An American Lion

This is where Norman Rogers practices the manly art of curation.

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The Frisky Mole Boy of Groton

Norman Rogers recounts the summer he spent hiding from the stern love of his father and living as the world-famous “frisky mole boy” in the Groton, Connecticut sewer system. The Frisky Mole Boy of Groton seduced the women of the town and solved crimes, all while subsisting on a steady diet of depravity and confusion.

Rampage of the Innocents is my unfinished but brilliant Historical Romance Novel (now, with more sex and violence for my teenaged readers)

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    An American Lion

    Entries in Commentary (545)

    Friday
    Sep102010

    Now This is a Car For Johnny Law

    Polizei

    If you look carefully at the license plate on the police car pictured above, it appears to be registered to Boblingen, which is near where we live now in Germany. Boblingen is a wonderful little city, but the traffic and speed cameras there are no fun. They are hidden all over the city, and they do Johnny Law’s job for him—they get everyone to slow down and drive reasonably.

    Not every police officer can drive a Porsche, however:

    There’s a three-way shoot-out blazing on the mean streets of Detroit. This one pits Ford against General Motors, with Chrysler hoping to score with a lucky shot of its own.

    The three makers are all vying for the police interceptor market Ford will vacate when it pulls the plug on its time-worn Crown Victoria, long the vehicle of choice for the nation’s law enforcement community, in September 2011.

    While police departments have used a variety of vehicles in recent years, especially for unmarked and undercover cruisers, the Crown Victoria Police Interceptor has garnered the lion’s share of law enforcement sales, with about 60 percent of the 75,000 vehicles sold annually. That demand was one of the main reasons Ford has kept the Crown Vic in production so long.

    Most of the cities and towns patrolled by Johnny Law are flat broke. There’s no money left. So, why not just abandon the idea of having Johnny Law use a police car? Why not have him use a minivan? A minivan is the ultimate Johnny Law vehicle. Buy them used and change the oil or do whatever is necessary to ensure that the thing doesn’t break down after a few thousand miles.

    The roomier ones are perfect for law enforcement work. The minivan could be the unsung hero of fiscally conscious communities all over the nation. The minivan can patrol with excellent views of the surrounding area. It can even be fitted with a Johnny Law perched on top, spinning a spotlight around. The minivan can be retro-fitted for multi-use. It can use one to three Johnny Laws if necessary. It can fit a couple of them up front and it can haul between five and seven rowdy small-town teenagers. Put bigger motors in them and you’ll see the difference. Johnny Law doesn’t do much chasing these days anyway.

    I know, I know—they’re dowdy. Well, so what? Dowdy is reliable, and reliable is the new austerity trophy. Get yours today.

    Friday
    Sep102010

    The Mexican Drug War Continues to Shock Me

    When I read stories about the victims of the Mexican drug war, I come away with the sense that this is one of the most tragic stories of our time. You can certainly find this news, and there are people writing about the subject, but it has not reached a critical mass in the American consciousness as yet. There is no collective movement to deal with this problem and stop the killing.

    Here’s another tragic story:

    The murders of 25 people by suspected drug hitmen on the U.S.-Mexico border on Thursday was the bloodiest day in almost three years in an area gripped by an escalating drug war, officials said on Friday.

     

    Gunmen burst into several houses in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, and shot people accused of working for rival drug gangs, a spokesman for the Chihuahua state attorney general’s office said on Friday morning.

     Four bystanders were also killed on Thursday as a convoy of hitmen shot its way out of traffic in Ciudad Juarez, local newspaper El Diario said. Police declined to confirm that report, but said 25 people had died in drug violence, in the worst single day of killings in Ciudad Juarez since January 2008, when recent drug murders began.

    Mexican police do not typically release information on death tolls from violence until the day after an incident.

    The rampant bloodshed in Ciudad Juarez, where hitmen detonated a car bomb in July, and other parts of Mexico is helping fuel fears in the United States that the nation may be losing control of drug violence.

    And what can I add? What can I say that will make a difference? Well, being an older fellow, my experience tells me that writing about the subject can’t really achieve much. Most of the people who visit my blog are here for the stories about Father or for the recipes and the lifestyle advice. There’s nothing that a professional blogger can do except note the event, write down a few thoughts, and then engage with the readers of the blog a little in order to clarify or learn from what is going on.

    The drug war is changing attitudes towards legalization of certain drugs, and that’s probably where any discussion about dealing with these events has to start. We are locked in a new and different struggle, one where the act of legalizing drugs would change the landscape where the drug gangs operate. It would, in some ways, force them to move into harder drugs (cocaine and crystal methamphetamine will probably never, ever be legal, but keep hoping, Skippy) and it would force American culture to adapt and grow.

    Can we sustain a violent, bloody gang war on our Southern border? My guess is that we will because there aren’t enough Americans affected by it as yet. When that changes, perhaps we will see that convergence of popular opinion and outrage that I really have not seen as yet.

    Thursday
    Sep092010

    Looks Like the Kids Have Better Things to Do

    This is just sad:

    What happened to Barack Obama’s once vaunted political machine? The outfit that put upwards of 8 million volunteers on the street in 2008 — known as Organizing for America — is a ghost of its former self. Its staff has shrunk from 6,000 to 300, and its donors are depressed: receipts are a fraction of what they were in 2008. Virtually no one in politics believes it will turn many contests this fall. “There’s no chance that OFA is going to have the slightest impact on the midterms,” says Charlie Cook, who tracks congressional races.

    Neglect is to blame. After Obama was elected, his political aides ignored the army he had created until it eventually disappeared. No one was in charge; decisions were often deferred but rarely made. By the time they realized they needed more troops, says longtime consultant Joe Trippi, “their supporters had taken a vacation from politics.”

    So earlier this year, when the White House gave OFA a whopping $30 million — more than half of the party’s entire budget for 2010 — senior Democrats suspected a hidden agenda. Several tell Time that OFA boss David Plouffe, who ran Obama’s 2008 campaign, is using the cash to rebuild an army for 2012 under the cover of boosting turnout in 2010. OFA is putting staff into such states as Virginia, North Carolina and Arizona, which have few close statewide races this fall but which are all prime targets in an Obama re-election campaign. “This is totally about 2012,” Cook says.

    Think of the bloggers! Think of all of that positive energy as it continues to dissipate like the air being let out of an enormous tent. By the time 2012 rolls around, only the bankers and the union bosses will support this President. The kids were motivated to put on their walking shoes in early 2009 and all that was needed was an apparatus to engage them and channel their energies into something positive. Like every other movement in history, the money men took over and pissed it all away.

    Wednesday
    Sep082010

    Don't Tinker With the Damned Senate

    Messing with established institutions is what crazy people do when they want things to fall over and collapse. Think of someone who starts trying to re-imagine how the house of cards you just set up on the dining room table would look like with a bridge over it so that people can pass cookies from one place to the next. Hello? How stupid is that? I’m not naming names, Mr. Peej.

    There is a discussion out there that centers around the mistaken belief that the rules of the United States Senate are keeping us from getting anything done. Far from it. The rules are keeping Senators from doing too much to weaken and injure the republic. Any fool can see that:

    For those of us on the train for Senate reform, Elizabeth Drew’s Politico piece is worth reading, as she offers a very strong — and very convincing — defense of the chamber’s status quo. The short of her argument is that reformers are vastly overstating the extent to which the body is paralyzed or “dysfunctional”; by and large, Drew argues, this Senate has “essentially met all of the president’s major goals,” including one of the most significant public-policy “breakthroughs” in a generation. Yes, the Senate hasn’t moved on climate change and immigration, but as Drew notes, those are issues where there is significant disagreement within the Democratic caucus.

    As I’ve argued before, I think this line of defense misses the damage intense minority obstruction does to the Senate’s other priorities; in addition to passing legislation, the Senate is responsible for confirming the president’s executive-branch and judicial nominees. Thanks to the filibuster and other parliamentary maneuvers, GOP senators have kept hundreds of executive-branch nominees and dozens of judges from filling their positions. PresidentObama has the lowest judicial confirmation rate of any president in the last 30 years, and for a long time, key executive-branch agencies were pitifully understaffed.

    That said, there’s a lot Drew gets right in her piece, and this in particular needs to be said more often:

    A lot of people also confused the fact that for the first time in 30 years a party, in this case the Democrats, had 60 votes (actually, 58 Democrats and two independents who caucused with them) with the idea that it automatically had 60 progressive votes, or 60 votes for the president’s program, which it rarely had. Some of those 60 are moderates from more conservative states (or smaller states, which have disproportionate power in the Senate). Also, Democrats technically had 60 votes for only seven of the 13 months of this Congress so far.

    Miss Drew has it exactly correct; the rules of the Senate do not need tweaking. The paralysis of the Senate is not because of the rules. It is because Senator Harry Reid is an ineffective Majority Leader. He cannot get anything done and he commands little or no respect from his own caucus. If he had strict discipline over his own members, the last year and a half would have been a whirlwind of good government. Instead, we have half-measures and half-assery. Good government? That’s for the little people to wonder about.
    Sunday
    Sep052010

    Would This Be a Good Time to Bring Up Iraq?

    Iraqi Defense Minister Abdul-Qadir al-Ubaidi, center, inspects the site of a suicide attack accompanied by soldiers at a military headquarters in Baghdad, on Sunday. The fighting killed 12 people and wounded dozens.

    Yes, there’s still something of a war in Iraq:

    Days after the U.S. officially ended combat operations and touted Iraq’s ability to defend itself, American troops found themselves battling heavily armed militants assaulting an Iraqi military headquarters in the center of Baghdad on Sunday. The fighting killed 12 people and wounded dozens.

    It was the first exchange of fire involving U.S. troops in Baghdad since the Aug. 31 deadline for formally ending the combat mission, and it showed that American troops remaining in the country are still being drawn into the fighting.

    The attack also made plain the kind of lapses in security that have left Iraqis wary of the U.S. drawdown and distrustful of the ability of Iraqi forces now taking up ultimate responsibility for protecting the country.

    Sunday’s hour-long assault was the second in as many weeks on the facility, the headquarters for the Iraqi Army’s 11th Division, pointing to the failure of Iraqi forces to plug even the most obvious holes in their security.

    Duck, Cletus. Those sons of bitches are still shooting at you. Apparently, no one told the Iraqi Army that it was their turn to get their hands dirty fighting to preserve and protect their own country. How much do you want to bet that the ones that ran away will still get paid next month to do nothing?

    We may not have a very large footprint in Iraq (although, 50,000 troops is a hell of a lot of troops to me) and we may have ended combat operations, but let’s not forget this one very salient fact—there is no middle class in Iraq anymore. Anyone with the means to do so has fled. What’s left are a lot of very scared people at the mercy of whatever happens in their general vicinity. It is the collision of a corrupt government, an ally in retreat, and an entrenched opposition that thrives on murder and mayhem. It is not a recipe for sunshine and puppy dogs and happy times.

    Monday
    Aug302010

    Few People Understand the German Economy Right Now

    I think Mr. Krugman is fairly well-versed, but this fellow that he’s quoting today may not be so savvy:

    Wolfgang Munchau has some not-so-nice things to say about the German economic situation. He notes that so far, at least, Germany’s growth simply reflects recovery from an unusually deep slump: “So far, this looks like classic dead-cat bounce.” He also stresses the role of German undervaluation; this is a big problem, and I agree that it’s at the heart of the eurozone’s troubles.

    Well, Munchau starts off by basing his observations on what he observes in a German grocery store.

     

    Really? Which one? Aldi? E Market? Or any of a number of discount markets that I can go into any time I want. The difference between a Penny Markt and an E Market are evident when you walk through the front door.

     

    Grocery stores reflect the prices that the community in which you live can, generally, pay for things. If you look at high end stores and discount stores, and everyone in between, prices will rise and fall based on the economics of the people who live there. If the grocery store prices are too high, they’ll be out of business, and fast. If the prices ride along smartly, then the store can thrive.

     

    Standards of living vary across Germany. The presence in my part of Germany of dozens of large companies—to say nothing of the massive Mercedes assembly plant in Sindelfingen—all but guarantees that, when I go into E Market, I’ll be paying a few more euros than someone in the middle of Italy. What is “undervaluation” anyway? Is it any accident that the Germans have a lingering resentment for their trading of the mark for the euro? If you had a traditionally strong currency, and if you traded it for one based in some part on the shenanigans of the Italians and the Greeks, you’d be sensitive to the claims being made. too. 

     

    People cannot understand this, and I do not know why—the Germans will not do anything to endanger their way of life or the standard of living they now enjoy. They are fanatical about cutting and stacking wood, about grooming and caring for fruit trees that grow in abundance here, and they recycle and conserve as if their lives depend on it. They will not just sit here and consume, mindlessly, while other members of the EU go down the toilet. 
    Sunday
    Aug292010

    Our Best President Since Reagan

    He really was our best President since Reaganwasn't he?

    George W. Bush has remained mostly out of view and silent on policy debates since leaving office 19 months ago.

    Now, the former president is about to step into the public arena again, at a moment when Washington is revisiting tax cuts, stem cells and other issues that were among the most contentious of his administration.

    Mr. Bush is re-emerging to promote his memoir, to be published a week after the Nov. 2 elections.

    While the timing suggests that the book will not provide fodder for midterm campaigns, Mr. Bush will return to the public eye just as the Republican Party looks ahead to asserting greater power in Congress and to choosing its 2012 presidential nominee, and as President Barack Obama accuses the GOP of wanting to take the country back to Bush-era programs that, the Democratic president says, "drove the car into the ditch."

    I can't wait to hear the gnashing of the teeth and see the rending of the garments. Something about this man drives liberals crazy. It must be his ability to lead decisively and pretend not to care about his critics.

    The legacy of the Bush era is this--a rather necessary war, a now obviously unnecessary war, relative prosperity for the smart investors, and a downturn in the business cycle when the housing fiasco happened. No President could survive the loss of trillions of dollars in home equity throughout the country. This happened because no one--not the Bush Administration, not the Congress, nobody--realized how dangerous it was to inflate the values of homes so that suckers with no money could borrow money they could never pay back to buy homes that weren't worth what they were sold for. What was supposed to be a profitable bubble turned out to be a calamity.

    Oil prices, the collapse of the American car industry, and the demise of a service-based economy were the fault of President Bush? Did President Bush force bad business strategies on the country? Did he open all of those Bed Bath and Beyonds and all of those Tower Records stores in strip malls? Did he create a situation where Americans would spend themselves into oblivion consuming crap made in China? Or is there some measure of personal responsibility that people want to avoid because, after all, he was "the worst President ever?"

    History has yet to write this chapter. By the time they figure out what happened between 2001 and 2009, don't believe what anyone tells you.

    Sunday
    Aug292010

    Never Put Your Blind Trust in a Politician

    There are a number of things wrong with this piece:

    Chances are that by now you've heard about the August 19, 2010 Pew poll that found that nearly one fifth of Americans (mistakenly) believe that President Obama is a Muslim. Perhaps you think that a terrifying outlier; or perhaps you're a believer, and then you are in good company. Either way, you're wrong: in fact, a remarkably high numbers of Americans believe the most unusual things. Although the portion of poll respondents who believe Obama is a Muslim has risen recently, some of these oddball opinions contain more consistent numbers of believers.

    Number one, it is elitist. Number two, it fails to take into account the fact that Americans really do have a bias against certain ethnic groups and certain religions. Number three, it's easy to point out how stupid Americans are because we couldn't possibly have an article in an American media magazine that points out how much stupider the rest of the world actually happens to be. There aren't many articles that talk about witches or ghosts, which terrorize Africa to this day, as a matter of fact, now are there? Nor are there many articles out there about how the complete and utter stupidity of other nations when it comes to money or infrastructure or common sense is in sad comparison to America, now are there?

    Of course not; America-bashing sells. Newsweek needs to sell like the dickens in order to maintain the mediocrity we have come to know and love.

    If you believe what the media tells you, I cannot assist you in understanding why this is all a self-fulfilling farce perpetrated by a frightened group of clowns.

    This is the same country where the Mormon faith of Mitt Romney was all but ignored by people who didn't want to delve into such unpleasantness. The fact remains, Romney has a huge handicap with Republican voters because of it. The fact remains that Catholics still face scrutiny and people of the Jewish faith already know that they are suspect simply because of their affiliations. It's not easy to explain why, but it's easy to tell you that your religion and race still matter in America. I wish that these things did not matter and they do not matter to me.

    I don't take President Obama at his word for anything. He's a politician. And there's the principle of oversight and compliance--we don't trust any individual at all because there's a greater chance of malfeasance when we do. We keep an eye on imperfect men and their imperfect actions. Trusting someone typically means that we trust that he or she isn't stealing from the treasury while we check on that fact anyway. But here's something that will blow the mind of the average hairy-legged liberal female blogger who is stoked on outrage and bile--yes, your guy can lie, too. President Obama has lied to liberals left and right. Because they like him better, they take him at his word that he's not lying. Well, we've had eight years of liberals screaming about the lies that George W. Bush had to tell people so he could wage a war against terrorists. If Bush is a liar, then Obama is a liar; in point of fact, they are all liars.

    Hence, the possibility exists that President Obama is lying for political expediency. You do not get to be President by telling the truth all the time, nor do you get to be President simply by being a crass fabricator; the American people can see through phonies and the road to immortality is paved with their failed attempts at fooling the voters. We get the President we deserve, and we get the one we vote for, most every time. Our failure to deal with that tends to fall along the lines of who we voter for and if that fellow won.

    It wouldn't matter to me if he were a Muslim. It is fundamentally anti-American to use religion or race as a weapon against others. I would say that his religion doesn't matter; there is no Pope of Islam to issue orders or threaten excommunication. If John Kerry were President, his views on Choice would have led the current Pope to excommunicate him. How sad would that be? Bombing the Vatican in retaliation would be a public relations nightmare.

    It would matter to the general public, however, because we have mistakenly demonized a religion instead of demonizing the violent ideology of jihadism. We now have no room to move on the issue, and the smart people already know that. It would be like trying to sell the people on the idea that we actually won the Vietnam War; it ain't happening.

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    Sunday
    Aug292010

    This Mommy Blogger Says No

    While it is true that I have sold out--and I would sell out--no one has taken me up on that bet:

     

    Katie Couric once described bloggers as journalists who gnaw at new information “like piranhas in a pool.” But increasingly, many bloggers are also secretly feeding on cash from political campaigns, in a form of partisan payola that erases the line between journalism and paid endorsement.
    “It’s standard operating procedure” to pay bloggers for favorable coverage, says one Republican campaign operative. A GOP blogger-for-hire estimates that “at least half the bloggers that are out there” on the Republican side “are getting remuneration in some way beyond ad sales.”
    In California, where former eBay executive Meg Whitman beat businessman Steve Poizner in a bitterly fought primary battle in the campaign for governor, it sometimes seemed as if there was a bidding war for bloggers.
    One pro-Poizner blogger, Aaron Park, was discovered to be a paid consultant to the Poizner campaign while writing for Red County, a conservative blog about California politics. Red County founder Chip Hanlon threw Park off the site upon discovering his affiliation, which had not been disclosed.

    As a Mommy Blogger, I am obligated to list all of the people who pay for advertising on my blogs. It would take big money to make me strip out my Mommy Blogger credentials and roll around on a bed covered with money handed to me by some campaign or organization. I would certainly do it. If you ever see me suddenly saying something nice about a complete and utter jackass, then you'll know that the fix is in and I'm probably naked on a bedspread with hundred dollar bills stuck to my sweaty back.

    The full list is as follows:

    [blank]

    When people find out that those specific political blogs with targeted subjects are on the take, nothing will happen. It's almost a given that they are all operating without any ethics. Heard anything from Will Folks lately? Of course not.

    I have had a few inquiries to run pop-up ads and specific ads next to specific posts, but I have turned them all down. I have the standard "Google Ads" deal because a web site without ads is immediately deemed suspect. You have to have ads to maintain the same look and feel that all other sites have. If and when several million people flood my site with bile and hatred, I want to be able to cash a fat $100 check and laugh at their insolence. Until then, I will keep being fabulous.

     

    Sunday
    Aug152010

    Those Bumbling Bureaucrats and Their Missing Centenarians

    Japan has issues, just like any other nation on Earth. The problem is, Japan tends to boast of its accomplishments and then run from the truth when those accomplishments are proved to be less than stellar. Japan's economic prowess has been one of the most overhyped and misunderstood phenomenons of my lifetime. Would you want their economy? If you're Sudan, Botswana or Serbia, absolutely. If you're the United States, no way.

    This is yet another example of how Japan's boasting has gotten in the way of reality:

    Japan has long boasted of having many of the world’s oldest people — testament, many here say, to a society with a superior diet and a commitment to its elderly that is unrivaled in the West.

    That was before the police found the body of a man thought to be one of Japan’s oldest, at 111 years, mummified in his bed, dead for more than three decades. His daughter, now 81, hid his death to continue collecting his monthly pension payments, the police said.

    Alarmed, local governments began sending teams to check on other elderly residents. What they found so far has been anything but encouraging.

    A woman thought to be Tokyo’s oldest, who would be 113, was last seen in the 1980s. Another woman, who would be the oldest in the world at 125, is also missing, and probably has been for a long time. When city officials tried to visit her at her registered address, they discovered that the site had been turned into a city park, in 1981.

    To date, the authorities have been unable to find more than 281 Japanese who had been listed in records as 100 years old or older. Facing a growing public outcry, the country’s health minister, Akira Nagatsuma, said officials would meet with every person listed as 110 or older to verify that they are alive; Tokyo officials made the same promise for the 3,000 or so residents listed as 100 and up.

    The national hand-wringing over the revelations has reached such proportions that the rising toll of people missing has merited daily, and mournful, media coverage. “Is this the reality of a longevity nation?” lamented an editorial last week in The Mainichi newspaper, one of Japan’s biggest dailies.

    This goes on everywhere; it's not a Japanese problem. But mummified since 1978? What the hell is that about?