The George Blog

2005-11-18T04:00:00.000-08:00

I Rest My Case..for the Time Being

On the air and in print, I think I can honestly say I was one of the first talkers in the country early this year to say that one of the best things we could do to address the illegal alien problem in the United States would be to build a fence between the U.S. and Mexico.

I received my fair share of accusations of being a racist, or crazy, or both. I also received many comments from people who said things like "Thanks for not being afraid to say what we need."

In case you missed it, my plan calls for a big fence, maybe 12 or so feet high above ground and another 12 feet below. With two levels of electricity in it. The first, sort of in the middle, to give anyone who tries to climb it enough of a shock to make them drop their tacos. The second, at the top AND underground, enough to knock you senseless.

The humanitarian in me does insist that we put signs up on the fence at regular intervals explaining the meaning of "voltage" in English, Spanish, a middle-Eastern dialect or two and maybe French while we're at it.

Crazy idea? Here's what reporter Mimi Hines wrote in Thursday's USA TODAY:

A once-radical idea to build a 2,000-mile steel-and-wire fence on the U.S.-Mexican border is gaining momentum amid warnings that terrorists can easily sneak into the country.

In Congress, a powerful Republican lawmaker this week proposed building such a fence across the entire border and two dozen other lawmakers signed on. And via the Internet, a group called weneedafence.com has raised enough money to air TV ads warning that the border is open to terrorists.

Even at the Homeland Security Department, which opposes building a border-long fence, Secretary Michael Chertoff this fall waived environmental laws so that construction can continue on a 14-mile section of fence near San Diego that has helped border agents stem the flow of illegal migrants and drug runners.

“You have to be able to enforce your borders,” says California Rep. Duncan Hunter, the Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. He's proposing a fence from San Diego to Brownsville, Texas. “It's no longer just an immigration issue. It's now a national security issue.”

Colin Hanna of weneedafence.com says “there is incredible momentum on this issue,” fueled by the specter of another Sept. 11. His group aired TV ads in Washington, D.C., this fall and plans more next year.

Fencing the border, originally proposed in the debate over how to stop illegal immigration, is controversial. The Bush administration argues that a Berlin Wall-style barrier would be a huge waste of money — costing up to $8 billion.

Border Patrol Chief David Aguilar says it makes more sense to use a mix of additional agents, better surveillance and tougher enforcement of immigration laws — and fences.

But Hunter points to the experience in San Diego, where the number of illegal migrants arrested is one-sixth of what it was before the fence was built.

“People have made stupid editorial comments about the Great Wall of China,” he says, “but the only thing that has worked is that fence.”

I rest my case.

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2005-11-17T04:00:00.000-08:00

Say It Loud and Proud: MERRY CHRISTMAS!

You may remember last year's holiday talk topic on the lips of every talking head, and maybe even at your office or family get-together: Target Department Stores banning the Salvation army bell-ringers from their property. Target said it was to be fair to everybody and that if they said yes to the Salvation army, they'd have to let every group who wanted to solicit funds to do the same.

Well, that was nothing compared to what's about to happen. Credit where credit is due: I happened to catch Bill O'Reilly talking about this Wednesday and I knew I had to blog you on it to make sure you know about it.

To cut to the chase, a number of major American stores have issued memos to the staff saying that there will no signs or references to the expression "Merry Christmas" in their stores, so as not to offend non-Christians (at the busiest sales time of the year). Which stores have made this glass-brained decision? Wal-Mart, Sears, Target, Costco, and a bunch of other national retailers.

The official word is that management is concerned that non-Christians will be "offended" by seeing a poster or advertising that says "Merry Christmas." This is simply feel-good, can't-we-all-get-along B.S.!

If you're a store owner, you can cover all your bases by putting up "Happy Hanukkah" (or however you choose to spell it), "Merry Kwaanza" AND "Happy Holidays" posters.

But the fact of the matter is that something like 85% of the people in this country say they are Christian people. We have no state religion, but Christmas is a federal holiday. And the only people who have problems with that are the ones you'll find at ACLU meetings.

If you don't understand that Christmas is religion-oriented and that most people, including Jews and Muslims, don't really care if someone says "Merry Christmas," I can't help you. Their reaction is probably the same as that of Christians who might see a sign in a store celebrating an important Jewish, Muslim, or whatever holiday---indifference without animosity.

Shoud you boycott any of the stores who have said there won't be any "Christmas" in their stores. You might find that tough to do this year. For the record, I always go out of my way to avoid Target because of their moron decision and stupid reasoning to boot out the Salvation Army. If it's possible, though, an informal boycott coupled with letters, emails, and phone calls to local and national management really might work, because this is make it or break it time for many of these stores at the cash register between now and the first of the year.

It's not about not offending people. It's about a traditional greeting that 8 out every 10 people in this country will express that the other 2 won't care about or find offensive. To store managers and employees: get ready to feel uncomfortable when shoppers express their anger and disgust this year. Since no one will feel sorry for you, let me be the first to wish you and everyone checking out today's George Blog, a very MERRY CHRISTMAS!

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2005-11-16T04:00:00.000-08:00

The Penalty for Being Politically Incorrect

Seems that about a month ago, eight city employees in Leawood, Kansas, put up $30 for the prize in an office pool. But no one’s going to win, now, because Leawood Mayor Peggy Dunn has spoiled all the fun Big Time.

The employees weren’t betting on anything sporty, involving the Kansas City Chiefs, which is probably the first thing that would come to mind for a lot of people. Nor were they starting early for the popular “Who’s gonna make it to the Super Bowl?” competition.

These folks came up with a more socially relevant office pool: the winner would have been the person who correctly guessed the number of homicides in Kansas City this year.

But Mayor Dunn said it was “totally unacceptable and completely inappropriate,” issued an apology as mayors do at times like these, and then docked all of the employees who ponied up their cash for a week, and two weeks for guy who held the pot and the supervisor who knew about it but kept his mouth shut and didn’t take part.

Do you see anything wrong with this? I’ve heard that the mayor apologized because of the insensitivity it showed towards the families of those who have already been killed. But I have to tell you that I just don’t see anything wrong with this! To be blunt about it, the homicides we’re talking about are in Kansas City, not Leawood, and most have been in pretty rough parts of town.

This is not a personal vendetta or even poking fun at the death rate; it’s a reality that’s been in the news here all year. If anything, maybe this will increase the awareness for anyone in Leawood or any of the other more upscale neighborhoods who try hard not to hear about these homicides.

Last year, during my tenure at KCMO radio, my producer and I got into a sort of battle over his telling me that famous people die in threes, after two had died. I told him what nonsense it was and we made a bet on the air.

I lost when some other celebrity died within the week’s deadline (no pun intended) we had agreed on.

So I did what any reasonable sore loser would do. I searched on the Internet to see what a search on “celebrity death pool” would bring up. Would you believe about 9,700 results?
Here are some of the listings on Yahoo:

Who's Alive and Who's Dead? - keep track of which famous people have died and which are still alive.

stiffs.com - going for the gold that lies in the back teeth of the rich and feeble

You Bet Their Life - a celebrity death pool with cash prizes.

Rotten Dead Pool - choose ten people who you think will die in the next year.

Celebrity Death Pool - possibly fatal swimming hole reserved for politicians, musicians, and other unevolved groups of famous people.

Guess the Date of the Next Skyway Bridge Jumper Pool - put in your guess as to when the next jump will occur off the Skyway Bridge in Tampa Bay.

O.B.E. Celebrity Death Watch - tracking the demise of the rich and famous for fun and games.

CashforCadavers.com - provides a haven for death mongers and puts the fun back in funeral.

Halloween Dead Pool - yearly dead pool where teams are picked fantasy football style

…and Mayor Dunn thinks the Kansas City Homicide Death Pool is worth docking someone a week’s pay?

That's a rotten penalty for being politically incorrect.

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2005-11-14T04:00:00.000-08:00

Liberal Kneejerking At Its Worst

The talking heads will certainly have a field day today following CNN's airing the words of President Bush's National Security Adviser.

Bloomberg News Service says:

The Bush administration had no intention of misleading the public even though pre-war intelligence about Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction was ``wrong,'' Stephen Hadley, National Security Advisor, told the Cable News Network.

``This was a collective intelligence judgment. It was relied on by the prior administration and other world leaders, the Congress, the president of the United States,'' Hadley said. ``Turns out we were wrong.''

Hadley said that allegations that the president tried to manipulate the information to build a case for war ``are flat wrong.'' The Senate Intelligence Committee and a separate commission on the intelligence capabilities of the U.S. concluded ``there was no manipulation of intelligence,'' Hadley said.

Hadley is saying that the information on the WMD's was wrong and not manipulated, that the intelligence was bad, leading to a flawed decision. But that's simply not good enough for left-wing Democrats. Their attitude seems to be "So what? We don't like Bush, so the truth is that he must have lied to the world about it."

The Bloomberg report continues:

Former North Carolina Senator and Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards wrote in a Washington Post editorial column [Sunday] that his vote in favor of an October 2002 joint resolution authorizing the use of U.S. armed forces against Iraq in was based on '``inaccurate'' intelligence. ``Had I known that at the time, I would have never voted for this war,'' Edwards wrote.

Senator Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, also blamed faulty intelligence for his vote. ``I would have never voted yes if I knew what I know today,'' he said on Fox News Sunday.

``I think the Democrats always have to stand up and tell the truth,'' said Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee. ``And that's what we're doing. The truth is that the president misled America when he sent us to war.''

Dean's statement is a perfect example of what I think the left-wing Democratic attitude is: "So what? We don't like Bush, so the truth is that he must have lied to the world about it."

Last Tuesday, Sean Hannity presented a litany of quotes, none taken out of context, by Liberals like Ted Kennedy and Barbara Boxer, who were part of a good-sized list of Democrats who enthusiastically backed President Clinton's decision to attack Iraq after he argued that Saddam Hussein was prepared to use chemical, biological and nuclear weapons against the world.

If that information was based on bad intelligence, don't they, and anyone who believe as they do, have to admit that Clinton lied to the world as well?

Because if he gets a free pass based on bad intelligence collected on his watch, then President Bush is owed a long-overdue apology.

It's one thing to change your mind after you've learned that you made a decision based on bad information. After that discovery, you would be rightfully indignant at the very least if you are accused of being a liar.

No one has accused any of these far-left-wingers of lying about their reasons for formerly backing an invasion which they are not saying was a bad decision.

For them to not afford the President the same judgement and to continue to accuse him of lying about it mainly because they hate his politics is simply illogical, smear politicking at its worst.

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2005-11-11T04:00:00.000-08:00

The Bus That Won't Fly

First, it is Veteran's Day today. If you see a veteran, thank him or her for their service to our country. And if you are one, THANK YOU for your contribution to our national security and for serving honorable in the American armed forces.

About a week ago, the Kansas City Star featured a story about the regional transit study that's going on now in Johnson County. Three-fourths of a little over 1,200 people said they'd probably back such a tax, about 13 percent said no way, and 12 perecent were undecided.

To my amazement, the Star did an editorial piece yesterday (Thursday, 11/10/05) that contained some major truths which also happen to be huge negatives about the plan:

Sixty-three percent said they would favor a sales tax levied only in Johnson County, with the money used to build a bus rapid-transit line or a commuter-rail line along I-35...Some of the cost numbers being batted around in the study should give pause, however. The poll, for example, asked people whether they preferred a billion-dollar light-rail line that could take 20 years to build or a rapid-bus line that would cost one-fifth that amount.

The results, however, should be viewed realistically by officials, given that people often respond more positively to hypothetical proposals than they do when faced with real tax increases. Moreover, transit ridership is notoriously tough to estimate, especially for services that don’t exist yet.

Can you imagine that? A BILLION-dollar project that would take twenty years to finish? Not counting cost overruns, of course.

I am also amazed that so many people (if they were indeed selected at random) in Johnson County said they'd buy into this stupid scheme. Why do I say that? Because the truth is that outside of:

(1) a very small number of idealists who think that loght rail and/or buses is simply the right thing to do, and

(2) a somewhat larger number of people who can take a train from fairly close to where they live to fairly close to where they work (like so many do in New York),

the only other people who ride the bus are poor.

Nasty truth, isn't it?

Let's be real...most people don't like riding on buses. Buses are generally a frustrating way to get to work unless they're express. The Star says:

People are more likely to leave their cars if a train or a bus can get them to their jobs more quickly.

And I say that unless Kansas City grows to the size of Chicago or larger, that just isn't going to happen. People drive because of the control factor. They get to choose alternate routes in they want, and if not, they get to sit in much more comfort and maybe chow down or sip some coffee until the delay lightens up. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that even if a car or train could get you to work more quickly, most people would STILL opt for their own vehicle.

Don't forget that any such project would ultimately wind up being a bi-state effort, since the train or bus line wouldn't end at the Kansas border, but continue into downtown Kansas City...which is being touted as the place to live, among other reasons, so you don't have to drive far to work. And we've already seen how easy it is to get voters to pass bi-state taxes.

Tell you what: you put together what the area really needs for the convenience of area residents as well as the business community--some type of realistic mass transit to move people between the airport and downtown--and then come back to me and we'll talk about it.

Listen Here for the audio version of today's George Blog

2005-11-10T04:00:00.000-08:00

Your Next Government Nightmare

The other night, I went to a meeting at the nursing home where my mother lives, to listen to information about the new mandatory Medicare/Medicaid program that kicks in soon.

How can I say this to emphasize it properly? This is the positively, absolutely, without doubt, most terribly confusing, hard to understand government program I've ever seen.

There are a number of comapnies that are basically drugstores, except they don't have storefronts--they're the large firms that provide drugs to nursing homes, hospitals and such. Omnicare is one of them in the Kansas City area and one of their reps gave the presentation. To make it clear how confusing the program is, let me quote just a little from their introduction to what it's all about:

The Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003 (MMA) gives Medicare beneficiaries access to prescription drug coverage beginning January 1, 2006.
This prescription drug benefit is commonly referred to as Medicare Part D.

All Medicare beneficiaries—no matter how they get their health care today or whether they have existing drug coverage—will be eligible for drug coverage under a Medicare prescription drug plan.

The Medicare Part D program provides a prescription drug benefit primarily through one of two sources: (1) a fee-for-service option known as a prescription drug plan (PDP) or (2) a managed care plan with a drug benefit (i.e., Medicare Advantage (MA)). These are referred to as "Part D plans."

In order to provide a choice of plans in all areas of the United States, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) divided the country into 34 regions. In each region, beneficiaries must have at least two Part D plans to choose from and at least one plan must be a "stand alone" (PDP) plan.

OK, is ANY of that clear to you?

If it sounds like I'm trying to frighten you, I am! There are penalties involved if you are required to sign up and do not that literally increase and can last a lifetime, as crazy as that sounds.

If you have a family member of friend in a nursing home, their choice of providers was already made recently for them at random by a computer. The firm chosen by the computer may not be able to provide certain drugs your loved one needs so they or you will have to get it elsewhere, paying out of your own pocket, unless you change over to a different provider.

I cannot emphasize enough how terribly confusing this is. Yet, it is a mandatory deal for millions of people and each one of those people or a responsible member of their family must get involved to make sure that the level and quality of health care stays the same after the program kicks in right after the first of the year.

The employees of these drug suppliers, local pharmacies, and nursing home administrators are not allowed to choose for you or to suggest any of the 15 specific plans in Kansas or 34 in Missouri. Your doctor may not wish to discuss it with you because it takes so much time--time that he can spend seeing other patients.

You want to give someone a tremendously valuable gift for Christmas? Here's what you do: learn about this plan and offer to help someone understand, and make the right choice in signing up OR changing if they've already been placed in a plan that doesn't meet all their needs. This will take time but nowadays that's the biggest gift of all in many cases.

Two places to start are:

www.medicare.gov
www.omnicare.com

After November 15, the Medicare website will amost certainly be difficult if not impossible to access as I predict millions of people will be trying to get information. Don't wait to visit it.

This is not a plug or an endorsement for Omnicare--they happen to have a lot of downloadable fact sheets and a couple of archived webcasts you can listen to at no charge.

Again, I have to say I can't emphasize enough how convoluted this plan is. It's frightening to think of how many people will need help just to understand its requirements which no one will fully understand after just one reading or explanation. I urge you to learn what you can starting now if you or anyone you love are among the millions who have to sign up and make new choices concerning their health care and prescription drugs.

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2005-11-09T04:00:00.000-08:00

The Ugly Truth in France

They're calling it the worst civil unrest in almost 40 years, and now an official state of emergency for up to 12 days has been declared.

And yet while schools are being set on fire, and police are being pelted with gasoline bombs, France's national leaders are expressing sorrow not for victims but for the fact their own sorry socialist system has let them down.

According to an AP news story,

Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, tacitly acknowledging that France has failed to live up to its egalitarian ideals, reached out to the heavily immigrant suburbs where the rioting began. He said France must make a priority of working against the discrimination that feeds the frustration of youths made to feel that they do not belong in France.

"The effectiveness of our integration model is in question," the prime minister told parliament. He called the riots "a warning" and "an appeal."

An appeal? The man is clearly not in touch with reality. He goes on to say riot police faced "determined individuals, structured gangs, organized criminality," and that restoring order "will take time." This isn't an appeal. This is sheer violence, started by hoodlums who are complaining about a lack of jobs and discrimination.

Remind you a little of some of the evening news reports in the United States in the 60's?

The difference is that the police here quickly quelled the violence, so that no declarations of up to a dozen nights of a state of emergency had to be declared. Yes, that meant that sometimes the police smashed heads and hands and faces instead of saying "Please, don't do that." But that's the attitude that seems to still be in the air in France.

The AP story says:

The main opposition Socialists, through their parliamentary leader Jean-Marc Ayrault, said they did not oppose the use of curfews but also warned that they should not be used to hide suburban "misery" or become "a new mark of segregation."

Can ANYBODY explain to me how a curfew can "hide suburban misery?"

If this blog sounds a little cruel or insensitive today, let me invite you to look past France--literally--towards other places in Europe.

Like Poland, where the 30% urban unemployment rate is higher than that being quoted for France and where the rural unemployment rate in some villages and towns runs between 60-70%--and has for the last THREE YEARS!

Yet there are no riots, gasoline bombings, school set ablaze or urban terrorism. Nor does the government make idotic statements approach those that that say riots are "an appeal."

The ugliness the world is seeing lit by flames in the streets throughout France is matched by the ugly thinking of its leaders in refusing to acknowledge reality and take the necessary steps involving force to restore peace. Force does not always need to be met with force to quiet civil unrest, but from our part of the world, this is one of those time when it is a viable solution.

And that's the ugly truth.

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2005-11-07T04:00:00.000-08:00

When is Free Speech Not Free Speech?

Suppose you want to protest something, like a visit by a political figure with whom you disagree, or a fundraiser for a cause you think is flat-out wrong. The protest will be a public one of course, and will consist primarily of you holding up a sign and verbally yelling about why you're there.

Now, suppose I know about your little protest and decide I am going to counter-protest. I show up with my sign and one thing that you don't have--a stronger, louder voice and a bigger, better set of lungs than you--which makes it easy for me to just drown out your voice.

Am I interfering with your right of free speech?

I read with glee the story in last Saturday's Kansas City Star that told about the Rev. Fred Phelps' gang of free speech thugs who are now making it their business to show up at the funerals of Americans killed in uniform in Iraq and Afghanistan. These sickos are spreading their twisted gospel which says basically that the deaths are the result of the United States not doing enough to condemn homosexuality, so God is punishing us by having military men and women killed over there.

The reason I enjoyed the story so much is because it's the first time I heard about how the folks who disagree with the Phelps Philosophy are counter-protesting at his demonstratons. At one such funeral in South Haven, Kansas, more than 200 bikers showed up and every time Fred's group of 11 started to talk, the bikers simply cranked up their bike throttles, creating a sweet wall of noise. I may never complain again when one of them peels out next to me on the interstate and makes more noise than my eardrums like to hear coming into them.

Some lawmakers around the country are trying to come up with laws that will ban groups like Fred's from staging their demonstrations at funerals, whether the deceased is military or civilian. Of course, the ACLU will get involved, but I think there's a way for intelligent laws to be implemented that won't mess with the right to free speech.

Make no mistake--this is about free speech, not about anyone's stand on homosexuality (although that part of the equation will undoubtedly be tied in as much as possible by the Phelps gang and the ACLU crowd). I agree with Oklahoma Rep. Paul Wesselhoft.

According to the Star article,

A retired Army chaplain, Wesselhoft has introduced a bill that would ban any protest within 500 feet of a funeral site from two hours before the service starts until two hours after it is over. Violators would face a mandatory 30 days in jail.

“This comes when a family is in its most vulnerable state,” Wesselhoft said of the protests. “We can protect them a little without trampling free speech.”

Remember the 1960's when college kids protested by burning their draft cards, claiming that this was their way of expressing "free speech" to protest American policies? The way they got nailed was simple: a law was passed that required young men to carry their draft cards with them at all times. Everyone knew it was a way around the free speech issue but the law was upheld.

What I think it will come down to is this: the Supreme Court may have to decide if free speech is truly being abridged if there is another way to make your point, within very broad limits. Can you only make your point by protesting at someone's funeral or could you do it in a supermarket parking lot, even at a different time? Is my being able to yell louder than you intentionally depriving you of your rights, or your tough luck because you have weak lungs?

In the meantime, I can think of only one thing to say:

Gentlemen, START YOUR ENGINES!

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2005-11-04T04:00:00.000-08:00

A Question of Faith?

Of all the talk and immediate blather about the nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, no spin has grabbed me more than one presented by the Christian Science Monitor:

To what extent should a nominee's religious faith be a legitimate area of inquiry during Senate confirmation hearings?

After all, as staff writer Warren Richey points out,"One of the defining characteristics of American liberty is that a person's religious faith - or lack of religious faith - is generally a private matter outside the realm of government concern. Indeed, Article VI of the Constitution bars any religious test for prospective government officials."

Does that surprise you? That pertinent point seems to have been lost as the media covers the nomination like a game of tennis, explaining one side's volley in excrucating detail and then the other's, until most people have forgotten the basics. And the basics here come back to one single issue: how closely to the letter of the law is the nominee likely to adhere?

Here's the problem in this spin: for those inside the beltway who hold some measure of power, whether by controlling blocks of votes or position of leadership, the argument is not about religion. It is entirely about politics--and this includes Democrats AND Republicans. Anyone who says otherwise is a liar or deluded.

The more conservative religions (we're not talking politically, now) which oppose abortion and gay marriage, to use two easy-to-grab hot-button topics of the times, expect a candidate who is a member of their faith to vote accordingly on such issues because his allegiance to God and faith come first.

Can a moral person do otherwise? Many say yes, but I am uncomfortable with that point of view because it become too easy to pick and choose which beliefs are "right" and which, because they're "not right," must be wrong, and therefore exempt from your following them.

The Rev. C. Welton Gaddy, president of the Interfaith Alliance, is quoted in the Christian Science Monitor article as saying:

"What is at stake is the advancement of a view that the government of the United States has a responsibility to shape and monitor the personal, moral values of the citizens of this nation."

His comments make it sounds like that's a bad thing, when it fact, that is in part what the founding fathers had in mind! Not a police state, but a level of safety that everyone from the most rabid conservative to the most liberal member of the ACLU can agree upon. His rhetoric does nothing to answer my original question concerning a nominee's religious faith.

The timing of the nomination provides a wonderful opportunity for each one of us to think about this issue during what is one of the most religious times of the year for many Ameicans. You might want to suggest to your pastor or rabbi that the issue be discussed to help you or others decide where you stand, since you'll face it again and again in small as well as large politics.

A simple question with a difficult answer: is it a question of faith?

Listen Here for the audio version of today's George Blog

2005-11-03T04:00:00.000-08:00

Money, Money, Everywhere

So how many credit cards offers, insurance sales pitches, and offers to get a lower interest rate on your mortgage (or equity loan) do YOU get each month?

I've just completed taking part in a survey, and it's kind of something I've always wanted to do to find out just how many direct mail pieces I get in a month. I'm figuring that I'm in that great grey area between poor and rich, so my results may be pretty close to yours.

First, think for a moment and come up with a number in your head as I ask again. In one month, how many of each of the following do you get in the mail:

credit card offers
insurance sales pitches
offers to refinance your mortgage at a lower rate
offers for an equity loan on your home to pay off all your bills
and let's throw in some type of offer for telephone, internet, and TV service

The way I figure, if I'm in that large batch of people who feel comfortable putting themselves in the middle, so to speak, then there must be money everywhere.

In the last month, I received:

21 credit card offers
3 insurance sales pitches
2 mortgage refinancing offers
1 equity loan offer
11 offers for telephone, Internet, and TV service

Note that this doesn't count the almost daily telemarketing calls I got for a better mortgage rate.

My favorite offers were the 4 credit card offers that same in my mother's name. She got rid of her credit cards a long time ago, and she's been in a nursing home since 1998. But with no savings, no property, and no income, she's guaranteed for a platinum card from Capital One.

There must be money everywhere if the card issuers are that eager to extend credit. Money in the profits for them, and money for the people who actually reply to the offers.

It's hard to believe that given the incredibly small rate of sales actually made by direct mail there are enough people who buy into these offers to make big profits for the card companies. It must be like people who play slot machines at casinos because if they get enough playing points, they can cash them in for prizes. Translation for the financially impaired: that DVD player you have your eye on, which you can buy for about thirty bucks at Wal-mart, will cost you around $500 at the casino.

I know several people who I think are bright and fairly intelligent who have said they won't own a credit card because they're afraid they wouldn't have enough self-control to avoid running up massive bills. I've always found this to be a paradox, but apparently it's not that uncommon a phenomenon.

If you're interested in doing your own study, let me recommend the easiest way to conduct it: the old-fashioned box filing system. Place a box somewhere just a little bit out of the way someplace in your house and when the mail comes, stand in front of it and pitch in everything except the obviously important stuff. At the end of 30 days, sit down and separate the pile. Not only will you be amazed, but you'll experience the most important insight of all that comes from this self-survey: there is indeed money, money EVERYWHERE.

Except you don't have any of it

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2005-11-02T04:00:00.000-08:00

It's Deja Vu All Over Again

Just about everyone seems to know how liberal the people of the Netherlands are. The "businesses" in Amsterdam where marijuana and sex are practically commodities besides being tolerated; the same-sex marriages that have been performed legally for many years, and so on. So what problem could the Dutch possibly have in common with the United States, which so many Europeans view as an anal, repressive society?

Terrorism.

A story in Sunday's Washington Post says:

The Netherlands is a country torn between its efforts to preserve a cherished identity and the need to protect itself from murderous fanatics. That's an experience familiar to practically every democracy faced with a terrorist threat...What the Dutch are discovering is that protecting their way of life may require undermining some of the very values they are trying to protect.

I want to quote from this story at length so that you'll have a full understanding of how this "you-can-do-anything-you like" attitude is proving to be, quite simply, wrong.

While the Dutch are worried about the threat to their culture, they are terrified of what they believe is an impending terrorist attack. Polls show that it's the top concern of the population. Recent events have given the Dutch reason to worry. A few weeks ago, news reports here announced that the Dutch parliament building had been sealed and that there were police activities in several cities. Anxious moments later, word got around that police raids had netted seven people suspected of plotting terrorist strikes. Just days later, authorities in Baltimore stopped all traffic for almost two hours in a major tunnel under the Baltimore Harbor, responding to a tip about a possible attack that reportedly came from a man held in custody in the Netherlands.

One of those arrested in the Dutch raids was Samir Azzouz, a baby-faced 19-year-old who had already faced Dutch justice a few months earlier. Azzouz went to trial last spring after police allegedly found he had links to theHofstad terror group. In his apartment they found explosives and maps of the Amsterdam airport, the parliament building and a nuclear power plant. But the progressive Dutch system, which does not even allow the media to reveal a convicted criminal's last name, ruled some of the evidence inadmissible and acquitted him of the terrorism charges, while convicting him of illegal arms possession.

The latest wave of arrests came after authorities said they found a video of Azzouz in which he said goodbye to his friends and family and, speaking in Arabic, referred to a certain "act" he was committing. Police claim he had been trying to buy explosives, and they believe he was planning a suicide bombing.

Many here expect an attack soon, perhaps to commemorate the anniversary of the day that changed everything. The day that so thoroughly traumatized Holland, not unlike America's 9/11, was Nov. 2, 2004, when a Muslim extremist killed and nearly decapitated the filmmaker Theo van Gogh in broad daylight on an Amsterdam street.

Van Gogh's own story captures the conflict over tolerance. The talented filmmaker made a career of stirring controversy in a country that has thrived on the unconventional. He had insulted just about every segment of society, and they put up with it. But when his film "Submission" offended some Muslims, extremists decided he, along with a number of politicians, must die. The killer, Mohammed Bouyeri, turned to van Gogh's mother after his conviction and said, "I do not feel your pain." He also vowed he would kill again if he were freed.

The immigration minister, Rita Verdonk, "Iron Rita," is spearheading a number of reforms that strike deep into the hearts of Dutch liberals. New immigrants, particularly from Muslim countries, are being required to take courses in Dutch language and society and they will have to pass a test to show their proficiency in Dutch culture in order to immigrate to the Netherlands. The latest proposal includes banning the burqa -- the head-to-toe cover worn by some Muslim women -- in public places. And a new plan would have foreigners expelled from the Netherlands for committing even minor crimes.

Note the use of the word "undermine" the Post reporter used in this story. It's a terrible choice of words. It suggests that it's O.K. for Muslim extremists to use violence to snuff out anyone who uses freedom of speech to disagree with them, but it's not O.K. for those who disagree to make their case in public or in the press. That's pathetic.

It seems to me that the Dutch are beginning to understand the meaning of a tried-and-true American expression that makes a lot of misguided people here cringe when they see it on the bumper sticker on the car in front of them:

Freedom isn't free.

Listen Here for the audio version of today's George Blog.

2005-11-01T04:00:00.000-08:00

It's Trick or Treat in Washington

The nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court to replace Sandra Day O'Connor amuses me in a strange way.

I said in the only blog I did on the nomination of Harriet Miers that the great uproar from Democrats and Republicans was misplaced and that the time to speak was at the actual vote to apporve or disapporve of the nominee. And I feel the same way about Alito.

We're already hearing from Democratic Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, that he is "disappointed" in the pick of Alito in that he is not a "consensus nominee." He also said that Alito's nomination would "create a lot of problems." Senator Chuck Schumer of New York., also took issue with the President for not picking someone, as he said, in the "mold of Sandra Day O'Connor, who would unify us."

So again, we're going to hear another pointless war of words. Pointless because the Democrats still don't understand they lost the last election!

It's true. Outside of talk show hosts and bloggers, it seems no high-ranking politician wants to tell it like it is. Here's what I'd like to see instead of the namby-pamby stuff we've been treated to following the annoucement of the President's latest nominee to the Supreme Court.

First, a Republican comment: "All right, folks, it's Sam Alito, and yes, he's pretty much a conservative with a capital C. His track record of decisions makes it likely that he's not going to make any decision like the person he's replacing. Most Democrats are't going to like it because he's not one of them. To them I say: what did you expect, some liberal guy who;s going to take your side in issues that are clearly defined by the split in thinking between us? You crazy or what? You guys lost and we won and that's the way it goes. Chances are that sooner or later, you'll have someone in the White House and will act exactly the same way. You can say whatever you like but we have the votes and you don't. In other words, we own the bat, the ball, and we make the rules. Now we'll still play the game with you, but you really have to just shut up and quite whining or we WILL pack it up and go home."

Now, a Democrat's comment: "ANOTHER Conservative! Well, we'd be stupid if we expected something else but couldn't you guys pick someone a little more moderate? We know we can't really change enough minds to not have him approved, but we will go as far as we can to make it as tough as possible if for no other reason than we just don't like you, or anyone who doesn't vote and think like we do. We still think we were cheated in the last election and frankly have never gotten over it. So we'll play politics for all it's worth to make this thng drag on as much as possible. So there!"

Sound a little like kids arguing on the playground? Or maybe like a breath of fresh air and truth for a change?

Some Republicans are already saying the nuclear option (*see definition below) won't be used if the going gets dragged down. I say, do it and get it over with. If the Democrats are stupid enough to essentially shut the government down because of it, then let the American people speak as to who's right and who's wrong in their approach to running the country.

The President is not going to run again for re-election. He's not the one the Democrats have to beat, but the news today sure makes it look that way!
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* From Wikipedia: The nuclear option is a phrase used to refer to a proposed change in the U.S. Senate rules to prevent the filibuster of judicial confirmations. Along with the term Constitutional option, it is an American political code word used during the 2005 judicial confirmation political fight.

Currently, Senate rules allow any member to prevent a confirmation vote of a Presidential appointee by staging a filibuster. The filibuster can be overridden by a three-fifths majority (60 out of 100 senators) vote via a cloture motion. The nuclear option would allow a simple majority (50 out of 100 senators, plus the Vice President) to end a judicial filibuster. Once cloture is achieved, the nominee would be confirmed or rejected by a simple majority vote.
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Listen Here for the audio version of today's George Blog

2005-10-31T16:00:00.000-08:00

Terror Trick or Treat

You may have heard about the Tampa Bay Bucaneers season ticket holder who, with the help of the ACLU, won a temporary injunction that stops the patdown searches of fans attending the games at Raymond James Stadium. High school civics teacher Gordon Johnston won his argument that the patdowns were unconstitutional.

When I first heard the news, I thought that the judge made a very bad call, assuming that the team or the NFL was the offending party (and it's my understanding that the NFL has in fact mandated patdowns throughout the leagues as an anti-terrorism measure), but it turns out that the lawsuit wasn't against the team or the NFL--it was against the Tampa Sports Authority. The distinction is important, because the judge's ruling is going to generate a ton of talk with people taking sides without knowing all the facts.

The NFL and the teams are private, for-profit organizations. If they were the parties implementing the patdowns, there's no case. If you don't like it, don't go. At Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, they check bags to make sure you're not bringing in contraband (such as booze, I believe). A friend of mine was hassled there this year when he tried to bring in his baby's diaper bag- true story! At concerts throughout the country, security checks out each patron to make sure hard rock fans aren't bringing in booze or drugs. Is this a violation of someone's rights? I say no. If I'm throwing a for-profit, private bash, and you don't like my rules, as long as I don't discriminate on the basis of sex or race, stay away.

You're going to hear a lot of "yeah, buts" and rhetoric from both extremes in this debate. Personally, I don't have a problem with patdowns like this, whether public or private. I do not for a moment believe that this type of thing MUST inevitably lead to a Big Brother Police State and to those who disagree, I say to you: show me where it's happened in our country one time.

The way to solve this issue is simple. First, turn over all security to the NFL or each team. Get it away from any platform where the AACLU (That's Anti-American Civil Liberties Union, remember) can get involved in any argument.

Let the league or the teams decide whether or not they want to do patdowns. If they do, then they can absorb the cost by raising ticket prices if necessary. Fans will grumble but they'll still cough up and the stands won't be empty.

But what if they don't want to do patdowns?

No problem!

You know how when you pay for parking and the parking receipt has wording that says you're actually buying a limited license to let your vehicle sit in the parking lot, and that parking is at your own risk in case something happens to your car?

Well, in addition to the wording on each ticket that says what you're purchasing is actually a license to sit in a certain location, etc., let's add the wording that says there is "standard" security but by buying the ticket, you release the team from any liability for damage if a terrorist who slips anything through "standard" security causes you to be hurt or killed.

Shouldn't this satisfy the folks who say it's a violation of their rights AND the people who would say if there was some type of terrorist event at a football game and they were injured that the team didn't do enough to protect its customers?

This isn't the final word on this case, which of course is being watched by the Kansas City Chiefs and every other team in the NFL. There could be a trial, the decision could be appealed. and so on. The injunction goes into effect next Sunday, November 6, at Tampa's next home game.

If you're tired of the wars going on between the Liberals and the Conservatives in Washington, keep your eyes on this one, because it can affect you and about 76,000 other folks who like to watch the Chiefs when they play at home.

Listen Here for the audio version of today's George Blog.

2005-10-28T04:00:00.000-07:00

Guilty by Innocence

The U.S. government does screw up the lives of innocent Americans. Sometimes it's necessary, but sometimes it's way overdone and not unlike some of the things you've seen in the movies.

I know this now for a fact. It was presented to me last week in a simple but startling way.

My wife Nancy and I were in Las Vegas, in part to visit a former high school classmate and his wife. We had a lot of catching up to do, having just re-established contact at a high school reunion a couple of years ago.

Over dinner, my friend told a story that sounds like it's right out the movies, but it's true. Not just because I know and can vouch for my classmate, but because it was documented by the media from coast and coast, although you may not have heard the story.

George and Valerie Hilton lived a relatively quiet life until 1995. George was and still is a collector and trader of military memorabilia and surplus, with an honorable military background. He managed to acquire one of the largest collections of military uniforms in the world, and to make a long story short, became one of the leading wardrobe suppliers in the country to film studios, renting huge numbers of uniforms for the filming of movies involving war, and battles, and troops. He even found himself getting bit parts in some movies simply because he happened to be at the right place at the right time.

Becoming dissatisfied with living in Hollywood, George and Valerie eventually moved to Kingman, Arizona. They liked the area, and George had sold a lot of surplus stuff to people there, so the move seemed logical and comfortble. They bought a convenience store type of place so George could continue his business and kept the part that sold gas open as well. They knew the locals through their business, as many would stop for gas and the army surplus fans came in to shop in the store.

Things went well until the spring of 1995, when one young man who came and went at George and Valerie's store drove up in his truck just before they opened to fill up his tank, as he had "a long way to go," as he explained before he said goodbye and took off.

His name was Timothy McVeigh.

When the word got out that the person responsible for the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City had lived near Kingman, the national media descended with a shark's appetite on the city. And when it was learned that McVeigh--like many others--had frequented George Hilton's place, where army surplus goods were available, the media had a veritable feeding frenzy. George and Valerie had nothing to hide, so they spoke freely.

That caught the attention of the FBI, since the Kingman area was one of the areas of the county where militia groups were known to hold "training" and meetings, and such. George and Valerie were questioned relentlessly about their "relationship" with McVeigh, the same questions being asked over and over and over again. They were subpoened

The problem was there was no relationship. The Oklahoma bomber happened to buy gas at their place. Period, end of story.

But the stereotyped movie plots of the FBI's investigations that make them out to be the bad guys were'nt just plots in this case. Strange cars and vans followed George and Valerie, whether they traveled together or individually. When one of the FBI agents denied driving a certain type of white car, George smiled and pointed to the white car across the street where a couple of his fellow agents were getting out to come talk with him.

Phone taps? Yes. Easy to prove. George intentionally told a friend on the phone that he would meet him at a certain out of the way place at a certain time just to see what would happen. At the time of the "meeting," a number of out-of-town vehicles were waiting for them--George had called the FBI's bluff!

Eventually the "investigation" quieted down, but not until after the story starring George and Valerie Hilton had been in 33 newspapers and all major television media. They took it well, thinking the the notoriety/publicity would generate a little more business for them from curiosity seekers.

Wrong call. Their business dropped off. The month after their 15 minutes of fame, their total business income was $55.

And some time later, Valerie tried to use the Freedom of Information Act to take a look at the files on her and George, only to be told that the files were still open and therefore, she could not have access to them.

I know there's a lingering bitterness that will never go away, but my friends have enough guts, smarts, and integrity to have not let the intrusion become an obsession. They're not afraid to talk about their story in as straightforward a way as I hope I've presented it here.

George and Valerie Hilton - just a couple of ordinary folks who were guilty by innocence. And so far, no apologies from the FBI or anyone else in government.

Listen Here for the audio version of today's George Blog.

2005-10-27T04:00:00.000-07:00

IRS 3 Anti-Tax Guy 0

Last week, I said I'd keep you updated on the outcome of the trial involving the country's most well-known anti-tax guy, Irwin Schiff, and in case you haven't heard, the jury has reached a verdict.

Guilty!

I know a lot of people are going to cry "He was railroaded," because they want to believe the line Irwin's been selling for years, that there is no law that says you have to pay income tax. These are the people who automatically blame the government for everything that they feel is wrong, and there's no convincing them otherwise. But if these same folks put aside their emotions and look at the real facts they'll have to agree with the verdict.

Here's why: Irwin's actions during the trial clearly show that he's a guy who thinks he's beaten the system but doesn't really know how to play the game. You don't say, as he did, "All federal judges are corrupt" in court. You may believe it with all your heart, but you don't say it out loud and make up your own rules of court conduct. You can't even do that in pro football!

Irwin's girlfriend, Cynthia Neun, was also his co-defendant and she was found guilty of Social Security disability fraud, collecting disability and not reporting that she was employed at the bookstore Irwin owns.

As soon as the guilty verdict came down, the judge said Irwin was off to jail because he was a flight risk. His defenders said it was ridiculous, and the judge replied that since Irwin has bucks in several bank accounts overseas, maybe it's not that ridiculous after all. (About three million bucks!)

The story of the verdict in the Las Vegas Review-Journal quoted one 44-year-old man who has attended the trial regularly who said, "He's 100 percent innocent, that's what I think. He was never allowed to put on a defense. ... This is a travesty. The people with the tax honesty movement aren't a bunch of wackos who are just trying to twist the law in their favor."

Well, I've interviewed Irwin twice and I have talked with several people, young and old, who have bought into his scam, and I do think they're wackos who are just trying to twist the law in their favor.

He tried to defraud the government and urge others to do the same, and the bottom line is that he cheated you and me twice---once by refusing to pay his share of taxes, thereby causing more of mine to be spent that didn't have to be, even if the amount is a fraction of a cent, and again by incurring the cost of a federal trial, which comes out of taxpayer's dollar. Yes, he--like anyone else--deserves his day in court, but now he's had three for pretty much the same thing, and as far as I'm concerned, that's three strikes--and he's out.

The guy quoted in the paper declined to give his name and said he feared retaliation from the IRS. A real warrior supporter, there.

I got some interesting feedback from some of Irwin's supporters who think I'm 100% wrong and that Irwin in the only person in the country who is right on this tax thing. Some went as far as to suggest that I'm a stooge who loves the government and would welcome a police state.

Well, if you're one of them, I want you to make sure you check out The George Blog for tomorrow, Friday, October 28, when I'll present, for the first time ever,a story about how the government can be terribly wrong, and how they can screw up people's lives almost beyond belief.

See you then!

Listen Here for the audio version of today's George Blog.

2005-10-26T08:26:00.000-07:00

Before the Spin Docs Start Spinning Again…

With the daily shootings, the talk about whether or not the Chiefs and Royals will stay or leave, and other net-and-potatoes stories capturing your attention, there’s one that’s been overlooked. It bobs to the surface fairly regularly, and before it does again, let me give you almost everything you need to know when you talk about it with friends and associates.

What is it? Two words: light rail.

Light rail is touted as a cost-effective way to ease traffic congestion and save money “in the long run.” That’s a bunch of bull. And that’s the bottom line in a study named Rail Disasters 2005 by Randal O’Toole.

You can read it for free and download it at www.reason.org/ps336.pdf

An editorial in the Las-Vegas Review Journal last Saturday summarized the study so well, I’d like to quote part of it for you, because I think it’s important and I know the issue will be raised again in Kansas City as it has been regularly over the past three years when some do-gooders and glass-brained politicians run out of ready-made news to spin:

:…the truth about light rail: It costs a fortune, it doesn't relieve congestion, it never pays for itself and it actually hurts mass transit ridership.

Mr. O'Toole's research, which is based on more than 20 years of ridership and transit data, exposes light rail cheerleading as delusional.

Cities with successful bus lines get a sniff of the federal subsidies available for mass transit and want a bite. Consultants and bureaucrats provide inflated ridership estimates. Local and state governments then bury themselves in construction debt, convinced that people will abandon their vehicles for expensive, inconvenient trolley rides. When the riders don't materialize, already high fares are raised to cover operational costs and bus service is slashed. Ridership drops, and taxpayers cover the debts.

If this was a 2, 5, or even 10-year report, some questions about its accuracy might be justifiable. But twenty years is a long-term study, and covering as many cities as the report does pretty much clinches it – light rail always sounds great at first but when you examine it in a straightforward manner, it’s not “light” at all. It’s a heavy burden on taxpayers across more than one generation.

Listen Here for the audio version of today's George Blog

2005-10-21T04:00:00.000-07:00

The Federal Mafia

I've been following a trial this week that most people probably haven't heard about. It's in the hands of the jury and I have a feeling that as soon as they reach a verdict, it'll get some national coverage, so I thought I'd give you a sneak preview.

The title of today's Blog, "The Federal Mafia," is the title of the book by the defendant in the case. He's Irwin Schiff and the book is The Federal Mafia: How the Government Illegally Imposes and Unlawfully Collects Income Taxes.

Irwin's been a guest on a couple of radio programs I've hosted, and has been on hundreds of radio talk shows for something like the past twenty years. You may have heard him. He's the guy who sells kits that you're supposed to use to do a couple of things, namely (1) pay no income tax and (2) what to tell the Feds when they come knocking to ask why you haven't been paying your taxes.

According to a report in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Irwin

"...conducts seminars and sells videotapes which show people how to file what he calls a "zero return." Schiff advocates listing zero income on tax return forms, regardless of an individual's annual earnings, prosecutors said. A court order has prevented Schiff from selling copies of "The Federal Mafia," since 2003. Schiff's message was apparently embraced by thousands of people who filed tax returns with what prosecutors called "the Schiff attachment."

"Schiff took issue with the government's claim that a conspiracy took place or was planned. There was no secrecy or covert action, Schiff said. His views were publicized through his products and on his radio show, which he used as a platform to issue a challenge for anyone to produce a citation in the law that requires people to pay an income tax. Even when he offered $5,000 as a reward to anyone who could do so, Schiff said there were no takers."

I remember this guy as a nice guy, thoroughly convinced that he is right in saying that there is no law that requires people to file and/ or pay income tax. He says he hasn't paid any income tax since 1973. The problem is that a number of people who have bought his stuff and followed his advice have gone to jail for tax evasion.

There's a lot of talk in Irwin's writings about how paying taxes is voluntary. The best explanation from "the federal mafia" that's been presented to me is that essentially many laws are "voluntary." Here's a simple example: you're supposed to stop at a stop sign right? Your stopping is a voluntary action. There are no policemen permanently stationed at all stop signs to enforce the law. If there happens to be a cop watching one and you blow past it, you get nailed.

This is all a lot of nit-picking about voluntary compliance with laws that are legal and have been on the books for years.

What makes this case especially interesting is that the government is not charging Irwin specifically with tax evasion, but with conspiracy. The Review-Journal says:

"Federal prosecutors are seeking multiple criminal convictions that spring from Schiff's marketing, selling and practice of the idea that the law does not require Americans to pay income tax. Schiff, 77, the owner of Freedom Books in Las Vegas, and two employees...stand accused of conspiring to defraud the federal government."

Conspiracy, not evasion. Will it be "a victory for the little guy" or a guilty verdict for a crook who hides in plain sight?

If it was an evasion charge, I'd go for guilty, but conspiracy? That's a word that conjures up much more malicious imagery, ranging from Enron to Iraq.

In the language of Las Vegas, I'll settle for being the bookmaker on this one, and I'll hold your money for a small fee as you make the call.

But I will keep you posted for free.

Listen Here for the audio version of today's George Blog

2005-10-20T06:00:00.000-07:00

Surfing the News

If it's ever seemed to you without an immediately obvious reason that all is not well in the world, but there's no major depressing news like a story the size of Hurricane Katrina, I think I can help.

I had a small revelation today (Wed 10-19-05), one of those flashes of insight, as I scanned the front page of USA Today, a publication I'll read for free but not if I have to pay for it.

Headline: Teenagers redefining sex...Seemingly casual acceptance of oral sex perplexes parents, fuels concerns of an intimacy crisis in new generation.

Headline: Errors, gaps, cloud athletic spending

Headline: 1 in 4 Iraq vets ailing on return.

Let's take the first two headlines together: what's the common thread that ties them together?

If you said "changing values," you're right on the money. While the sex story is designed to titillate younger readers and annoy older ones, is it really front page news? It sure is, when you've got one, maybe two other stories that come from the same stew (not even including the latest on Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers).

Spending on sports in high school and college is outpacing spending on academics. The problem is that the numbers of graduates who are capable of finding work other than as players in pro sports are far greater than the bodies who in fact do become big-name sports stars. Shouldn't the dollar values in this case be reversed?

"Redefining sex" is a totally B.S. expression. You're straight or you're gay. That's pretty much it on that count. "Intimacy crisis" is nothing more than a change in attitude; nobody is redefining anything. What this is all about is the fact that young people today have access to so much information from so many sources, it seems like there's some major shift in thinking in America. It's more a matter of intensity than redefining anything.

Just like schools spending more on sports than on studies, so to speak.

And the Big Story, 1 in 4 Iraq vets ailing on return? In the middle of the story, the 28% figure is explained by USA Today saying that those servicemembers "returned with problems ranging from lingering battle wounds to toothaches, from suicidal thoughts to strained marriages." One other statistic quoted is that 47% saw someone wounded or killed or saw a dead body.

What I'd like to know is the number of battle wounds versus toothaches, and the logic of putting both "ailments" in the same phrase....and the numbers of suicidal thoughts and strained marriages that were actually voiced from other wars....and the number of just plain civikians who were "ailing" for days, weeks, even months, after seeing one or both planes fly into the twin towers.

And people continue to insist the mainstream media doesn't have a liberal agenda. All you have to do surf the front page of the news on a day when there's no single dominant story and judge for yourself.

Listen Here for the audio version of today's George Blog

2005-10-19T04:00:00.000-07:00

Talkin' Trash

I'm sorry to see that a lot of people have bought into the myth of recycling that Kansas City has been promoting. Enough people believe this garbage so that starting the first of November, KC's recycling program becomes a weekly affair.

Interesting side note: published reports say in some parts of the city, as many as 90% of residents recycle. Why is it that in the inner city, only around 30% do?

Why is recycling a myth? To put it as simply as possible, we can't create more stuff than we can throw away. We can change it's shape and volume, but ultimately, it's physically impossible to do. We can always change it back. Granted, at large cost, but you get what you pay for whether you pay now or pay later.

I'm aware that this type of talk is virtual blasphemy, especially for parents of children who are taught from very early on that recycling is next to cleanliness.

What it is is a feelgood thing, and like all feelgood things, all you have to do is follow the money trail to see the scam.

If recycling is The Right Thing To Do, then why are the people who put out their blue bins not PAID for their recyclables? After all, what they're throwing away is being used primarily by private business to manufacture products that are ultimately sold--except the provider of the raw materials is not compensated for the product.

"But it's good for the environment!" scream the glass-brained devotees of the myth. To them I say, check out the long term results of not just a few cities, but whole countries (Denmark is one) who have concluded the results of recycling all the way around are simply not worth it.

Locally, this is just a well-worked plan for Kansas City to nail its residents for more money above and beyond the 1% earnings tax for trash removal. Smoke and mirrors - one of the illusions the city has managed to pull off successfully.

Listen Here for the audio version of today's George Blog.

2005-10-17T13:47:00.000-07:00

A Hand, Not a Handout

First of all, let's see the record straight about people wandering the streets---you know, people who don't wear ties or belly blouses and who don't have a cell phone glued to their ears because they don't have any.

To me, there are three kinds: the homeless, bums, and the mentally ill.

And as you can quickly guess, there are hybrid categories, because nobody knows how many homeless and bums are mentally ill.

I know that my categorizing people wandering the streets will anger some people. They are the ones who can't differentiate between a hand and a handout.

There's a big story in the Kansas City Star today about a proposed multi-million dollar campus to assist homeless people.The basic idea is good: a place for real homeless people to catch a shower and a meal and get job training and counseling--but NOT a place to crash for the night. The bad part is that phony homeless people--bums--will only have to walk two blocks to sleep inside.

I have no problem with using an intelligent combinaton of tax and private dollars to help people who may not be technically homeless, but are so strung out financially after paying for heat and rent, that they are genuinely having a hard time having enough left over to buy groceries and clothes for their families.

I DO have a problem with professional bums who are undeserving, wanting only a place to sleep, a free meal, and enough money to buy booze. And there are professional bums on the streets. In two different cities large and small, I've talked with religious leaders who privately acknowledge this class of people and have discouraged me from helping them when I thought some of them were truly needy.

The story in the paper quotes Michael Stoops, acting executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless in Washington, D.C. who says that providing job training is key to ending homelessness. He says “The majority of homeless people are able bodies and what they need most is a job that pays a living wage so they can afford housing.”

I don't believe him.

I've talked with a lot of people over the past three years who deal with head and brain injuries and one thing I've learned is that probably the majority of people wandering the streets have some kind of injury like that that is hardly ever diagnosed properly by the social workers who think that they are doing a great thing.

What this type of person needs most is a determination of how much they can actually understand and what their level of function is. Figuring how how many people there really are like this should be the first step, not a multi-million dollar feelgood operation that look on TV and looks to people in general like a solid answer to an ongoing problem.

The real problem that the people who are coming up with these plans just don't understand the difference between a hand and a handout.

Listen Here for the audio version of today's George Blog.

2005-10-14T04:00:00.000-07:00

Cash With a Catch

You be the judge: is it compassionate conservatism or a crazy liberal scheme?

Peru has a government program named Juntos, which means "Together." It's that country's way of fighting poverty, and it's similar to other programs in Latin America known as CCT programs. CCT stands for Conditional Cash Transfer. This particular program will give a family $30 a month, but only if they meet certain conditions. Keep in mind that $30 a month in that neck of the woods is basically doubling the income of a family. We are talking seriously poor folks.

According to Lucien Chauvin, correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor,

To be eligible for Juntos, a family must have children under the age of 14 and live in a community where at least two basic needs - running water, electricity, schools, health services - are unmet. Families receiving the cash in Peru must enroll their children in schools and ensure that they are vaccinated. Pregnant mothers must take part in pre-natal care programs and post-natal controls. In addition, the adults must have national identification cards and make sure that their children have birth certificates.

As long as they meet the conditions, families will be eligible for the stipend for up to eight years. They can receive the full $30 a month for the first four years and will be slowly weaned off the program over the final four years.

Your first impression of this plan may be the same as mine--it seems like a decent idea, because it looks like giving someone a hand instead of a handout. It's got a definite end date, so it's not endless welfare. Parents have to make sure their kids are well and getting an education . If you're getting this money and you ignore the requirements, the money stops. The requirements are reasonable. Some people will disagree because of the part about national I.D. cards, but we'll leave that for another blog.

It's not hard to picture this plan on a somewhat larger scale and start wondering if some variation of it would work in the United States. Remember, we're talking the poorest of the poor. The program in Peru started out in the most remote parts of nowhere and is designed to ultimately be instituted in inner city neighborhoods, so there's not much of a track record yet.

The intelligentsia in Peru are debating whether or not the plan will work. One criticism is that it's based on what the government wants and not the needs of the people. But the first recipients designated to get their $30 said the first things they would do would be to buy food and clothing for their children, or farm animals to start a business.

Another critic says it will likely take up to ten years before anyone can say the program is a success or a bust.

And, acording to the Christian Science Monitor story,

Despite billions of dollars spent by the Peruvian government and international donors to reduce poverty in the past two decades, there are proportionately more people living in poverty today than in 1985. While poverty levels have dropped from 60 percent in the mid-1980s to slightly less than 50 percent today, the population has increased by 10 million people.

The people who are in the first wave of this program must think it's too good to be true. The inevitable changes of leadership and political sentiments will certainly cause changes in it. It'll be interesting to watch to see if the Juntos plan works and if it does, start thinking about if any of it could be used to help remodel the welfare workings here, which never seem to satisfy the recipients or the taxpayers who foot the bill.

Listen Here for the audio version of today's George Blog

2005-10-13T04:00:00.000-07:00

When Is a Child Not a Child?

I've got an answer that works pretty good for me: a child is not a child when that individual knowingly, deliberately, intentionally stabs their mother to death.

Esmie Tseng is a 16-year-old girl from Overland Park, Kansas, who has been charged with first degree murder in the death of her mother, which happened last August. For the first time since then, her father, Tao Tseng has made a statement, asking the District Attorney to try her as a juvenile and not as an adult, as the D.A. has requested.

Maybe it's because I am not a parent that I cannot understand his words:

“If my daughter is tried and penalized with hardened criminals and recidivists, she will be doomed. I have already been deprived of my wife. I am afraid I will not survive the loss of my daughter, a more devastating blow.”

A more devastating blow?

Understand that we're pretty much assuming that this girl is guilty, for the sake of this conversation. There are no other suspects in the case, and it appears that there is no question of who done it, since it allegedly took place in the home with just the two women there.

I have to quote one other part of the statement from Esmie's father:

“If Esmie becomes a part of the adult criminal system, it will simply be another tragedy because her wonderful gifts and talents will without question be forever lost. She has far too much to give to the world for that to happen."

Honestly, this talk makes me sick. Whether you like to admit it or not, children in America today grow up far faster than did children of the fifties, sixties, or even more recent decades. At 16, college and careers start becoming matters of concern right next to trying to be cool, hip, and trendy.

And here's the bottom line:

At 16, you may not be mentally or physically 100% "adult," but you ARE adult enough to know that it's wrong to stab your mother to death. When you do that, you forfeit any so-called "wonderful gifts and talents" you may have, unless you are, in fact, brain-damaged.

Which Esmie is most certainly not, according to the bio that appears on a website put up by her friends:

A bright, talented, and caring 16 year old girl, Esmie is well-known, respected and loved by her friends, her friends' families, her teachers and coaches and by many, many members of her community.

Intellectually gifted, Esmie has been an outstanding student throughout her academic career, pushing herself to achieve and maintain a high grade point average during her first two years at the highly competitive Blue Valley North and earning a spot on the honor role both years. She has excelled in many subjects, demonstrating especially great ability and promise in writing and an exceptional aptitude in philosophy.

If Esmie is so intellectually gifted, is there any reason for her not knowing killing your mother is wrong? And what the hell does an exceptional aptitude in philosophy have to do with anything here? If anything, these words and the rest that follow paint a picture of someone with above-average maturity who certainly deserves to be treated like an adult--all the way around.

Esmie is definitely well-known in the entire Kansas City area now, but she is NOT respected or loved by many, many members of the community.

Few killers are.

Listen Here for the audio version of today's George Blog

2005-10-12T04:00:00.000-07:00

Rumors We Like to Hear

The free online edition of U.S. News & World Report isn't above printing rumors and they've posted one that put a broad smile on my face, and probably will put one on yours, too. Let me help spread the rumor with what they said:

Is Al Gore coming back? If allies we talked to have their way, the former veep will be the next president. "It's Gore Time," says a political strategist and fundraiser who is opening a bid to get Gore into the race. Gore friends see his recent political and business moves as proof he's preparing to run. Allies say that in speeches, Gore has found his voice to address domestic and world issues. And in raising money for his Current TV network, which targets the critical youth market, Big Al has built an issue base and donor network that's competitive with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton 's. Our source--a top aide in the previous Bush administration--is planning meetings with Gore's team to push an early entry while Clinton runs for re-election in New York. It doesn't end there: The Gorebots want him to pick Sen. Barack Obama, the youthful Illinois African-American, as his No. 2.

Al Gore as the Democratic presidential nominee again? That would suit me fine! Gore has reinvented himself very sucessfully as a clean-cut extremist in a business suit. Sort of a Howard Dean who can afford to wear custom-tailored suits instead of one off the rack. Gore has moved from left of center to FAR left of center and loves preaching to the choir. He and his frenzied followers can't seem to grasp that their party has split into two groups - the anarchists like him, and the ones who are still clearly on the left, but understand that the way to win votes does not emphasize shrill rants and ravings that belong on a stage or screen drama, not on the campaign trail.

"The critical youth market?" Someone's head is where the sun doesn't shine. Or maybe Al is spending some much time supervising a TV network which consists mainly of programming for people with attention span problems that he can't remember the youth that were supposed first to propel Howard Dean into the White House and later, John Kerry.

If, through some unimaginable quirk, Big Al does become the candidate, it'll mark the first time in American history that we would see the same bumper sticker on cars of both Democrats and Republicans.

It would read: "ANYBODY but Gore!"

LISTEN HERE for the audip version of today's George Blog.

2005-10-11T04:00:00.000-07:00

When "Moron" is Too Polite a Term

It's time for the supporters of building a new baseball park in downtown Kansas City to have a "listening tour" to see if the Jackson County honchos will let them speak.

Not that I think the Jackson County Sports Authority members have more brainpower collectively than a worm, but I hope that they tell these dreamers to go pound sand.

The supporters of this lunatic idea mainly belong to the Downtown Council. Chairman Jon Copaken, says:

“Everybody thinks we’re up to sinister things, and all we really want to do is make sure an alternative idea is heard, explored and debated.”

Now, just why is this "alternative idea" such a rotten one?

Let the facts speak for themselves:

A Poll taken this year by the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce showed that 80 percent of county residents opposed the concept of a downtown ballpark.

Kansas City Star columnist Kevin Collison points out:

It certainly appears that Jackson County voters would be presented with old wine in a new bottle next April if they are asked to authorize a sales tax that could generate up to $450 million to fund improvements at the sports complex. The Bistate II proposal, defeated last year, asked for $360 million from the entire metropolitan area.

And of course, yours truly has pointed out, with the help of the Business Journal's national research project of a few years ago, that Kansas City is the third most overextended pro sports market in the United States. The inevitable higher cost of tickets to watch a game in a new downtown stadium would probably keep the attendance figures as dismal as they have been for the Royals after the initial groundswell of interest in a swell new ballfield dies down.

Downtown Council chairman Copaken said:

“This organization feels there are viable alternatives that we want to have an opportunity to present... the county created this forum so we want to participate and make the case that our proposal is worth looking into.

Jon, it's just a professional courtesy extended from one bunch of political hacks to another for an idea that clearly is a LOSER.

"Moron" is too polite a term to describe the supporters of this stupid idea.

Listen Here for the audio version of today's George Blog.

2005-10-10T04:00:00.000-07:00

Ashes to Ashes, Dust to...Diamonds?

While it's not what you would call the top of the news, there's a never-ending discusson in America on living wills, and the choices of being buried intact, cremated, or donating your body to science. So we'll start this week off with, believe it or not, another choice that's just been added to the menu at the cemetery.

All it takes is eight ounces of creamated remains to turn you into a diamond, so that in a surreal way, you'll be around almost forever. The LifeGem company uses some type of super-hot ovens to transform ashes to graphite and then press the stone into blue or yellow diamonds that retail for anywhere from 2,700 to 20,000 dollars. And of course, your survivors will still have plenty left over (that's ashes, not dollars) to stick in a vase and keep for show in your house.

Dean VandenBiesen, vice president of operations for LifeGem, says someone has ordered eleven of these things so far. Saying that it's certainly not for everyone, Dean also said:

"We have people that approach us who have just experienced a tragedy and they say I can't wait, I'm so excited about this. In the field of death care, when someone 'says I'm really excited about this,' I think we've achieved what we wanted to do which is change the culture of death."

Excited over someone close to you dying because they can be made into a sparkly rock? That's certainly a change, but it's not one I call positive. When I die, I want EVERYBODY to be upset, not eager for me to shuffle off so someone can see how much what's left of me might fetch on eBay!

If you haven't been a faithful reader/listener to The George Blog, you might not have caught the story I told about the the company that makes solar-powered video screens that can be mounted on a tombstone and play a 5 to 10 minute tribute or video from the deceased. "Hi, this is Bill. Thanks for coming by to see me today. Wish I could be here in person to tell you, but that's the way death goes, you know. Have a nice day."

Where else in the world other than America would you expect stuff like this to be marketed to the masses? Sounds more like the funeral industry's answer to all those wedding chapels in las Vegas. Which makes me wonder: if you can get married there by an Elvis impersonator, can you be buried with Elvis saying that you have left the building, too?

Sorry. While everyone jokes about death at one time or another--which may be fine in small doses--it's far too serious to be marked by a goofy marketing idea cooked up primarily to put more money in someone else's pocket under the guise of doing something to make it less painful.

Unfortunately, death gives meaning to our lives. It is the ultimate vindication of life--a beautiful gem each one of us own owns for awhile that should not be remembered with an artificial piece of jewelry that's just a feeble attempt to avoid reality.

Listen Here for the audio version of today's George Blog.

2005-10-07T04:33:00.000-07:00

The 26 Parties

I find myself today wondering once again why many callers on some of my past radio shows think I'm either hard up for humor or just plain nuts when they heard me say I wish we had a multi-party system like the 26 or so political parties they have in Italy and some other countries. The reasons given for why it's a dumb idea range from practicality to concern that without consensus, nothing would ever really get done.

I think of this today as I look at the backlash on the right against President Bush's nominating White House counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. I expect the overwhelming majority of Democrats to wail and complain about any nominee to any position who's not a Democrat, and the same from the Republicans if the situation was the other way around. But to hear the wailing of the Republicans, you'd think Bush had picked a name at random out of the phone book.

It seems these days that Bush cannot win on any decision he makes. Conservatives are upset that he hasn't selected a ran-and-file conservative whose views are commonly known (and reflect theirs). Liberals are upset, saying the nomination smacks of cronyism, and echoing the mainstream media's cry that she lacks the expertise it takes to be on the Supreme Court.

And then there's Trent lott, who said on "Hardball," on MSNBC:

"There are a lot more people -- men, women and minorities -- that are more qualified, in my opinion, by their experience than she is. Now, that doesn't mean she's not qualified, but you have to weigh that. And then you have to also look at what has been her level of decisiveness and competence, and I don't have enough information on that yet."

Excuse me. What kind of screwball goes on national TV and says the woman is not as qualified as other people, but he doesn't have enough information on her competance and decisiveness to comment on it, but he still comments on it?

I wonder if this same type of crap went on and just never got exposed in the days of no national media and instant news, when the first or second Supreme Court was selected? I wonder if the media would be singing a diferent song today is we had 26 political parties relatively familiar to the public instead of just two?

The President has selected a woman he says he knows and trusts. The Christian Science Monitor says, in a simple and straightforward summary of who she is:

Harriet Miers, the White House counsel, has never been a judge and is not a recognized expert on constitutional law, in sharp contrast to the new chief justice, John Roberts.

Still, she has diverse experience, including many years in private law practice, and political experience that none of the sitting justices has, both as a member of the Dallas City Council and, for the past five years, as a member of Mr. Bush's White House inner circle. Before being named counsel 10 months ago, Ms. Miers had served as assistant to the president, staff secretary, and deputy chief of staff.

As the replacement for the retiring Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman justice, Miers would maintain the presence of two women on the court, and perhaps also present a counterweight to the liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

And I say instead of having what undoubtedly will be a free-for-all debate in the media, the elected officials who will ultimately vote for or against the nomination should realize that their time to cast their vote is already set, and put the emphasis on their daily job of doing "The People's Work." They should not use this nomination as yet another photo op or chance to tout the political line which they slavishly support.

I'm telling you, the 26 Parties idea has a lot more going for it than most people think!

Listen Here for the audio version of today's George Blog

2005-10-06T09:48:00.000-07:00

The Cell Phone Battle Heats Up

First, let's get one thing straight. They're CELL phones, dammit, not wireless phones.

I have a rechargable toothbrush with no wires. It is neither a wireless toothbrush nor a cell toothbrush. It's an electric toothbrush. I have a hand-held rechargable little vacuum cleaner-dust buster-thingy. It is neither a wireless vacuum cleaner nor a cellular dust-buster thingy. And these telephones under discussion work without wires but they wouldn't be worth squat if it wasn't for the CELL concept that they need to work properly.

What's happening is thet Lawrence, Kansas, city traffic engineer David Woosley is recommending making it illegal to talk on a cell phone while driving. The same news story that reported this quoted some guy who said "I would go insane. I'm on the phone all the time. I am. I have to have my phone with me at all times."

No, you don't.

The world existed just fine without them and as convenient and handy as they are, the world would, believe it or not, survive if they suddenly all went away. Yep--you guessed it: it's the resurrected debate on whether or not cell phones should be illegal while driving.

Personally, I am leaning more and more toward agreeing with those who say we should ban them, and the reason why has nothing to do with government or personal rights or such. My attitude is pretty much based on personal experience of driving and seeing what happens or can happen when some cell phone users drive and talk and enter that strange twilight zone where they're going through the motions of driving, but aren't really looking at the road. Twice this year, I've had a couple of these drivers almost hit me while they were changing lanes, oblivious to the reality that there was another car next to them!

An unusual collaboration among the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and American Automobile Association was featured a few years ago in a report by Bryan Knowles for SpeakOut.com (Read it Here).

Check out this fair and balanced excerpt I've put together for you:

On One Hand...

Dialing numbers, receiving calls and holding conversations on cell phones while driving eats away at the concentration required of motorists. Beyond the tragic human toll of fatalities caused by drivers distracted by cell phones, scientific studies have established correlations between cell phone usage and accidents. A study of 699 Canadian drivers with cell phones found that "the risk of a collision when using a cellular telephone was four times higher than the risk when a cellular telephone was not being used". The federal government and individual states must protect citizens by enacting legislation that restricts, if not completely outlaws the use of cell phones by motorists and when operating their vehicles.

On the Other Hand...

When states issue drivers licenses, an individual motorist has been deemed both responsible and capable of making decisions behind the wheel. Holding a conversation on a cell phone while driving is no more distracting or different than talking to a passenger, eating fast food or fumbling for a music tape or CD. Motorists were involved in accidents due to inattentive driving decades before the advent of cell phones and no U.S. studies have proven that cell phones cause accidents. A driver should be able to chose whether or not to use a cell phone while driving. Attempts to legally prohibit this infringes on the personal rights of motorists.

So where do YOU weigh in, and why? If you haven't become interactive yet with The George Blog, this is a great chance to get your end of the conversation going. I'll keep you posted on the war news as more reports come back from the firing line.

Listen Here for the audio edition of today's George Blog.

2005-10-06T09:38:00.000-07:00

2005-10-05T04:00:00.000-07:00

"I Want to be Different, Like Everyone Else"

I just have to rant a bit today about something that's been bugging me that with make you glad someone else is feeling the same as you, or else make you laugh. But I hope you won't be laughing when I'm done.

What's been bugging me is today's kids, and I'm not even a father. I've been struck by some things I've encountered in the media, through my friends, and by just plain looking at what's happening around me.

I guess it all started with word that "Flightplan," a new movie that was almost universally trounced by reviewers everywhere, was one of the top movies at the box office the past couple of weeks. This, of course, is due to the primary buyers of movie tickets, young people. I find it hard to believe that star power (Jodie Foster in this case) can take a movie that receives just plain bad reviews for stupidity of story line, not for violence, or sex, or attitude, and make it a big hit. This tells me that a great many young people either have money to burn or just don't care enough to think a little before laying down their cash. Don't get me wrong--I've seen my share of crummy movies, and I used to be a big movie-goer. But I remember checking out what the movie was about and what people who had already seen it (personally or via what reviews I could get my hands on), before I spent money that could have bought me some other type of entertainment.

Then there's the story that was in the paper a few days ago about a 20-something fairly bright guy who is a real whiz on movies who freely admitted that he refuses to watch any movie in black and white, even if it's universally considered a classic film. First time I encountered this attitude was via a friend's 11-year-old son. Eleven I can understand, but 25? What troubles me is wondering how many other ideas seemingly bright people dismiss simply because they're not...well, colorful enough.

Next: earrings on men. It's pretty easy to remember when the fad started, as a show of outrageousness or in-your-face rebellion. It was a symbol of defiance. But now, it's not a sign of resistance. It's some type of fashion statement that is lost through its becoming so commonplace. No one cares, except for those who still think it's somehow cool who say "I want to be different, like everyone else." Don't believe me? How much spiked hair do you still see around these days?

One more: I have a friend who has a son who lives with him (Mom divorced and remarried). Son is in his early 20's. Said he ws't feeling well the other night, probably because of his acid reflux. So Dad says he'll go out and get some of the medicine the kid takes when it acts up. By the time he got back, his son was gone, having decided to go out with his pals.

There's more than a little bit of irresponsibility running through all this stuff and it doesn't annoy me as much as concern me for the future. What issues are important to these kids other than having the latest style cell phone? Sometimes I think it's a reincarnation of the "me" generation, but much worse. Music, for example, has always been used to rebel against authority, but at no other time in my life did words of songs encourage people to abuse women and not be afraid to kill cops, who are, by virtue of wearing a badge, always wrong and always "the enemy."

Maybe I'm worrying a bit too much, or I just happen to be in one of those cycles where ths type of stuff comes together in a cluster so it looks worse than it is. I sure hope so.

Listen Here for the audio version of today's George Blog.

2005-10-04T04:00:00.000-07:00

Attitude is Everything, but Don't Tell Starbucks

One of my personal fascinations is the batch of news stories that sort of escape the Big Spotlight but never really go away after they make their first headline-grabbing appearance.

One such story is the constant battle between people, like me, who do not feel terribly inconvenienced by various security measures that have come about since 9/11 and people who feel that those measures are the beginning of the end of all so-called rights of personal liberty as we know them.

I've always believed that the people who whine about things they're allegedly "giving up" and mumble about the dangers of a Big Brother government are ignorant leftovers from the 70's who never matured. If you know any of them, do me a favor and talk any of them who may be planning a trip to Italy out of going.

Italy has an anti-terror law that makes Internet cafe managers--and for that matter--any manager of any place offering public communications services--to make passport photocopies of every customer who uses the Internet, phone, or fax facilities in those places.

One Internet cafe manager in Rome says he's closing hsi doors because he doesn't want to have to deal with page after page of photocopied passports and be a cop. Guess it goes to show what a misnomer "Internet cafe" is. You'd think a cafe wouldn't have to close up shop if they had decent coffee and fresh overpriced pastries.

The law was passed after the bombings in England this summer. It's part of a huge anti-terror piece of legislation thought to be the biggest ever in Italy.

And yet, in a country where people protest and demonstrate over all kinds of issues, no major opposition to the law has been shown. The Christian Science Monitor goes on to say that most Italian citizens are pretty much unfazed by the law. Can you imagine what would happen if we had the same thing here? The ACLU would be throwing rallys in front of Starbucks from coast to coast.

Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu says "There is no doubt that, to achieve maximum efficiency, we need the support of the best technological applications."

The Monitor says:

Due to new measures, more than 25 Islamic extremists were arrested on Italian soil in 2005, according to the Interior Ministry. The ministry also reported that they are conducting "rigorous surveillance" of high-risk areas of terrorist activity and over 13,000 strategic locations in Italy. On Aug. 12 and 13 alone, a reported 32,703 checks were carried out on suspicious individuals.

I know what the whiners will say. "25 people arrested out of 32,000??"

Yes. Or have you forgotten that it took fewer terrorists than that to kill over 2,000 Americans in one stroke?

Attitude IS everything.

Listen Here for the audio version of today's George Blog.

2005-10-03T04:00:00.000-07:00

A Strange Victory for Illegal Aliens

Hopefully, The George Blog will not be the only place you'll hear about this. I found out over the weekend that:

A federal District Court Judge has ruled that the privacy rights of illegal aliens convicted of heinous crimes in this country are more important than the public’s right to know if the government is properly enforcing a key immigration law.

Hard to believe? You bet! But true. Mark Tapscott of the Heritage Foundation uncovered this travesty. Some reporters asked the Justice Department to release a lot of information about thousands of aliens convicted of serious crimes all over the country. We publish the names and addresses of sex offenders in print and online throughout the United States, but we can't print information about murderers, thieves and rapists who are in this country illegally? What a crock!

Judge Richard J. Leon, according to Mark Tapscott's report, said:

“these privacy interests, and the privacy intrusion associated with disclosing this information clearly outweighs the public disclosure of this information."

Leon further argued that that criminal aliens have "a substantial personal privacy interest" in their FBI case numbers and that interest also outweighs the public's interest in being able to assess the performance of government officials required by the law to meet criminal aliens when released from jail to escort them out of the country.

The root of this lunatic decision has a lot to do with journalists who routinely ask for release of information by various government agencies. Bureaucrats, whose jobs always seem to be in some kind of perpetual danger, seem to be in a never-ending low-level war with the media, regardless of any real or imagined political slant. They want to protect their butts at all times, even if common sense, logic, and the safety of you and me have to be disregarded.

Can anything be done about craziness like this? I think so, but I also think it's going to take a very long time or a very large public outcry, or both. Don't hold your breath.

Read the whole story here

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2005-09-30T04:00:00.000-07:00

Field of Nightmares

The lease which Jackson County, Missouri, signed with the Kansas City Chiefs and the Kansas City Royals back in the early 1990's said that the teams will be given similar consideration when it comes to improvements.

Does 40 million sound similar to 300 million?

The news is out that the County may seriously ask voters next year for their OK to spend $300 million (or more) to spiff up Arrowhead Stadium and $40 million to improve Kaufmann.

Attorney Thomas Stewart, managing partner at Lathrop & Gage, the law firm representing the county in lease negotiations, told The Kansas City Star’s editorial board, “There is a significant chance we won’t give the Royals anything,” Then later he backed off, according to the paper, saying voters could be asked to approve the $40 million or so in facility repairs needed to ensure the county does not default on its lease with the Royals.

Here's the key: Attorney Stewart says “We will take a risk that the Royals are not going to move,” while Mike Smith, Jackson County Sports Complex Authority chairman, says that Stewart does not speak for the Sports Authority. Let's see now...the head honcho of the group says that the lawyer for the group doesn't actually represent the group.

Someone is trying to pull a fast one here.

I'm not a sportscaster, but here's my play-by-play:

The county has no money to fulfill its lease with the sports teams even though they knew ten years in advance when the money needed to be spent to prevent a default. STRIKE ONE.

The county is gambling on voters approving a new tax to bail them out, and as I'm predicting, will use scare-and-shame tactics so that if voters don't approve the tax, they'll be pictured as who to blame for one or both teams leaving Kansas City. STRIKE TWO.

The county hasn't included any of the Royals management in their latest talks. Royals management says it first learned of the latest scam--or is that supposed to be scheme?--by hearing about it from newspaper reporters. STRIKE THREE.

And they're out! Who? Two losers here - the County for being such poor players in the negotiations and the Royals, who, even with their incredibly bad back-to-back losing seasons, will likely have their choice of a dozen or more cities to move to when Royals owner David Glass finally wakes up and realizes that the County essentially doesn't give a damn about the Royals, but wants to absolutely, positively make sure the Chiefs don't think about relocating.

The KC Star also reports:

Stewart blamed supporters of a downtown baseball park, particularly talk radio, for making it unlikely that county voters would approve $200 million to $225 million in improvements at Kauffman.

Who's the one having the bad dreams here? Is the lawyer? Is it the Sports Authority, who's cutting checks to him for his service? Is it the voters who are supplying the funds to the Sports Authority members who believe that 40 is the same as 300?

Or could it be all of the above?

Truly, a Field of Nightmares!

LISTEN HERE for the audio version of today's George Blog

2005-09-29T04:00:00.000-07:00

Stupid Is as Stupid Does

I am not making this up. Six principals in the Independence, Missouri, school district okayed the policy that said that parents were not allowed to visit classrooms while teaching was taking place.

According to the Kansas City Star,

At Bryant Elementary, principal Jon Pye announced the rule earlier this month in his school newsletter. He implemented the rule, he said, to protect the classroom from disruptive parents and to protect student privacy. Pye said he wanted to prevent parents from gossiping about students whom they might see struggling with academics. He extended the rule to include parents who regularly volunteer at the school.

How'd a loony like this ever get to be a principal? Let's trash his issues one at a time.

Disruptive parents: can the parents be any more disruptive than most kids in school these days? Principal Pye, if a parent visit a classroom becomes disruptive, the teacher calls you, you take action, and class resumes. End of story.

Gossiping about students: do you think any parents interested enough to visit a classroom to see how their children are being taught are that interested in others, or the type who are there to gossip? Get a grip, willya? Those parents are there to make sure their kids don't grow up to have the incompetant leadership policies you are displaying.

Protect student privacy: ain't so such thing. The smarter kids and the dumber kids AND their families already know who is who. No one has to spy inside a classroom to figure it out, and frankly, no one really cares as long as it's not their children.

Also from the KC Star story:

Earlier this year, a new Missouri law took effect directing state educators to increase parental involvement. Moreover, a section of the federal No Child Left Behind law requires school districts, especially those that get federal Title I dollars, to have a written policy outlining effective ways to increase parents’ involvement in schools.

Superintendent Jim Hinson threw out the policy and said “The only district policy is to encourage parental involvement.”

Good for you, Jim. It's nice to know that you got Forrest Gump's simple message and took action on it.

Because it's true: stupid is as stupid does.

Listen Here to today's audio version of the George Blog

2005-09-28T04:00:00.000-07:00

Beware! The Government May Take Your Junk!

Forget Eminent Domain. Now, some powers-that-be are thinking about passing a law that would let them walk on to your property and take away some of your property just because your neighbors don't like it being there!

Have you ever heard of anything more outrageous than this? Has it come down to neighbor against neighbor?

I mean, if there's no covenant in your neighbor association's list that says you can't keep a few rusting old cars that don't run on your property until they disintegrate, what's the world coming to?

Code enforcement officials in Knox County, Tennessee, approved an ordinance Monday to force property owners to clean up junk cars in their yards. They say they've been getting a lot of calls about one guy's yard that is "bumper-to-bumper with beat-up, rusted cars."

There are allegedly car parts and tires all over the place. Heck, where I come from, that would be an sign of wealth. People used to joke "How can you tell the rich part of town?" The answer was "Easy, just look for the yards with the most cars up on blocks in the front yard."

My current favorite in this news story from Knoxville is the minivan with weeds growing in it. Somehow, that just seems fitting, just...right to me.

Now, here's where it gets nasty: the county is considering adopting a law that would give people 10 to 30 days to remove cars that don't work from their lawns. If they don't, the county will tow 'em away at the owner's expense. This is "keep your city clean" with some muscle behind it!

If it fair? I suppose it falls under the same deal as when you don't cut your grass for, say, four or five months, and the police have to come out to find the sign they put there about getting it mowed that no one can see anymore, because the weeds are higher than it is.

I realize you may be asking "George, why is someone as astute as you, a keen analyst of international news and foreign policy, talking about junk cars in some moron's yard half a country away?"

Two reasons. First, while driving around town lately, I have seen some of the worst taste in lawn ornaments ever. We're not talking little politically incorrect statues of jockeys holding imaginary horses, or fatal overdoses of spinning thingys from the dollar store, we're talking overwhelming decoration by people who need professional help. These people have to be confronted with force, if necessary, to clean up their act!

Second, we had junk cars in my back yard while I was growing up. So the subject is near and dear to my heart.

You see, my father was the owner-operator of North End Garage where I grew up, and a large part of his one-man business that put food on our table was his hauling in vehicles that were wrecked in accidents. Our large back yard was where they were stored until the owners came to claim them and arrange to have them hauled away. Zoning really didn't exist in my small, but crummy, hometown.

By law, Dad had to leave them there for some specified period of time. It wasn't unusual for an owner to say "Keep It!" if a car was smashed up beyond repair, creating a loss and a disposal problem. Our house/business on the front of the property was built such that from the front, most public view, you could only see a couple of cars, and Dad was always careful to put the least wrecked ones there.

And the only people who really complained about the junkers were the ones who lived in the two trailers just on the other side of the property line.

So laugh if you must, but this is a big issue in communities all over the country. Remember this blog the next time you see some piece of crap sitting in someone's front yard.

Oh, one last thing---those neighbors who complained when the junker count rose past their tolerance level?

I think they were just jealous.

Click Here to listen to today's George Blog

2005-09-27T04:00:00.000-07:00

It's Not About Abortion

Here's the story: one of the two main parts of Missouri's new anti-abortion law allows parents to sue people who "intentionally cause, aid or assist" their minor daughters in getting abortions without their consent. A federal judge has already thrown up a roadblock, but now a state judge has said the law likely violates constitutional rights to free speech.

Both judges are saying that the way the law is worded, it's not clear as to what words or actions could be interpreted as "aiding or assisting" a teenager in getting an abortion without parental consent.

There's nothing more effective than to throw an emotionally loaded grenade labelled "free speech" into an argument that really has NOTHING to do with free speech. By doing this, everyone gets bogged down in trying to decide what "free speech" really is, and then tie it in to their position. Let me say it again: it's not about abortion.

What it's about is the right of parents to control their children, to set limits to what they can and cannot do "as long as you live under my roof," a perfectly valid argument. Part of this parental control is the right to tell people to get the hell away from their sons or daughters if the parents think those people are a bad or corrupting influence on their children.

And parents should have the right to sue anyone who provides clear-cut information and/or assistance to help their kids go against their wishes. It shouldn't matter whether the information is designed to help a girl get an abortion, start smoking or take part in so-called hate crimes. If someone is a stalker, parents can get an order to keep the creep away. Now, these judges are saying that parents can't do essentially the same thing--keep people they consider harmful or a threat away from their kids.

I'm especially upset about this because I know from many talk radio shows that zealots on both sides of this issue only care about their position and nothing else matters. The word "abortion" itself is enough justification to ignore the real story, the real facts, so that they can mount the soapbox and yell, basically preaching to their own respective choirs.

"Free Speech"---most people think of the First Amendment when they hear the expression. Don't teachers teach that the First Amendment keeps the government from making laws that might stop us from saying what we think? That people have the right to criticize the government and to share their opinions with others?

Well, here's the catch: there's one whale of a difference between sharing your opinion with others and helping a minor to get an abortion without parental consent. We bust people who try to entice children to use them as sexual objects; why is it so hard to understand that we should also bust people who actively encourage children to take drastic actions that go against their parent's wishes?

That's what this is all about. It's not about abortion. It's not about free speech. It's all about common sense and parental rights, and that's the bottom line.

Click Here to listen to today's George Blog.

2005-09-26T04:00:00.000-07:00

Greece and Area 51

Sometimes the craziest combination of things results in great ideas. They come from people like the guy who accidentally dropped a scoop of ice cream into a glass of seltzer water and created the ice cream soda. Or the Earl of Sandwich, who told his servant to throw some meat between a couple of hunks of bread, so he could eat and keep on playing cards comfortably.

I think I've tied together a couple of ideas the same way. They don't have anything to do with food, but taken together, they might be the start of a better way to handle the problem of illegal aliens coming into the country across the Mexican border.

Sunday night, I decided to sit back and watch a program on the Learning Channel titled Area 51: Fact or Fiction, about the infamous extremely secretive government air base in the desert north of Las Vegas where they test aircraft and maybe do something with UFO's. It was easy to separate conjecture from fact on the show and the fact part of it was verry interesting. A team of four private individuals put together a 24-hour surveillance project to monitor activity legally from just outside various boundaries around the perimeter of Area 51. The security specialist on the team easily pointed out various state-of-the-art eavesdropping stuff, such as sophisticated listening devices. What was described as a satellite picture of the air base was also shown.

Later, I read a news story about how the government of Greece is considering launching a network of 12 lightweight satellites into orbit to monitor Greece’s borders for illegal immigration and other uses. According to the story, in the Greek newspaper Kathimerini:

The network of satellites would revolve between 400 to 800 kilometers above the earth — much lower than other satellites, which usually orbit at about 36,000 kilometers.

The satellites will be neither expensive nor bulky; they will weigh about 50 kilograms or slightly more, depending on the satellite’s program, the source said.

One of the network’s main duties will be to monitor the country’s borders for illegal immigrants. Another would be to help determine where the country’s oil wealth lies.

Each year, Greece catches thousands of immigrants trying to sneak into the country as a means of moving on to other parts of Western Europe.

The migrants, who hail from countries such as as Iraq, often fall victim to people smugglers and enter the country under dangerous conditions.

Can you connect the dots? Can you see the big picture?

I'm saying it's a given that the U.S. government has the smarts and the technology to do the same thing and more intelligently utilize the manpower we have. If we're doing a great job securing the borders of Area 51, surely it seems reasonable to assume we can adapt the same concepts to monitor the border better than we're doing now. As far as costs go, I can't comment because we don't know how much is spent on what we're doing as far as Area 51 is concerned.

It almost seems too simple, doesn't it? I'll be keeping an eye on the Grecian plan to see if it actually becomes a reality and how well it works.

Oh, yeah, one more thing: if Mexico doesn't like it, tough. What are they going to do? Blow our satellites out of the skies with missiles? Turn the current non-shooting border war into one that uses live ammo? Don't think so.

Click Here to listen to today's George Blog

2005-09-23T04:00:00.000-07:00

The Curse of the Hurricane

What do you think Katrina and Rita's legacy will be?

Will it be that taken together, they were a wake-up call for America to be better prepared for natural disasters of all kinds? Will it be a lingering battle between citizens' rights to stay in their homes and government's desire to evacuate them for safety's sake against their will? Will it be a unique vehicle to stoke the fires of racism arguments?

No. It won't be any of these.

What it will be is a turning up of the volume on the Myth of Global Warming.

We've already seen it with Katrina. Get ready for the same tune to be played for Rita.

The idea is great for science fiction movie such as liberal crap like The Day After Tomorrow: that the earth is getting warmer because of advances in technology, most popularly an increase in greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide.

The Environmental Studies Program at the University of Chicago is one of many programs that studies the environment and takes a long look at the myth of global warming. The study explains in plain English why it's a myth:

The earth’s atmosphere has actually cooled by 0.13 degrees Celsius since 1979 according to highly accurate satellite-based atmospheric temperature measurements. By contrast, computer climate models predicted that the globe should have warmed by an easily detectable 0.4 C over the last fifteen years.

The scientific evidence argues against the existence of a greenhouse crisis, against the notion that realistic policies could achieve any meaningful climatic impact, and against the claim that we must act now if we are to reduce the greenhouse threat.

Current computer climate models are incapable of coupling the oceans and atmosphere; misrepresent the role of sea ice, snow caps, localized storms, and biological systems; and fail to account accurately for the effects of clouds.

There's a huge amount of scientific writing--no, make that evidence--in print and online explaining why global warming is a myth, and from around the world, even from former true believers who, when faced with the facts, changed their minds!

Mike Walters, writing in the Texas A&M college newspaper The Battalion asks, "Where's the supporting evidence?" He says:

...there seems to be a lack of hard evidence suggesting that the earth really is getting warmer, that such weather patterns are outside of the normal fluctuation ranges or that any of it is caused by human activity.

...This isn't just a stubborn denial by politicians or chemical plant owners. More than 17,000 scientists have signed the Oregon Institute Petition, which states that "there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate."

If this were a small misunderstanding, it wouldn't be a problem to clear up. However, an incredible amount of people believe in this. In a national survey of 1,000 adults conducted by the polling firm Global Strategy Group this year, 70 percent of Americans polled said they consider global warming to be a "very serious" or "somewhat serious" problem.
And the media doesn't seem to be doing much to clear this matter up.

And when the winds die down, after the rain stops, and the pictures of damage and destruction hit the TV, you know those two words won't be far behind...global warming!

That's the Curse of the Hurricane.

Click Here to listen to today's George Blog

2005-09-22T04:00:00.000-07:00

Time Out to Celebrate!

It's the first day of fall, autumn, or as they rather grimly call it in England, the drop!

And it hasn't arrived soon enough for me.

Look, I know there are bigger stories to talk about today, and they'll certainly get covered by 9 out of 10 radio and TV talking heads and printmeisters. I'm talking fall, my favorite season of the year.

For the record, I'm one of the relatively few people who don't like summer because I can get a sunburn in the shade on a bright day. Really.

And I intend to savor this fall to the fullest since it's one of the last two remaining decent ones we'll see for probably a long time.

Why? Because this year, your numbskull Congress passed legislation to extend daylight saving time (DST) by four weeks. Under the measure, DST will start on the second Sunday in March and end on the first Sunday in November beginning in 2007. Currently, DST starts on the first Sunday in April and ends on the last Sunday in October.

This whole nonsense of changing our clocks is based on the ideas that more business is conducted, fewer traffic accidents occur, less crime is committed during daylight hours in early evening, as well as the much-verbalized notion that "kids don't have to walk to school in the dark in the morning." Hey! You got kids--you walk with 'em or drive 'em. Goes with the territory.

In the when-I-feel-like-it interest of being fair and balanced, let me quote from the National Sleep Foundation, a non-profit group that is all about....sleep! They took a survey on the changes to daylight saving time after it was extended.

The survey found that 56% of voters support the DST change and 44% oppose it. By contrast, 37% of voters thought the change would negatively affect their sleep, 30% thought it would positively affect their sleep, and 32% thought the DST change wouldn’t affect their sleep at all.

Here are some of the responses from people who participated in the survey:

“I know I'm being unrealistic but I wish we didn't have Daylight Saving Time at all, let alone extending it more. I think if TIME and SCHEDULES don't work well together it should be the schedules that change, not the time.” --Paul Handsaker, RRT, College Station, TX

“The DST extension will of course exacerbate the chronic sleep phase delay of American students, increasing their classroom irritability and napping, while impairing their education.” --Charles M. Epstein, MD, Atlanta, GA

“Believe it or not, human beings cannot make the sun shine for more hours. I am opposed to the extension of DST; I would prefer it be abolished. (People could always get up an hour earlier, and businesses could open their doors at an earlier time.)” --Irene Eggers, Retired Voice and Piano Teacher, San Diego, CA

“To call something by another name doesn't change its nature. A sunrise is still a sunrise, and a sunset is still a sunset.” --James C. Matthews, Retired, Coral Springs, FL

You know what the worst excuse for this nonsense is? "We'll save energy because people won't use as much electricity for lights and such in homes later in the day." What bull! What about that phoney "extra" hour of staying up to watch TV, play with your computer, work a little later at that indoor job in the winter, and all the other activties that will simply offset the energy savings that are imaginary, anyway?

So let's take time out to celebrate the best season of the year today and be glad we've got this year and next before it all goes away. Break out the chili!

Click Here to listen to today's George Blog.

2005-09-21T04:00:00.003-07:00

The (Real) News from Iraq

In the past year, I've talked with a number of guests on the air from information officers on the military payroll to just plain men and women who were home from Iraq, and the story has been the same. Basically, these people were saying that the news reports making the rounds regularly in American media for the most part ignore all mention of progress.

With "death toll" stories of U.S. military casualties or Iraqi civilians blown away by car bombs, is there any news from Iraq that could possibly be good?

There is, and it's fairly big news but it simply doesn't get reported, or if it does, it is virtually buried. It's not hard to form the conclusion that someone or many someones in mass media have an agenda.

E. Thomas McClanahan, of the Kansas City Star's editorial board, has a literally amazing piece in Tuesday's paper titled "Behind headlines are positive progress reports from Iraq." What are they? To summarize:

A successful campaign to clean out insurgent enclaves by 3,500 Americans--and 8,000 Iraqis, with the fighting taking place in tough street areas. We're talking urban warfare here. A big part of the success came from citizens who were not afraid to point out enemy troops trying to disguise themselves as just plain folks to cut and run.

While political bickering remains, the Sunnis are turning on the terrorists with more and more information being given to U.S. forces...maybe that's why there have been more attacks on civilians lately.

Last fall, the police in Mosul pretty much gave it up and ran away, but following the elections, things stabilized and tips from citizens on the police hotline there have increased by ten times.
And, most notable of all, the last six Al-Qaida leaders who were captured painted the same picture: about 80% of their network in Northern Iraq has been trashed.

So with headlines like these, why are so many people thinking the war is a losing effort? Maybe, as McClamahan suggests, it's because most media are reporting truly only one side of the story.

And for some people, if you're told something often enough, sooner or later, you start believing it. Things are not as bleak as the newsmongers want to make everyone believe, and it's news like this that proves it--the real news from Iraq that doesn't get as much space or time as the car bombings.

Read the complete KC Star article here.

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2005-09-19T04:00:00.000-07:00

Donate or Sacrifice?

You can listen to the George Blog. Click here to download and play today’s mp3 audiofile.

Chicago, Illinois

I had the honor to be a guest Sunday night on the nationally-syndicated political radio talk show Beyond the Beltway, hosted by Bruce DuMont. My fellow guests were Eric Zorn, columnist for the Chicago Tribune and Charles Lipson, Professor of Polticial Science at the University of Chicago, who was born and raised somewhat north of New Orleans.

We spent the entire two hours talking about Hurricane Katrina and rather than get into partisan issues as a lot of talk shows have been doing for weeks, we tried to look at a lot of "bigger picture issues," that were sometimes hard to talk about.

Host Bruce DuMont presented one that has stuck with me, and probably will stay with me for a long time. Bruce asked how much will Americans be willing to sacrifice to help rebuild New Orleans. The President has said there'll be plenty of money to pay the enormous tab for this major rebuilding, not only of the city itself, but the mind-body-spirit type of rebuilding, from health to jobs. But he only suggested that the money can come from cutting spending, not raising taxes.

The generosity of the American people has proven to be solid and substantial whenever it comes to helping neighbors across the country and around the world when disaster strikes. Ordinary people dig and sometimes dig deep to cough up help.

But I say there's a huge difference between making a donation and making a sacrifice. I think there's a midset in America that says a donation is OK, because it's not painful, like a sacrifice usually is. What if you were asked to take a cut in pay for awhile to help out the evacuees of New Orleans? Or maybe asked if you would voluntarily put off the drug benefit program you're entitled to now for a year...or two?

See the difference? If not, how about giving up your SUV for a car that gets better mileage, not to save you and your family some money, but primarily to help the environment and maybe make more gasoline available to everyone?

I know a lot of people will immediately react to an idea like this by saying "I earned that SUV and we have freedom of choice in this country, so back off!" That's the point! How much will America--will you, and everyone you know--sacrifice if necessary to rebuild an American city in a terrible, terrible mess?

The "me" generation has grown up and passed along its attitude towards sacrifice to another. If you don't believe me, see how many want to give up their iPods for a week or watch a movie in black and white instead of color.

Donate or sacrifice?

How can such a simple question be so hard?

2005-09-16T04:00:00.000-07:00

The Theory of Democratic Insanity

You can listen to The George Blog every day. Click here to download and play today's mp3 audiofile.

I think I've got it figured out: either most Democrats in real or imagined positions of party power are insane or I am.

Outside of the expected pseudo-debate over the confirmation of John Roberts to the Supreme Court, what have the Democrats been doing over the last few weeks?

Beating up on President Bush.

Mainstream Democrats and real left-wing liberals had a gift in Cindy Sheehan, as she became a uniting point of focus--not to argue the rights and wrongs of war, but to bash the President. Hurricane Katrina came along and offered another easy vehicle to keep the bashwagon rolling along.

And through it all, something seemed wrong to me. Something inside kept nagging at me, feeding the feeling that the Bush-bashing was wrong---not from a moral point of view, but from a logistic point of view.

It finally dawned on me today what it is: the Liberals haven't been beating up on the President simply because they think he's wrong and/or evil. It's because they still don't realize they lost the election!

Look at the big picture. No liberal has anything to gain at this time by continuing to bash Bush. The Democrats are not running against Bush in the next election, but it sure looks that way by almost everything they've done over the last month. A smarter and more productive use of energy would be to fine-tune the liberal gospel, to start beating the message drum of the party instead of the war drum against an adminstration that ceases to exist in a little over two years.

Bush should not be the target. Any Republican who might run for the office and every conservative lesser national and local leader should be. But outside of a few juicy issues here and there, it's the Democratic Party versus George Bush.

If this is what they're doing now, imagine the internal bashing that will take the spotlight when the far-left fanatics meet the mainstream liberals in their own party when the time comes to select a candidate.

I call it the Theory of Democratic Insanity. And unless I'm the one who's nuts, it should drive Hilary Clinton, John Kerry, John Edwards, Howard Dean, and maybe even John McCain nuts, too, long before 2008 rolls around.

2005-09-15T04:00:00.000-07:00

She's 14. He's 22.

You can listen to The George Blog every day. Click here to download and play today's mp3 audiofile.

Have I got your attention?

Matthew Koso is 22 and his wife, Crystal, is 14, and they were legally married in May in Kansas with the blessing of both sets of parents. Both these kids--let's call them what they are, please--live in Falls City, Nebraska. Matthew has been charged with rape and if he's convicted, he could go to jail for up to fifty years.

Is that a bad thing?

Let me tell you a few more details before you make up your mind. This odd couple first began dating a couple of years ago when he was 20 and she was 12. Her mother filed a legal complaint (Dad was not in the picture), but they kept on seeing each other, and Crystal got pregnant. Her mother found out about it by discovering stretch marks on her during a shopping trip. By that time in the pregnancy, abortion was not an option, and family beliefs ruled out putting the child-to-be up for adoption. Marriage was deemed to be "the right thing to do," by all parties concerned, and Kansas was the place to do it because it's one of a few states that still allow kids as young as 12 to marry legally with parental consent. So they tied the knot and went back home to Nebraska.

When Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning heard the news, he arrested Matthew, charging him with first-degree sexual assault. The Cornhusker State says sex between an adult and a person younger than 16 is considered statutory rape, whether the couple is married or not.

Now, are you ready for the real kickers in this whole mess?

Matthew also has attention deficit disorder and learning disabilities. According to ABC News, he and Crystal have received hundreds of gifts and letters of support from residents in Falls City.

Some people are saying that because the two have been legally married, the state of Nebraska owes it to them to leave them alone and be free to raise their baby girl in peace. The reasoning goes that Nebraska should respect the legality of the Kansas marriage.

But hold on a minute! There is no question, no wiggle room, not a shadow of any doubt, that the couple had sex in the state of Nebraska at a time when they were both in the state. Matthew broke the law. The fact that the crime was discovered months after it was committed does not automatically dismiss it. This creep committed an act of sexual assault, not an act of consensual sex.

It sickens me to see that there are actually battle lines drawn, made up of supporters and detractors of Mathew Koso, a battle in which the supporters are essentially sending the message to young people that it's OK to ignore laws about sex because you're mature enough to make decisions at the age of twelve. Crystal has just started her freshman year in high school!

Enough is enough. Matthew's reported diabilities do not excuse him of the consequences of the results. Jail and treatment for at least twenty years. It's plain to see that the people closest to him are a bunch of enablers who will do him more harm than good in the long run if he's allowed to remain free.

And what about Crystal and the baby? Let's just say it'll be real interesting to see how well she does over the next few years.

There aren't many mothers entering the ninth grade with whom she can compare notes on raising a child.

2005-09-14T04:00:00.000-07:00

Presidential Popularity: The Real Story

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If you listen to the news these days, it seems as if President Bush's popularity rating is headed toward minus numbers. This reminds me of Harry Truman beating Thomas E. Dewey. Why? Because even as the election returns were coming in on election night in 1948, news reporters didn't believe he had a chance. This was one of the biggest screw-ups in American history regarding presidential popularity.

I decided to do some digging to find out from a historical perspective just what the real story is, and get away from the jabbering of both sides, the egg-sucking liberal whining dogs on the left and the militant, jackbooted, Nazi thugs on the right.

You might be amazed to learn that scholars admit that some of the reasons why presidents are popular or unpopular in what is called the era of modern public opinion polling are simply not clear. Doesn't that sound shocking in view of the finger-pointing still going on over Hurricane Katrina?

A long term study by the Center for Contemporary Conflict says there are three basic schools of thought for what influences presidential popularity.

The first says that for all presidents, regardless of party, public approval moves downward from the first day in office. Even though things will happen that will have people cheering, there's nothing a president can do to prevent this downward drift during his term in office.

The second thought looks at the domestic and international stuff, so to speak, that a president has to address, constantly being graded by citizens on very specific events, such as the rates of unemployment and inflation, levels of international tension, battle deaths during periods of war, and the success of the president's legislative agenda.

The third thought gets a little deep. It looks at the symbolic nature of the presidency (that is, the picture of the Pres as the most powerful man in the free world) and how political drama and public relations actions are used (like speeches on TV, press conferences, etc) to build and maintain public support.

The study also talks about the Diversionary Theory of War. This says that regardless of which party is in the White House, the media begin to report that the President is thinking of taking military action in an attempt to arouse patriotism and build up his popularity.

What does history show?

Specifically looking at the first War in the Gulf, "Attempts at corroborating this conventional wisdom initially met with mixed results however, and early research found little or no relationship between domestic political or economic conditions and instances of foreign conflict. The report goes on to say: "Clearly, the decision to use force may backfire if the electorate perceives that the commander-in-chief is exercising his constitutional authority for political gain."

I'm going to ask you now to keep two thoughts together in your mind while I quote one more time from the conclusion of the study. I want you to think whatever opinion you have of President Bush's military actions in Iraq AND the actions of the government in response to Hurricane Katrina, whether you approve, disapprove, or are split on these issues. Got it?

Now here's the quote:

"Despite popular presumptions to the contrary, presidents are in fact not more likely to become involved in crises when their popularity is low, and actually are more likely to enjoy higher than average public approval levels prior to becoming involved in militarized disputes."

Doesn't exactly match up with what you're hearing and seeing in the news right now, does it?

Check out the complete report of the Center for Contemporary Conflict here.

2005-09-13T04:00:00.004-07:00

The Latest Nominee for Liberal of the Year

You can listen to The George Blog every day. Click here to download and play today's mp3 audiofile.

...goes to Mike Hendricks of the Kansas City Star.

In case you didn't know, I've teased Mike off on on over the last three years and given him the nickname "my favorite nemesis." But now, it's no more Mr. Nice Guy.

In today's column, Mike tells the story of Barbara Roberts, a grandmother who was taking care of her baby granddaughter while her daughter and son-in-law flew down to New Orleans for a 2-day business trip just before Hurricane Katrina hit, when it wasn't 100% certain that the storm would hit there. They got stuck there for a week.

Barbara was at their home in Columbia, Missouri. She worked for a company in Springfield. She called her supervisor and said she would not be in for work because of the situation. According to Mike, she didn't know any one in Columbia, and didn't want to entrust the baby to a stranger.

Barbara was fired. She had used up all her personal days, and that was that.

Mike 's headline spells out his position well: "Grandma's good deed costs her a job."

But I'm not buying it. You mean to tell me that this woman couldn't take the baby back with her to Springfield, where she surely has friends she trusts, to help her out for 5 days? This is a no-brainer. Mike reports he spoke with the the president of the company where Barbara worked but "the company could not make an exception for someone who put the needs of her grandchild ahead of the company's needs, hurricane or not."

What a load! This is the biggest crock I've heard in a long time. Mike, these are not "special circumstances" that warrant an exception. Let me spell out for you what it is: it's an annoying, somewhat inconvenient but rather ordinary circumstance of life that does not automatically justify this woman's decision.

This is not a cruel thing, as you put it.

I worked with a guy once who was having a marital crisis. His car was in his wife's name, and to make life hard for him, she made sure that he did not operate the vehicle. Therefore, he said, he couldn't get to work and would have to take off an indefinite amount of time until he "got his life back together." When the boss asked what I would do, I said I'd tell him he could take a personal day off to find someplace close enough to stay, rent a car, work out something with a friend or whatever, and get his butt back to work the day after that.

Personal crises are just that - personal. There's a difference between your child getting sick at school and you being up against the wall if you're alone to find a solution, and a grandmother who's probably seen her share of such tough moments, either throwing in the towel or being helplessly unresourceful.

Mike, I'm not buying into your trying to make me feel sorry for somone who knew full well ahead of time what the consequences of her action would be. Congratulations on making my personal short list for Liberal of the Year.

And, Mike, if this makes you feel bad, free free to blame it on The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.

2005-09-12T04:00:00.000-07:00

Will Mother Nature Send YOU Packing?

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As the sad and sometimes angry news keeps emanating from New Orleans, most of the rest of us go about our lives with a business-as-usual attitude, with perhaps a little more compassionate reflection than usual.

What's the most important way in which Hurrican Katrina affected YOU? I'll bet 99% of Americans don't know the answer to this question. There is only one correct answer and it is: It made me stop, think, and plan for a potential natural disaster where I live.

Let's make a quick tour of where the you-know-what can hit the fan just to make sure you're up to speed. Here are the areas and diasters that emergency planners list as the top spots that keep them awake at night (thanks to Denver Post columnist Penelope Purdy):

THE MIDWEST AND EARTHQUAKES: We're talking Missouri, Arkansas, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Tennessee. A lot of people just aren't aware that these states are on top of a huge fault which did its thing big time in 1811 causing large areas of land to sink or heave up. Damage was reported as far away as the East coast, down in South Carolina, which also has a major fault. I know, because I worked there for awhile and was laughed at and teased after I posted an "Earthquake Emergency Checklist" in the radio station I worked at in Charleston. About a week later, though, the laughing stopped, when a small quake lifted the trailer the station was located in about a foot up, yanking the tie-downs completely out of the ground.

While Charleston and its counterparts in California have public education policies and some building code requirements as a result of this, I'll bet most people in these Midwestern states haven't paid any attention because no one outside of talkers like me tells them this stuff. If you live in or near Kansas City, for just a moment picture yourself at work. The building starts shaking. What do you do? Now picture your family at home, and the same thing happens. Do any of them know what to do? mew orleans got a 48-hour warning. Earthquakes don't give you any.

MOUNT RAINER, WASHINGTON: I have to admit I wasn't fully aware myself that this mountain is not completely dormant, and that if it blows its top, it'll make Mt. St. Helen looks like a junior high science project. While local towns would of course be in danger of lave, mud, and glacier flow, the major metro areas of Seattle and Tacoma to the west, might be told to evacuate. How many would heed the call? 3.5 million people with their backs to the Pacific Ocean and an erupting volcano to the east. It's not a pleasant thought.

There are some other obvious iterms on the list such as the entire Southeastern U.S. and hurricanes, obviously, and Tornado Alley from the plains of Kansas throughout the Midwest. You could even include various blizzards that have made the history books because of their death tolls and damage totals.

So what's for you to think about? Let me quote what columnist Purdy says, because I can't think of a better way to say it:

When the tornado sirens sound, where do you go for safety at home or work? If a flood arrives, are your important papers, survival supplies and family photos up off the ground floor? Are tree limbs trimmed away from your roof to prevent damage? Do you have several gallons of water stored up? How long would your food last if you couldn't get to the store? Do you have a battery-powered radio so you can hear what's happening in the world if the electricity is out? If you said "no," you're a sitting duck, ignoring the basics of 21st Century domestic security, much like the unfortunate souls in the hard-hit Gulf states.

2005-09-09T04:00:00.000-07:00

The Nightmare Continues

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Denver, Colorado

I'm high and dry in the Rockies, but all this week, while on a semi-vacation, I've found myself still thinking from time to time about what Hurricane Katrina has done and as cliched as it sounds, what she's taught us. I'll bet you've been thinking like this, too. Before I list some of the random thoughts I've had, let me invite you to email me with yours for inclusion in a future blog. Talk with your family and friends and then send your email to george@georgewoods.com.
It's like a horror movie in more ways than one.

Now the mayor of New Orleans has authorized police and military to use force if necessary to remove people who will not voluntarily leave. Imagine yourself as a New Orleans cop. If you allow any of the numbskulls who refuse to leave even temporarily, to stay where they are and they die, you're scum because you didn't help someone who obviously couldn't care for themselves. If you force them to leave, you're scum because you forced someone to leave their home against their will. This whole "because it's my home" lunacy for not leaving until it's safe to return just doesn't make sense.

Speaking of returning, forget the politics; a more interesting question is whether or not New Orleans shoulkd be rebuilt where it is and much as it was. We're talking about rebuilding a city which was mostly below sea level, with most of the water held back by levees sitting in a place with a known history of hurricanes.Denver Post columnist Ed Quillen writes:

"The low parts of the city had to be pumped continuously just so the toilets would flush. When the electricity went out, so did the pumping; the place was an immense exercise in trying to defy the law of gravity..."

What bothers me most is the lack of character shown by the small but violent minority of looters who were willing to literally rape and pillage when the going got tough. I was very surprised when Mary Sanchez of the Kansas City Star, who I consider to be a flaming liberal, wrote an eloquent piece talking about dignity in the face of catasrophe:

The reporting experience is among the most humbling of my 20 years of newspaper work.

I’ve always cringed at writings that depict poor people as humble servants to fate. As if being poor or destitute is something they thrive on.

But in Honduras, the survivors of Hurricane Mitch were filled with grace, even in their desperation.

That is why some of the images from New Orleans and other Gulf Coast cities are so discouraging.

Granted, only a tiny percentage of Katrina’s victims are doing the despicable acts. But there is no excuse for it.
More than 1.5 million Hondurans were homeless after Hurricane Mitch.

They also were forced to live along highways, in churches and at a giant stadium - just as the Katrina survivors fled to first the Superdome and now the Astrodome.

You may be one of the millions of Americans who have been going to sleep the last couple of weeks with a sense of relief that something like this could not happen to you or your relatives or friends because you don't live in an area where a natural disaster of such magnitude could ever happen.

Are you sure? Check in with The George Blog Monday to start off the week with a real eye-opener, especially if you live in the Midwest.

One more thought for today....

Somewhere, someone, is writing the script for the disaster movie based on Hurrican Karina. I'm sure of it. Driven more by greed than any sense of humanity, there are probably many people who are developing plot angles and envisioning special effects in the hopes of separating many people from their money for what will have to called entertainment.

Someday. The farther off, the better. I don't want to see the movie.

Click here for complete article by Ed Quillen, Denver Post
Click here for complete article by Mary Sanchez, Kansas City Star

2005-09-08T04:00:00.000-07:00

What's the Difference Between a Fee and a Tax?

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Darned if I know!

An editorial in last Sunday's Kansas City Star about the never-ending contract dance between Jackson County and the Chiefs/Royals really surprised me. For once, the Star pretty much opened up with both barrels and blasted away at the County. The writer was rightfully angered that the County had decided to keep the negotiations secret instead of public.

Hey, we're talking maybe $400 million here in taxpayers' money. Don't give us this B.S. that the talks are so delicate and tricky that allowing the public to get involved in any way would jeopardize the deal. What a flagrant insult: saying that taxpayers are so stupid that they can't offer opinion or ideas valuable enough for consideration if they doesn't match up with county officials.

The Star lists several things which should be included in any new lease:

Clear wording of what the master plan for stadium upgrades will cover
A limit on taxpayer contributions
Requiring specific contributions from the Chiefs/Royals

and a couple of others, including imposing user fees.

This got me to thinking: what is the difference between a user fee and a tax? Especially when it comes to stadiums.

The dictionary defines fee as "a sum paid or charged for a service." A tax is "a charge,usually of money, imposed by authority on persons or property for public purposes" OR "a sum levied on members of an organization to defray expenses."

This didn't make sense to me in the context of this stadium nonsense, so I asked the Star to give me a little help in understanding this user fee statement.

Yael T. Abouhalkah, the writer of the editorial, explained it to me this way:
--------------------------------------------
Jackson County officials have wanted to impose a user fees for years at the sports complex.

Here is what they are talking about:

One possibility is a 10 percent user fee on the price to park at the sports
complex. The only people who would pay this user fee would be the ones who
park at the complex. So it's not a general tax - such as a property tax or
sales tax - that everyone pays to pay for upkeep or improvements at the
stadiums.

To use a simple example, parking at the sports complex is now $9 for a
Royals game. Next year, IF THE FEE STAYED THE SAME, the Royals would get to
keep almost $8.20 of the parking charge and slightly more than 80 cents
would go to the county.

Of course, the parking charge likely would go up next year. So to continue
the example, if the total parking charge went up to $10 a vehicle at Royals
games, about $9.10 of that would go to the Royals and the other 90 cents
would go to the county.

A user fee on tickets would work the same way, likely boosting the price of
the tickets by the amount of the user fee. From a fairness angle, county
officials like this because only the people who use the stadiums by buying
tickets would pay the user fee on the tickets.
----------------------------------------
I am amazed! This is the first time I've seen anything advanced by county officials that reflects the widely-held notion that if you want to make all these improvements, you should actually think about making the people who use the service pay for it, rather than taxpayers who may never set foot inside Arrowhead stadium.

I still don't see any real difference between tax, fee, surcharge, and in some cases, outright theft. Let's leave that for another time, O.K.?

2005-09-07T04:00:00.000-07:00

An Old Problem with a New Attitude

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Have you heard the story about the Ohio high school where 64 of the 490 female students are pregnant? That works out to 13% of the girls at Timken High School in Canton. What's significant about this is that teen pregnancy rates have been going down for the past ten years. Some experts are saying the high pregnancy rate at the Ohio school that's landed in the national spotlight is not that unusual and that the issue is widespread.

Excuse me. It can't be that overwhelmingly widespread if the numbers over the last ten years show that number of teen girls who have gotten knocked up has dropped overall.

One of the questions being asked about this situation that caught my attention is "Has the stigma of unwed motherhood lost its edge?"

What a stupid question! The answer is, unfortunately, "Of course, you jerk!" I wish it wasn't that way but is is. I worked with a guy just last year in his mid-twenties who talked about wanting to be a father but had no intention of getting married because, in his words, "It's no big thing anymore." And he was a bright, well-educated guy with high career aspirations.

One of the kids in the Ohio story who's 18 and has a 2-year-old son tried to explain the situation away by saying "It goes back to where you were raised. Down here, it's not looked down upon because a lot of parents had kids when they were kids."

And of course you have those who say that abstinence-based education obviously isn't working so we should give kids condoms because they're going to have sex anyway.

This all boils down to a change in attitude, say from 1955 to 2005, on the part of both the parents of the girls getting knocked up and those girls and their amorous boyfriends.If you want an "obviously," how about this: Obviously we need to change attitudes for the families involved, whether or not "a lot pf parents had kids when they were kids." I have a simple plan to avoid the eternal argument between the abstinence bunch and the condom crowd that will never be settled.

The Woods Plan is simple, easy to implement and will cost relatively few taxes dollars, if any at all.
In any given school district, starting at an age agreed on by parents and school administrators, at the start of every school year, all students have to listen in person to something like this:

"Students, welcome back to a new school year. It's time once again for the sex speech. I know it's always a time for leering and giggling, so go ahead, but look upon it as he explanation for why some of your friends who were sitting next to you at this time last year aren't here this year.

Girls, if you get knocked up while you're in school, you're out. Literally. You're expelled, for want of a kinder, gentler word. The best you can hope for is a G.E.D.which you will have to get on your own time after regular school hours. You're going to need more special help and sick days than girls who choose or are lucky enough not to get pregnant. We're in the education business, not the health care or day care business and our budget is strapped enough as it is. If it's determined that you became pregnant while enrolled in school, you and your parents will be legally responsible for providing for the health and care of the child until you turn 21 and if unable to do so, your child will be put up for adoption as there are many caring parents ready to adopt.

Boys, you're in kind of an odd situation, because if you happen to be the party who helps to get a girl pregnant and you're never identified, nothing happens to you.

Girls, you might want to keep this in mind as the school year progresses. Yes, it is absolutely unfair, but the fact is that only you can get pregnant and have a baby, and you have total control over that happening, so that's the way it is. It's your choice.

A copy of this reminder is being sent this morning to your parents and we'll talk about it in person with them very soon at our first face-to-face meeting for this year.

Please take a moment to look at your fellow students around you. This is to make sure you remember what they look like if they're not back next year...or in just a few months from now."

It'll work.

Why? Because of the mistakes that WILL be made by the girls who let themselves get knocked up anyway. It's not as much peer pressure as it is fear, in the aftermath of the consequences for both the girls and the parents. A horribly lopsided, harsh way to deal with the situation, almost cruel?

Yes, it is. Some people have to actually burn their hand on the stove after being told not to touch it because that's what will happen. Most people will see the results and not touch it.

2005-09-06T04:00:00.000-07:00

A View from the Rockies

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Today’s blog comes to you from downtown Denver, Colorado, where I’m composing this less than two blocks away from the 16th Street Mall in a spirit of depressed enlightenment.

Hah?

Enlightened and depressed because I know precisely now why downtown Kansas City’s highly-touted redevelopment is going to fail, as I’ve been saying for over a year now.

The answer appeared right in front of my face as I walked down the 16th Street Mall here: retail.

There are shops and stores of every kind, from swanky expensive shops to vendors selling hot dogs from carts. You want a $16 Rocky Mountain Burger? It’s on the menu downstairs here at the Grand Hyatt. Or, you can walk a couple of short blocks and have burgers for two for less than six bucks at Sonic.

Here’s why Kansas City Mayor Kay Barnes cockeyed “bill it and they will come” vision with a new arena and the so-called entertainment district will be much less than a roaring success: it lacks a sense of community. What I’m seeing here is character, something with a little bit of charm. What the mayor is promising is a collection of bars and eateries that are really no different from the trendy boutique-type stores in Oak Park Mall.

Where’s the big grocery store downtown where wannabee management types wait in line to pay for their groceries with little old ladies who go their more to chat about neighborhood rumors than to buy milk and bread. That’s the type of place that is more of a community center than the buildings that bear that title as part of their names.

For downtown revitalization to be successful anywhere, you need something that I’m not seeing in the plans for Kansas City. You need an attitude of welcoming not just to the young loft-dwellers who are content to mortgage themselves up to their eyeballs for a view that they think is hip and trendy because an advertising agency said so, but also to people of all ages who don’t always have a few extra bucks to spend on a pricey beer or sandwich in some glass-and-chrome joint.

What it needs is a sense of character, and that is not something that money can buy. It grows and develops from the people, working and shopping in a real community, not a manufactured one. It is not a destination. It is the sense of neighborhood charm that isn’t sold as a “destination,” because it can’t be.

There is some comfort in my depressed enlightenment, though. I know, as I’m sure you do, too, that sooner or later, downtown KC can and will be revitalized. It’ll come from the people themselves and not from whoever happens to be sitting at the top of City Hall when the time comes.

2005-09-05T04:00:00.000-07:00

Time Out for Time-Haunted People

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No news or political commentary today. Labor Day, or the entire Labor Day Weekend, as I see it, is one of my favorite holidays.Of all of the holidays we observe in this county, to me, Labor Day is one of the top two or three and the reason why has nothing to do with the historical roots of the observation.

It's because with the passage of Labor Day, time slows down.

If it doesn't sound crazy to you, welcome to the club, and if it does, hang with me for an explanation.

I've always been a time-obsessed person from as far back in my childhood as I can remember. I've always been fascinated by this thing called time that seems to move faster or slower depending on where you are and what you're doing. No one has even been able to convince me that this is just a perception, this feeling that time itself has some type of speed. And no one ever will convince me of this.

No matter where I've lived, what I've done, time seems to slow down after Labor Day. Not to a crawl, but to a more relaxed pace. Is it due to weather? Nope. I lived in the Carolinas for a while and can clearly remember the same feeling around this time of year, although the temperatures remained summer hot for easily another two months. But that sense of time slowing down was still there.

I'm sure a lot of people with East coast roots will say this perception is just due to the kids heading back to school after Labor Day, vacation and/or summer mode being turned off, and so on.

I don't think so. I'm not a summer person. In fact I really don't like summer. I burn very easily and need to use sun block even if I'm outside in the shade for a little while because I will get a slight burn from reflected brightness. So summer can't pass quickly enough for me.

This year, I'm sure the especially large amount of troubling and just downright bad news in America will keep a lot of people from thinking about something like the passage of time, an abstract and deceptively simple thought for most.

I think this slowing down is a reminder for us--a reminder that just as the year is a journey not through twelve months but through four very different seasons, we are on personal journeys that we frequently take for granted until something highly unexpected happens, or until time speeds up or slows down.

If this is so, then the words of Thomas Mikelson, spoken in a sermon three years ago at one of the oldest churches in America, The First Parish, Unitarian Universalist, in Cambridge, Massacusetts, are worth repeating as we take time out today for time-haunted people:

A spiritual path is not a familiar path, not a predictable one, not a secure one. It is filled with unforeseeable twists and turns, frustrating dead ends, impassable ruts and washouts, rickety old bridges, confusing intersections, steep rises, high mountain passes that lead us close to precipitous and terrifying drop-offs, places in the road that are too narrow to pass, detours that aren't on the map, and old signs that have long-since rusted over. If we can handle all that, the view can be exhilarating; and sometimes the path actually takes us somewhere, though very rarely to anyplace that we planned to go at the beginning of the journey.

2005-09-04T04:00:00.000-07:00

Presidential Popularity: The Real Story

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If you listen to the news these days, it seems as if President Bush's popularity rating is headed toward minus numbers. This reminds me of Harry Truman beating Thomas E. Dewey. Why? Because even as the election returns were coming in on election night in 1948, news reporters didn't believe he had a chance. This was one of the biggest screw-ups in American history regarding presidential popularity.

I decided to do some digging to find out from a historical perspective just what the real story is, and get away from the jabbering of both sides, the egg-sucking liberal whining dogs on the left and the militant, jackbooted, Nazi thugs on the right.

You might be amazed to learn that scholars admit that some of the reasons why presidents are popular or unpopular in what is called the era of modern public opinion polling are simply not clear. Doesn't that sound shocking in view of the finger-pointing still going on over Hurricane Katrina?

A long term study by the Center for Contemporary Conflict says there are three basic schools of thought for what influences presidential popularity.

The first says that for all presidents, regardless of party, public approval moves downward from the first day in office. Even though things will happen that will have people cheering, there's nothing a presdient can do to prevent this downward drift during his term in office.

The second thought looks at the domestic and international stuff, so to speak, that a president has to address, constantly being graded by citizens on very specific events, such as the rates of unemployment and inflation, levels of international tension, battle deaths during periods of war, and the success of the president's legislative agenda.

The third thought gets a little deep. It looks at the symbolic nature of the presidency (that is, the picture of the Pres as the most powerful man in the free world), and how political drama and public relations actions are used (like speeches on TV, press conferences, etc.) to build and maintain public support.

The study also talks about the Diversionary Theory of War. This says that regardless of which party is in the White House, the media begin to report that the President is thinking of taking military action in an attempt to arouse patriotism and build up his popularity. What does history show? Specifically looking at the first War in the Gulf, "Attempts at corroborating this conventional wisdom initially met with mixed results however, and early research found little or no relationship between domestic, political, or economic conditions, and instances of foreign conflict.

The report goes on to say: "Clearly, the decision to use force may backfire if the electorate perceives that the commander-in-chief is exercising his constitutional authority for political gain."

I'm going to ask you now to keep two thoughts together in your mind while I quote one more time from the conclusion of the study. I want you to keep whatever opinion you have of President Bush's military actions in Iraq AND the actions of the government in response to Hurricane Katrina, whether you approve, disapprove, or are split on these issues. Got it?

Now here's the quote:

"Despite popular presumptions to the contrary, presidents are in fact not more likely to become involved in crises when their popularity is low, and actually are more likely to enjoy higher than average public approval levels prior to becoming involved in militarized disputes."

Doesn't exactly match up with what you're hearing and seeing in the news right now, does it?

Check out the complete report of the Center for Contemporary Conflict here.

2005-09-02T04:00:00.000-07:00

A Week of Whammies

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The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina couple with the lightning-fast increase in the price of gas are the biggest whammies of the week. It almost seems a bit selfish to feel bad or angry about what seem to be petty gripes by comparison.

But that's what's happening to me right now, and I'm not going to ignore them.

First, one of the things that bothers me, angers me, about the wake of Hurricane Katrina is the speed at which the situation crumbled into chaos. This is certainly to be expected to a degree, but the ravaging that's going on is undoubtedly of interest to America's enemies overseas. The most frightening news for you and me and for the people of New Orleans has to be the likelihood of disease sweeping over the populace. What a lesson for terrorists, who are seeing that a highly effective way to hit America is not with planes flying into buildings amd not with suicide bombers but with biological warfare. We've read and talked about it but what we're seeing now is a real-life tutorial on how to wreak havoc quickly. Terrorists can't conjure up hurricanes but we know they've been playing with biological stuff for a long time. Now they've seen how effective this type of thing can be, thanks to nature. It's a very unsettling thought.

And my petty gripes? Twice this week, I've sent emails that each contained one simple question. Do I do this or that? Was there one or two? And both times, the replies were from people who did not answer the question, most likely because they were in Calcutta and simply didn't understand English. What they sent were replies that were probably selected by a computer matching a couple of words in my emails and some pre-fab generic reply files.

Today, I needed to know a few simple steps in a procedure and actually spoke on the phone with a living, breathing customer service representative in the middle of the United States who I understood completely and vice-versa! The problem was, he obviously couldn't wait to get rid of me and rushed through the information as quickly as he could because he understood it and couldn't conceive that anyone else might not get it as quickly as he gave it out.

Later, I needed to get some info on a computer program that I've used for years very happily, only to find out that the company that produced it was sold to a larger company who no longer supported the product but did have an upgraded one for only three times what I paid for the original with many new features, none of which I would ever use.

Funny? Not for a minute. This is happening more and more and the anger level of Joe Average is getting lower and lower. It's not so much a matter of control as of just plain rotten communication. In a way, it hints at the fact that there'll always be a place for a talk show host who can speak plainly enough to simply be understood, but it also makes you wonder about the quality of leadership in government and the workplace that you'll have to put up with more and more in your lifetime.

Take it from me: too many whammies in a week, and you'll want to go wham someone yourself.

2005-09-01T04:00:00.000-07:00

Hurricane Katrina's REALLY Bizarre Side

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The stories appearing in most national media that are emerging in the wake of Hurricane Katrina are so compelling, no commentator or journalist really needs to sensationalize any of the facts.

But there are some stories coming out that make you just want to shake your head and wonder how some people tick. Any natural disaster brings out the worst in some people such as the looters who justify their thievery by rationalizing that because they in particular have been given some type of raw deal, it's OK to steal clothing, jewelry, and, of course, guns. Respect for someone else's property vanishes. Check out this AP news report from New Orleans:

Thieves commandeered a forklift and used it to push up the storm shutters and break the glass of a pharmacy. The crowd stormed the store, carrying out so much ice, water and food that it dropped from their arms as they ran. The street was littered with packages of ramen noodles and other items.

But you know what? Even this is understandable compared to the really bizarre stuff that's starting to come out.

For instance, Robert Kennedy, Jr, writing in his blog on the Huffington Post website, said: "In 1998, Republican icon Pat Robertson warned that hurricanes were likely to hit communities that offended God. Perhaps it was Barbour’s memo that caused Katrina, at the last moment, to spare New Orleans and save its worst flailings for the Mississippi coast." That's Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour he's talking about, who he says derailed the Kyoto Protocol, an agreement on global warning.

Is Kennedy serious? He sure sounds it. If he is, how despicable is this, to blatantly politicize a tragedy in which hundreds have died and their fellow citizens are looting the city? If he's not, and he's trying to be humorous, Bob Jr., don't quit your day job!

Here's what the New York Times said after Kennedy's blog piece was posted:

"Because hurricanes form over warm ocean water, it is easy to assume that the recent rise in their number and ferocity is because of global warming. But that is not the case, scientists say. Instead, the severity of hurricane seasons changes with cycles of temperatures of several decades in the Atlantic Ocean. The recent onslaught 'is very much natural,' said William M. Gray, a professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University who issues forecasts for the hurricane season.'"

Moving right along, how about this:

...a new futures market predicting where hurricanes will hit has opened.

A trio of University of Miami professors is trying to take over the local weatherman’s job. The three are betting on a new way to predict where a hurricane will hit. Their approach may not be as orthodox as Walter the Weatherman, but they believe their way could help people living in hurricane alley decide whether or not to evacuate.

The three have founded an electronic futures market that allows the public, students and trained forecasters to invest in shares representing selected coastline spots where they think the hurricane will strike. Those who forecast most accurately will get a payout.

This from Judi McLeod in the Canada Free Press, quoting an AP story from last July. She goes on to say: "The hope is that investors, because they have a financial stake, will draw an accurate consensus on the storm’s path–much like bettors predicting the outcome of a horse race or football game. But betting on horses is not the same thing as betting on human misery."

So you don't have to be a degenerate horseplayer, like some of us are to be a slimeball lowlife. Just a college professor.

I don't think it's too soon after this disaster to be asking, "Where are the messages from the international community saying they will send help and relief and money to the United States to give the people of New Orleans the aid they need right now?" Maybe I've missed it, but I haven't read or heard about such yet. I'm sorry that it seems at first glance like such a bizarre thought.

I checked the International Herald Tribune and the BBC website before writing today's blog, and no word on any contributions from the European community or elsewhere. I did see this post in the BBC's "Have Your Say" feature, though, from "Kaz" who identifies himself as a Briton living in New Jersey:

"The news of what's happening is horrifying. We're organising community donations to the Red Cross in the hope that every bit will help. Speaking of aid, even though we're looking at over a million homeless and massive rebuilding, I am surprised by the outcry about the lack of international aid - the US is the world's single most wealthy nation, and gives the lowest proportion of its GDP in international aid. I assume that the world's only superpower will let the international community know if it isn't able to fund rescue and reconstruction. It ought to be possible - after all, the budget was fully balanced only a few years ago."

Thanks a lot, Kaz. We barely wait 24 hours before millions of our tax dollars flow overseas to help victims of natural disasters, while you imply that we're not worthy to be helped when the situation is reversed. Never mind the fact that the actual dollars and cents sent by the US is larger than the amount of other countries' GDPs as determined by your phony proportion argument.

The strangeness of what is happening in New Orleans now doesn't come close to the real-life wierdness of people much better off who use a disaster as a tool to advance their own political views.

2005-08-31T04:00:00.000-07:00

Kansas City's Worst Judge

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His name is Judge Dean Whipple.

He's the same judge who ruled that in order for someone to be found guilty of luring a minor to have sex, a child must be involved and not just an undercover detective pretending to be one, for example, on the Internet. Now, this S.O.B. in black robes has ruled that a guy who came halfway across the country to Missouri to have sex with a child can't be found guilty because there was in fact, no child involved.

We have two cases in which there is clear intent to molest a child and this judge is saying they must be thrown out because no one under 18 was actually involved. The judge apparently doesn't understand that the successful detective work of the police in each case prevented a terrible crime from happening. Three circuit courts of appeal have ruled that an undercover cop can pose as a minor in such cases. Now we have to go that route again, thanks to Judge Whipple.

This second case is about a man who allegedly came to Missouri from Texas to have sex with a mother and her two young daughters. His lawyer wanted the charges thown out because the guy had also been talking online with an undercover agent. And Judge Whipple said "O.K."

Is there anyone with any amount of common sense that doesn't believe that the sting part of this whole deal is specifically designed to prevent something horrible from happening? The judge implies that because no physical act was committed, there's no crime, apparently because intent in this case is not a crime.

Sorry, Judge. The reasoning here is the same thinking that caused the law to take effect in Missouri the other day that forces some sex offenders to wear electronic bracelets permanently if convicted. It's because it's been shown that most of these people will follow through on their intent again and again and again. You have the ability and the authority to prevent a crime from happening that will surely happen if these sickos are allowed to go free. No one travels halfway across the country for such a thing only to fail and go back home, and you know it.

Let's hope the judges on the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals understand that when they take at look at the cases that have been appealed to them thanks to the worst judge in Missouri.

2005-08-30T04:00:00.000-07:00

"I Ain't Leavin, Dadgum It!"

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As Hurrican Katrina flooded entire neighborhoods literally up to the rooftops today, the story that grabbed me the most was one told by KMBZ radio reporter Dan Verbeck, who was in New Orleans talking live to Kansas City on his cell phone. He told how some people in the Big Easy, fearful of a repeat performance of an earlier massive flood in the city's history that made the water rise up to rooftops kept axes in their attic in case another flood should come along someday, so that they could hack their way out of the house for a last chance at life rather than drown in the attic.

Someday came today.

This got me to thinking about people who won't leave home in the face of natural disasters, like people who refuse to leave coastal towns when hurricanes hit, or people who won't evacuate in the face of death by molten lava when the volcano a little further up the slope decides to visit without an invitation.

In Omaha, there's a flood plain on which generations of people have built houses that have been destroyed by the forces of nature. Few people who live in those houses die, but when the TV reporters ask them to tell their story, they whine about how the government (or anyone else) won't sell them flood insurance, how they lost all their belongings, and that they're going to rebuild and stay there because, by God, it's their home.

Some people call these folks proud.

I call them stupid.

What kind of crazy thinking is it to personalize the forces of nature, to twist reality into a confrontation between man and nature as if it's a contest of wills?

There is nothing proud about standing up for principle in a fight you simply cannot win. Spare me the "yeah, but" examples of people overcoming impossible odds. There are always a few exceptions to every rule, but when you're given fair warning and you get smacked down so hard it hurts, I'm not going to feel sorry for you. I'll help you, if there's anything left to help you with after I finish with the people who were smart enough to try to help themselves and their families first.

The stories of these people will come out in the days that follow, so let me get you ready for them with a quote from the Amazon.com book review of the book Braving Home: Dispatches from the Underwater Town, the Lava-Side Inn, and Other Extreme Locales by Jake Halpern:

"As a cub reporter at The New Republic, Halpern earned the unofficial job title of Bad Homes Correspondent. Braving Home tells his stories of places where people really ought not live and the people who live there anyway. Halpern traveled to such inadvisable destinations as a bed and breakfast at the foot of an active Hawaiian volcano, a North Carolina town trying to recover from being completely submerged, an indoor Alaskan city, and an island in the Gulf of Mexico located directly in the cross hairs of numerous hurricanes. And while the places themselves make for interesting historical lore, the people who choose to stay and make their homes there form the real heart of the story. The doomed, it seems, get few visitors but have plenty of time on their hands. So Halpern goes out to meet them, crashes on their couches or guest beds and hangs out for a few days forming a one-man tourist industry. Far from being the kooks one might expect, Halpern's subjects come across as normal folks, though significantly more resilient than most, who stay in their homes simply because, well, those are their homes. Halpern himself figures prominently in most of the stories and at times it seems like the young man is spending too much time navel gazing. But on each of the book's five adventures, Halpern goes from wide-eyed visitor to welcome member of the community and in so doing demonstrates how, once you get used to it, any place can feel like home. Even if that it's surrounded by molten lava."

Stupid!

2005-08-29T04:00:00.001-07:00

The Real Truth About Iraq

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Kansas Senator Pat Roberts got the message this past week and he was miffed by it, according to a story in Sunday's (8/28/05) Kansas City Star.

The message was that the vast majority of his constituents are more interested in things other than what's happening in Iraq. The Seantor held three town hall meetings in four days before an estimated total of 240 to 400 people. He took 36 questions from the people who attended. How many questions were about Iraq?

Five.

Are you surprised? I'm not...because I realized a long time ago that the real truth about Iraq is that it's simply not that high on most people's list of Important Things in Their Lives. Pundits like Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity whose careers and lives esentially revolve around politics would probably be indignant at hearing me say this, but it's true.

Look at some of the issues that were tossed at Senator Roberts (keeping in mind that he spent about fifteen minutes at the start of each of those meetings talking about Iraq): Social Security, a flat tax, money to reimburse Merchant Marines from World War II, and how cuts to farm programs will affect Kansas.

I call it The Supermarket Factor. I like to eavesdrop on people while waiting in line to pay for my groceries. It's a real lesson in what's important to just plain folks, because if total strangers are motivated enough to chat about something with other strangers other than the weather, then it's something that's REAL important. And I can't remember the last time I heard anyone spouting politics at the Price Chopper. The cost of gas and other things having to do with money seem to be the topics that float around the cash registers, or so it seems to me.

Face it: we want our serious issues fed to us. That's why talk radio is so popular. Big media--I'm talking TV here--has to grab you by the throat to make you watch between commercials. The particular dramatization that's done is done easily with the passion and emotion from a relative handful of politicians and zealots to promote their points of view. This ain't the 60's when Vietnam was a big enough issue to have large numbers of just plain common folks and college students marching and protesting all over the country for extended periods of time.

I'm not saying the whole Iraq issue isn't important. I am saying that Senator Roberts should not be surprised at the displays of basic human behavior he saw at those meetings. When it comes down to your safety, your well-being, and more often than not, your personal comfort, the so-called bigger issues in the news aren't big at all, are they?

The "me" generation never really went away. It just grew older and taught its children to think the same way.

Remember this as you follow the news this week...and the next time you're waiting in line at the supermarket.

2005-08-26T04:00:00.000-07:00

Why Some People Think I'm Nuts

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Saturday is my birthday and I think EVERYONE should make their birthday a special day. So today's blog will be about ME although you may find a little of YOU somewhere in here as well.

Aside from my idea to build a wall with an electrified fence well below and above it from coast to coast on the border with Mexico to keep illegal aliens out, why would anyone think I'm not playing with a full deck?

Part of the answer is what my passions are when I'm not involved with the stuff that radio talk show hosts do as part of their job.

I like comic strips. Not comic books, but strips, like the ones in the newspaper. They're really the only true and original American art form, you know, combining pictures with words. I especially like the ones that aren't around any more, and go out of my way to collect books of them. I take pride in my small but select collection of out-of-print anthologies of Pogo. He was the possum who, along with his friends and neighbors in the Okefenokee swamp, were great observers of everyday life who managed to make political commentary without offending anyone and still be funny. Hard to find that nowadays.

I also have a first-edition collection of The Spirit, a 1930's-and-'40's crimefighting detective who did not have super powers and who got the stuffing beat out of himself regularly, with a few bullet wounds along the way. When people were shot in his strip, they died, and graphically, for those days. Not stuff for kids, but compelling stories in which sometimes the bad guy got away. Maybe I revel in reading these gems simply because they would be so politically incorrect today.

I like pinball. Real pinball, the big old wooden box with flippers kind, not any computer-generated stuff. Once you really learn the subtleties of the game, (and yes, there are fine points, such as defining precisely when to launch a ball off a flipper and send it exactly where you want it to go), it can suspend you in time and space. A cheap high with no ill side effects or hangover? Call it that if you like. It's one of those things that you either comprehend completely or not at all. You don't if you can't understand why a grown man would look forward to driving down to the Replay Lounge in Lawrence just to spend a couple of hours bonding with "Theater of Magic," or "Fun House," pinball games that rank high on the satisfaction chart among afficionados.

Dreams. I've studied dreams for over 20 years, all because of one dream I had during an afternoon nap in which I played a game with Death and beat him. All dreams come in the service of health and wholeness and the person who can interpret your dreams the best is you. I've trained myself to remember most of my dreams and write them down in the middle of the night and return to sleep. I've had lucid dreams, where you know you're dreaming but stay asleep and do not wake up, and yes, it's a pretty freaky experience. Once you learn to believe in your dreams and get halfway good at understanding them, it's really amazing how helpful they are in waking life.

I imagine some people will be surprised to learn that I don't spend all my spare time reading literature provided by The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy or watching Fox News Channel. Hey--the little boy inside me won't let me do that, and I thank God for it.

If you're going to do something for which some people will think you're nuts, pick stuff that doesn't depend on a political label.

That way, for example, liberals and conservatives will have something on which they can agree. That will drive them nuts.

Which is O.K.

There's always room for more.

2005-08-25T04:00:00.000-07:00

More Evidence That Common Sense is on Life Support

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ITEM: On Monday's TV broadcast of The 700 Club, Evangelist Pat Robertson, speaking about Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, said: "You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war, and I don't think any oil shipments will stop. We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability."

Wednesday, Robertson said: "I didn't say 'assassination.' I said our special forces should 'take him out...'Take him out' could be a number of things.'" Of course, until then, he had said that he denied saying the guy should be killed.

Pat, to quote the immortal words of the sheriff in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, "Don't pee on my boots and try to tell me it's raining."

ITEM: 20-year-old KU college football player Bruce Ringwood was arrested and charged with two counts of assault after he allegedly attacked a guy and his wife at a country music concert who asked him to be more careful after he hit the woman in the head. The couple was old enough to be his parents. Officials at KU said they were "gathering information about the incident."

To the officials at KU: Just what do you not understand about the FACT that the kid was arrested? Your first move should be to suspend this kid from the team and then "gather information" about it. I suggest starting with the police report.

ITEM: Dr. Terry Bennett of New Hampshire told a fat woman who was his patient that she was obese and that she should join a group of similar people to try to get rid of the weight that would ultimately kill her. She says his saying that hurt her more than helping her, filed a complaint, and he wound up writing a letter of apology at the insistence of the state board of medicine.

These are only three current examples that common sense in America is slowly dying. Preachers recorded saying one thing and then denying they ever said it. (Of course, he is a politican as well as a man of God, you know.) Coaches and administrators standing up for the status quo instead of doing what any ordinary person would do. And the PC story of the fat woman in New England.

If one of these came along every now and then, we could all enjoy a good laugh. But these are just three examples of many that are in our faces every day. We're becoming immune to their stupidity and we run a real risk of losing what little sense may be left in this country.

I'm throwing down a challenge to you: starting today, I want you to make a mental note of every such story you encounter from all media, radio, TV, newspapers, Internet, blogs, whatever. Just stash it away in what we'll call the Stupid File inside your head. I'm betting that you won't go more than one day in which you don't have an entry.

Is there any good news about this state of affairs?

Well....sort of. The United States is not the only nation so afflicted. Other countries are, too.

But right now, we seem to have the market cornered.

2005-08-24T04:00:00.000-07:00

Reply to KC Star Editorial: NO!

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The Kansas City's Star's editorial today talks about the need for the owners of the Chiefs and the Royals to be more open about their finances, but if you "look around the edges," as you often need to do with editorials, one thing is certainly clear: the Star supports a new tax to update and expand the Truman Sports Complex.

And the proper response is: NO!

What you're being asked to think is that if the teams tell you in detail how much money they make, spend a lot of their own money to modernize their facilities and agree to stay in Kansas City for x numbers of years, then spending public money generated from a new tax is just fine and dandy.

But it's not. The central point in this non-debate is simply this: a new tax would be raising money to pay for the defaulted promise of Jackson County leaders who never put aside any money at all when they signed the contract back in the mid-90's that will soon expire.

To those leaders, I say:

Why should we trust you now ? This is just terrible planning and a real insult to the people you serve. You have spent money that should have been set aside for many years to reckon with this situation. Now you want to build a similar structure. How do we know you won't do the same thing again?

The Star editorial says: "Keeping both major-league teams is an essential goal for civic and elected leaders." NO, it is not. The scare stories hinted at in local media and recited aloud by Mayor Kay Barnes implying that Kansas City will become a second-class city if the teams leave are growing thin and hollow. The fact is the fastest-growing cities in this country do not have any pro sports teams.

If the teams should leave, Kansas City will not suddenly tumble and fall. The economic impact would be more of a ripple than an avalanche. After all, aren't the new entertainment district and the new Sprint arena downtown going to generate millions of dollars for the entire area? That's what many of these same officials are saying.

I don't want to see the teams leave. I think the flavor they provide for Kansas City is very special. But I do not think that flavor should be maintained to the tune of $400 million worth of public funds being managed by people who are either terrible planners, ignorant handlers, or simply dishonest.

This is not about giving a tax break to a new business who wants to bring thousands of jobs into Jackson County. It's not about giving a break to a business that is close to filing Chapter 11. It's about corporate welfare for a big entertainment company that generates highly popular sporting events.

I'm sure that sooner or later there will be a tax issue on the ballot in Jackson County specifically addressing this situation.

When that time comes, remember: the proper response is NO.

2005-08-23T04:00:00.000-07:00

Why You Think the Economy Stinks

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True or false: the US economy is booming.

Answer; True. It is . It just doesn't feel like it for a whole lot of people.

The stats show that as of last year, the American economy was growing at a rate of more than four per cent a year, unemployment was falling and millions of new jobs were created. So why do so many people think the economy stinks?

Maybe the real answer lies in wages. When workers can make more stuff for each hour they work, that means more sales and more money. The money can go into paychecks and on to the profit side of the ledgers or a lopsided combination of both or just one side. And what is happening now is that companies are holding on to that money or spending it to keep the same profit levels as a year or two ago because they're paying more for energy costs--just like the workers, in the case of gas prices. This is what some of the so-called leading economists are saying. I've just put it into plain English.

The reason I mention this is because I think the reason why it feels like the economy is lousy even though some big factors say as a nation we're doing pretty well is because of the Ford factor.

Say what?

The Ford factor. Everybody knows that Henry Ford with his assembly line concept made it possible for people to produce products not only faster, but cheaper.The computer industry is the perfect modern example of this, combining mass production with technology that enables us to buy computers that become obsolete doorstops worth les than we paid for them almost before we get them home from the store.

But what's really happened is that since the end of the second world war, we've essentially become a nation on a buying binge. As things have become cheaper to produce they've also become disposable and easier to throw away, from diapers to automobiles. The amount of money we save is at an all-time low while credit card debt is at an all-time high. If that hunk of plastic you use to burn a CD or DVD that you buy today for 79 cents still cost $10 like it did back in the 90's when the economy was supposedly booming so well, I'll bet you'd think twice before buying a 50-piece spindle of them.

It's popular to trash the government and private business when you think the economy stinks, and each entity deserves blame for making bad choices. It's always uncomfortable to accept any blame yourself. Truth is, it's a three-way deal, and in the long run, each part of the unholy trinity - government, business, and US - generate this idotic condition in which the economy can be doing well, but no one seems to be getting ahead.

So let's just blame Henry Ford and let it go at that.

After all, what do I know? The only course I flunked in college was Economics.

2005-08-22T04:00:00.000-07:00

When Senators Go Senile

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We saw early signs of it this past weekend when Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel, whose military service earned him numberous medal and a couple of purple hearts, joined the wailing liberal chorus urging the government to quit Iraq before the job is done.

Among the things that Hagel said was this:

"We're past that stage now because now we are locked into a bogged-down problem not unsimilar, dissimilar to where we were in Vietnam." "The longer we stay, the more problems we're going to have...what I think the White House does not yet understand - and some of my colleagues - the dam has broke on this policy." "The longer we stay there, the more similarities [to Vietnam] are going to come together."

Don't people whining like Senator Hagel ever learn anything from their experience? Almost every kid in high school complains about having to take some type of history course no matter how clearly experience shows that we learn from the past.

Consider this:

Insurgents bombed a police station, claiming the lives of five Americans and thirty-nine civilians. Loosely organized terrorist cells plant mines, snipe at American occupation forces and assassinate mayors and officials collaborating with the occupying forces struggling to rebuild the country.

A quagmire? It might sound like it, but no.

This is post-war Germany, not present-day Iraq.

If this doesn't shock you, maybe you'll at least be surprised to know that these words were written by Alexander Rubin, in the Canada Free Press last Saturday! Rubin goes on to say: Tactics were varied, and typically terrorist. Stories of assassinations, sniping attacks and sabotage rocked American troops and German civilians.

All you need to do is substiture "Iraqi" for German in that sentence and it becomes current news and not history. I wonder if Chuck Hagel can understand that.

It seems amazing to me that apparently the media was as culpable then as many conservatives are saying the media is today, which turns the image of a liberal press into a reality rather than a stereotype. As Alexander Rubin puts it:

The Nazi insurgency generated a fear and panic completely out of proportion to their actual effectiveness. Radio and leaflet propaganda claimed every setback in reconstruction as one of their operations, and deaths of prominent occupation personalities as assassinations. The media gobbled it up, while the citizens of America and Germany worried.

The parallels are in one sense, amazing, and in another sense, unimpressive, for anyone who is an astute student of American history.

I was going to say that hope at least you'll remember today's blog the next time you read or hear someone saying we should throw in the towel and leave unfinished what we started in Iraq. But there's a better idea.

I virtually never suggest that you email friends and associates web page addresses, articles, and so on. But the thinking is so clear, the logic so easy to understand, that I'm urging you to go ahead and email the URL for this page as you see fit.

What is happening in Iraq is not the same as what happened in Vietnam, and we have a major lesson from history that simply proves it. It's all about staying focused and the commitment that naturally follows.

Here's the link to Alexander Rubin's piece: The Specter of the Werewolf: Lessons from Post-War Germany

Make time to read it and then make time to forward today's blog to your email list. This is powerful stuff.

2005-08-19T04:00:00.000-07:00

Yeah, But Can He Play Football?

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What it is, is some of the Kansas City Chiefs getting into toruble with the law for drunken and/or stupid conduct in nightclubs near training camp. And the talk of the town seems to boil down to three points of view: that the Chiefs involved did what's been reported or that they did not, OR the crazy third one, that sure, yeah, the Chiefs did it but so what? The media just want to get a piece of the Chiefs to sell papers or attract listeners. The incidents are blown out of proportion because the local police and people there simply have to be overreacting because these people--the Chiefs--are celebrities.

Let's cut through the spin: amidst the charges and the talk and the speculation, two FACTS stand out:

1) Police have a security video that clearly shows Lawrence Tynes assaulting a guy in a bar, the incident that wound up with Tynes being charged with "substantial battery."

2) At a morning training camp news conference, Chiefs manager Carl Peterson announced that quarterback Trent Green would only answer questions related to football. Specifcally. Peterson said "I would hope that people in Kansas City, particularly, never question the integrity of this guy right here. What he's done on the field, and off the field, more importantly, and his family, I think, speak volumes about the integrity of Trent Green. In spite of what some media may want to suppose or write, they're wrong. And this incident is closed as far as we're concerned."

If there's a video that clearly shows what's reported with no question as to who was involved and what happened, there are not, as Tynes' attorney says 'two sides to every story." The camera isn't paid paid hundreds of dollars an hour to get someone off the hook. And we're talking about a couple of charges that can result in fines of up to $20,000 and over four years in the slammer.

It simply doesn't matter who started any type of provocation.

The bottom line is that when you get into a fight for somebody bumping into you, whether they do it intentionally or not, you don't have a case. The security camera video will show you just walking away, and there would be no way you would be accused of throwing punches. This is not a judgement call for a referee to make. The police report spells it out, backed up by the video, and that's the way it is.

The comments by Carl Peterson are downright insulting. If Green is lily-white innocent, that should come out in the legal process. But don't you be telling me, Carl Peterson, that I have no right to question somebody because his track record looks squeaky clean. That's an old political trick that's just plain slimy. At worst, he's a lousy party animal and at best, he's guilty of hanging out with some pro football players who have serious behavioral problems off the field.

"Don't question his integrity." Peterson reminds me of former Nebraska football coach Tom Osbourne. Near the end of Tom's legendary football era, he approved the selection of a bunch of football players for his team who had equal, if not worse, behavioral problems like these Chiefs who are in the spotlight.

Tom hated the media, and he tried not to show it most of the time. But after one of the worst episodes in which one of his players broke into a house and literally dragged his ex-girlfriend down a flight of stairs, Tom tried to put a very simple spin on the incident to create a "no big deal" type of attitude.

When a CBS reporter asked him a question he didn't like, Tom told the cameraman to shut off his camera, asked who the reporter was, and told him to get out. What a great example to set for your team, whether they're students or highly paid pro players.

Peterson could have defused the situation much better if he had specified that the press conference would have two parts, one for foot-ball questions and one for slime-ball questions and then he could have just played dodge-ball by saying that because the law was involved, neither he nor any players could answer, and bail out gracefully.

We'll save the rest of the talk about sports figures being role models and other such fairy tales for a future blog. Have a great weekend and see ya back here on Monday.

2005-08-18T04:00:00.000-07:00

Gone but not Forgotten--Ever

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A new company plans to unveil new high-tech tombstones with embedded flat screen monitors that would allow visitors to play memorial videos of the deceased, according to a report. Joe Joachim, who says he wants to be the Walt Disney of the funeral business, plans to show the Vidstone this year at the annual funeral directors convention.

That's the story today from WKMG TV in Florida. Joe, the guy who came up with this lunatic idea, says it's the "ultimate funeral experience." Visitors could plug in headphones at the grave site and be treated to a documentary of the deceased's life. It's solar powered so there would never be a problem with--if you'll pardon the expression--dead batteries.

Don't you think this is a sick idea? I do. It's sick because with tombstone video, the person never really dies and that's unhealthy for the living.

Earlier this summer, my wife asked her parents to give her a batch of old 8mm home movies, some dating back to the 50's, which they had stored under excellent conditions. We took them to a video transfer place where they were transferred onto A DVD so that the images can still be seen longer after the film deteriorates beyond use. At the family reunion where she presented them, the gathering noted how wonderful it was to see long-dead relatives enjoying themselves in scenes from their lives. A lot of people watched the DVD twice and got teary-eyed the second time around. Then at the end of the weekend, everyone got into their cars and drove home and thanked Nancy for the wonderful thing she had done. But it was very, very obvious that the DVD-watching was a special thing that even with the DVD within grabbing distance, would not be repeated every day.

Isn't the tombstone video pretty much the same? No! Because funerals are not for the deceased; they're for the living, and they are the ultimate rite of passage. Watching that person be lowered into the ground is a dramatic, forceful way of conveying the message that that person is dead. Gone. Left the building. Not coming back. Having a video at that specific location sends the message to at least some mourners that the deceased will somehow always be there and be "available."

In a world that is growing more and more dependent on communication that is no longer personal but conducted through instruments of media, ranging from wireless phones to ATM's to customer service departments that are halfway around the world, it bothers me a lot that inventions like this twist and distort what should be the finality of death, especially for younger people.

When I heard about this, I couldn't help remembering a 1965 movie that was promoted with the catch phrase as the movie that had "something to offend everyone." It was The Loved One, a very black comedy that bombed at the box office. Picture Jonathan Winters in a serious role as twin brothers, one of whom is very jealous of the other, who is a very successful funeral home director. Musician Paul Williams plays a 13-year-old aeronautics genius who invents a method of sending corpses into "eternal orbit." A funeral sequence near the end of the film has Winters with his arms lifted up as a rocket blasts off with remains in them, screaming "Resurrection! Resurrection!"

In the film, someone's loved one had died but with that type of burial, they would never really die; they'd still be "there" -- up there. With tombstone video, people will die but they won't ever really die; they'll be "right there," and that's not what cemeteries or death are really all about.

Click Here for WKMG's video report

2005-08-17T04:00:00.000-07:00

Gas Prices: Can You Fight Back?

Now you can LISTEN to The George Blog. Click here to download and play today's mp3 audiofile.

In the spring of this year, I asked on the air "At what price per gallon will you really think twice before hopping in the car and going out--for shopping, errands, whatever--and start planning ahead?" The answers varied from "Now!" to "around three dollars a gallon." I said I really wasn't sure, but I'd know when it hit.

Well, it hit today. I wanted to make sure an important letter got into the mail as soon as possible, so I made a trip to my local post office, only a couple of miles away, to drop it in for the early afternoon pickup. On the way, I saw that prices had gone up in my neighborhood overnight with regular unleaded almost $2.60 a gallon at a couple of stations. That did it. I didn't get angry, I just flashed back to the conversation I just told you about and knew that this was IT-this was the trigger point for me to seriously start planning as much traveling in advance as possible, because my experience, my upbringing, my life in general, simply says the prices I saw are too high. Ranting won't help. Protesting won't help. Hmmm..come to think of it, other than planning, what will help?

I came up with a few things people are trying around the country to start using gas wisely to more or less fight back. You know, of course, the usual stuff that's first on the media's list of how to save money: plan your trips, don't speed, yada, yada, yada. Let's look at some of the stuff you might not hear while you're waiting in line to pay for your next tank at the convenience store.

Fill up on Tuesday or Wednesday because gas stations jack up the prices on weekends. Urban myth! I just told you what happened to me and it's barely the middle of the week.

Turn off the air conditioning and open the windows. Sounds sort of reasonable, doesn't it? Forget it! Cars are aerodynamically designed to run best wih the windows closed. Opening them can be fun at the right time, but the air flowing through open windows adds drag to the car. Of course, if you want to turn the AC off and keep the windows up, you might save a little, but it'll probably be offset by the extra laundry from washing a lot more sweaty clothes! While we're on the subject, if you take off the bike rack or extra luggage rack on top of your car, you'll make it more aerodynamic, too

Buy gas at stations located well away from interstate highway on and off ramps. This is for real! One of those universal common truths that happens to BE true. It is, pure and simple, the willingness of travelers to pay more just for the sake of time and speed.

On the interstate, stay behind the semis. There is some truth to this, as well. It's physics, all about letting someone else create a draft so there's less wind resistance for your vehicle to fight. The downside is that you're staying in the trucker's blind spot and it's not the safest thing to do at high speeds.

Buy higher octane - it'll improve your car's efficiency. BULL! Unless your car maker designates the ultra-high premium 92 or 93 octane stuff for a high-performance or really large engine, use unleaded regular. This is just an old wive's tale.

If you drive a pickup truck, leave the tailgate down to improve your mileage. This has been a great source of bar arguments for years. Let me clue you in on the real deal: it ain't true. The answer goes back to the aerodynamics thing again. A group of airline engineers got into this argument a couple of years ago and figured out that the best way to end it once and for all would be to take a pickup truck into one of those huge wind tunnels and set up a controlled test run that could be measured. They found that driving a pickup with the gate up uses less gas than with it down.

THE MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU'LL READ TODAY:
You're probably going to encounter some advertising for gizmos that you can install yourself easily on your car under the hood that will help increase you vehicle's mileage dramatically and won't hurt your car. The advertising will explain it's based on science and changing the mixture of air and gas, or as some old-timers call it, "leaning" the fuel.

DON'T DO IT!

I had the misfortune to get involved promoting one of these original gimmicks back in the 70's when gas prices went nuts. It was called the G.R. Valve and it was endorsed by astronaut Gordon Cooper, who I really think was not aware he was being scammed, too. The thing worked as advertised, but only on a few models of cars, and even then damage would be done to the engine in the long run. A friend of mine in manufacturing at the time had his engineering staff take it apart and they said it would very likely ruin a lot of cars. I bailed as fast as I could, and I advise you to do the same when you start hearing the modern-day equivalent of it being advertised.

2005-08-16T04:00:00.000-07:00

It's Really Just a Ho-Hum Story

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The Cindy Sheehan story.

When future generations look up the term "media circus," this will have to be the primo example. From print to electronic media, the writers and talking heads are running with this as if it's the play that will win the game for them. The fact is that all of the local and national writers, talk show hosts, and callers are missing the most important point of all the points there are in this story.

And that point is: this is NOT the Cindy Sheehan story.

It is the CASEY Sheehan story, a short one that is similar to the story of many others who have died in uniform at this time in our nation's history. But it is HIS story, not his mother's.

Casey was one of the thousands of men and women who made a personal choice to sign up with the military, to serve in the uniform of his country. He was not drafted. No one put a gun to his head to make him enlist. I find it hard to believe that Casey, or any other young person who, to put it simply, is not mentally deficient, knew that when he made the decision to become a soldier, he also knew that he was accepting a position that could ultimately cause his death on the orders of other people telling him what to do.

This is not news. This is the way it has always been and will likely always be. It does not matter if a mother disagrees with the politics of her son's employers, which is what this is all about. His employers happen to be the government of the United States. If she disagreed with those people, why did she not do everything in her power to try to persuade him not to take he path which he chose? I have not read or heard anything that speaks to that situation.

Please don't get me wrong. I am not saying that Cindy Sheehan's grief or sense of loss is not real. I am saying that her issues are not with "the man who sent her son to war." Her issues are with her politics and what I think is the issues that cannot be solved: the notion that she and her son believed in different things, and the notion that mother and son had contrasting beliefs that tugged at each person's purposes, dignity, and worth.

Hopefully, you picked up the truth that many media outlets had to backtrack to mention today: the fact that Cindy not only met with the President once already, but not in a group of other military families, but with the President privately, two months after her son died.

There can be no doubt that this women's protest has become an orchestrated media event by organized liberals. You need look no further than the involvement of self-identifed liberals groups, which are providing PR and acting as her handlers for the appearances she is being asked to make. If she really wanted to make her point, she would tell them politely "No, thanks," and have her closest relatives or friends who agree with what she is doing handle it for her, even if it's just to sit next to her little camp-out site and say "Go away" to everyone with a camera or a microphone.

The spins of "why are U.S. soldiers in Iraq?" or "what did my son die for?" have become almost inseparable from the spin that makes President Bush out to be uncaring at best and evil at worst for not rushing out from his ranch to engage Cindy in what certainly would be a pointless conversation, since through her public statements of today, she's made it clear that nothing he can say would be acceptable to her. She has ended the request for a conversation by turning it into a pure political statement.

It's one we've already heard before. And it's really just a ho-hum story.

2005-08-15T04:00:00.000-07:00

Slides from a Weekend Vacation

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It is late in the day Sunday as I make these notes. Just got back from a weekend getaway to the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines. Nancy and I plan literally months ahead of time for the event, centered around the annual Rock n' Roll Reunion concert in the grandstand.

Sunday afternoon starts becoming Sunday evening and I know there is plenty of blog material. But upon looking at all there is, it overwhelms me. Summer's nearly over and things should be starting to slow down a little, not speeding up. The soldier's mother who is demanding that meeing with the President, the violence because of the Gaza pullout in the Mideast, the continuing blather over Supreme Court nominee John Roberts, the ridiculously high price of gasoline----somebody stop me before I hurt myself!

Showing my slides on the radio is something I've done mainly for humor off and on for years. Along the way I've found that some pretty important reminders about everyday life have come out of them. And tonight seems like a particularly good night to present another slide show, with the hope that you'll find something in this little collection that you can come back to in your own mind this week, which looks like an especially top-heavy week filled with serious and sensitive news. Special thanks to Nance for suggesting I do this, since it's never been done in Blog style before!

Here we go.....

(CLICK) This is Dan the Domino Man, getting ready to push the first domino of the 6,000 he's set up so that we can spend about two minutes watching what it took him over nine hours to set up get knocked over. It was really something to see, and it worked perfectly. A silly but amusing spectacle by someone with way too much time on his hands? I prefer to think of it as one of those rare events that brought together everyone from the age of 5 to over 80, all focused on one common idea, on which they all agreed. The sense of satisfaction could be felt like electricity in the air when the last domino fell, and the cheers went up. We don't have a lot of things like this around anymore and it was almost comforting to have been part of it---as well as a lot of fun to see it live.

(CLICK) This is a shot of the Giant Slide, the thing where you sit on a hunk of burlap and just slide down a big wavy plastic sheet. Notice the looks of sheer joy on the faces of not just the little kids going it for the first time, but on the faces of the parents and grandparents, too. There was nothing else in the world for a few seconds except a safe thrill and delight in being free, in the non-political sense. Definitely worth two dollars and fifty cents.

(CLICK) Here are the two little boys riding in the little red wagon being pulled along by their Mom in front of where we were standing, by the tram stop. The one in the front smiled at us and yelled "Jump In," so we wouldn't have to stand there. Totally impossible, totally outrageous, this child responding to a smile and showing a sense of humor few of us seem to carry with us along the way to becoming the person pulling the wagon.

(CLICK) What a great display! This is inside the new State Fair Museum. And this picture I snapped from a newsreel someone had the smarts to make is an event that really happened. During the days of the Depression, some bright minds at the Fair staged an event that took everyone's mind off their troubles. These are in fact two steam locomotives, heading down an inclined track for a staged head-on collision at about 40 miles per hour in front of a crowd numbering 12,000. A big draw in 1931. One of the trains was nicknamed the Roosevelt and the other was the Hoover, after the current presidential candidates. Now, watch this next slide that shows the moment of impact....

(CLICK) Look at that explosion! In case you're wondering how that ball of fire came about, the impact was helped out a little bit by a case of dynamite mounted on the front of each locomotive to be ignited by the collision. Unlike the election, there was no declared winner and only two spectators received minor injuries from flying debris.

(CLICK) Last slide. This is Johnny Rivers, the star of this year's Rock n' Roll Reunion. Looking good and sounding just as good as he did when he didn't have any grey in his hair. From the words of his good rockin' songs like Maybelline and cover version of Kansas City to slower and somewhat more serious tunes like Poor Side of Town, he took us back for a few minutes to a time when life was a lot simpler than it is today. Felt pretty good. Sometimes I wish we could go there a little more often.

Summer rain taps at my window
West wind soft as a sweet dream
My love warm as the sunshine
Sittin' here by me, she's here by me-ee-ee

We sailed into the sunset
Drifted home caught by a gulf stream
Never gave a thought for tomorrow
Just let tomorrow be, now, let tomorrow be-ee-ee

All summer long we spent dancin' in the sand
And the jukebox kept on playin'
Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band...

Copyright Jim Hendricks, Maple Street Music

That's it. Somebody want to turn the lights back on, please?

2005-08-12T04:00:00.000-07:00

Ain't Gonna Happen

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Another bi-state tax.

What? Is someone still beating this tired, old, dead issue? Yep. Yael Abouhalkah ate up a lot of the Kansas City Star's Opinion page today with a story that tries to be upbeat about this loser of an idea. I have to admit he did a nice job covering his butt by inserting reminders throughout that the chances are really bad that any more votes on the plan will get shot down--in fact, will get crushed.

If you live here, you know that it's all about asking people in Kansas to subsidize the Chiefs and the Royals through sales taxes. The supporters don't like to use those words, though. They prefer "support" to "subsidize." They prefer to call the idea "upgrading regional assets" rather than "approving corporate welfare," which is what it boils down to.

Here's why another try at a bi-state tax just ain't gonna happen:

First, the attempt to package this pro sports subsidy as a wonderful opportunity to help finance arts programs throughout the area has been revealed for the scam it really is. The message that's bring sold is "hey, folks, let us up your taxes for football and baseball and we'll throw some money at arts and we'll get back to you later on how we'll do that."

Right.

Next, the supporters of this dumb tax have an inability to unerstand something very simple: people, especially on the Kansas side of the state line, who live long distances from the Truman Sports Complex just don't have the alleged sense of ownership of the Chiefs and the Royals that is supposed to exist in Missouri. Any why should they?

Worst-case situation: the teams bail on Kansas City. Personal outcome for most people: nothing.

They still have jobs and family. Their kids will still get an education. For most people, nothing will change. Kansas City will not become "a big Omaha," or a so-called second-class city except in the minds of the crazed supporters who just don't want to hear what the people have already said.

Oh sure, avid sports fans will be pretty P.O.'d. Welcome to reality. I'm still fuming over the thought that the Westport Flea Market Bar & Grill may make way for a Hooters.

If there is another attempt, the spin will be on things like "regional cooperation" and other such phoney concepts under the umbrella that reads "It's a metro thing; we're all in this together." You'll probably see some half-baked tie-in to light rail or improved mass transit or such, with money projections that will be totally out of touch with reality. The record shows that no one around here knows how to estimate and project big projects with any degree of accuracy (except maybe the local auto dealers' repair shops).

How about this: you want to make one more try at this harebrained bi-state tax? Go ahead, but promote it for what it really is: a 100% taxpayer-funded subsidy to make sure an entertaining pro football team and a thankless losing pro baseball team call Kansas City home for the rest of time. When the advertising hits the media, spell it out honestly.

Tell voters this: "The bi-state tax is back on the ballot. It's all about keeping the Chiefs and the Royals in Kansas City. If you don't pass it, they'll probably move and it'll be your fault. That it, folks, nothing more. It's all about keeping these teams here and the choice is up to you."

Ain't gonna happen.

2005-08-11T16:20:00.000-07:00

2005-08-11T04:00:00.000-07:00

The Talk No One Wants to Hear

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From the gas station down the corner from where you live to the top of the Drudge Report, the story's going to be the same for a little while: GAS PRICE RECORDS SMASHED!

It's really just a re-run but with the out-of-pocket price for a gallon of gas higher than it's ever been before and the summer heat soaring to the highest temperatures of the year for a big chunk of the country, we've got a pretty explosive situation. And what do such situations demand?

Simple answers, of course!

Let's ask it together: "Why are gas prices so high?"

Who wants to start? Let's start off with the answer a friend of mine offered at lunch yesterday: why, it's the evil gas (oil) companies, of course. Next, in line at the supermarket: it's those damn Arabs who have the oil who know they can jack up the price of crude just to jerk our chains. Moving right along, "man (or woman) in the street" radio and TV interviews featuring just plain folks:

"The gas station owners are just gouging us, that's all."
"It's the government, manipulating prices to star setting us up for the next elections."
"OPEC - we should bomb them if they don't start shipping more oil."
"It's a big scam...the oil companies, politicians, Arabs--they're all in cahoots."

Yeah! Yeah! It's so much easier to grab a simple answer than to take a hard look at the facts.

The numbers tell the story. Simply put, while the world will run out of natural oil someday, there is no shortage of crude oil. The supplies are O.K. And the numbers also say that there is no shortage of crude oil production capacity.

REAL REASON # 1: The United States consumes about 45% of the world's gasoline and the demand has increased over the past 18 months by something like five percent. Meanwhile, on the other side of the planet, booming trade in big Asian countries and increasing income for the people who live there have caused a growth rate of as much as ten percent. Who's the number one importer of oil? If you said Japan, you're wrong. China is number one, Japan is number two. China alone has over a billion people. The demand is growing fast and strong as refineries, few as they are, are cranking it out. We are talking supply and demand, not artificial gouging. If everyone in America boycotted using all oil or gas-powered machinery for a week, it wouldn't "send a message" as soapbox demagogues like to say. In fact, it wouldn't make a difference. There are willing buyers who will gladly pay the cost and the freight to get it there.

REAL REASON # 2: I've already hinted at it. The refinery situation. Figures from last year show that in 1981, 321 refineries pumped out 18.6 million barrels a day of gasoline in the U.S. Today 149 refineries, run by 60 companies in 33 different states, pump out 16.8 million barrels.In 1983, California had 37 refineries. Last year, it had 13. (Source:National Petrochemical and Refiners Association) If you want to throw a little blame around, here's the place to do it. The federal government and state governments, with a little help from environmentalists, dictate that something like EIGHTEEN different formulations of gasoline be sold in the U.S. to comply with various air quality regulations. What this means is that even in an emergency, a gasoline distributor can't just ship gas from one part of the country to another, because the gasolines are different--unless lawmakers or governors step in to call some pretty drastic shots.

REAL REASON # 3: While the dollar is still the currency of choice for buying and selling oil, the reality is that the dollar has not kept its value on the world market. I just checked the exchange rate and one U.S. dollar is currently worth 80% of 1 Euro. Would you want to be paid with a dollar that was worth only eighty cents when you went to the store to spend it? Sure--if you upped your price to make sure that you took in more to cover the difference!

The Ashbrook Center, a conservative think tank at Ashland University, tackled the evil oil companies back in 2000 when they presented the following analysis of why oil price were so high then:

Of course, oil companies are a favorite target of energy demagogues. Indeed, the charges leveled by the vice president conjure up images of the 1970s—déjà vu all over again. But logic points away from the oil companies as the cause of higher prices. Because if oil companies can raise prices at will, why did they wait so long to do so? Why did they let energy prices remain low for so long; indeed why did they permit them to fall to record lows last year? The fact is that three decades of investigations have never produced a shred of evidence to support the contention that oil companies have colluded to raise prices.

Think about that for a minute. If they can raise prices at will, why wait? Why not do it now--the same way that the drug companies do with medicine and the way pro sports and entertainers do for ticket prices? But the oil companies didn't. Huge profits? Sure! While it sounds like a rip, we're talking about a volatile industry that has high risks....and at the risk of sounding unpatriotic, where is it written that private for-profit businesses making and selling a high-demand product have any obligation to lower their prices because what used to be considered cheap is now considered pricey?

REAL REASON # 4: The numbers really do tell it all. These are the latest I could get today. They're from March of this year:

Regular gas at $2.08 a gallon:

Distribution & Marketing: 6%
Refining: 19%
Taxes: 21%
Crude Oil: 54%

Yep. It's the talk no one wants to hear.

2005-08-10T04:00:00.000-07:00

Hot Summer Nights

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Parents, do you know where your children are?

It's become a trite, cliched question that almost sets you up for a punch line.

A story in the Christian Science Monitor talks about what a lot of people think isn't that big a problem: drag racing by teenagers. Isn't this stuff supposed to happen mainly in places like California, or Texas, or someplace where there are small towns with nothing to do except cruise and race, like they do in the movies?

The statistics from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration don't have to be tweaked to show that the passion of youth for speed is as strong as it ever was: 45% of fatalities on 2003 for teen drivers aged 16-20 involved speed. They say that the stats show that more seat belts are being fastened on the road and fewer people are drinking and driving, but driving fast as a factor in deadly crashes is right up there.

You've probably heard and thought about the measures that different communities across the country are using or arguing about to try to cut down on teen accidents on the road: banning cell phones, limiting how many kids are in the car, tighter curfews, upping the age for a driver's license--it's a long list. Parents aren't thrilled by the prospect of having to haul their kids around for an extra couple of years, or at inconvenient hours, so many don't want to see any changes, whether or not safety is involved.

Of course, drag racing is mainly a guy thing, from the participation angle. But when it comes to watching, something strange happens. Depending on the community, not only other other boys but girls, and older people like their parents actively support it. The cops who break up the illegal races become the bad guys.

I lived in Omaha, Nebraska, for about twenty years. During my time there, I happened to take friends and family to or from the airport on a number of Saturday nights. I also dated a girl who lived near there and had to drive part of the same route when I went to pick her up when we went out on Saturdays. On many Saturday nights, part of the main road used to have sawhorses closing it off with official-looking "detour" signs pointing out the alternate route. I never gave it a second thought. Then, one Sunday the news broke that the police had broken up drag races there--drag races that had been held regularly by people simply blocking off public roads for the past three years, with as many as 500 people attending. The cops had bottles and rocks thrown at them as they broke it up and a lot of people were willing and eager to go on camera to rant about how their "rights" had been violated.

Now, in San Diego, the police are suggesting that anyone caught watching a drag race be subject to arrest and anyone taking part in one be subject to having the vehicle forfeited. And I say good for them! Encouraging teenage speed freaks of the old-fashioned kind to just go out and do their own thing is not the way to make dreams of NASCAR championships come true.

Big city or small town, hot summer nights should not automatically mean it's the time for racing just to show off in a macho test that really doesn't prove anything in the long run. It's tough to make your 16-year-old son believe that, since he already knows everything and isn't ever going to die. But it's better to try than to let it slide.

So the next time you hear "Parents, do you know where your children are?" don't be quick to crack a smile...unless you know the answer to the question.

2005-08-09T04:00:00.000-07:00

Bill O'Reilly Loves Kansas City

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...but for all the wrong reasons. And it's not his fault. Recently, Bill has done a couple of pieces on incredibly bad decisions by judges in this neck of the woods.

And when I say bad, I mean really bad--so bad that liberals on the far left and far right are in complete agreement that they're bad!

I think the worst was the case that happened a couple of weeks ago. I didn't say anything about it then because I felt it was important to make sure that the media reports were totally accurate, because of the nature of the story.

Back in April, 41-year-old lawyer Jan P. Helder Jr. had set up an afternoon meeting over the Internet for a sex romp with who he thought was a 14-year-old girl named Lisa. But it was a Platte County detective, not a 14-year-old girl, with whom he had made a date. And he walked right into the trap and got nailed. A classic sting operation, and it worked just fine.

Just fine, that is, until Judge Dean Whipple threw out a jury verdict that found the lawyer guilty of trying to arrange sex with an underage girl--because there was no actual sex act committed! Think about it--in essence, what the judge is saying is that it's all right to lure your children to engage in statutory rape as long as the rape doesn't take place. The judge apparently doesn't understand that the laws on this issue were written to protect children, including any precocious ones whose hormones kicked in earlier than those of other children their age.

The judge bought the argument of the lawyer's lawyer that in order to break federal law, you have to actually entice a minor, and not a deputy pretending to be a minor. Prosectors apparently now think that when the case is re-tried, they have enough evidence to convict, although there was speculation last week that the ruling could lead to a lot of federal cases of undercover agents in which child sex offenders were caught being thrown out.

No one should have any doubt that the thinking that got this guy off the hook is misguided, misdirected, and simply lacks common sense. The plain truth is that when it comes to children, the old barnyard adage fits perfectly: the idea is to stop the fox before he gets into the henhouse and wreaks havoc, destruction, and in some cases, death.

Sure it's a setup, a sting. Stings are all about prevention, whether it's preventing kids from buying cigarettes, stopping people who are driving drunk or with expired licenses, or preventing a grown man from molesting a child. You may think some stings are contrived and as some of my callers have said when the subject of stings came up before this one, un-American. But I'm betting that you and I and even Al Franken and Bill O'Reilly are in agreement that this one is right on target.

2005-08-08T04:00:00.000-07:00

Fighting Fire with Fire

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It doesn't make any difference where you live. The story of Sam and Lindsey Porter stays with you forever once you've heard it. An unsolved mystery of the worst kind.

Sam and Lindsay were picked up for a weekend visit by their father Dan Porter on June 5 of last year and haven't been seen since. Dan has told police a variety of stories ranging from giving them or maybe selling them to people who couldn't have children of their own to just outright killing them to get even with his wife for leaving him. Because Dan has told multiple stories to the police, the county prosecutor says he won't be charged with murder because it takes more than a confession to make the charge stick. Dan's in jail now waiting for his trial to come up on kidnapping charges, the only thing they have to charge him with.

Yesterday's story in the Kansas City Star covered a list of things he said that were indicative of "suspicious behavior" which leaves you to infer that he did in fact kill them. But this is all second-guessing.

I've talked about this before and if you're from the Kansas City area, I know the story has stuck with you as much as it has with me. Part of me sympathizes greatly for Tina, the chldren's mother, who mus go to bed every night wondering if your children are still alive and praying for their safe return. In cases like this, a mother has no rest until the truth finally comes out, whatever that truth is.

Another part of me has been asking, as I've asked on the radio, "What can we do with this creep to get him to tell the truth about what happened?"

I think I have an answer, an answer that the so-called prisoners' rights groups and the (Anti) American Civil Liberties Union won't like.

In a word, it's torture.

A special kind of torture, which we've seen works very well, and under proper supervision, doesn't permanently hurt the person who undergoes the torture.

It's simple: sleep deprivation. Fairly inexpensive to do and wonderfully brutal.

The name pretty much says it all, but let's dig into it just a little deeper. Sarah Ledoux, a student at Bryn Mawr college studying sleep deprivation a few years ago, wrote a paper that is well documented and non-technical enough to explain what happens:

Sleep deprived test subjects have difficulties thinking of imaginative words or ideas. Instead, they tend to choose repetitious words or clichéd phrases. Also, a sleep-deprived individual is less able to deliver a statement well. Subjects in research studies also have a more difficult time reacting well to unpredicted rapid changes. Sleep deprived people do not have the speed or creative abilities to cope with making quick but logical decisions, nor do they have the ability to implement them well. Studies have demonstrated that a lack of sleep impairs one's ability to simultaneously focus on several different related tasks, reducing the speed as well as the efficiency of one's actions. A person may be able to react to a complex scenario when suddenly presented with it but, similar to the verbal tests, the subject will most likely pick an unoriginal solution. If presented with a similar situation multiple times with slight variations in the information presented the subject chooses the same solution, even though it might not be as applicable to the new scenario.

Sounds to me like if we kept ol' Dan from sleeping, first, he'd start losing track of his stories and return to the same one over and over again. Would that one be the truth? Let's suppose he is as one-track-minded as he's appeared to be so far. We keep depriving him from sleep until he's begging for it so much, he gives the authorities what they need to find out the truth.

Some will say the dangers of this are too high; the brain literally shuts down; hallucinations occur, metabolism is affected adversely, and Dan would come dangerously close to death if he hung on for eleven days, because that's the record. But he'd never get that far. We'd monitor him and keep him healthy enough....enough to do it over and over and OVER again until he talks...because the only place people like him are vulnerable is inside their heads. So let the demons of their own creation haunt Dan Porter like no well-dressed, well-groomed contingent of lawyers or black-robed judge will.

Until the nightmare stops for Tina and the truth comes out, whether there's a happy ending or not, let the bleeding hearts be damned and let's fight fire with fire.

2005-08-05T04:00:00.000-07:00

Dancing in the Dark

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They swirl around the dance floor, spinning and gliding, moving in rhythm, dancing from the past into the future, paying no attention to anyone or anything as if the music will never stop.

They are the members of the Jackson County Sports Authority, who are finally starting to understand that the music will stop and it will stop with a roar - the roar of taxpayers and rabid Chiefs fans who will be venting righteous wrath when the bill for the ball is presented to them.

The other day, the firm hired by th Chiefs to total up how much it'll cost for the upgrades they want for Arrowhead stadium said it would cost about $300 million, but wouldn't say plainly how much it would cost just to keep the team there for another 8 years. County officials had a different estimate - $80 million for basic repairs for both Arrowhead and Kaufmann stadiums.

Here's the bottom line: sooner or later, the county will probably ask both ball clubs to put off a lot of repairs and almost all big improvements so that they'll have time to come up with financing proposals, which will likely be on the ballot next year for voters.

You don't have to be a political expert to see that what we're talking about is new taxes or tax increases for Jackson County folks. Forget about any more foolish Bi-state proposals. It's been established that no matter how Jackson County tries to color it, the picture is about a Kansas City, MISSOURI, problem. And the problem specifically is that the blowhards of the Sports Authority simply spaced off any planning for this problem until it hit them in the face over the last year or so. They've know since the early 90's that this day would come and they haven't put aside a cent for it.

You know what it kind of reminds me of? (Pardon the grammar.)

Some of the TV shows and movies about selling one's soul to the devil. Even when you know he's going to collect it, you pretend the deal didn't really happen after all.

But this one did, and the man in red is shaking his tail in the distance. Before he gets here, the Jackson County honchos will probably be using some moves from his own playbook to try to beat him.

And the main one will be fear.

You may have heard me say it before: the campaign will boil down to some variation of the following:

"If you don't votes yes on the tax increase for the Chiefs and the Royals, when they leave, it will be your fault for turning Kansas City into a non-major league city."

What pathetic leadership.

The ballroom's getting empty...the crowd is thinning out. Looks like the last dance is coming up.

2005-08-04T04:00:00.000-07:00

No Whining Allowed

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Helen Thomas, anyone?

You know who she is. She's the newspaper columnist who covers the White House who has been badgering presidents for years. I used to like her. I thought her questions were usually tough and to the point until about the beginning of Bill Clinton's second term. But then they became annoying. They sounded like they were constructed more for the sake of picking arguments for the sake of easy writing than for truly meaningful discussion. And they've continued that way to this day.

She's been referred to as the "first lady of the White House press corps," but I certainly wouldn't call her a great journalist. And now she's proven that she's just another press monkey who applies one standard to the politicians she writes about and another to herself.

Last week, Albert Eisele, who writes for The Hill, quoted Helen's response to his asking if she was promoting a run for the White House in 2008 by Vice-President Dick Cheney. Her response was: “The day I say Dick Cheney is going to run for president, I’ll kill myself. All we need is one more liar.” Albert printed her answer, Matt Drudge put it up on the Drudge Report on the Internet, and now Helen is saying Albert shouldn’t have quoted her “because we all say stuff we don’t want printed.”

Make sure you understand this picture. A writer calls a media personality to ask a question for an article he's writing. Is the media personality, who's been writing in the same city since 1943, really dumb enough to think that her answer would not wind up in print?

Reporters in all forms of media love to howl when politicians or their aides say that some piece of news or answer was supposed to be confidential, off the record, or provided in some non-official way. But apparently that standard doesn't apply when the situation is the other way around, or close to it.

Actually, Helen's answer was no worse than similar statements we've all made from time to time among family and friends to express our frustration or disgust over a situation or maybe another person. The difference is, in today's media-savvy world, members of the media should know that what they say is subject to the same level of scrutiny or ridicule as the people they write or talk about. The same advice applies to both camps: whatever you say is fair game. You don't want it to appear in print or on the evening news? The answer is simple: it's either "no comment" or just keep your mouth shut.

2005-08-03T04:00:00.000-07:00

Strictly Local

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I can't hold back any longer. It's time for me to weigh in on the Westport Flea Market Bar & Grill controversy. Place me on the side that absolutely positively does NOT want Hooters to replace the joint.

But make sure you understand where I'm coming from: I like Hooters. As hard as it may be to believe, I go there when my lust for chicken wings must be satisfied. Sexy (or trashy, take your pick) waitresses are part of the image of the place, but all I care about is their getting my order totalled up right.

My stand on this issue has to do with what I think is the real reason why the overwhelming majority of people who say they don't want a Hooters there, don't want a Hooters there. It's not about tackiness or morality. It's not about what's wholesome and what's not. And it's not about whether or not a 100% new building will detract from the looks of the block.

It's fear. It's the fear of growing old. It's not wanting to let go of something that's always been there. It's almost a primal urge to want to preserve a part of life that just can't be replaced. Most of the unique little shops and stores that were there twenty years ago are gone. But, most of the shops from ten years ago are gone and most of the places that were there just five years ago are gone. So we're left with an ever-shrinking number of locally-owned, truly special places that places like Starbucks and Chili's and Hooters simply can't replace.

I don't think I'm exaggerating in saying that if the Westport Flea Market Bar & Grill does close, a little part of us will die. The part that, when you're five years old, cannot comprehend your favorite spot where you meet and play with friends not being there someday. The part that, when you're eighty-five years old, doesn't want to see a place that's been there since you were five, go away, because that pushes the knowledge into your face and heart that you, too, are going to go away someday.

Replace a one-of-a-kind object with something that you can find copies of all over town as well as all over the country? What a dumb idea. Certainly no one can quarrel with an aging owner wanting to sell and retire. But you'd think there would be enough businesspeople who realize that the place could change owners and simply keep on doing business at the same level to sustain and profit for as long as the beams up hold the roof.

2005-08-02T04:00:00.000-07:00

Could You Really Live Within Your Means?

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Picture this: your state government spends $1.10 for each dollar it takes in. Unless you live in California, you probably haven't seen California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger saying this in a TV ad that has been running all summer long. And when you boil it down the way the copywriters did for this ad, it really sounds stupid and scary, doesn't it?

But come November, whether you live in Kansas, Missouri, Georgia or New York, you're bound to be watching to see if voters in California give thumbs up or down to what's being called the "Live Within Our Means" act. What it would do is simply make it law that the state government cannot spend more than it takes in.

Novel idea, eh? Sort of like what you and I try to do every week, month, and year.

Maine and Oregon are preparing initiatives for next year and reports say that almost two dozen other states have conservative groups who may do the same thing. WIll it be another great-sounding but sure-to-flop grass roots campaign? A citizen rebellion that doesn't burn out overnight?

Colorado's spending cap has caused such a tight squeeze that the governor there is urging voters to lift the cap for five years in their fall vote.

But I like the idea of forcing lawmakers to spend only what they actually have. For starters, it's common sense. It's also a form of ultimate accountability. All special interest groups will scream that their chunk of the pie (or as they will phrase it, "an essential program") simply cannot be cut because people will be hurt may finally have to face up to the reality that not getting more money for next year's budget is not a cut--it just means you don't get additional money. The state would be prohibited from the creative financing that states like Missouri have perpetrated for years, borrowing funds from one budget to cover other bills with the flimsiest of promises to pay back sometime in the future.

If this all sounds uncomfortably familiar in a strange way, here's why: it's the same logic that many people use to pay their personal and family bills. Yes, it's deciding which bills you'll pay this payday and which to put off, without giving much thought to the never-sleeping interest mounting up on the bills you're floating for a little while longer.

There is simply no way short of huge price controls on virtually everything we buy and sell privately to straighten out such a personal mess without pain or anguish. As much as many people insist that how a government spends money is nothing like how individuals or families spend money, they're simply wrong. The answer is, as the popular name spells out, to start living within our means. It's not easy. It's not without pain. But it is the first real step on the way to bring true accountability and sensible spending into more lives at more levels.

It'll be really interesting to hear what the arguments will be this fall in California and very likely where you live from those who will try to convince us that it's not a good idea not to spend what you don't have.

2005-08-01T04:00:00.000-07:00

"He Just Wants It to be Over"

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Who? Darned if I know. He's a teenager--17--and the media apparently isn't using his name.

He's the stupid kid who threw up intentionally on his Spanish teacher this past spring at Olathe Northwest High School. I talked about him on the air than, and was amazed to learn (1) that some people can indeed throw up by more or less willing themselves to, and (2) that this kid did this intentionally.

In case you missed the punishment part of this deal, a judge last week ordered him to be on call for the next four months to go clean up any cop cars in Johnson County in which someone loses their lunch--accidently or intentionally. Let's hear it for Judge Michael Farley for making the punishment fit the crime and spare me the rhetorical questions about whether or not the police might have to provide the guilty offender (doesn't that sound a little better than "jerk kid?") with biohazard equipment or whatever.

Here's your chance to help out the Johnson County police management honchos who were described by the Kansas City Star as "unsure how the sentence can be implemented," and become an active blogger if you're not already blogging. Just click on the "comments" link at the bottom of today's blog and suggest how they should implement the sentence. I'll submit all comments submitted over the next three days to the proper authorities. How 'bout that--the citizens helping the police for a change?

And let me start it off. Situation: drunk throws up while sitting in the back of a cop car. Solution: call the kid and tell him where to meet you. Provide a mop, bucket, rags, rubber gloves, and a surgical mask. That's ALL the so-called biohazard stuff the kid needs. If the smell makes him gag, too bad, pal, this is payback and you know what payback is.

If you're with me in cheering on Judge Farley, let me tell you a little story about why I KNOW he made the right call.

This past weekend, I accompanied my wife to her high school class reunion in Oskaloosa, Iowa, a sleepy little city that doesn't leap to the top of your mind when it comes to crime statistics. One of the events was a tour of the high school by one of her classmates who became a teacher. The subject of behavior in schools came up and a couple of things stood out for me that came to mind instantly when I heard the news about this kid's sentence.

First, the teacher commented that while she has smaller classes today than when she first started teaching, the behavior problems are worse today. Size doesn't matter; it's all a matter of attitude. Another reunion attendee who also became a teacher happened to mention that she has had behavior problems regularly in recent years with her classes--and she teaches second grade.

At the reunion banquet, one of my wife's classmates who was attending for the first time chatted with us. I especially wanted to hear his take on these comments, as he was a missionary who had spent twenty-seven years in South Africa working with students and families.

He said there were no behavior problems in the cities and villages in which he worked! If a student acted up in class, the teacher would take him to the headmaster. After ascertaining that the student did in fact cause a disruption, the student would be returned to the classroom and the headmaster would call the police. The police would then go to the home of the student and arrest the mother or father, after determining who had the greater responsibility depending on family situations, and that person would go to jail for two weeks.

So, Judge Farley, thanks again for a well-thought, honorable and truly appropriate sentence for The Unknown Hurler.

And to Brian Costello, the teenager's lawyer, who said "He feels horrible about what happened. His family has been embarrassed. He's been embarrassed, and he just wants it to be over..."

Just shut up.

2005-07-29T04:00:00.000-07:00

Midsummer Freakout

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Do you believe that there are certain times of year when weird stuff happens?

I do.

I'm not talking Halloween. I'm talking things like synchronicity, calling shots right with almost spooky precision, or the strangest of the strange that just make you laugh out loud.

Just to make sure you and everyone you'll talk to about today's blog are on the same page, synchronicity is loosely defined as a bunch of meaningful coincidences that don't seem to have any logical reason for happening. Here's an example: You walk into a book store not knowing what to buy, and the book you need falls from a shelf and practically hits you over the head. Later that day, you see an ad for the book on TV in a store you happened to stop at, that you normally don't shop. That type of thing.

It seems right to wrap up this week with a look at several outstanding cases of high strangeness that have come into and out of the media AND the George Blog this week.

The George Blog's entry for Wednesday this week was posted Tuesday night. That's the one that said that the space shuttle program as it now stands is better regarded as a collection of unrealistic expectations rather than a revival of American heroics in the air. The next morning, newspapers across the country published headlines and stories that took issue with me and anyone who thought as I did, who obviously were insulting fools. Later the same day, the announcement came down that the shuttle program was being halted after the return of Discovery because of problems with heat tiles. Two years of work and they still don't have it right. Unrealistic expectations.

Yesterday's George Blog fired some pretty blunt shots at the Muslim community in Wichita, Kansas, for whining about an alleged lack of love and respect instead of showing some backbone and calling on all Muslims there and elsewhere to actively condemn and vow to fight fellow Muslims who they may learn are involved with terrorism. Today, news services across the country carried an AP story under such headlines as "Muslim Scholars Condemn Terrorists" that read, in part:

Following deadly bombings in Britain and other nations, American Muslim scholars issued an edict Thursday condemning religious extremism and calling terrorists "criminals, not 'martyrs."'

"There is no justification in Islam for extremism or terrorism," the scholars wrote in the edict, called a fatwa.

"Targeting civilians' life and property through suicide bombings or any other method of attack is haram — or forbidden."

...the U.S. scholars said in a Washington news conference that their prohibition applied to attacks on civilians everywhere. Their fatwa states that Muslims are obligated to help law enforcement authorities "protect the lives of all civilians."

Moral of the stories: you can count on the George Blog to get it right!

I know, I know. You're saying "Nice little synchonicities, George, but where's the weirdness?"

It's in Sweden.

That's where an eyeglass maker says he's going to launch a new line of stylish yet discreet glasses for women...attending funerals. They're supposed to be elegant but subdued. I guess that's so you can look good and still show respect for the stiff you went to watch them bury.

It's in Vietnam, where a train engineer boozed it up during a break, then fell sound asleep at the wheel, literally, while his cargo train just kept on truckin' down the line. As the train barreled through one scheduled stop, the authorities made noise to wake him up, and he stopped the train safely and lost the job he had for twenty years. Dinner topic tonight: How much noise does it take to wake up a guy who falls asleep while running a locomotive?

And it's in Bridgeton, N.J where a teenage piano player has sued his music teacher, saying she confronted him on stage during a live performance at Carnegie Hall and slammed a piano keyboard cover on his fingers after they argued over what music he would play at the event.

And there's still almost two months of summer left!

2005-07-28T04:00:00.000-07:00

Wasted Words

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I'll bet I'm not the only person who wishes that Muslims would stop whining.

Them, and the assorted do-gooders, many of whom unfortunately are clergy men and women, who are whining, too.

At a Wichita, KS, meeting this week, leaders of local interfaith and peace groups got together to whine about how Muslims are victims of hatred and racism because of anti-Muslim comments which were apparently emailed to the local paper. Let's see now, the local mosque hasn't received any threats and hasn't had any major problems with harassment, according to Muslim honchos, and after police contacted people at the mosque to make sure they knew how to report problems, there have been no reported incidents.

Which leads me, at the risk of being irreverent, to ask, "What the hell are you people whining about?"

Horace Santry, executive director of the Peace and Social Justice Center of South Central Kansas, said "We're asking for all Kansans to rise above their unfounded fear and needless insecurities and give love and respect to all the members of the human community here in Wichita." But it doesn't have to be Wichita. It could be New York or Miami or Los Angeles.

Could even be London.

Mr. Santry, you want love and respect instead of fear? Well let me explain how this deal works to you. One of the reasons that a lot of people have this unfounded fear and needless insecurity you whine about is because we don't see YOU and your fellow Muslims doing anything about it!

Specifically, we don't see, we don't have any sense, that Muslims like you are doing much of anything pro-active to help track down your fellow Muslims who ARE terrorists, terrorist-helpers, or in short, the Bad Guys! Instead of holding rallies that are nothing more than feel-good sideshows, how about holding a press conference to report how the Muslim community in which you live vows to fight terrorism perpetrated by radical Islamists tooth and nail and to work with authorities to help spot what we'll call legitimate suspects? Yes, this means maybe ratting out a fellow Muslim, if necessary.

You want respect? You show a little grit and I guarantee you that people of all faiths and cultural backgrounds will rally around you, asking "What can I do to help you?" You want love? It' ll come on the heels of respect. But you're not going to get either by responding to racist comments by whining, which is exactly what you're doing.

And to you interfaith leaders who are "urging people to take a stand against bigotry and hatred," how about doing a little teaching on how to organize and mobilize inter-cultural neighborhood watch groups to give people a real taste of ownership in contributing to their own safety instead of simply mouthing words that are easy to say but not so easy to put into action?

Until you wake up and realize that action truly speaks louder than words, you're whining.

And whining is really best described as wasted words.

2005-07-27T04:00:00.000-07:00

Are We Really Flying That High?

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The successful launch of space shuttle Discovery has generated a lot of feel-good talk and a lot of “we-could-spend-the-money-on-something-better” talk around office water coolers, where kids skateboard and probably among you and members of your family.

Yes, it’s great that a program born of hope and vision and marred by terrible human tragedy is back on track again, so to speak. But the original attitude of the space program, namely, the exciting, tantalizing prospects of going where no man has hone before as Captain Kirk used to say just isn’t here. Wasn’t the big question that went unasked that you and I and everyone else had in the back of our minds really “I wonder if this thing is going to crash and burn again?”

Blunt but true.

One other talking head put the launch into perspective so well, it’s worth paraphrasing him to make sure you get the point. Quick: how many astronauts are there aboard Discovery? Name two.

Christian Science Monitor writer Mark Sappenfield sums it up in two truly meaningful words: unrealistic expectations. Following the focused determination of the Kennedy administration to go to the Moon and back, the space program’s goals became not just incredibly expensive but truly unrealistic. For example, the technology which would allow the shuttle to fly like a plane on re-entry hasn’t been perfected through seven administrations and 114 launches.

The dream of routine trips into nearby space for business and pleasure by ten years ago is still a dream today. And an expensive one.

I am not advocating that we scrap the program. I think what we need to do is to refocus just exactly what the primary goal is, if indeed there is one other than routine flights to finish building the space station. We need a simple, easy-to-understand mission that you or any one of your children could easily identify if someone asked “What’s the United States doing in space?” After 114 flights, the thrill is, unfortunately, gone, unless tragedy strikes again.

Imagine for just a minute if the goal was to send a crew to Mars and back. Or even “just” to the moon and back. Look what happened when we did that the first time. It was an important victory for the U.S. in the cold war, the single most dramatic win that solidly sent the message to the rest of the world that America’s might and brains enabled the country to do something so incredible that no one ever did before. A message that we could harness great power and were willing to chance the dangers of exploration in the same spirit that many ancient explorers the world over had done.

In the world that changed forever after 9-11, maybe this type of dedication of purpose, if done successfully, would not really revive the space program, but serve as a wake-up call to the rest of the world that we still have the same will, the same resolve, and the same ability to do the impossible, and in so doing regain some respect we may have lost along the way through no fault of our own.

Side note: While reading up on the space shuttle launch, I looked at CBSnews.com. Following the story, there was a block of advertising that was obviously assembled by some “sophisticated” automatic program on the Internet which selected ads that should be relevant to the story, based on key words within the story.

So what ads appeared?

“Do-it-yourself foam insulation kits”
“S & S industrial foam insulation”
“Inexpensive alternative to foam”

Makes you kind of wonder how we ever beat the Soviets, doesn’t it?

2005-07-26T04:00:00.000-07:00

The Letter of the Law vs the Spirit of the Law

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Don't you just love those "little" stories about people who say the spirit of the law is more important than the letter of the law? Or vice-versa?

Kansas Governor Kathleen Sibelius today vetoed part of a law which would have required state agencies to tag a little disclaimer on to their ads which would say that the advertising was "Paid for by your Kansas tax dollars." Yep, that's the exact wording of the disclaimer.

Reminds you of political advertising, doesn't it? It's always comforting to know that Joe Candidate, the one you support in an election, is the worst possible choice for the job, when you find out that the ad was paid for by the We Hate Joe Candidate's Guts Ad Hoc Committee.

The Gov says that some of the advertising is paid for by the federal government, private grants, or in the case of the Kansas Lottery, ticket sales and that the proposal would make state agencies use larger type in classified ads for state jobs. So of course, that would, according to her, "waste tax dollars in the name of saving them."

Nice try, Governor, but no cigar. Wise up, willya?

Each ad is written individually. Radio, print, billboard, whatever. In the writing, it's a no-brainer to say "Paid for by your Kansas tax dollars", or "Paid in part by..." or "Paid for by Kansas Lottery ticket sales," or WHATEVER. The spirit of the idea is clearly to make it easier to identify who paid for what, and that's a good thing, whether it's a political ad or not. And Governor, do you really think for even one Kansas second that the average taxpayer can't figure out for himself or herself that a classified ad for a state job was in fact paid for by the state?

Taxpayers have the right to know how their money is being spent. That's the spirit of this proposal. Implying they don't have that right because the letter of the law might be interpreted wrongly may not be criminal, but it's certainly a matter for the courts to decide. Using your veto power to toss out something that helps Kansans to understand where their money goes is nothing more than a gross disservice and insult to voters. Shame on you for promoting what amounts to continued spending behind closed doors.

In this case of the spirit of the law versus the letter of the law, it's pretty clear to see which side should trump the other.

2005-07-25T04:00:00.000-07:00

Two More Reasons Why It’s Called the Show-Me State

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Cruising back to my humble little home (and it is) in Johnson County, KS from cheap food and drink at a happy hour on the Plaza Friday afternoon, Nancy and I decided to see if the rich folks’ lawns on Ward Parkway were a better shade of brown than ours is, so we motored down the Parkway to beat the traffic on I-35.

The signs were up, like they always seem to be before an election in which money is an issue, and they basically said “money is not an issue.” But an editorial in the Sunday Kansas City Star, while it urged voters to vote for the issue, said the lawn signs were misleading when they said “no tax increase.” Bet that’ll fry the Ward Parkway folks and Mayor Kay Barnes more than the triple-digit temps we’ve been having.

See, this water and sewer bond issue that’s causing this stink—that’s your bad pun for the week, there—will, if passed, cause water and sewer rates to go up. But they’re charges, they’re not really taxes, right? The chances are that the city probably really does need the improvements they want and that’s a reasonable thing. What’s not reasonable is the sneaky way the proponents are trying to sell the vote. I’ll bet you’re like a lot of people—including me—who don’t care if it’s called a tax or a surcharge, or a tariff, or a fee. It’s still more money coming out of my pocket. So at least “SHOW ME” why it’s needed in an honest way.

MAX has come to Kansas City and they’re calling it “light rail on rubber tires.” Isn’t that a great image? Sort of conjures up a picture of a kid’s toy train that was engineered more not to hurt anyone than get to where it needs to go on time.

MAX is the new bus system that starts this week. Let me quote a couple of lines from the Star to give you the down and dirty details:

The system will run faster, use designated lanes and make fewer stops. The bus will run in designated lanes during peak traffic hours. And it can keep a traffic signal from turning red. The bus can hold a light green for seven or eight seconds. The bus will run four to miles an hour faster than the existing service. The rapid bus route will extend along a 5½-mile stretch of one of the busiest corridors of the city, where there are an estimated 150,000 jobs. The MAX replaces the No. 56 Country Club route, which has about 3,100 riders a day.

When this lunatic plan was introduced, I said SHOW ME and I’m saying it again now. We’re talking about slowing down traffic—non-bus-traffic—when the MAX drivers MAX out traffic lights that should be left alone. Eight seconds doesn’t sound like much but I’m wiiling to bet that it will help to slow down thingsBig Time when they shouldn’t be slowed down. Four to five miles an hour faster at rush hour in the middle of the city? SHOW ME!

And what’s with these numbers? Exactly how do 3,100 riders relate to 150,000 jobs? You telling me that the people who haven’t taken buses to work in that area before now will suddenly fill the seats because it’ll get them to work SIX MINUTES FASTER from the Plaza to downtown?

SHOW ME!

And by the way, this week doesn’t count because people can ride for free. Get back to me, say, around the first of February, will ya?

2005-07-22T04:00:00.000-07:00

When is a Stem Cell Not a Stem Cell?

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I have a confession to make. I’m fascinated by the current debate over stem-cell research.

You see, I was taught, and have always believed, that human life begins at conception, when the sperm from a man fertilizes an egg cell provided by a woman. Boom. New human being. New soul. New life begins.

But the type of stuff that’s happening to create the debate that is currently raging in Missouri between Right-to-Lifers and Governor Matt Blunt, and even between various conservatives themselves seems to me to be nothing like that at all.

The debate is over SCNT--somatic cell nuclear transfer. Unless I’m way off, here’s how this process works: the nucleus of an unfertilized egg is removed or destroyed. That’s the inside of an egg cell—not fertilized, not nothing. Then, the nucleus of a somatic cell—that’s a cell other than a sperm or egg cell--is then removed and put in the emptied egg. Next, scientists juice this cell with some amount of electricity and the thing starts to divide. This is how embryonic stem cells are created to harvest for research or possible treatment of certain diseases.

This sure doesn’t sound like what I was taught about how families are made. There is no traditional fertilization. Where does the new soul “begin,” so to speak? I’ve asked this on the air before and have not received any answers that came close to being adequate.

I’ve read that this is the technique that they used to clone Dolly the sheep, and could theoretically be used to clone humans. It may sound totally outrageous, but I’d like to see it done successfully. Let’s skip the science-fiction stories of horror or triumph and just for a minute suppose you could clone a human. I mean, not a baby that needs to be raised to grow into an adult over years, but a copy of a 50-year-old guy that starts out at 8 pm tonight and is complete tomorrow morning. Sort of a human rubber stamp.

Is that a 3-D photocopy of him? Does he (the clone) think he IS the original, since he should have the same brains and memories, right? And most importantly, does he, or it, or whatever, have a soul? Or share it with the original? Or have no soul since there was no actual conception (or even a mother)?

So, what’s the actual debate here?

Many anti-abortion and religious folks say this is truly a way of “cloning microscopic humans,” according to a report in the Kansas City Star. But the cells are duplicates of the ones that started dividing when the scientists threw the switch in the lab.

No sperm. No egg. Not the way you and I got here.

There is no “beating heart” to be stopped, as the bumper stickers say. And apparently there are very few people who want to address the real question in this debate: where’s the soul?

2005-07-21T04:00:00.000-07:00

Black English Needs Cleaned

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When I lived for a short time in Erie, Pennsylvania, I came into contact with an expression that stood out because of its simply incredible strangeness. An otherwise well-educated buddy told me his coat “needs cleaned.” Not “needs to be cleaned,” just “needs cleaned.”

After I first heard this expression from him, I noticed that a lot of other locals used it as well, across the board, rich, poor, younger, older, men, women. And I’ve heard it in the Midwest and in Kansas City, too.

And it still drives me nuts!

Because it’s wrong. It sounds stupid to anyone who was taught standard English. It’s very similar to many of the expressions of Black English – the dialect that is still used by many parents at home that their children pick up and accept as normal and proper language…the type of talk that leads to expressions like “he sick,” or “we be cool,” and so on.

Before any charges of racism or prejudice start getting thrown at me, let me tell you who else is saying that black English needs cleaned: Thomas Sowell, the prominent black conservative columnist.

Sowell tells the story in this week’s column of a white teacher who had a little black girl in her class who got a test question wrong: It turned out that the little girl had no problem with the concepts or the facts but had misinterpreted a word because it sounded like another word that she had heard used at home, where a "black English" dialect was spoken.

Put yourself in the teacher’s place. Do you risk a confrontation that could result in your being called a racist and subject to a lot of administrative crap, or tell the girl’s mother just what the problem is?

Sowell writes “…the teacher told the girl's mother that, unless her daughter learned standard English, her education could suffer and her intelligence might be so under-estimated that she could be falsely labeled subnormal.”

To cut to the chase, the girl’s mother took the information and ran with it, making sure to correct the problem to the extent that her daughter got all A’s on her next tests.

I wonder how many parents—and teachers—could do the same?

With the temperature feeling like the air is above the temperature of your body, the ads pitching “back-to-school” sales in the middle of July seem way out of place and you might think talking about this little girl’s story is not as timely as it might be, say, during the first week of school.

Wrong. Time of year makes no difference when children need to be taught by the good example their parents set and help them keep, or when a friend of yours has something that “needs cleaned.”

Read the complete piece by Thomas Sowell.

2005-07-20T04:00:00.000-07:00

Catching Up

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THANK YOU for your patience with The George Blog. The past couple of days have been spent upgrading a computer/audio/broadcasting studio to get ready for some things that I know you’ll find exciting a little later this year.

Meantime back to business, and just a little catching up with some things that caught my attention while taking a break from a huge amount of wires, equipment, cabinetry, and cabling.

A WIN FOR THE LITTLE GUY

Back in the middle of February, I talked on the air about Jason Carter’s raw deal from his city. That’s when a large water main broke, washing away thousands of dollars of his own landscaping down the street and flooding his basement. He filed a claim with the city and its insurance company denied it, calling the deal “an act of God.” BULL! That was no act of God, that was lousy planning by human beings who were, as so many on city payrolls are, incompetent. Pipes break but diligent care and planning gets them replaced before they’re overloaded.

Jason persisted, mediation was called for, and finally, he will get a little over $36,000 to restore his property. Finally, a win for the little guy. Way to go, Jason!

ETHANOL – VINDICATION!

Another topic I talked about with you on the air not long ago was the scam job Kansas Governor Kathleen Sibelius pulled by signing into law a bill that allows gas stations in Kansas not to post notices that say the gas they sells contains ethanol. Why? Ultimately because it’s allegedly good for the environment, won’t hurt your car, and won’t pollue the air as much. Ethanol is supposed to be one of those great so-called renewable energy resources, and of course creates another market for farmers to sell their produce.

I cited a report a few years old that said that this was basically a lot of bunk since it was determined that the effort of making such alternative fuels winds up burning more energy than they produce and costs more than just burning the same amount of just plain gasoline.

Another study has just come out from Cornell University and the University of California at Berkeley that arrived at the same conclusion. Turns out that it takes anywhere from about thirty to just under sixty percent in some cases, MORE fossil fuel to turn corn or grass or wood into ethanol than the fuel produces.

They say that we’d be better off forgetting about ethanol and doing something else. Oh yeah, they didn’t add in the $3 billion in state and federal subsidies that the government pops for ethanol production every year.

FAMILY NIGHT AT SONIC

“ Burger, mayonnaise, extra pickles and a cheeseburger, mayonnaise, no pickles.”

Even if English was your second language, I would expect you, as an order-taker, to not have a lot of trouble with this order.

But I had to give it THREE times, TWO people had to have me repeat it, and I STILL didn’t get what I ordered.

Sometimes I really believe there is no hope for today’s generation. I know you may think it’s laughable and I was just hot and tired after figuring out which wires go where for two days, but I’ll bet you’ve been through variations of this little drama yourself and probably not that long ago.

Don’t you cringe when you picture someone like this ending their shift, and getting behind the wheel of a car to share the same road with you on the way home? Don’t you think “Well, at least that isn’t my child?”

Forget about no child left behind. Where are my extra pickles?

2005-07-18T04:00:00.000-07:00

Construction in Progress

We're building a new computer/audio studio and literally rewiring the joint to handle expanded operations in the near future, so there's no George Blog for today. We'll have the place good to go later today and resume business as usual on Tuesday.

Thank you for your understanding and patience. See ya tomorrow!