Question?

Did Dick Cheney pay for his own heart surgery? I'm just saying, that a man who is against government shouldn't be taking government money for medical expenses.

Neverland Ranch State Park, Huh?

When I first heard that state assemblyman, Mike Davis had proposed that Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch be turned into California's newest state park, I thought it a joke. I know that I'm in a vocal minority that thinks Michael Jackson will be a forgotten figure in 30 years, (Remember Eva Tanquay? Fame is fleeting. Look her up, she's a great story.) but shouldn't we wait awhile to see if I'm wrong. Too, while Michael Jackson's supporters seem to attribute a god like quality to the man, the taint of possible child molestation can stink up the place.
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But, then I began to give the idea some thought. The first thing I did was look up Neverland Ranch. Its 2, 676 acres is a significant piece of open space in a state that has a habit of putting real estate development on a sacred plane. Turn the house into a Michael Jackson Museum and restore the remaining 2, 670 acres to it's natural state. Hiking, bridal, and perhaps some bike paths, crossing a near natural bit of the Santa Ynez Valley sounds like a pretty good thing to me. Paying to buy the land could be problematic, but not impossible. Rather than pass a bond initiative, take out a bank loan, slap a $10 admission fee to the museum, and tell the bank all the money is theirs until the loan plus a reasonable amount of interest is paid. I would be surprised if initial visitation was under a million visitors a year. I'm willing to put up with crying Michael Jackson idolaters in the parking lot if I can walk away and into a piece of old California landscape in 10 minutes.

Mad Mel!

We know that Mel Gibson's father is a holocaust denier and an extreme anti-Semite. We know that such people usually have a whole host of such prejudices. We know that the man embraces a very conservative Catholicism that divides women into three categories: saintly virgin, wife and mother, and whore, bent on corrupting righteous men.
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It's very possible that Mel Gibson is at war with himself. One side is rational Mel, who knows that the holocaust did happen, that Jews aren't responsible for the Crucifixion of Christ, and that other minorities are not inferior sub humans. And one the other side, emotional Mel is ruled by the prejudices pounded into him by his father. Or then again, Mel Gibson may just be a major league jack-ass.
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Is it just me, or are there others out there wondering why Mel's use of certain racial slurs is a much bigger story than the domestic violence?

Roman Polanski 2

Well, I'm not really all that surprised. Roman Polanski is a free man, at least if he never ventures out of France or Switzerland. I always thought it unlikely that the Swiss would extradite Polanski to Los Angles to face sentencing for his rape (Plea bargained down to unlawful sex with a minor.) of a 13 year old girl.
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What has always bothered me is the large number of people, who should know better, that seemed to just brush off what Polanski had done as some sort of right for those creative enough to have directed Chinatown. Let's be clear about what happened. Roman Polanski had forcible sex with a thirteen year old after giving her drugs and alcohol. He admitted this. He also admitted that he knew she was thirteen and that it was against the law for a man in his forties to have sex with a minor. In her initial interviews with the police, the victim claimed that she said no. Even if she was lying, it is still against the law. If she was telling the truth, she was forcibly raped by Polanski. Some of Polanski's supporters claim that the victims mother, basically, pimped out the girl to Polanski. There is no proof of this, but even if it were true, it is not legal to have sex with a thirteen year old, even if the mother consents. Many of Polanski's supporters point out that the victim, now a mother in her own right, would prefer that this all go away and that any prosecution of Polanski end. In the United states one does not commit a crime against a person, but rather against the laws of the state. It is irrelevant what the victim thinks. Many of Polanski's supporters argue that he was unjustly made an example of for his crimes, and was receiving unusually harsh treatment. In fact, in being allowed to plea bargain down to statutory rape from forcible rape, he was treated with a great deal of leniency. Polanski fled the jurisdiction when he learned that the plea bargain negotiated by his lawyers and the DA's office might not be honored by the judge. Plea bargains only go into effect when the judge signs off, and Polanski was informed of that possibility ahead of time.
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For those who would argue that there was a lynch mob mentality in the United States surrounding Polanski's case, I would refer them to the death of Emmit Till. A request for extradition is far from being a lynching. For those who would argue that what Polanski did was not "rape rape," whatever that means, I would ask them to refer to the facts of the case. For those who would argue that Polanski has been punished enough I would ask them where in the law does it say that someone who has suffered in life is exempt from rape laws. For those would argue that his film career justifies his actions, I would ask what are the limits of the creative exemption to the law. Is is battery, robbery, rape, murder?
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Roman Polanski is a great director. I have another blog that I've made up, primarily for my movie buff friends http://www.greatmovieslist.blogspot.com/, and sooner or latter I'll add Chinatown, Knife in the Water and Rosemary's Baby to the list. But even though I admire his movies, that doesn't mean I think he should get away with rape and fleeing the jurisdiction to avoid jail time.
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Is it just me, or are there others out there that find the Swiss claim that national interests were involved in denying the extradition request a little weird?

The Census

Ran across some interesting figures today. It seems that the U.S. Census has been tracking threats against census workers. 13 times shots were fired at census workers; 132 times, weapons were pulled on census workers; there were 88 physical assaults; ten times census takers were robbed; there were 101 verbal assaults. Well, I spent six weeks as a census worker, and those numbers are way too low.
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The fact is, most of us never reported incidents because there were just too many of them. To start with, I'm not challenging shots fired, weapons pulled, or robberies. Those numbers I'm sure represent what really went on out there. But 101 verbal assaults? I'd love to know how that term is defined, because I got told off, doors slammed, finger wagged and poked in the chest plenty of times. The big thing was bizarre, right wing political rants about census workers as the vanguard of a leftist plot to take over the country. I wonder where those ideas came from? Right wing insanity spreads, I guess. What other explanation can there be for one rant after another about how government was trying to violate the rights of our citizenry via the census. And what were these dangerous questions. How many people live in a home? Names, birthdays? Ethnicity, race? Rent or own? Telephone? And the weird thing was that beyond the actual count, people were pretty much free to refuse. How intrusive!
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Of course, if a lot of people in the "RED" states like Alabama, Texas, and Utah refuse to answer the census, they'll lose seats in congress and "BLUE" states like New York and California will gain. So right wingers of America, you are right! We census workers are trying to figure out who should go to conservative concentration camps! We are trying to take your guns! Avoid the census!

Two If By Sea

Didn't we fight a revolution so we could ignore these people! It's only been a couple of days, but I'm already tired of listening to the British complain about our less than happy feelings toward British Petroleum. What do they expect? Are we supposed to shrug our shoulders, say stuff happens, and ignore BP's mixture of stupidity and arrogance because lots of Brits own BP stock? Come on! If anything, I wish President Obama would talk less about kicking British ass and spend more time actually dirtying his shoe on Tony Hayward's behind.
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I'm 55, and I can't ever remember a time when the British and the other Europeans haven't been lecturing us. It's always the same; Americans are stupid, Americans are naive, Americans need to shut up and learn from superior Europeans. Well lets look at the historical trend of the last 100 years. The general legacy of European imperialism, especially English imperialism created one problem after another, in every corner of the world. Now I'm not saying that we Americans have always done the right thing, but I would point out that we've spent trillions of dollars, and sacrificed thousands of lives trying to solve those problems. The United States did not conquer the world, rob, steal pillage, rape, loot, and betray Africa, Asia, Australia, Oceania, and any other bit of land they could lay their greedy hands on.

My Civic Duty

Well, I did my civic duty; I voted. It's been a day, and I've got to stop being lazy about my political writing, so if nothing else, it's time to throw out a few thoughts on yesterday's elections.
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Of course, it's California that I'm most concerned with. As a Democrat, there wasn't much suspense in who my party would nominate in the two big races. Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer, for all intent and purpose, ran unopposed. Some of the down slate races had names that might be real powers in the future. Most notably the two San Franciscans, Gavin Newsome and Kamala Harris. On the Republican side...well, what can I say. Multi-millionaires, Meg Whitman (A billionaire, actually.) and Carly Fiorina won. It will be fun to see how two candidates who went after the immigrant community (Supporting Arizona's new anti-immigrant law was the new standard for this year's Repugs.) will fare in a state with soooo many Hispanics. Not well, I suspect.
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Both Fiorina and Whitman tout their business backgrounds. I'm not quite sure why Carly does, considering she was fired for running Hewlett Packard into the ground. At least Whitman has been successful at her various corporate gigs. Both ladies love to point out that government doesn't create jobs, private enterprise does. As the big corporations give, so do they taketh away. In the case of Carly, she fired 30,000 American workers and outsourced their jobs to China. Meg wasn't much better. Before she ran eBay, she ran Hasbro. Under her leadership, the children's toy manufacturer also shipped jobs off to China. At least she provided jobs for lots of Chinese children. Such little fingers, so good for making Mr. Potato Heads. Of course, I will say this. The 80 million that Meg spent from her own pocket was an economic shot in the arm for California. At least I think she didn't outsource any campaign jobs.
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As anyone who has ever read either the original (See my first post for an explanation.) or the current version of The New Common Sense knows, I'm not a big fan of the initiative system. We Californians, through the ballot box, have pretty much banned political parties. (Maybe.) Our newly approved top two primary system, where all candidates run on a single non-partisan ballot, followed by a run-off of the top two, doesn't make much sense to me. The whole purpose of having parties is so that people, or coalitions of like minded people, can chose candidates to represent their own political philosophy. The backers of the proposition claim that it will eliminate extreme candidates and give us centrist choices. I don't want centrist choices. I want a supporter of labor unions, single payer health care, a true national pension system, stronger environmental laws, and a strong opponent of unlimited military spending. Oh well, I doubt it will survive court challenges. At least I hope not.
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Just when I thought that we Californians were powerless to resist the siren call of corporate sponsored propositions, we went and rejected prop. 16, sponsored by PG&E, which would have granted the utility near monopoly status, and prop. 17, sponsored by Mercury Insurance that would have royally screwed car owners come insurance renewal time. Small miracles. I guess the outlay of millions of dollars of corporate cash can't buy a victory after all. Carly, Meg, are you listening?
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My two favorite, non-California elections, were in Nevada and South Carolina. In Nevada, Tea Party candidate, Sharon Angle won the Repug primary and the right to oppose Harry Reid for his U.S. Senate seat. Let's see, her ambition is to get rid of Social Security, medicare, the EPA, the Department o Education, and maybe ban the consumption of Alcohol. That will go over big in Vegas. And South Carolina...Democrats are crying foul over the nomination of unknown Alvin Greene to run against ultraconservative, nut case, Jim DeMint. Just because Greene is an unemployed veteran without a college degree, who lives in his parents house, and may be charged with a sex crime at sometime in the near future, they think they've been robbed of the chance to defeat DeMint. The main stream candidate probably wouldn't have beat DeMint, so why not nominate Greene? Who knows, South Carolina is just crazy enough that Greene might have a chance. If nothing else, his unemployed status might win him the unemployed vote, and in South Carolina, that's a lot of people.