An American Lion
An American Lion

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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
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    Entries in Current Events (185)

    Friday
    Sep032010

    Like a War Zone

    DateFriday, September 3, 2010

    Christchurch Square, Christchurch New ZealandChristchurch, New Zealand has been hit by a massive earthquake:

    Power and water have been cut to parts of Christchurch after a magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck about 30km west of the city at 4.35am today.

    The quake was at a depth of 33km and was centred near Darfield.

    “Check on your neighbours”

    Christchurch mayor Bob Parker told Newstalk ZB that the morning had been “pretty traumatic.”

    Mr Parker said that people were being taken to Christchurch Hospital for emergency treatment, and he had not heard any reports of serious injuries.

    “It wouldn’t surprise me if there were some.”

    Mr Parker urged Cantabrians affected by the earthquake to check on their neighbours to ensure they were safe.

    The best sources are probably right there in Christchurch. If I see anything to add, I’ll put it here. What a tragedy. The Earth is really coming after humanity these days.

    AuthorNorman Rogers | tagged , , , , , , , | in , ,
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    Tuesday
    Aug102010

    Ted Stevens 1923-2010

    DateTuesday, August 10, 2010

    Senator Ted Stevens

    AuthorNorman Rogers | tagged , , , , , , , | in , , ,
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    Saturday
    Aug072010

    If You Are Born Here, You're a Citizen

    DateSaturday, August 7, 2010

    Since there were no Czech machine guns when the 2nd Amendment was passed, good luck convincing me to give mine up, sir.I don't understand the ignorance of American history exhibited here, but what else is new?

    At a breakfast on Thursday in Washington, Senator Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, tried to tamp down a controversy that started when SenatorLindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, questioned the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which grants the right to citizenship to anyone born in the United States.

    “I am not aware of anybody who has come out in favor of altering the 14th Amendment,” Mr. McConnell said.

    But Mr. Graham, speaking on Fox News last week, said it was “a mistake” to allow American-born children of illegal immigrants to become citizens automatically, a practice known as birthright citizenship. He said that along with a plan to grant legal status to millions of illegal immigrants, he would also amend the 14th Amendment as a way of discouraging future unauthorized immigration.

    Throughout the week Mr. Graham stood firm on his proposal. “We can’t just have people swimming across the river having children here — that’s chaos,” he said Wednesday in another interview with Fox News.

    The proposal caught Republican and Democratic lawmakers by surprise, not least because it came from Mr. Graham, who earlier this year was the leading — and almost the only — Republican negotiating with Democrats to create an immigration overhaul bill. Mr. Graham gave new prominence to an issue that has long been a favorite of conservatives advocating reduced immigration, but has been peripheral to the immigration debate in Congress.

    Mr. McConnell said Republicans were calling only for hearings on the issue. The debate centers on the first sentence of what is known as the citizenship clause: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.” The amendment was adopted in 1868 to ensure the citizenship of the American-born children of freed slaves.

    Opponents of birthright citizenship contend that illegal immigrants are not under United States jurisdiction, therefore their American-born children should not automatically be citizens. They say the amendment could not apply to those immigrants because there was no illegal immigration when it was adopted.

    America gives you something that is better than anything any other nation on Earth can give you, and that's the right to call yourself an American. Look very closely at the last paragraph:

    They say the amendment could not apply to those immigrants because there was no illegal immigration when it was adopted.

    I just want to shake my head and laugh. 

    There were no assault weapons then, either. This means we should ban them, right? I mean, let's apply some old-fashioned common sense here. If you believe in gun rights, as I certainly do, there's nothing more ridiculous than someone who says, well, you know, back in the olden times when Ben Franklin was president, he said that we should all have guns, but we didn't have like guns that shoot four thousand bullets a second so, you know...

    The enticement for people to come to America has always been a free, open society that welcomes all comers. The idea that a woman could immigrate here and give birth on American soil is one that countless people have seen as their best reason to come here. We don't ask for papers in America. We give you freedom. And that kid of yours? Back in the old country, your child was a veritable indentured servant for life. Here, he or she is free.

    Free.

    Anyone who can't figure out that one does not take rights away from Americans is a fool.

    AuthorNorman Rogers | tagged , , , , , , , | in , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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    Thursday
    Jul292010

    Could the Republican Party Take Back the House?

    DateThursday, July 29, 2010

    If Congress is in play, then all bets are off. But Congress really isn't in play. Sure, there's a lot of anger out there. There might even be a great deal of motivation for people to go out and vote. Noise does not equal actual votes, however, and I think people will find themselves turned off by the last few years of economic and political upheaval. In other words, I think apathy will overwhelm the chances of a Republican takeover of the House.

    Here's Nate Silver on what might be "in play" this silly season:

    In fact, there are 101 Democrat-held seats that are rated as something other than safe by at least one of the "Big 4" forecasters (Cook, CQ, Rothenberg, Sabato). And if you include Real Clear Politics' forecasts in the mix, the total rises to 108.

    That's a fairly liberal definition of "in play", but at least it's one with some concrete standard attached. By a slightly more conservative definition -- a seat is "in play" if at least three of the five forcasters noted above think it is -- the figure is 89 seats, still higher than the range that the DCCC memo suggests.

    But I don't know that we should be erring on the side of conservativism in defining the number of seats that are "in play". Occasionally, in a wave election, a few seats that nobody was polling and nobody was paying attention to might wind up switching sides: one instance I recall is the     IA-2 district in 2006, which was won by then-obscure political science professor Dave Loebsack, who edged out 15-term (!) Republican incumbent Jim Leach. (I was following the race intently because Leach, although a moderate Republican overall, was a leading proponent of the legislation to prohibit online poker, from which I was making a portion of my living at the time.)

    I sense that the apathy is stronger than the noise. Sure, there is a fair amount of "throw the bums" out being generated. But what if a few economic indicators begin to tick upwards this fall? What if there's good news on the job front after the summer is over?

    Obstructionism does not inspire people to vote. I know that this was the strategy adopted by the beaten and cowed Republicans when President Obama took office, but that strategy comes with its own pitfalls. It's one thing to make a lot of noise and say that your opponent is not doing the right thing. It's another thing when all you've been doing is blocking the wrong things and the right things and everything else.

    Obstructionism is a temporary strategy, one that has to be followed by substantive proposals, statesmanship, and a bit of inspiration. If you can get people talking about what you stopped, what you want to do, and how that might benefit the country, you have the chance to roll a national election into a takeover of Congress.

    When the Republicans took back the House in 1994 and when the Democrats took it in 2006, there were clearly defined examples presented in many races as to what the party would do and what it stood for. You could argue that those were elections where ideas counted and where the national sentiment was such that anyone with a decent idea and a good head of hair stood a pretty good chance of getting their ticket punched for at least one term in Congress.

    Okay, but how does this translate into what's necessary to take back the House this year? What are people voting for? More obstructionism?

    Where are the ideas, in other words? I'm not hearing any.

     

    AuthorNorman Rogers | tagged , , , , , , | in , , , , , , , , ,
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    Monday
    Jul262010

    Panic and Chaos at the Love Parade

    DateMonday, July 26, 2010

    Here in Germany, people are in shock over what happened at the Love Parade:

    Survivors of a stampede at a free dance music festival in Germany in which 19 people were killed have blamed organisers for the deaths.

    Witnesses criticised the decision to have just one entrance through a tunnel to the Love Parade, and said they had warned police about overcrowding.

    However, the mayor of Duisburg told a press conference that it was too early to blame anyone for the incident.

    The officials in question are due for a serious appraisal of their decision to hold the Love Parade in Duisberg, and I think the finger is going to be pointed at the good mayor:

    [...] BBC Berlin correspondent Tristana Moore says critics argued that the organisers and police were not prepared for such huge numbers of visitors and the site itself - an old railway yard - was too small and completely unsuitable.

    The police insisted that security arrangements were adequate and claimed the site was not overcrowded. German media said the festival had drawn about 1.4 million people.

    The head of a major police union, Rainer Wendt, told the Bild newspaper his organisation had warned a year ago that Duisburg was "too narrow, too small to manage the masses of people".

    Police said that no-one had died inside the tunnel.

    Deputy police chief Detlef von Schmeling said: "Fourteen people died on the metal steps leading away from the tunnel, two on a wall outside the tunnel."

    If you look at the video above, it's just horror--a stampede with no easy answers. The decision to funnel people into the site through a single entrance--a single point of failure--stands as the dumbest move of all.

    AuthorNorman Rogers | tagged , , , , , , , | in , , , ,
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    Monday
    Jul192010

    Still Burying the Dead of World War I

    DateMonday, July 19, 2010

    Aerial view of the Fromelles battlefieldHere's an example as to how honor is upheld:

    The last remains of scores of British and Australian World War I troops recovered from mass graves will be reburied in northern France later.

    Prince Charles and relatives of identified soldiers will attend a commemorative ceremony at the new Fromelles Military Cemetery.

    It comes 94 years after the soldiers were killed in the Battle of Fromelles.

    Work to excavate and identify the 250 soldiers began two years ago, after the bodies were found.

    The Commonwealth War Graves Commission was behind the work to exhume the bodies.

    Of those recovered, 205 have now been identified as Australian, three served with the British army and 42 are still classified as unknown.

    It is no less tragic, nearly a hundred years later, to read about the senseless loss of life.

    AuthorNorman Rogers | tagged , , , , , , , | in , ,
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    Monday
    Jul192010

    An Economy That Will Cost the Democrats Seats in Congress

    DateMonday, July 19, 2010

    Let this old fellow sleep on itWhat we have here is an economy that will hurt the Democrat Party--no question about it. And, to back me up on this, here's Paul Krugman:

    What political scientists, as opposed to pundits, tell us is that it really is the economy, stupid. Today, Ronald Reagan is often credited with godlike political skills — but in the summer of 1982, when the U.S. economy was performing badly, his approval rating was only 42 percent.

    My Princeton colleague Larry Bartels sums it up as follows: “Objective economic conditions — not clever television ads, debate performances, or the other ephemera of day-to-day campaigning — are the single most important influence upon an incumbent president’s prospects for re-election.” If the economy is improving strongly in the months before an election, incumbents do well; if it’s stagnating or retrogressing, they do badly.

    Now, the fact that “ephemera” don’t matter seems reassuring, suggesting that voters aren’t swayed by cheap tricks. Unfortunately, however, the evidence suggests that issues don’t matter either, in part because voters are often deeply ill informed.

    Suppose, for example, that you believed claims that voters are more concerned about the budget deficit than they are about jobs. (That’s not actually true, but never mind.) Even so, how much credit would you expect Democrats to get for reducing the deficit?

    None. In 1996 voters were asked whether the deficit had gone up or down under Bill Clinton. It had, in fact, plunged — but a plurality of voters, and a majority of Republicans, said that it had risen.

    Perception will always work against anyone holding power. If you perceive that a political party has gone off the rails, surrendered common sense to bureaucratic incompetents, and is controlled by corrupt money men, then no one is going to convince you of the saintliness of the ruling class.

    I am still not convinced that the control of Congress is on the line here. Should the Democrats lose control of the House, then impeachment hearings will begin by the spring of 2011. The Republican Party will, without question, find some abuse of power charge to level against the Obama Administration of its handling of the war on terror and we will be subjected to Kabuki theater rather than honest work for the American people.

    As much as I would like to see Obama thrown from office, I don't relish a Biden Presidency and I don't think we can solve anything by pursuing the impeachment of the President just because control of Congress has changed. That ship has sailed, and it's not a viable means of opposing the agenda of a failed President.

    AuthorNorman Rogers | tagged , , , , , , , | in , , , , , , , ,
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    Saturday
    Jul172010

    Your Founding Fathers Would Laugh at Your Ignorance

    DateSaturday, July 17, 2010

    Really, I'm getting tired of this nonsense:

    Minutemen groups, a surge in Border Patrol agents and a tough new immigration law aren't enough for a reputed neo-Nazi who's now leading a militia in the Arizona desert.

    Jason "J.T." Ready is taking matters into his own hands, declaring war on "narco-terrorists" and keeping an eye out for illegal immigrants. So far, he says his patrols have only found a few border crossers who were given water and handed over to the Border Patrol. Once, they also found a decaying body in a wash, and alerted authorities.

    But local law enforcement are nervous given that Ready's group is heavily armed and identifies with the National Socialist Movement, an organization that believes only non-Jewish, white heterosexuals should be American citizens and that everyone who isn't white should leave the country "peacefully or by force."

    "We're not going to sit around and wait for the government anymore," Ready said. "This is what our founding fathers did."

    What your "founding fathers" actually did was this--whenever they found land they wanted, they evicted whoever was on it and used the legal system to obtain clear legal title and deed to the property. If a founding father wasn't already a lawyer, then he used lawyers to obtain what he wanted. You see, there were certainly poor people who wanted to build America and who fought for independence. We're talking about a tiny percentage of American colonists, though. The vast majority of Americans did nothing to secure their liberty, other than sitting on their dead ass, drunk on whatever they could make out of whatever they could grow and turn into alcohol, and they did it with no teeth and no shoes.

    If a founding father had to deal with such rabble, he had his people handle it. If a founding father had to do business with the commoners, he was well-dressed and proper. Oh, and he used a lot of his wife's family's money or land as collateral or some combination of the speculative titles to lands far out west or the slaves he owned to mortgage himself to the hilt. The founding fathers were the intellectual and economic elite of their day; they were men of means and property. They were intelligent men, well versed in what was right and what was right for them.

    This notion that they would be out in the desert of the American southwest trying to catch poor people sneaking into this country is a knee-slapper. They would, instead, be looking for a way to ensure that admitting the American southwest into the Union would not upset the balance of free states and slave states, to put not too fine a point on it.

    I absolutely adore and respect our founders; I think there are few, if any, to compare in history. Thanks to my impressive command of American history I refuse to put on blinders and accept the notion that some rube with white supremacist ties and a few minutes to talk to a gullible reporter is worth leaving out there without some comment. Reality check--the founders were men who wouldn't give the likes of this young man the time of day.

    AuthorNorman Rogers | tagged , , , , , , , | in , , , , , , , , ,
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    Wednesday
    Jul072010

    Your Good Government Promise is in the Mail

    DateWednesday, July 7, 2010

    When obstructionism is the rule of the day, go to the recess appointment:

    Facing the prospect of an acrimonious nomination fight that threatened to reprise last year's healthcare debate, President Obama will bypass the Senate to appoint a new head of the federal Medicare and Medicaid health insurance programs, the White House announced Tuesday evening.

    Dr. Donald Berwick, a Harvard pediatrician and expert on healthcare quality, was nominated in April to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS, one of the top healthcare positions in government.

    But with Republicans lining up to oppose Berwick, Obama will make a recess appointment Wednesday, administration officials said."Many Republicans in Congress have made it clear in recent weeks that they were going to stall the nomination as long as they could, solely to score political points," White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer said in a blog post Tuesday announcing the decision.

    Apparently, this President is not allowed to pick unqualified cronies and donors for high-ranking patronage posts. Apparently, the Senate would like some say on who runs a trillion dollar sector of the American economy. Too bad the "obstructionist" trigger has been pulled too many times already. My wish is that the Republicans would have been a little more judicious in their use of the threatened filibuster in order to really block the people who need blocking. Understanding the power of patronage is difficult in a time when patronage doesn't really mean what it used to mean. A hundred years ago, such a powerful position in the American economy would have been negotiated over as if it were made entirely of gold. Now, a recess appointment has to be used in order to keep things running.

    Anyway, we'll have good government someday, but not until the gravy train is through.

    AuthorNorman Rogers | tagged , , , , , , , | in , , , , ,
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    Monday
    Jul052010

    Tiger's Game is All But Shot

    DateMonday, July 5, 2010

    Coming soon to a cut-out bin near youWatching the sad decline of Tiger Woods gives me pains in my sides.

    How does he keep his number one ranking? You'd think that, by now, he would have fallen completely off the charts. He's awful, and he's not going to improve if he doesn't make radical changes and get his health back in order:

    Tiger Woods looked just as out of form in a celebrity pro-am as he did on the PGA Tour.

    The world’s No. 1 golfer arrived Monday in Ireland just hours after his 46th-place finish at the AT&T National in Pennsylvania and shot a 7-over 79 in the first round of the J.P. McManus Invitational Pro-Am.

    The unranked event in County Limerick featuring Hollywood celebrities and Irish billionaires was his first overseas event since revelations of his extramarital affairs surfaced last year.

    While more than 40,000 Irish golf fans offered him a friendly and forgiving welcome, Woods’ opening round at the 7,453-yard, par-72 Adare Manor Golf Resort was often dreadful. He bogeyed six holes, double-bogeyed the 7th, and managed a lone birdie on the 17th.

    He followed that up by gamely trying to reach the green on the 18th — a five-par 548-yard hole on the far side of the River Maigue — in two. His risky second shot fell short into the riverside reeds for a final bogey, the third time he had found water in his round.

    There's a physical issue here, and I think it comes down to a lack of practice and discipline coupled with an injury he is not discussing or a physical limitation from his previous knee problems. I won't go into the mental aspects of his game because that's for his coaches and caddy to discuss (if he even employs a coach anymore--I don't honestly know).

    Either way, the world's greatest golfer has gone off the rails. Will he win anything this year? Can he contend anywhere? I don't know.

    AuthorNorman Rogers | tagged , , , , , , , | in , , , , , ,
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