the ability to draw a like-minded mob can clear this speed bump on his way to a public feasting of spending and self laudatory publicity.

The intention of “Clean” Elections was admirable in that Candidates were now supposedly freed up to have time to meet with constituents about concerns instead of meeting with fat cats about cash. This was supposed to “even the playing field” between the entrenched incumbent and the struggling outsider. The reality is that the true outsiders on the fringe still do not have a chance (and beyond the rare “exception that proves the rule” never will) while the incumbent remains safely enthroned.The incumbent is still in a far greater position to have his party browse the Rolodex to tap 500 “contributors” for their $5 donation, as is the main opposition party’s anointed candidate. The usual suspects on the extreme left and right (like Nader and Buchanan) will also have an easier time in fractionalizing the primary process since they to will easily be able to draw on their own relatively small pool of contributors to get their campaigns off to a running start.The true “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” type of candidate was the intended beneficiary of this law but the problem with this fantasy is two-fold.  The pool of contributors that a real Mr. Smith has to draw from tend to be more pragmatic or realistic when it comes to their elected officials and while they would probably give Mr. Smith that five spot they know that this is more a gift of charity rather than an honest donation to a political cause.  They may see Mr. Smith as being a great guy with great ideas but they also realize that getting past political realities in a Primary election is considerably different than doing so in a General Election. Mr. Smith realizes this dichotomy too and since he still has to put food on the table for his family (unless he is independently wealthy in which case he does not care or need to dine at the public trough to begin with) he will ultimately decide that his time and energy is best spent taking care of his own home.To win in our political system requires each of the following: Charisma, Concepts and Cash.  Charisma so that people are willing to listen to your Concepts and Cash to get your message out.  Clean Elections only addresses one of these needs. The candidate that has Charisma and Concepts will attract the Cash required to move beyond the Primary and to the General Election, while no amount of Clean Elections Cash will overcome deficits in Charisma and Concepts.So what are we left with? Well an examination of the French election will be instructive. We get mainstream candidates vetted by the major political parties forced to duke it out with the unelectable fringe at public expense. For what purpose?  To broaden public discourse?  Please! The fringe candidate (be they from PETA or the Aryan Nation here or the Postal Socialist and the National Front in France) must know that they do not stand a chance of being elected and are only in the fight to push a single narrow agenda. If they are laboring under the delusion that they can actually win then the public purse needs to be spent providing them with a padded cell rather than a soapbox. The unintended consequence of Clean Elections is that it only cleans out the public purse and does not actually encourage Mr. Smith to run. We only need to look at the current slate of candidates to see this truth.

We can also only hope that further unintended consequences of Campaign Finance Reform coupled with Clean Elections will not allow a fringe candidate to make it to the General Election where the burgeoning intolerance of the tolerant would lead to a report like this one from by NBC: “Some voters did not go happily to the polls. A few leftists said they were so displeased with the choice offered that they planned to cast ballots for the conservative Chirac, who is plagued by corruption scandals, wearing latex gloves or with clothespins on their noses. French officials warned that such a public display could lead to fines or the annulment of a vote.”

Vive La France.  The Arizona Legislature and John McCain sure have a great roll model to follow!

David W. Riddle
Mesa, Arizona