Here is his 1999 NRA Convention Keynote Speech in Denver, which, by coincidence, was scheduled shortly after the Columbine shootings in Colorado:

 "I have been advised not to be here. I apologize for this disruption, but from our friends in the national press corps, we have received some very good late-breaking news. According to reports Yugoslavia has agreed to release our three American P.O.W.'s, perhaps, this note says, within 24 hours. That's the best news we could have.

"I was advised not to be here, not to speak to you here, that's not the first time. In 1963, I marched on Washington with Dr. Martin Luther King, long before Hollywood found civil rights, um, fashionable. My associates advised me not to go. They said it would be unpopular, and may be dangerous. Thirty-six years later, my associates advised me not to come to Denver. They said it would be unpopular, and may be dangerous. Here I am. Let me tell you why...

"I see our country teetering on the edge of an abyss. At its bottom brews the simmering bile of deep, dark hatred. Hatred that's dividing our country: politically, racially, economically, geographically, in every way- whether it's political vendettas, sports brawls, corporate takeovers, or high school gangs in cleats, the American competitive ethic has changed from 'let's beat the other guy, to let's destroy the other guy.' Too many, too many are too willing to stigmatize and demonize others for political advantage, for money or for ratings. The vilification is savage. This week, Representative John Conyers slandered three million Americans when he called the NRA 'merchants of death' on national television as our first lady nodded in agreement.

"A hideous cartoon by Mike Peters ran nationally, it showed childrens' dead bodies sprawled out to spell N-R-A. The countless requests we've received this last week or so for media appearances are in fact, summons to public floggings, where those who hate firearms will, predictably don the white hat and give us the black one. This harvest of hatred is then sold as news. As entertainment. As government policy. Such hateful, divisive forces are leading us to one awful end--America's own form of Balkanization. A weakened country of rabid factions, each less free, united only by hatred of one another.

"In the past ten days, we've seen the these brutal blows attempting to fracture America into two such camps. Now one camp would be the majority- people who believe our founders guaranteed our security with the right to defend ourselves, our families, and our country. The other camp would be a large minority of people who believe that we will buy security--if we would just surrender these freedoms. This debate would be accurately described as those who believe in the Second Amendment versus those who don't but instead it is spun as those who believe in murder versus those who don't.

"A struggle between the reckless and the prudent, between the dim-witted and the progressive. Between inferior citizens who know, and elitists who know what's good for society. But we're not the rustic, reckless radicals they wish for. No, the NRA spans the broadest range of American demography imaginable. We defy stereotyping, except for love of country. Look in your mirror, your shopping mall, your church, your grocery store--that's us. Millions of ordinary people and extraordinary people. War heroes, sports idols, several U.S. Presidents, and, yes, movie stars.

"But the screeching hyperbole leveled at gun owners has made these two camps so wary of each other, so hostile and confrontational and disrespectful on both sides they have forgotten that we are first Americans. I am asking all of us, on both sides, to take one step back from the edge, than another step and another... however many it takes to get back to the place where we are all Americans. Different...different, imperfect, diverse, but one nation, indivisible.

"This cycle of tragedy-driven hatred must stop, because so much more connects us than that which divides us because tragedy has been, and will always be with us. Somewhere right now, evil people are planning evil things. All of us will do everything meaningful, everything we can do to prevent it, but each horrible act can't become an ax for opportunists to cleave the very Bill of Rights that binds us. America must stop this predictable pattern of reaction. when an isolated, terrible event occurs, our phones ring, demanding that the NRA explain the inexplicable. Why us? Because their story needs a villain. They want us to play the heavy in their drama of packaged grief. To provide riveting programming to run between commercials for cars and cat food.

"The dirty secret of this day and age is that political gain and media ratings all to often bloom on fresh graves. I remember a better day, where no one dared politicize or profiteer on trauma. We kept a respectful distance then, as NRA has tried to do now. Simply being silent is so often the right thing to do. But today, carnage comes with a catchy title, splashy graphics, regular promos and a reactionary passage of legislation. Reporters perch like vultures on the balconies of hotels for a hundred miles around. Cameras jockey for shocking angles as news anchors race to drench their microphones with the tears of victims.

"Injury, shock, grief and despair shouldn't be brought to you by sponsors. That's pornography. It trivializes the tragedy it abuses. It abuses vulnerable people, and maybe worst of all, it makes the unspeakable seem commonplace. And we're often cast as the villain. That is not our role in American society, and we will not be forced to play it.

"Our mission is to remain, as our Vice-President said, a steady beacon of strength and support for the Second Amendment even if it has no other friend on this planet. We cannot, we must not let tragedy lay waste to the most rare, and hard-won human right in history. A nation cannot gain safety by giving up freedom. This truth is older than our country. Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. Ben Franklin said that.

"Now, if you like your freedoms of speech and of religion, freedom from search and seizure, freedom of the press, and of privacy, to assemble, and to redress grievances, then you'd better give them that eternal bodyguard called the Second Amendment.

"The individual right to bear arms is freedom's insurance policy. Not just for your children, but for infinite generations to come. That is it's singular sacred duty, and why we preserve it so fiercely. Now, no, it's not a right without rational restrictions, and it's not for everyone. Only the law-abiding majority of society deserves the Second Amendment.

"Abuse it once, and lose it forever. That's the law. But, curiously, the NRA is far more eager to prosecute gun abusers than are those who oppose gun ownership altogether. As if the tool could be more evil than the evil-doers. I don't understand that. The NRA also spends more and works harder than anybody in America to promote safe, responsible use of firearms. From 38,000 certified instructors, training millions of police, hunters, women and youths, to 500 law-enforcement agencies promoting our Eddie Eagle gun-safety program Wen told you about distributed to eleven million kids-eleven million and counting.

"But our essential reason for being is this: as long as there is a Second Amendment, evil can never conquer us, tyranny in any form can never find footing within a society of law-abiding, armed, ethical people. The majesty of the Second Amendment that our founders so divinely captured and crafted into your birthright guarantees that no government despot, no renegade faction of armed forces, no roving gangs of criminals, no breakdown of law and order, no massive anarchy, no force of evil or crime or oppression from within or from without can ever rob you of the liberties that define your Americanism.

"And, so, when they ask you well, indeed you would uh, bear arms against Government tyranny? The answer is no. That could never happen, precisely because we have the Second Amendment. Let me be absolutely clear. The Founding Fathers guaranteed this freedom, because they knew no tyranny can ever arise among a people endowed with the right to keep and bear arms. That's why you and your descendants need never fear fascism, state-run faith, refugee camps, brain-washing, ethnic cleansing, or especially submission to the wanton will of criminals.

"The Second Amendment, there can be no more precious inheritance- that's what the NRA preserves.

"Now, if you disagree, that's your right. I respect that. But, we will not relinquish it, or be silenced about it, or be told: 'Do not come here, you are unwelcome in your own land.'

"Let us go from this place, this huge room, renewed in spirit and dedicated against hatred. We have work to do, hearts to heal, evil to defeat, and a country to unite. We may have differences, yes, and we will again suffer tragedy almost beyond description. But when the sun sets on Denver tonight, and forevermore, let it always set on we the people, secure in our land of the free, and home of the brave. I, for one, plan to do my part. Thank You."

 Hat Tip: Varmint Al

Check out Bobby Jindal's victory speech from the Louisiana race for governor last night. 

I'm sorry, but I see no brighter light in either of the major parties at this time—can you? Anybody? Jindal's specialty is fixing things, and there are so many things in Louisiana to fix. If he can fix Louisiana, he can fix...he can fix the world, and we will wind up with this son of the Punjab as President. Now is Jindal's time to prove himself. May God bless him, or at least have mercy on his soul. 

Run Bobby run!

This is an open letter to the blonde-haired guy in the black GMC midsize pickup truck I “met” at the intersection of Airport and I-35 on the afternoon of October third.

I am one of the unclean, a tobacco smoker. Since I have kids at home and can’t smoke in the office or any other public place, I smoke mostly in my car. Typically I roll my own cigarettes with American Spirit tobacco. They have no filters, and the paper is made from 100% flax. Since these hand-rolled cigarettes are all-natural and essentially pre-biodegraded containing nothing but leaf material and a spot of flax paper which disolves in water, sometimes I will drop my “butts” out of my car window into the gutter if I’m stopped at a traffic light or stop sign. Most of the time I do this my cigarette is no longer burning since natural tobacco doesn’t contain chemicals to keep it lit like manufactured cigarettes do. Now I know this is a bad habit and constitutes illegal littering in spite of my rationalizations about the fact that my litter dissolves into a tiny amount of 100% plant detritus upon first contact with water. Mea culpa: It is still wrong for me to litter, regardless.

On October third I was running late for an after-school event at my children’s elementary school for which I volunteer on a weekly basis. Instead of trying to roll a cigarette while I was driving, I noticed my wife had left a pack of her store-bought cigarettes in my car, so I lit up one of those instead. While stopped under the I-35 overpass at Airport Blvd. waiting to make a left-hand turn, I thoughtlessly dropped my cigarette butt into the gutter. Realizing I had just dropped a fiberglass filtered cigarette butt instead of one of my hand-rolled butts, I glanced up at the light and debated whether I should get out of my car and pick it up. But before I could decide, I saw something move right outside my car window out of the corner of my eye. Thinking it might be a panhandler, I bent my head down to look up at him when something burning came flying through the window and hit me in the face. Upon impact, it burst into multiple burning pieces. One burning piece went into my left eye, one piece fell onto my forearm and stuck, while the rest of the pieces fell between my legs onto my car seat and between my car door and the drivers seat. Panicked, I looked around to see where my attacker was and saw the man behind me calmly get back into his truck. It was then that I realized what was happening, that he had seen me drop a cigarette butt, got out of his truck, bent over next to my car, picked it up, and threw it in my face. By this time the light had changed and the car in front of me was moving. In shock and unsure if the passenger compartment of my car was on fire or not, I made the left turn. I pulled into a parking lot and checked my car to make sure nothing was burning. The man behind me went on about his way. He never uttered a word.

Now I’m sure this man is very satisfied with himself, and I’m sure he enjoyed the self-righteous rush he got from demonstrating his moral righteousness—with fire!—to a filthy, littering smoker. And I’m sure that there are people reading this post feeling smug in their pious certitude that I got what I deserved. But the truth of the matter is this man physically assaulted and injured me, a total stranger. Although I don’t smoke with my children in the car, had they been in there with me they might have gotten injured too. If I had been wearing a rayon or acrylic shirt, I could be in Brackenridge right now with third degree burns on fifty percent of my body. My car could have caught on fire and I might have burned to death, tangled up in my seat belt. Or, in my panic, I might have accidentally hit my accelerator and slammed into the car in front of me, harming that driver and her child. I’m left wondering how any of these potential outcomes would have affected this man’s moral calculus, but it’s clear that the only factor was himself and his egotistical sense of rectitude. If he had just picked up the butt and said “excuse me sir, I think you dropped this” I would have been properly chastised and he would have made his point. But apparently that wasn’t enough for him.

Anyway, whoever you are Mr. “Activist,” my eye’s okay, and the blisters on my forearm and face are small and will heal soon enough. I still hope you one day develop the moral cognition necessary to understand that while my littering may have been anti-social, what you did was thuggish and sociopathic, and God forbid you seriously harm someone before you figure out what a creep you are.

This is not real. We've seen it all before.
Slow down, you're screaming. What exploded? When?
I guess this means we've got ourselves a war.
And look at -- Lord have mercy, not again.
I heard that they went after Air Force One.
Call FAA at once if you can't land.
They say the bastards got the Pentagon.
The Capitol. The White House. Disneyland.
I was across the river, saw it all.
Down Fifth, the buildings put it in a frame.
Aboard the ferry -- we felt awful small.
I didn't look until I felt the flame.
The steel turns red, the framework starts to go.
Jacks clasp Jills' hands and step onto the sky.
The noise was not like anything you know.
Stand still, he said, and watch a building die.
There's no one you can help above this floor.
We've got to hold our breath. We've got to climb.
Don't give me that; I did this once before.
The firemen look up, and know the time.
These labored, took their wages, and are dead.
The cracker-crumbs of fascia sieve the light.
The air's deciduous of letterhead.
How dark, how brilliant, things will be tonight.
Once more, we'll all remember where we were.
Forget it, friend. You didn't have a choice.
That's got to be a rumor, but who's sure?
The Internet is stammering with noise.
You turn and turn but just can't turn away.
My child can't understand. I can't explain.
The towers drain out from Boston to LA.
The cellphone is our ganglion of pain.
What was I thinking of? What did I say?
You're safe? The TV's off. What do you mean?
I'm going now, but not going away.
I couldn't touch the answering machine.
I nearly was, but caught a later bus.
I would have been, but had this awful cold.
I spoke with her, she's headed home, don't fuss.
Pick up those tools. The subway job's on hold.
Somebody's got to pay, no matter what.
I love you. Just I love you. Just I love --
The cloud rolls on; I think of Eliot.
Not silence, but an emptiness above.
There's dust, and metal. Nothing else at all.
it's airless and it's absolutely black.
I found a wallet. I'm afraid to call.
I'll stay until my little girl comes back.
You hold your breath whenever something shakes.
St. Vincent's takes one massive trauma case.
The voice, so placid, till the circuit breaks.
Ten minutes just to grab stuff from my place.
I only want to hear them say goodbye.
They could be down there, buried, couldn't they?

My friends all made it, and that's why I cry.
He stayed with me, and he died anyway.
We almost tipped the island toward uptown.
Next minute, I'm in Macy's. Who knows how.
I really need to get this bagel down.
He'd haul ass, that's what Jesus would do now.
A fighter plane? Dear God, let it be ours.
We're scared of bombs and so we're loading guns.
Who didn't have a rude word for the towers?
The world's hip-deep in junk that mattered once.
Hands rise to heaven as asbestos falls.
The air is yellow, hideously thick.
A photo, private once, on fifty walls.
A candle in a teacup on a brick.
They found -- can you believe -- a pair of hands.
Oh, that don't hurt. Well, maybe just a bit.
The Winter Garden's shattered but it stands.
A howl is Mene Tekeled in the grit.
Some made it in a basement, so there's hope.
The following are definitely known . . .
You live, is how you learn that you can cope.
Yes, I sincerely want to be alone.
Don't even ask. That's what your tears are for.
The cats are in a shelter; we are not.
Pedestrians rule the Roeblings' bridge once more.
A memory of home is what we've got.
Tribeca with no people, that's plain wrong.
It's just a shopping bag, but who can tell?
Okay, okay, I'm moving right along.
The postcards hit two dollars, and they sell.
Be honest, now. You're proud of living here.
If this is Armageddon, make it quick.
Today, for you, the rose is free, my dear.
We're shooting down our neighbors. Now I'm sick.
I can't do that for fifty times the fare.
A coronary. Other things went on.
It goes, like, something mighty, and despair.
All those not now accounted for are gone.
Here is the man whose god blinked in the flash,
Whose god says sinful people should be hurt,
The man whose god is kneeling in the ash,
The man whose god is dancing on the dirt.
Okay, I ate at Windows now and then.
This fortune-teller went to Notre Dame?
They knocked 'em down. We'll stack 'em up again.
Oh, I'd say one or two things stayed the same.
Some nights I still can see them, like a ghost.
King Kong was right about the Empire State.
I'd rather not hear what you'll miss the most.
A taller building? Maybe. I can wait.
I hugged the stranger sitting next to me.
So this is what you call a second chance.
One turn aside, into eternity.
This is New York. We'll find a place to dance.

With resolution wanting, reason runs
To characters and symbols, noughts and ones.

...or is it the same conservatives who think it's possible to keep 10,000 Mexicans a day out of the US with a 2000 mile fence who also think it's impossible to fortify 300 miles of levees to keep a twenty foot storm surge out of New Orleans?

 Here it is:

 Bah-dah-bing, made on a Mac.

Well this site has been dormant for a few months not due to any one particular reason, but rather due to a host of reinforcing demands on my time and attention, which taken singly are rather poor excuses for the neglect. For whatever reason—guilt most likely— I thought I'd share one of them with you.

Right about the time of my last post here I'd been shopping for a house gun. That's right, a gun. I'm forty-two years old and I've never purchased a gun in my life in spite of the fact that I was raised shooting them. Just before last September 11th, Glenn Reynolds over at Instapundit made a half-serious crack about how we should all mark the infamous date's passing by buying guns. Initially I took the suggestion in the spirit in which it was given, but then I encountered this site and my attitude abruptly changed. For the first time I realized that in spite of having an old Remington .22 which I'd gotten as a Christmas gift when I was a teenager buried at the back of my closet, I've essentially been remiss all these years in never investing in a weapon (and the proficiency required to handle it responsibly) capable of the firepower necessary to protect myself and my family should the need arise. It's not about fear of criminals or tyrants, it's more about about free men accepting grown-up responsibilities in an uncertain world. We should all have an accurate, hig-powered rifle for the same reason we have insurance and 401k accounts.

Anyway, while searching for my idea of the perfect house gun—a double-barrel twenty gauge with exposed hammers—I came across a "mil-surp" rifle that captured my imagination from, of all places, Switzerland. As many know, Swiss citizens have been required for generations to participate in their democratic confederacy's military for most of their lives, and are even issued battle rifles to keep in their homes along with some ammunition so that they may mobilize at a moment's notice. From 1933 to 1958, Swiss militiamen were issued the Karabiner 31, or K-31, a six-shot straight-pull bolt action rifle. They are currently available for $100-200, fire a cartridge remarkably similar to the .30-06, and enjoy a reputation for being one of the most accurate battle rifles ever generally issued. On September 11th, I ordered two of them from a dealer in North Carolina, along with my twenty gauge. They arrived a few days later.

Like most military surplus rifles, the ones I received had a lot of wear showing on their wooden stocks. The black water stains you can see around their butt plates is due to the Swiss practice of stacking them in threes, tripod-like, outside of their tents in the snow. Most of the gashes at the bottom of the stocks are from the militiamen kicking them free from the frozen snow in the morning with their hobnail boots. Unlike most military surplus rifles however, the K-31s on the market today have mostly pristine metal, owing to their fine original workmanship (their barrels were manufactured by Hammerli and Sig) and the care the Swiss took with them. Thankfully the Swiss didn't store them in cosmoline grease as was the preferred long-term storage method of the US military. Here's a couple of pictures of mine as I received them:

One is a 1941 issue, the other is a 1943, both with walnut stocks (the Swiss later switched to beechwood). I then proceeded to spend the next two months finding every bit of information I could on these rifles so I could restore them to a facsimile of what they looked like when they were issued. Believe it or not there are at least a half a dozen bustling US-based message boards devoted to this rifle. Long-story-short, here's the finished product:

I presented one of them to my wife as a fifteenth anniversary present. It's certainly the weirdest one she's ever gotten from me.

I remember the first time (of what would be many times) I saw my young son suddenly cry "snake!" and dive head first into the tall grass of our back yard with his arms stretched out before him. In the seconds it took me to overcome my shock and make it to the tall grass to save my six year-old son, he was already on his feet again, with an eight-inch dirt-colored garden snake wiggling between his fingers. I don't think I've ever seen my son more delighted, and delighted with himself, as he was at that moment. Even so, at the time all I could think was that if that snake had turned out to be a copperhead, I was going to have that Crocodile Hunter guy's ass.

Then last night in a comments thread someone piped in that Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, was dead. Hoping it was a joke, I clicked over to a mainstream media site and sure enough, there were a couple of headlines proclaiming reports of his death, the oldest having been posted forty minutes prior. After I read the reports, I clicked over to Wikipedia to see what they had to say about his life and was startled to find that someone had already edited Irwin's entry to include the story of his demise at the wrong end of a stingray.

Steve and I had a few things in common. We were nearly the same age—he was only a few years older than me—and we were both fathers of young children, so my first thought after learning of his death was of his children, a three year-old son and an eight year-old daughter. My daughter is eight too, so a momentary, personal stab of dread was probably unavoidable for me. But later it was worse as the realization of what we have actually lost in Irwin slowly rose in my mind.

 And by now we all know what we've lost: a fierce conservationist, a committed, successful educator, an insatiable explorer, a wacky, tireless entertainer, and, quite possibly, the absolute coolest dad in all the universe.

 And there is my son again, standing there, beaming with wonder and life, the little snake slithering curiously through his hands. Steve Irwin didn't teach my son to be careless with the natural world, he taught him to be fearless. Thoughtful, but fearless. Because that's the way he was on his show.

Sure, Irwin was a showman at heart, and he was a very good one, so good that sometimes it got him into trouble with his weenie critics. But what he was always teaching us was that even though we humans have managed to separate our daily lives from much of it, we are still an integral part of nature—not interlopers, not voyeurs, not parasites, but actual participants in the natural world. Steve Irwin knew that if we are to preserve our natural world, we needed to understand this, that fear and ignorance were opposite sides of the same destructive force. Thus he showed us, over and over again, fearlessly, that in nature there is nothing to fear and much, much to know. And in doing so he taught my son something very important, and even beautiful, that I never could have. For that, I will always be grateful to him.

Over the years, I’ve noticed that Peter hates hiccups.  Hiccupping makes him crazy. He’ll try any folk remedy (and has tried most) to get rid of them.  To me, they’re harmless and interesting.  The muscles that control one’s diaphragm get ‘irritated’ and start twitching involuntarily.  It’s like applying a toilet plunger to your lungs.  Hiccups end as mysteriously as they start.

Last night, I hiccupped through a phone call with my older gay sister who was offering me comfort that a “family tree” had been printed and mailed that would give our relatives the impression that I was either an unwed mother of three children or a typical American divorcee.  It turns out she’s not into hiccups either.  Her folk remedy was to drink water through a paper napkin held over the mouth of the glass.  Failing to persuade me to try her remedy, she carried on bravely despite her irrational dislike of muscles doing their own thing.  She couldn’t resist pointing out much later in the conversation that my hiccupping had subsided.

A pair of balls beats a vagina, any day

One has to reach back in time 13 years for the beginning of the story of how two sisters, one straight and one gay, find out that life, to paraphrase Forrest Gump, is exactly like a box of chocolates – you should be curious enough to try each one until you’ve learned what you like.

Raised in ‘orthodox Hindu’ households, my parents had every right to expect that their seven children would continue the tradition of marrying whomever their parents select for them.  [Darwinists take note: there is no natural selection – no ‘survival of the fittest’ – within orthodox cultures.]  Their illusions were first shattered when I “came out of the closet” to reveal I had been shacking up with a southern Redneck (genus unknown) for almost two years.  Emboldened by my act of courage, my sister immediately followed up by coming out to them.  Peter and I used to joke that his stock shot up immediately.

Roots and fruit

So, yesterday, I was deeply hurt when my father forwarded the ‘family tree’ sans my husband’s name.  An accidental omission, my father later stated.  My reaction was ‘emotional’, not based on facts.  While it was the right thing to do to include grandchildren’s spouses’ names, my father was not aware of their intentions to add these details.  He conceded that the relative in charge of creating the family tree could have placed a phone call.  My father concluded:

Inspite of the above clarification, if you still want do not want the corrections made for distribution at the time of the function, and if you do not want your name at all in the list, I guess I will have to oblige you, because it will be your choice.

Being omitted entirely in the corrected notice distributed on the day of the function – my grandfather’s centennial birth anniversary – an option?  Discount my own existence entirely?  That’s a hiccup of epic proportions!  Maybe gays and I do have something in common…

Orthodoxy and non-natural selection

The orthodox do not practice natural selection.  So, it’s easy for them to prove that evolution is bunk.  Darwin didn’t prove a damned thing writing about the ‘best genes’ banging each other.  It’s survival of the fittest cultures, not genes!  Man has documented enough of his own history to prove it, too.  The traditions and culture passed on the next generation are more important than the existence of any one member of the culture.  As a consequence, ‘pedigree’ is the key criterion to successful breeding. 

Hindus and other orthodox groups have been running the equivalent of ‘breeding’ farms for millennia.  There are royalty running all over Europe trying not to bang each other!   Even in cultures where there was never a clear history of dynasty building, monarchies took off because people can’t resist titles like ‘King’ or ‘Prince’ or ‘Queen’.  Americans ruined it with our insistence that all men are created equal and, well, despite the Kennedy’s best efforts to create an American Camelot, it’s since gone to the dogs… [Kennel Club members, take notes: you may learn a thing or two.]

The right language, the right caste, the right astral signs, the right family, the right connections – all of these factors are taken into account when matches are made.  One only has to go to the India Times matrimonials website to document the tragedy of our post-modern existence.  Girls are described as ‘wheatish’ in tone.  Boys described as ‘fair-complected’ don’t remain posted for long.  ‘Caste no barrier’ is posted by those whose caste is the problem.  One would think from reading the India Times that modern India is becoming as deliciously infused with the vigor of cross-fertilization as the Latin America of the last 500 years but, alas, that is not the case.  People stick to what they know and are often blind to what they don’t know since their culturally-ingrained prejudices keep them from seeing what they don’t know.

‘Love’ marriages generally do not get the kind of extended familial support that ‘arranged’ marriages do, no matter how heinous the outcomes.  Unfortunately, two or more rights frequently end up making one BIG wrong (or cause a lot of in-breeding)!  For example, my father’s oldest sister was married at 13 or 14 to a sub-prime human being who came with all of the ‘right’ qualifications.  My father’s family rescued her from the typical physical violence aimed at new daughter-in-laws that had escalated to a drenching in gasoline.  It’s still not clear to me if she was trying to end her own existence or if her new ‘family’ was to blame.  She never divorced, but she never lived with her husband’s ‘family’ again.  She raised her daughter on her own and remains, to this day, a quite independent gal.

Doing what is right is not easy

I didn’t need convincing that my parents would treat my first-born differently if he were born out of wedlock – it was an easy concession that, surprisingly, came with medical and dental benefits.  My sister argues that gays should be legally allowed to be married.  I agree.  Marriage is a social contract.  It may even pre-date the religious sacraments since societies form to ensure that the current generation will be survived by a generation indoctrinated in its unique culture, traditions and customs.  Marriage is also a legally-binding contract, as evidenced by the numerous lawyers who traffic in divorce proceedings.  Gays are denied the legal protection marriage offers to the disposition of assets acquired during the marriage.  They are also denied the right to negotiate or defend custodial agreements, a volatile and particularly bruising aspect of divorce.

Congress loves the implicit social contract of marriage so much, they wrote it into law!  The Administration for Children and Families’ website has this to say about marriage and the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA):

When Congress enacted PRWORA and established the TANF program, States were given the authority to provide marriage support services as an acknowledgement that two-parent households are the most effective environment for raising children.

PRWORA was Bill ‘I did not have sex with that woman’ Clinton’s prized legacy!  It would have been delightful irony if Bill had been sued by a state attorney general for child support under PRWORA but – sigh – he read the bill before he signed it into law!  In retrospect, PRWORA was a slippery slope for liberals. As the saying goes, “Where a window closes, a door opens.”  A decade later, Congress is moving into our bedrooms with the backing of an administration that supports ‘orthodox’ beliefs about marriage.

Been there, done that

God’s not here to contradict those who claim to know his position on gays, straights and marriage, so there’s no way to put this whole thing on trial, like they did during the Scopes monkey trial.  It turns out that ‘playah haters’ existed then too!  Douglas Linder, in The Scopes Trial: An Introduction (2002), wrote:

The early 1920s found social patterns in chaos. Traditionalists, the older Victorians, worried that everything valuable was ending. Younger modernists no longer asked whether society would approve of their behavior, only whether their behavior met the approval of their intellect. Intellectual experimentation flourished. Americans danced to the sound of the Jazz Age, showed their contempt for alcoholic prohibition, debated abstract art and Freudian theories. In a response to the new social patterns set in motion by modernism, a wave of revivalism developed, becoming especially strong in the American South. 

Our orthodox don’t dress up in black wool or force their women to wear hijabs.  They don’t smear their foreheads with ashes once a year or envelope themselves in saffron-colored robes.  It’s hard to tell ‘them’ apart from ‘us’.  The orthodox can be found anywhere where biological diversity is consistently being stamped out of our gene pool.  They are the ones at the shallow end of the gene pool trying to control the evolution and growth of our species with short-term, narrow-minded purpose.  In the end, however the orthodox will lose because Darwin was absolutely correct:

In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment.

It’s that time of year.  Again.  The Travis County Appraisal District (TCAD) 2006 Notice of Appraised Value hit our mailbox.  According to TCAD, the value of my house is 57 percent higher than it was last year. I reaped an astounding return on my ‘investment’. Time to pop the cork!

Except there is a major flaw with this projection: I have to sell in order to realize it.  In the meantime, however, TCAD will tax me on the presumption that if I had sold my house this year, I would have owed them the difference in taxes between what I bought it for and what buyers are willing to pay this year.  If only I were selling my house – I could use the money to pay the taxes!  But I’m not buying and selling my house each year.

Instead, I filed our property tax dispute form so that I can have the pleasure of facing a three-member panel of ‘judges’ with whom I can argue that my house is in such a state of disrepair that I couldn’t sell it at any price close to what TCAD has calculated.  It is only through this process, undertaken in order for me to stay at home with our children before they were school-aged, that we’ve managed to avoid paying insane property taxes.  Now that we’re a dual-income household, I have to question the value of continuing to protest our tax bill.  Am I principled or outraged? What’s fueling the steep rise in property values in Austin?

Just so you know, if gasoline prices are getting you down, don't blame the oil companies. In fact, blame environmentalists, and Congress. This is Spring Spike,™ as predictable as the dafodils each year. It occurs when the US gasoline supply chain must switch over to the Congressionally mandated summer formulation for several parts of the country.

Outside air temperatures affect how internal combustion engines run, and thus they affect engine emissions, and the longer, hotter  days of summer tend to transform more of those emissions into pollution.  Although reformulated gasoline (RFG) affects several aspects of emissions, the target emission the government is trying to lower is peak ozone. Here's a map showing the US counties that are required to use RFG:

Approximately 75 million Americans live in these counties.

So is it worth the extra 30¢ per gallon during spring and autumn spikes (not to mention the inflation it causes for other goods and services, and also the additional 8¢ per gallon that RFG costs) so these areas have less ozone in their air during the summer?  I can't help but doubt it.

I thought it would be interesting to count, as my family and I drove east for the Mardi Gras, the number of moving vans that I sighted. By the time we reached Beaumont, the count stood at 2 U-Hauls and 1 Penske. The last vehicle I spotted had a Delaware tag. 

 The roadways are filled with debris. As we drove over the GNO, the debris stopped at the top. I couldn't help but recall how many people were turned back, and I was left wondering how much of the debris I was looking at was from that fateful day. Note to Ray Nagin: if you're going to invite people to party in your house, clean up.

After another cup of coffee, I'm packing up the car so, when my wife Varshna brings home the kids from school, we can hit the road for New Orleans. This will be the first Carnival that Varshna and I have been to since before we had children, which makes it about eleven years. And, like last time, this year Mardi Gras falls on my birthday, so I'll be back at the scene of the crime exactly forty-one years later. Gad.

But it won't all be beads and beer—well, actually, for the most part it will be, God willing. But I'll also be gathering intelligence for further installments of the Unfortunate Series. After all, this Carnival season is the opening statement in Nagin & Company's defense that New Orleans is still a viable city.

With the kids playing their proper role as bead magnets, it should be a lot of fun. But I also have the feeling that Varshna and I are in for our fair share of little heartbreaks as well. Hopefully, they won't add up. We'll see. 

Paul at WizBang posts a reality check concerning the controversy in some people's minds regarding rebuilding New Orleans' levee system, the failure of the old one, and any questions concerning whether or not they should be rebuilt.

Personally, I can't go so far as to blame the Federal government for the catastrophe—I blame Katrina herself—but I'm with Paul that any talk of abandoning or "moving" New Orleans is ludicrous. Setting aside the city's historical importance and the fact that it's one of the few cities in the US that doesn't resemble a big WalMart, setting aside it's importance as a major port both to and from the US heartland, and setting aside the interests of the people—Americans—who live there, the fact remains that New Orleans and her surrounding parishes represent billions or perhaps trillions of dollars-worth of capital built up over centuries, and abandoning that capital would prove a depression-inducing folly of the highest order.

Yes, New Orleans is low-lying with some parts below sea-level, and yes, Louisiana's Gulf coast is eroding. So what? We're talking about the mouth of the Mississippi here, and whether it is at Baton Rouge, or Vicksburg, or Memphis, wherever this mighty river meets the sea will be or become low-lying and eventually face the same considerations that New Orleans faces now.

Sorry America, but prudence requires you to get up off of your wallet and make New Orleans surge-proof. Yes it's going to cost a lot, but not nearly as much as it will if we don't act.

Well how about that.

I saw this price for gasoline advertised on the signs of more than a couple of gas stations and convenience stores on my way home this evening. Without the first windfall profits tax levied against oil companies, without the first additional excise tax on crude oil, without any type of additional regulation or increase in CAFE standards, the price of gasoline has been falling for over a month and now stands at about 33% less than what it was just two or three fill-ups ago.

The idea that the government should force gas prices higher with taxes in order to protect us from—(wait for it)—high gas prices, has always struck me as, well, sort of sub-genius. Yet there are even many well-known and otherwise thoughtful conservatives, such as Charles Krauthammer, who make this argument with a straight face.

This school of thought argues that if the price of fuel is kept artificially high, then market forces (you and me) will respond by buying little gas-sippers, not driving as much, taking the bus, etc. It is also believed that higher prices today will buffer prices in the future by simply forcing consumers to conserve and spurring alternative fuels development. The only problem is that these imagined rosy outcomes are just that: imaginings. Sure, people will consume less fossil fuels. They will also be forced to consume a lot less of other things too, since money they used to save or spend suddenly gets rerouted to government coffers via the pump, and the price of most everything else is also forced up due to higher transportation costs. Sure, technology and industry will invest more into developing alternative fuels, but more R&D isn't a guarantee that development will be quicker or even successful. Citizens of most European countries have paid punishing fuel taxes for decades, so much so that one would think the continent would be literally buzzing with electric vehicles by now—but it's not. Instead, the best the European automakers have managed to accomplish is to make the world safe for diesels. Yay.

In net, these types of social engineering taxes simply result in societies being poorer than they otherwise would be, and they almost never result in the outcome intended. This is because free prices communicate critical knowledge regarding supply and demand between buyers and sellers, producers and consumers, and their reactions to changing prices allow everyone involved to harmonize their market activity in realtime. When government arbitrarily raises or lowers prices above or below what the market sets, that critical harmonizing knowledge gets obliterated, literally lost in translation, and we wind up in situations where producers think they need to produce more when consumers are actually buying less, and vice versa. The end result is most often shortages, where product is unavailable at any price. And as you can probably imagine, constantly misallocating resources doesn't help producers maximize employment or stay in business.

 So, which is more desirable? A system in which prices are sometimes low and sometimes high, but with a consistently available supply, or a system in which gas prices are either high or very high, and where people wait in line for gas in between periods of complete shortages? If this isn't a no-brainer, I don't know what is.

Today I went grocery shopping after having dropped the kids off at Kumon and guess what they have stocked on the shelves after a weeks-long absence? This:

Over the years we've lived in Texas, this stuff has become our most important daily requirement for making living outside of New Orleans bearable. Fortunately for us it became available in Austin grocery stores in the early nineties.

While grocery shopping a few days after Katrina hit, I went to the coffee aisle to find one lonely orange can on the shelf. It hadn't occurred to me until that moment that it might be a while before new stock would be available again. Damn. We Americans can be so fat and oblivious sometimes, living up to our eyeballs in plenty.

Needless to say I snatched that bad boy up. I then went to the grocery across the highway but they were already out, but it was okay because I had a backup plan. For whatever cultural reasons, the Vietnamese-American community is utterly hooked on Cafe du Monde chicory coffee. Go to Cafe du Monde itself on Decatur Street and the entire staff is inexplicably Vietnamese. Go to any Vietnamese restaurant and it's on the menu, served with sweetened condensed milk. Go to any Asian grocery and you'll usually find cases of it stacked to the ceiling. The next day my wife Varshna went to the largest Asian grocery in Austin and sure enough, there was the stack—behind the register, with the various cheap non-New Orleans yellow can imitation brands stacked out front. The Vietnamese, it seems, are quite familiar with scarcity. My wife nonchalantly asked for six cans. The woman behind the register looked her in the eye and smiled: "Three can limit." I think there was something in the tone of her voice that immediately convinced my wife that if she wanted three cans, she shouldn't argue.

Anyway, I opened our last can a couple of days ago, so it was wonderful to see it back in stock, even if the price was fifty percent higher than usual. It's cool how free markets use the price system to ration scarce stuff to those most willing or able to pay higher prices. Let those who don't really care opt for the cheap yellow can imitations. This native New Orleanian will gladly, even eagerly pay more for the real deal.
 

To: Clarence Ray Nagin Jr., Mayor of New Orleans
RE: Anything But the Projects

Your Honor,

 
As the recovery phase following the Katrina catastrophe ends and the rebuilding phase begins, you may feel that New Orleans’ worst mistakes and starkest challenges are behind you. Unfortunately they’re not. As per the famous Chinese curse, the interesting times are just beginning in New Orleans.

And you, sir, are in a very interesting position. You’re not only going to be the one history holds responsible for the outcome of the new New Orleans, but you also have the almost unheard of opportunity of starting mostly from scratch. Every power-worshiping planner in the history of history has coveted this opportunity. Some, such as Pol Pot and Stalin, killed millions for it. The rest have had to be content with fantasizing about it, but you—lucky you!—have had it thrust upon you. And what you do with it will endure as your legacy, for better or for worse.

Although I live five hundred miles away in Austin, Texas, I’m a native New Orleanian, and the folks that the nation saw suffering on television after the hurricane were my friends and family. And like you, I was not merely heartbroken, but soul-broken by Katrina’s devastation of my precious city. But we must find time to grieve another day, because the tipping point that will determine the future of New Orleans is fast upon us.

They will come. They’re coming now. Many are already in New Orleans. But the two-bit carpet baggers and hustlers, the grifters, the lawyers, they’re not the ones to worry about. The ones to worry about are the professional do-gooders, the bureaucrats, the Planners, and the holier-than-thou activists. Each have their own vision of what the new New Orleans should look like, and each is absolutely sure that their vision is the correct one. They will pretend to know everything, including things they can’t possibly know, and they will speak as if disagreeing with them is somehow stupid and immoral. They’ll kiss your ass at first, but if that doesn’t work, they’ll try to shame you, and if that still doesn’t work, they will attack you. Getting a shot at rebuilding a great city from scratch is just too much of an opportunity for them to let little things—like the Mayor, or the people of New Orleans—get in the way. But just remember: when the Planners’ master plan hits the fan, it’s not them who are going to be left holding the bag. It’s going to be you left holding the bag. You and the citizens of New Orleans.

Now, having properly advised you against those offering advice, allow me to offer you some more. Unlike the Planners, I don’t believe I know what’s best for New Orleans and her people. In fact, I’m pretty certain I don’t know, and I’m pretty certain that no one else does either; that knowledge is dispersed throughout the thoughts, dreams, and desires of all those who live and do business there. I do know, however, certain things that are NOT in the best interests of New Orleanians, just like anybody else who’s ever lived there. And not counting hurricanes, the absolute worst thing that could happen to the city would be the rebuilding of any of the government housing projects of New Orleans. If the Feds or anybody else wants to help low income folks by providing them with down payments for their own house, that’s fine. If they want to have the government underwrite their monthly payments, great. If government wants to do anything that will help the poor gain access to financing that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to obtain, by all means bring it on. Let them help by doing anything—anything except the projects.

Mister Mayor, you have seen with your own eyes what the projects have done to generation after generation of those who have lived in them: they entrap the very defenseless people they’re most intended to help and then expose them like live bait to the social predators who would feed upon them. And sir, you also know what the projects do to their surrounding communities: they provide an unpoliceable habitat for criminality of every sort, and thus become a permanent source of fear, theft, and violence which constantly preys upon the law-abiding, rich and poor, citizens and businesses alike.

And there isn’t a single reason under the sun to believe that there is any way to reform the projects or otherwise make them work better. Remember that when the bureaucrats threaten you. Remember that when the advocates stamp their feet in disgust and accuse you of not caring about poor people or worse. Remember that the only thing the do-gooders want is to make themselves feel special, and only you can keep them from doing so on the backs of the people of New Orleans. And always, always remember: it’s the poor themselves who are  victimized the most by housing projects.

Mayor Nagin, please condemn each and every housing project in New Orleans immediately. And don’t waste one second feeling bad about it. Think about how half of them don’t look any different now than they did before Katrina. Condemn them, confiscate them under the Supreme Court’s new and improved eminent domain, and sell them off to the highest bidder. Then you can dissolve the Housing Authority and use the money for better things, like hiring more police at higher pay. Use it for something that fights despair instead of creating it.

Yours,
Peter Jackson
Admin, LiberalCapitalist.com

Is it obvious to everyone yet?

Because if it’s not clear by now, surely it soon will be: evacuating New Orleans in the face of killer hurricanes simply isn’t a viable response strategy. In fact, New Orleans’ miserable experience during and after hurricane Katrina suggests that mandatory or forced evacuation may not be a satisfactory response for larger cities facing other disasters as well; there’s simply too many citizens in too many life situations requiring too much specialized assistance on too short of a notice.

When hurricanes hit a populated area, they impose massive costs in three main areas: damage to property, damage to infrastructure, and damage to people. Evacuation, as a response strategy, only addresses one of these cost areas, that of damage to people. After Katrina’s effects on New Orleans are paid for, to the long-term tune of perhaps a quarter trillion dollars or more, the question will answer itself as to whether or not it is cost-effective or otherwise sufficient or desirable to evacuate people from the city and then just take the hit to property and infrastructure. And as the current drama unfolds further, and more bureaucratic decisions which look great on paper become disasters when implemented on the ground, nearly all will be able to agree that forced evacuation is a cure that proves more deadly than the disease.

There is only one option that truly addresses all of the costs encountered when a killer storm strikes: the time has come to turn the tables on nature and hurricane-proof New Orleans. An anti-flood system, designed to withstand the rains and storm surge produced by a “beyond category” hurricane, would include a surge wall in front of Lake Ponchartrain’s earthen levees and similar fortifications along the Mississippi river; multiple storm gates along the city’s canals and internal waterways; a hardened storm water removal system of elevated pumps, storm water towers, and a switchable drain system that would allow storm water to be directed to whichever spillway had the most capacity. By also hardening communications and electrical infrastructure within the city itself, New Orleans can mitigate or eliminate virtually all losses and most dangers posed by these deadly storms.

Would such a system be expensive? Sure—but not as expensive as Katrina. And we’re not talking about some huge high-tech monster project like the Big Dig in Boston, or even jacking up every building and backfilling the city as was done in Galveston a century ago. Would such a system work? We must accept that we can't know for sure, at least until the first hurricane tests it. About the only thing we do know for sure is that someday New Orleans is going to be hit by another storm. Do we want to risk a repeat of the mayhem and despair of Katrina, or should we try for something better?

The benefits of such a system have many implications, most importantly that it would prevent New Orleans from ever having to evacuate its population outside of the city limits again. The city’s property and infrastructure would be protected to such a degree that New Orleans could even be transformed from the city most vulnerable to gulf hurricanes into an advanced hurricane forward response center, capable of responding within hours by air and sea to storms from Miami to Brownsville, as well as serving as a nearby evacuation center for the Mississippi and Alabama Gulf coasts. Thus reborn, a new New Orleans could respond to all future hurricanes with what she does best; when the rain stops, the winds fade, the clouds break and the sun peeks out, New Orleans can call out a second line and roll a parade.

A pretty long thread in What-if Sports that is noticeably less full of bullshit than normal, or at least is full of higher-quality bullshit. A Christian reverend makes some points:

"One of the biggest falacies is that gay people are "born gay"...there is not a gene that causes 100% of people who have it to be gay. People are gay by personal choice. Some may have more propencity than others because of education, environment, etc. But no one has ever been "born gay"."

"James 1:14-15

14 but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed.

15 Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.

Once sin entered the world, all kinds of depravity came about from the imagination of sinful man. It goes back to being a free moral agent...someone down the line must've got curious and asked the question, "I wonder what it would feel like to have sex with a man"..."

"If a person still lusts in their heart for the same sex - it would be the same as if a person lusted for the opposite sex. Lust is lust regardless of which sex it is that you lust after...and any lust (except toward your wife) is a sin."

"As far as sin goes...we have to remember that ALL sexual conduct done outside of marriage is sin - regardless of what gender you prefer. And, all lust is sin regardless of which gender you prefer."

"It's one thing to recognize that a woman is beautiful...it's another to imagine having sex with that beautiful woman..."

So I said:

Wow, a semi-intelligent discussion in the Pit! Celebrate, it don't happen that often.

Now, davkar, to your point. Are you saying that when you see a beautiful woman, it never crosses your mind what it might be like having sex with her? I mean in the abstract, not that you have any intention of actually doing it, even if she were willing. I mean, you don't even have to flash on any truly porno thoughts to appreciate the curve of a breast, the sway of some hips.

If that truly never happens for you, then I am in awe, because it goes against everything I know about the human sex drive, particularly the male sex drive (just because that's what I know).

As a straight guy, I have no instinctive appreciation of how a guy looks and what I would like to do with him, like I would with a female. But from being friends with many gay men (and lesbians), I am convinced that they have exactly the same impulses I do, just directed differently.

I can be celibate (as a matter of fact, I am currently suffering from that condition). But I just can't see how you can argue that having sexual thoughts, about whatever flavor you prefer, is a sin. Actions are what matter. And I don't believe, if you are wired that way, that being gay is a sin. A gay man (or woman) who is somehow fooled into thinking that he/she should be hetero because that's the way God wants it is only cheating whoever the spouse is.

Or do you have another shoe to drop? Does your argument have something to do with procreation? Or do you have a theory about what is "natural" and therefore "good"?

I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, just trying to anticipate where you're going next. You have put up a brave argument, and I respect you for it, but I find your stance ultimately immoral, because it creates pain where none should exist, and it denies the great diversity in individuals. I think we would agree about the frailty of human beings and the necessity to face sin squarely by cleaning our own houses, living a good life, trying not to cause harm and actively trying to improve the lives of those we're close to. Not being selfish, not cheating on our significant others, not being thieves and liars, etc. etc. I try every day to be a better guy than I was yesterday. But one thing is never going to change: when I see an attractive woman, I'm going to think about her sexually. It is involuntary, a function of how I perceive the world. And I can't imagine that gay people are any different.