Popcult Meltdown (and 6 Other Topics, in Very-Brief). The media have been filled of late with insane amounts of coverage of the death of Anna Nicole Smith and the erratic behavior of Britney Spears. Some observers see serious drug use in both cases. I don't know, and frankly don't much care. I am disgusted with drug addicts and have no sympathy for them. I don't want my tax moneys, nor moneys taken from other decent, hardworking people, diverted from programs that benefit sensible people to instead helping self-indulgent losers get off drugs. Aside from the fact that such efforts cannot succeed unless the addict really wants to change, my stance is that these people didn't need any help to get onto drugs. Why should they need help to get off them? Drug addicts are self-destructive. If they die from their vice, they get their wish. Let's be happy for them — and for a society freed from them.
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If they really want to change, they can change. Interventions and rehabilitation programs may provide structure toward self-reinforcing rather than self-destructive behaviors, but to the extent drug-dependent individuals need such programs, they can damned well pay for them themselves. They found a way to support a drug habit. They can support a rehab program. And if they can't, that's their problem, not ours.
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Britney Spears stayed in rehab one day! At least she's paying for her own program. If she ends up dying from drugs, so be it. Let's just find a good home for her kids and stop wasting the public's time and attention on a poor little rich girl — be it Britney or Anna Nicole.
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XM Gets Sirius. The Nation's two satellite-radio services want to join, in a "merger of equals". The FCC should not permit it. No waiver from antitrust laws should be granted, because a single player will have uncontrolled power to abuse potential subscribers, and it is the public that is supposed to be protected by antitrust legislation. If these services are in financial trouble, it is because of the preposterous amounts they have paid 'people' like the loathsome Howard Stern (the one who insults the world, not the one who may have murdered Anna Nicole Smith and her son). Let them cut back on such outrageous overpayments and they may establish long-term viability on their own, each service competing with an actual alternative. The public must have choice.
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More Mount Hood Morons. Three climbers had to be rescued from an accident on Mount Hood, Oregon today. This is the same mountain three other hikers died on not long ago. The rescue attempt for those fools cost the public a lot of money. The rescue effort for these other fools — and who but fools goes hiking on a mountain in the bitter, subfreezing cold of winter? — doubtless cost the taxpayers of Oregon (or the Nation) more money. Climbers should be dissuaded from stupidity, and taxpayers should be relieved of financial burdens heretofore imposed by morons, by a system of mandatory rescue-money deposits. For instance, every hiker who wants to go up Mount Hood in winter has to put down a deposit of $5,000 toward expenses society will incur if we have to rescue them. A party of 10 climbers would pay $50,000 into a fund, and if anyone in their group incurs rescue costs greater than his or her own deposit, the pooled fund would pay the remainder. The members of the group will get back, pro rata, any portion of the fund not exhausted.
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The figure of $5,000 per hiker is only an example. Park or police authorities could levy deposits based on actual, historical rescue costs for the location and season. Thus, it might actually be fairer to require a $10,000 deposit per climber for Mount Hood in winter but only $5,000 for the same location in summer.
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However it's done, society should not have to lose money to save morons. As it is, two climbers' bodies from months ago have not yet been found. Some unfortunate hiker this spring stands to suffer a terrible shock. Park police should warn climbers that the particular area they are planning to explore may contain two corpses, so don't be surprised if the scenery turns unpleasant. Morons should not be allowed to litter the landscape with their corpses.
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Whatever Happened to Immigration Standards? The British degenerate Hugh Grant is allowed to come and go in this country without any restriction, despite his being guilty of public indecency in having sex with a prostitute in a parked car on a public street. Whatever happened to the "moral turpitude" restriction on people seeking to enter the United States? There was a time when there was a serious question of whether Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor could be kept out of the United States because of their licentious (extramarital) relationship. Ah, the good old days. Now we let a man convicted of "lewd conduct" ignore the border as tho he was born here — which, I'm pleased to say, he was not. How is it that he's not considered a "sex offender" and barred from the United States?
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Of what value is a border if we let in British beasts like Hugh Grant and Simon Cowell?
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Musical Harassment. CNN Headline News has a segment called "It's Your Money" in which the same few bars of music are played over and over and over and over again in the background, all the while the reporter speaks. Why? The music is not just annoying but also so loud that you have to strain to hear what the presenter is saying. Stupid.
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There is at least 100 times too much music in the media of this country. Essentially every commercial has a jingle, every show has an opening theme and closing theme, and even documentarians feel a need to fill almost every second of their films with background music. Why?
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Music was once rare, and could be appreciated for its rarity. Now it is everywhere, almost inescapable even if you turn the TV and radio off. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing.
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Whose Revolution?!? Dumbya today compared the war in Iraq to the American Revolution. He didn't mean that in Iraq, the local people are trying to drive out a foreign occupier who has made their country into a colony and sent massive force to put down the people. No, he meant that somehow we were liberating the people, and the people of Iraq were working toward democracy with our help. The reality is the opposite, as above.
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But even more to the point might be comparisons to other wars and countries, as in the Iran-Contra affair, in which the United States was infusing money and arms into a civil war in Honduras to help insurgents in their struggle to oust a government. The money could not come from Congress, which refused it, so the Reagan Administration — another "conservative" Republican government that so loved the Constitution and the laws duly passed in accordance with it that it would not abide by either — sold arms to Iran, the very country George Bush is now railing against as a dangerous enemy infusing money and arms into Iraq, helping insurgents to attack a government. Round and round we go. Where Republicans will stop, nobody knows.
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Second-Class Citizenship. Homosexuals and lesbians in New Jersey today got the right to submit applications for "civil union", the second-class version of civil marriage that New Jersey enacted this past year, and which is to take effect later this week. Gay men have now stepped up from third-class citizenship to second. That's an advance? The New York Times reports:

About a dozen couples visited clerks’ offices in New Jersey on Monday, the first day on which people were allowed to submit applications for civil unions, which guarantee all the rights and benefits of heterosexual marriage. New Jersey is the third state to offer civil unions, following Vermont, which introduced them to rapt national attention in 2000, and Connecticut, which quietly followed suit in 2005.

Outside of this small region of the Northeast, the rest of the Nation grants not even that, second-class citizenship. And even here in New Jersey we're supposed to be grateful for second-class citizenship. I don't think so. This is only step one from third-class citizenship. There is one more step to take, Governor and Legislature. Have the guts (or lower) to take that step.

"I wish they would just call it marriage," Mr. [Degn] Schubert said, "and be done with it."

Me too.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 3,144 — for Israel.)



- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:59 PM