Gilbert in Gilmore Girls
Now Playing: Something on WGN with Selma Blair in it

One of my favorite shows, Gilmore Girls on today on ABC Family I think. Heard the jarring sound of my own name from Lorelai Gilmore as she spoke to Luke. (Those would be character names and not the real names of the actors involved) A wooden lawn goat, not even a whole goat but the front end of the wooden goat which was named "Gilbert" as in "Gilbert the Goat" had suffered a terrible weed wacker injury and was beheaded. Gilbert was examined by Luke who said that he could fix it good as new. Nobody would ever know that Gilbert had ever been headless. The name Gilbert danced around for a minute which was cool. Don't hear Gilbert that often. Also of note, and you wouldn't know this unless you actually watched a number of the episodes of this show, he had his tool box with him also named by Lorelai. I mention this because the tool box is named "Bert" which is also a name I've been called. So it was a double Gilbert reference.

Since I'm on the subject of the Gilmore Girls it's very odd when I think about it. The character Lorelai, played by Lauren Graham is of course a beautiful woman. After watching and enjoying the show for some time I saw a movie that she was in. Keanu Reeves was in it as well and in fact Lauren was the girlfriend to Keanu. The thing was, she was in either a bikini or skimpy underwear and you know, it was jarring to see. Odd since of course I generally love to admire beautiful women in skimpy clothing. Not this time. She's still beautiful as can be and I love the character she plays. I've know the character she plays in real life. It's oddly jarring to see her in a bikini. When I figure this out I'll be the first to know.

1950 Technology - Nukes to you

Operational in 1952 and using the technology that was top of the line in 1952 comes the Mark 7 - a nuclear bomb of a small enough size to fit on the planes of the day. A few years later there were hydrogen bombs this size that fit on planes. This would be nuclear weapon technology 50 years old. The usual official Government talk states something about nuclear weapons being too large to be easily transportable. It seems to me this would not be the case. Even with overly large 50 year old technology a nuclear bomb could be put in a truck, a boxcar or a shipping container with no difficulty. I think that in fifty years the technology available to interested parties would allow weapons of this size or smaller. I'd feel better about this if stories like this missile sales didn't happen with some regularity. The fact that the CIA and the US didn't know that about the Ukraine missile sales to Iran and China isn't unusual and when you think about the thousands of nuclear weapons from the former Soviet Union and the number of those nukes that are unaccounted for you might start to be concerned. The officials in the Ukraine said not to worry, we didn't sell them the nukes that were on those missiles. Self regulation, a beautiful thing and a wonderful thing to rest your security on.
I just think that when in five years or so when a nuclear bomb is detonated in the United States the cries of how could this happen will be deafening. By that time it will be too late. The rest of our civil liberties will evaporate along with part of a large city.

Jesus-his best week since Christmas
Rising from the water, springing forth from the reflecting pool comes the giant Jesus. Like a giant butter statue or perhaps a thing made of beach sand or even of snow. It seems unique. I don't know how good the church attendance is but the Jesus sits on the property of one of those Mega New Age style super Churches which by all accounts is shiny, new and still under construction. Anyways, The Ten Commandments is on, Yul Brenner is shirtless and with hands on hips saying 'So let it be written, so let it be done.' and Charleton Heston is saying 'Let my People go!' so it's all good. Easter coming up, spring coming up.

pink butterflies
Topic: Mysteries of Life


Just a little thing I was playing with. The little butterfly hovers above my computer screen and reminds me how much I love pink butterflies. Yes indeed.

In celebrity justice I note that Robert Blake was acquitted on the murder charge and you know, that's the name of that tune. (Baretta humor) That Lil/Little Kim was found guilty of perjury and in June will find out if she is going to spend twenty years in the big house. Peterson was sentenced to death and you'll get to see that in thirty years perhaps but I doubt it. However he will have a hellish time in prison and will likely wish he was dead for most of that time. So his karma will get him. Speaking of death penalty and the implementation of same, check out this link to desert vampire where the BBC will give you an interesting account of the execution of a serial killer in Iran. Him and another man lured little kids out to the desert, tortured, raped and murdered them. He was flogged, stabbed by a relative of one of his victims, the noose put around his neck by the mother of another victim and he was slowly hanged in front of a cheering crowd. I don't feel sorry for the person who harmed helpless children. I'm not surprised either, your karma will catch up with you.

In other death penalty news I've been emailed by someone (Richard Soltow) who would like for me to feature a woman who is on death row in Florida. Virginia Larzelere who has a support group at helpvirginia@yahoogroups. A quick google shows that she has some info and advocates on the web already.

In yet other death penalty news of sorts, a young lady added me to her icq, which of course happens all the time. I'm not sure why 22 year old fake females always add me and what scam on icq they might be working but at least this one time it was an actual person. She said "I took the liberty of adding you on ICQ. Now I just want to give you some
more info on who I am, so you don't mistake me for some madman trying to get
you on my contact list or something:" Well a NIN, Tool fan who is studying Egyptology with an interest in the death penalty from Denmark. As Spock would say, 'fascinating'. It reminds me of the nature of the Internet and the wide variety of people I know. From China, Hong Kong, Turkey, India, Canada and the US to name a few places. It's a shame that ICQ is full of so many bots now and spambots and such. It is nice and it's fascinating to actually communicate with people from around the world, with various interests and various points of view. Hard to find that anymore. Oh well.

Thank God- Only problem-Steroids in Baseball
Topic: Politics
Humm. I see Mark McGuire wearing a suit and in front of a congressional hearing. Fox is all over it. CNN is also showing the hearings live. Great. The budget thing is taken care of. The Social Security crisis is apparently solved. No problems in the inner city and all of the problems with education are things of the past. Instead, they are all getting their face time in front of the camera, murmurings of 'the purity of baseball'and 'the hallowed game' are being thrown around. Well, good at least I am hearing the tired suits answering the questions about their 'grandstanding' which is right on the money. Grandstanding, pompous bullshit. This really is a joke.

Favorites
Now Playing: House - Fox tv show
Topic: Mysteries of Life
Tuesday night. Two of my favorite shows on. Gilmore Girls and House. Love em both. I've known real Lori Gilmores and I'm a grump like House.

Ground Zero for WWIII - Taiwan
Now Playing: Grand Funk Railroad - An American Band
In the terrible aftermath of World War II we looked for answers and found that we knew that the conflict and war began with the territorial aggrandizement and desire of a number of countries to have all of their various bits of 'ancestral homelands' returned to them by intimidation or by force. The expansion of Nazi Germany and their militarization - a activity accomplished in the bright light of day and under the suspicious but ultimately ineffectual gaze of France and the United Kingdom is a part of the historical record that can be read and seen for the future that would come by any sixth grader in the world with any quality of History book at their disposal. The militarism of Japan was slow and was likewise easily seen for what it was. After all, the buildup of a military much too big for defense accompanied by the use of that force is pretty much a lead pipe giveaway of future intentions. The easy to spot symptoms and the results are history. Easy to see. Likewise the threat that came after WWII, the threat of Communist ideology and it's desire for world revolution. Another easy to see threat, it proclaimed itself for what it was. We stood up and we conquered that foe. Communism is dead in Europe, a failed and bankrupted ideology whose power to influence nations and their radicals has gone.

The threat rising in the east, like a giant Mt.St Helens, is China. When it explodes and brings the world to war it will be another one of those things where people will say that we should have been better prepared and that the signs of the pending violence were there to be seen. As easy to see as the rise of militarism and violence from Germany's Third Reich. A concerted effort to build up a military for open water use, for cross channel use to invade the country of Taiwan. Missiles piling along the coast, submarines being bought from the Soviets, weapon systems being bought from our perfidious allies in Europe. A new law, a new 'legal excuse' for a desired invasion of Taiwan. The pieces continue to be put in place, pressure is being placed, Taiwan is being threatened, the USA and Japan are being 'warned' to not interfer in the 'internal' affairs of China. Like Hitler wanting Alsace-Lorraine, then a bit of Poland where some Germans lived, China is following the same expansionist, militaristic logic of Hitler. And a logic that remains just as invalid as when exposed by a madman over sixty years ago. China 'legal threats'

Some of the same factors that drove Hitler to focus his people on the desire for 'reunification' are likewise in place in China. A booming economy with needs to expand, a society that has a large young population which in the case of China, will suffer acute social problems which will amplify with every passing day in part because of the large population of males in relation to females, the change from a agricultural society to a manufacturing society and the change in attitudes toward the central government. In both cases the authoritarian states walk that fine line of being able to control their populations and in both cases they appeal to nationalism where it's always easier to rouse populations to combat outside forces, to right 'ancient nationalistic wrongs' and to find enemies everywhere outside of their nations to fight rather than letting their people focus on the wrongs in their own governments.

I believe that China is deciding right now whether they can intimidate the United States and Japan into not defending Taiwan. They are certainly making noises along that line. Ultimately will they risk their world position and their economic well being on this? Many people, many people who know nothing of China, Chinese history or Chinese Culture assume that the answer is no. I assume otherwise. They may already be on a course that they cannot pull back from and the confrontation may already be fated to happen. The Chinese government, like every other government who has faced the United States has assumed, assumed wrongly, that it can either back us out of our commitments or that they can move so quickly and decisively that the US will be forced to back down. Such miscalculations have put the world in flames before and will do so again. Of course it's much more complicated that my few paragraphs can relate. A giant chess game with misperceptions on top of misperceptions, layers and layers of assumptions which reinforce incorrect ideas. Cultural ways of thinking that cannot fathom decisions and thinking of the other side. US government decision makers who cannot believe that such an irrational action could be taken and so they don't even think seriously about the possibility. Chinese thinkers not understanding why the US would risk war over Taiwan. Ahhh.

Peachy Keen
Now Playing: Anything I want on my iPod :-P
Howdy hi. How do I feel? Humm. Well no matter how I feel I always say I feel peachy keen. Found this after filling the gas tank up. Just turned around and before my watering eyes there it stood, the peach of all peaches. Giant water tower peach. Now, don't remember ever seeing one of those. Half expected to see Voltron or one of those giant cartoony characters rumble up beside the peach of great sizedness. Humm. Roll call.





Always happy to see my friends.

Roper v. Simmons - No Execution for minors
Topic: Law
My first reaction to reading this decision syllabus
is wow- shades of emanations and penumbras. I agree with the result of the decision but I find myself marveling at the lack of credible logic involved. It's not completely consistent with stare decisis definition
since it overturns the decision of the court in Stanford v. Kentucky syllabus
which was decided in 1989 and allowed the execution of minors. It seems that the justices have again overstepped their role as interpretors of the law and have gone to their self appointed godlike roles of moral determiners of what ought to be.

I'm conflicted. I don't believe that the death penalty is right on any level. It shouldn't exist. It's existence in the United States is a point of shame and I'm glad that it's been narrowed even further. At last the US has left the company of Sudan in allowing executions of minors. Unfortunately we are still in the company of China, Sudan and Saudi Arabia in allowing executions at all.

Should the Court be looking to unratified International Treaties to help it decide? No. Should the Court be looking beyond the law itself to decide it's cases? I think that if you say no then you say that the court wasn't right in overturning Scott v. Sandford - which as you know decided that a black man was not a citizen of the US and showed that the only place in the constitution that the subject came up showed blacks as property. The fullness and fog of time has shown the first finding by the Supreme Court to be in error and the ones after that to be the right ones. But Scott v. Sandford was 'Constitutional' as the constitution was written at the time. We could look at this decision in the same vein, a moral and 'constitutional' decision that in the fullness of time will not be raved against and will be simply acknowledged as the right decision which causes some political heat and fury from those who disagree.

If sound and fury at the time of a Supreme Court decision were the criteria by which we judged the rightness of the decisions at hand then Brown v. Board of Education would have been wrong and should have resulted in impeachment of Supreme Court Judges. If the issue here is what level of moral decision making by the Supreme Court can be absorbed by the country it seems that past decisions have not brought revolution except perhaps where it was needed. (Civil War).

In this case the logic was tortured and it would have nice if there was more to pin the decision on. As it is, the ranting on talk radio and right wing outlets will give a weeks worth of airtime and ink. In reality, there were very few states that allowed this aspect of the death penalty, fewer still that carried it through. The end result is not much different than it would have been if they ruled the other way. One man who is now off of death row still is looking at a life behind bars. The case details show that he richly deserves every single day they keep him there. He has won no victories and will not be out to prey on innocent people again. His life, his celebrity if you will will die down and the circle of people around him who have provided him with support and celebrity will fade away and in the end he will still be in his cell. A fitting punishment.

Clinton goes to Taiwan
Topic: Politics
A surprise. I see that former President Clinton is in Taiwan at the invitation of the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy. You can imagine the teeth gnashing in Beijing over this one. China Trip
The link goes to the google list of news items about this. The Taiwan Headlines says that "Clinton Affirms Taiwan's Democracy and Prosperity" while the China Post (Taiwan News) speaks about how angered the trip made the Mainland Chinese. Clinton spoke about the need for Taiwan and Mainland China to work together economically and peacefully. In another victory for censorship, avoidance of issues and not actually standing beside avowed principles of freedom and self determination the other news bits from around the world will be as carefully neutral as possible so as not to anger the Mainland folk. It's always sad to see the double standards and double speak with respect to Taiwan and China. But it was good to see that Clinton went to Taiwan in the first place. Every bit helps.

New York Times again - NJ corruption followup
Topic: Politics
In Monmouth County, Desperate for Development and Its Bounty

Looks like the New York Times is all over this one, the second article, a follow up article, trying to get up close and personal about the endemic corruption in this particular area of New Jersey. State Senator Ellen Karcher was one who didn't want to play ball in the usual graft and corruption of the area and was threatened, offered $150,000 bribe money and had her property vandalized. She went to the FBI which brought the unblinking eye of the G-Men on the problem. Then the article goes on to identify the various social problems of the area to include it being 86% white, rich and with too many small local government entities. All very entertaining.

Oscar Hype - Oscar Blather
Now Playing: CSPAN
Oscars, Grammies, Spring Training, Super Bowl, Opening Day, Presidential Elections, all of these 'events' have campaigns that lead up to the event. Those campaigns get to be so deafening that you just can't wait for the event to get here. Not that you are interested in the event but that you just wish the noise would end. I'm hoping that the Oscars gets here quickly, please please let the noise stop. I don't care that Chris Rock is hosting. I don't care what art house movies are up for what awards or if this or that ancient director gets an award for the first time or if there are enough Hispanic nominees in the short animated documentary by a newcomer who lisps category. In the mass scope of human events it does not matter. In the tiny up close and personal scope of human events it matters not one whit either.

If Matt Drudge wants to worry that Chris Rock might say 'bum' (as in touch my) then all the power in the world to him. It's all one big hype machine. They want you to tune in and watch and see if Chris Rock implodes and provides us with a Janet Jackson moment. Don't think so, I'm pretty sure there will be a five second delay working and I'm almost certain that Rock doesn't have the Boob potential of Ms. Jackson. So why bother tuning in? The dude is not funny, I don't care how many critics and hype machine lackeys pronounce him to be the funniest thing since Richard Pryor. It's always good to remember the story of the Emperor's New Cloths - where everyone says the nude King looks simply wonderful because they think everyone else can see the wonderment of the magnificent livery but them and so they mouth the praises of these imaginary clothes. But really, your eyes do not deceive you, there are no clothes and Chris Rock is not funny. Not even close to being funny. He doesn't even cuss and say shocking and rude things with any style. That would be my opinion. Your mileage may vary.

The other thing that annoys me about all of the hype I tangentially have to suffer through is the overinflated value they put to themselves. Media, TV specifically. Now I took the liberty of checking the 'ratings' today. Some show called CSI was the most watched television show for the last week. Wow, that's impressive. Must mean everyone in the United States is watching the thing. Humm. Never seen it. I must be odd, living in a cave somewhere. Let's see the numbers. I see the listing tells me that 30 million people were watching. Now, that's probably a overly exaggerated number but whatever. Let's see, go the to the US Census site. Oh, about 300 million people in the United States of America. Quick math tells me that one in ten Americans -roughly speaking - was watching this show. Hardly overwhelming. That means 9 out of 10 people were not watching. Perhaps bowling, driving, cooking pasta, having sex, just any number of things possible. Seems hardly worth all the hype and noise about you might hear through the various media outlets we're subject to. And subject to the hype we are, taking their cues from the endless Presidential campaigns we get hit continually with this nonsense. Take a bit of notice, it's cutting down on actual news such as it is these days.

Good New York Times Story - Prison Medical Care
Private Health Care in Jails Can Be a Death Sentence
(New York Times, Registration Required).
A good article in the New York Times about the descending level of medical care in Prisons and Jails in the United States. Horror story upon horror story is detailed as the article traces tales of people dying in jail with little or no medical care at all. To save money governments are farming medical care out to the lowest bidder with the results you would expect. On top of that, the fact that people in jail are thought of and treated as subhuman and you will get the sort of deaths you can read about in this article. The people having heart attacks who are thought to be faking, the heroin attacks who die from withdrawl, the babies born in jail who die. Just a usual day in jail, go in for a week, month or year and face a possible death sentence. Better not get sick.

Welcome to your Serfdom - Kelo v. City of New London
Topic: Law
Kelo v. City of New London
This is a case about the government taking your property to give to another for their private use. The rationale behind taking your property and giving it to another private use is that the other person or corporation will improve the land, increase the tax base of the land and in a trickle down sort of way, provide for a larger tax base for the local government involved. So you and your little property taxes are not enough when Wal Mart comes a knocking. This simply means that your serfdom becomes more apparent. What you own is not your own. The right to property which our forefathers fought for and tore away from the English empire for and even enshrined in the Constitution mean nothing. It's more like the idea that all the lands belong to the King and you use them at his suffrage. Like I said, welcome to your serfdom.

Using eminent domain the government is allowed to seize your property for a public use. The Fifth Amendment : Amendment V

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

In reading the various blogs and opinions Professor Bainbridge Volokh on this I see many lawyers dissecting the words and separating this section 'without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.' Some are arguing that the comma after public use means that 'private use' may then be allowed. Right.

Amendment IX

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Which means that it isn't there, so you can't make it up. Not to mention that original intent would be clear here. The Fifth Amendment speaks to curbing the power of the government, not giving power to the government. Of course, this doesn't really matter. What matters is what those 9 Justices do. Separated as they are from the world in many ways it is possible that they will see this as an extension of the opening given in the Fifth Amendment to the fight against urban blight. The somewhat successful efforts to condemn blighted properties and turning them into something useful. The key words are 'blighted properties' and the desire to take something dangerous and blighted and eliminate it. By simply eliminating the problems in these cases there is an improvement. In the Kelo case the government is taking perfectly good homes, condemning them and giving them over to a private developer. In addition, the actual use for this property isn't even known. It is along the slippery slope of takings by the government and a instance of the natural progression of taking more power and more power until the original use and meaning of the Fifth Amendment is so distorted as to be unrecognizable. It's a shame and if the buzz after the oral arguments are to be believed then your property rights aren't worth the deed they are written on.

Paying attention to the China Threat
Topic: Politics
During the trip to Europe by President Bush the subject of Europe's desire to end the ban on arms sales to China has come under scrutiny. I for one am glad that the Bush administration is stepping up to the big geopolitical plate and recognizing the true threat to security that China is becoming. A certain portion of the American political population has always been fond of ignoring the bellicose ragings of foreign dictators and potentates so the continuing rage of China against Taiwan has gone under the radar to that group of people. Unfortunately the Party that was the defender of liberty and freedom is also the party of big corporate business. The Republican Party has taken the side of business in regards to China.

When it was communists doing the raging the Republican Party for the most part stood up and recognized the enemy even when it wasn't popular. It was the danger of nuclear war against the Soviet Union and the Soviet Bloc. It was the rumbling danger of a mysterious and cultish China and it was the Communist conspiracy. The Soviet Union falls, the Eastern Bloc states revolt and transform themselves into European nations and China enters the world as a economic force. Heady times for those who fought the demons of past threats. Except for the fact that China has never actually changed. China has economically transformed itself but American and European politicians have made the mistake of assuming or hoping that the change has made them more like us. They have believed that the Chinese were willing to forget that annoying thing like the ideology of Communism in favor of the ideology of making money. To an extent that is what has happened. But, China is still China the same way that Russia was always Russia with or without the Communist veneer overlay. What that means is that China still reacts in nationalistic and culturally driven ways. If you've read any Chinese history you will know they have a deep seated superiority complex along side of a deep seated inferiority complex. They are very militaristic, they believe that parts of the world that may have been under their control years and centuries ago still belong to them (think Hitler and Alsace-Lorraine or Hitler and Poland) and they have an almost messianic zeal to recover those lost territories. This means that the saber rattling against Taiwan is very very real. They are very serious about 'getting back the renegade province' much the same way they've put their paws on Tibet and other outlying areas which don't even get the acknowledgment that Tibet gets.

What this has meant is that they have for years been building up their military with the goal of getting Taiwan back. They make the calculations about what it would take to win in a war against the United States over Taiwan. They have made calculations about how the United States would give up after a successful strike. This is in keeping with other false assumptions as made by the Soviet Union in their war plans. They also planned for a war where if they were to strike hard and fast enough that they could win, kick the United States off of the continent of Europe before reinforcements could be brought up. In both cases there is the assumptions that the United States would accept the fait accompli - a takeover of Europe or a takeover of Taiwan. The only difference is that the Chinese actually believe that they can eventually reach a point where that strategy would work. And a large portion of the politicians believe that such a action is not possible at all. After all, to their way of thinking, we've grown beyond using war for such a purpose. The world knows such wars are a waste of lives and of energy. Right. Except that isn't true at all.

China doesn't think that way. And China will also be facing other pressures - of a billion people, more men than women and eventually (because it always happens to every nation) a economic downturn. Such pressures throughout history have led leaders of nations to conclude that war is their best alternative. These are the lessons of history. No amount of wishing will make the situation go away and no amount of self delusion will make the path that China is on change.

The only way for the United States to react is to maintain it's military superiority in the region. To maintain Taiwan's military power (which causes China to rage with every F-16 or Patriot Missile Battery delivered). To enlist Japan as a full partner in the defense of Taiwan. (This is happening where Japan has recently said aloud that the security of Taiwan is important (listen to China rage about that). To not let our allies contribute to the military upgrading of the Chinese because those would be weapons that Americans will eventually face. And while any French weapon would be of dubious quality were it made simply by the French, the military technology that the Europeans would like to sell are built with American technology that we will not let them export. The Chinese would take that technology and backward engineer it and what they would learn would kill American soldiers, airmen and sailors. The Europeans are a crass bunch who having been saved from tyranny countless times by American blood and American power are now willing to sell our potential adversaries the weapons they would use against us. President Bush has finally stepped up to the plate and started to look at the whole geopolitical picture. From China to Iraq to Russia. It's good to see and I hope this new attention to the world is not too late.