Execute the Orca, and the Executives. The executives of Sea World refuse to kill the serial-killer orca, Tilikum. It's time for government to step in, to kill the whale and the subhuman scum who have now consented to have THREE people killed by that monster. Sea World knew when it bought the beast that it had already participated with two other (unpunished) orcas in killing one trainer, yet the now-defunct aquarium in British Columbia did not have the animal "put down". Those executives are accessories before the fact in the subsequent deaths of TWO MORE people, and should be put to death, along with the executives of Sea World, for serial murder. Orcas commit murder only of other orcas, but the human co-conspirators who did not execute that monster did commit murder in co-conspiring to keep it alive, and thus enabling it to kill again, and again. Who knows how many MORE times it will be permitted to kill people with impunity?
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It is CRIMINAL ACTIVITY to keep alive an animal that kills people. If it were a dog, there's no question what would be done: it would be killed after the FIRST human death. We would not let it kill twice more and even then do nothing. An orca should be treated no differently: kill it. What is wrong with this country that there is not a massive, furious, unanimous outcry to kill that monster? Has the entire country lost its mind?
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Let the water out of its pool, then shoot it thru the brain with a high-powered rifle; harpoon it thru the brain or heart. Do whatever needs to be done to kill it. Then chop it up and feed it to the sharks and other animals in Sea World, or nearby zoos. Kill it, kill it, kill it. And then turn to the executives responsible for these three human deaths — every one of them, at any level, associated with any institution, in any country, who was responsible for keeping this or any other orca alive after it had killed ANY human being, and kill them too. Behead them, shoot into their brains thru the face — whatever it takes — and chop them up for parts for decent people. Tissue-type them first, match up all their usable organs with desperately ill people on waiting lists for organ transplants, then kill them as punishment for their crimes and as lesson to other fools: Don't do insanely stupid and criminally irresponsible things, or we'll kill you too.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,379 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 7:52 PM

 
CPAC, CPAP, CCRAP. Comedy Central's Daily Show is back, after yet another hiatus. Are they the laziest people in show business? They produce only four shows a week, and take off a full week every few weeks.
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In any case, last nite's show (which I see on Hulu.com, since I no longer subscribe to cable TV), spoke to the meeting of the Conservative Political Action Conference ("Loons R Us"). Clips showed various speakers denouncing Trotskyites, Maoists, and other types of leftists who play absolutely no role in U.S. politics and have absolutely no influence on U.S. policy — not at the state level, not at the Federal level. Why are they railing against people who play no part in U.S. political or intellectual affairs? Because they're CRAZY, that's why, and their target audience is feeble-minded losers who have to be fed the nonsense they have been hearing for almost a century. Trotskyites. I replayed the passage to see if "Bolsheviks" were mentioned. These are the enemies listed in the Daily Show clips:

Liberals, the Socialist Agenda, Progressives, the Liberal Agenda, Che Guevarians, Castroites, the Radical Left, Trotskyites, Maoists, Stalinists, Leninists, Marxists, the Liberal Elite; even, (according to Mitt Romney) "Liberal Neo-Monarchists"!

No Bolsheviks. But the "Conservatives" — Regressives, really — just can't break from Cold War rhetoric, even as they seem all in favor of free trade with COMMUNIST China.
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Conspicuously absent from the list of enemies are the people who really have them worried: blacks. Jon Stewart's introduction to the segment referred to the CPAC conference as the "Festival of Whites". How true, and sad.
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Glenn Beck, the Fox News clown — perhaps someday "Bozo" as shorthand for "clown" will be replaced by "Glennbo" — attacked "Progressivism". "Conservatives" should thus eagerly embrace the term "Regressives" for themselves and "Regressivism" for their political philosophy, to make as stark a contrast as possible to the hated enemy, progress! But why are so many of these Regressives on the Internet? Why aren't they enjoying the benefits of the past, like candles as against electric lites, the buggy as against the automobile, early death as against modern healthcare? I'm sure a lot of them would love to go back to 'the good old days' of black slavery or the post-Reconstruction era, when 'niggras' knew their place — which was definitely not the White House.
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The problem the Regressives face is that they are so out of touch with the cultural and political realities of the United States in 2010 that they align themselves with the Republican Party for influence, even as they ignore the FACT that the Republicans are the party of spend but do not tax, and that the national debt has exploded under all recent Republican Presidents, but started to contract under the (hated) Bill Clinton, who gave us the only budget surplus in recent memory — which the incoming Republican erased within 8 months of entering office.
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They talk about Big Government being a danger to democracy, but have no suggestions as to what can be cut that has any chance of being cut. They couldn't even eliminate the Department of Education, which is a plainly unconstitutional intrusion on an area reserved to the states. George Bush I actually increased the intrusiveness of Government with the Americans with Disabilities Act, and his son hugely increased the national debt with two wars that were not paid for by tax increases, not on the rich, not on the rest. The burden on "our children and grandchildren" that the Regressives keep talking about was almost all due to Republican Administrations. Obama has put forward ONE budget with a huge deficit, and has convened a meeting to discuss ways to cut it, which none of the three Republican Presidents who multiplied the national debt (Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II) ever did. No, they just multiplied the national debt. Reagan-Bush quadrupled it; Clinton just barely started to shrink it; Bush II doubled it again!
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So why weren't the Regressives PANICKED by and furious at the irresponsible budget-busting deficits of Republicans? Because they're hypocrites, that's why. They pretend to be for fiscal restraint but have no problem with MULTIPLYING — not just increasing: multiplying — the national debt under "Conservative" Presidents.
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Some cowardly Liberals have retreated from the word "Liberal" to the word "Progressive", but the Radical Right isn't fooled. They are now blasting "Progressivism". It's time for Liberals to revert to "Liberal" and saddle "Conservatives" with "Regressive": the Regressives advocate a Regressive Agenda, and are dedicated to Regressivism. Let's see how they like being called what they are, and how the electorate responds this November to calls to Regress!
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,378 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 6:12 PM

 
Barack the Faithless Betrays Another Constituency. President Obama has revealed his Republican loyalties again, in putting the weight of the Federal Government behind nuclear power, an insanely dangerous and criminally irresponsible act. He cites nuclear power plants in other countries as a reason to develop more here, despite two serious accidents at nuclear power plants, a relatively trivial one at Three Mile Island here, and a catastrophic event at Chernobyl. So China is building nuclear power plants. So what? Let China have its Chernobyl. I don't want one here.
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Moreover, there is absolutely no place to store nuclear waste safely in an age of terrorism. The more radioactive waste is generated, the more certain it is that some will be stolen by terrorists, with or without inside help. The pretense is that we can sufficiently secure domestic nuclear power plants that no outside terrorist attack could breach the defenses and dump nuclear waste into nearby reservoirs and streams, or scatter it over a nearby American city by means of conventional explosives. But what if terrorists have accomplices inside a nuclear facility? Then what? Well, then we'll just have to have a "security breach", and if a few hundred, or thousand, or hundred thousand Americans are killed by radiation poisoning — well, that's a small enuf price to pay to fite "global warming", which will kill us all, rite? No. No no no no no, there is no way to justify such a risk for so spurious and worthless a cause.
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Nuclear power plants are extraordinarily expensive to build, and if one should explode, or a fire, earthquake, hurricane, tornado or other event should poke a hole thru to the radioactive core and produce a massive release of radiation, enormous numbers of people and domestic animals, across a very wide area, could be killed or dangerously sickened. The Chernobyl explosion produced radioactive fallout over an area of perhaps 2 million square miles, equivalent to some 55% of the United States, and 2/3 of the "Lower 48". Given that this country flies into a panic when one hamburger is found contaminated with E. coli, how will the Nation react if radioactive particles start falling from the sky over hundreds of thousands of square miles of U.S. territory? Indeed, how will we feel if a Chinese nuclear plant explodes, and a cloud of radiation starts floating over the Pacific toward the United States?
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We are assured that a Chernobyl or Three Mile Island kind of event — or worse — could not possibly happen with the "new generation" of nuclear power plants. Do I really have to point out that we were assured before the very first nuclear power plant was built that they were absolutely, 100%, fail-safe safe, and there could not possibly be any danger of any kind from them? We didn't build, and the Soviet Union did not build, nuclear power plants with the expectation that a Three Mile Island event could occur, much less that a Chernobyl event could occur. So assurances from scientists and engineers mean absolutely nothing.
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May I point out that scientists are often guilty of arrogance and fraud. Just this month, the prestigious British scientific journal The Lancet withdrew a 1998 paper about possible causation of autism by childhood vaccinations, and said it should never have published that study. Curiously, if you read the reasons behind why the study should not have been published — violations of rules on medical ethics and conflict of interest, rather than outrite falsification of results — you are left wondering if the decision to withdraw that paper was just The Lancet yielding to moneyed interests in Big Pharma.
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But that particular case to the side, there is a huge problem of scientific fraud that society has not addressed. Tho most people feel scientists would not commit fraud, first, because they are dedicated to truth and to helping people, and second, because they have to assume that fraud will out, the fact remains that there is, at all times, massive scientific fraud going on all around us. Even if much of it is ultimately discredited, while it is believed, much can go wrong. In the 12 years before The Lancet withdrew the vaccination study, for instance, unknowable numbers of parents refused to permit their children to be vaccinated for mumps, measles, and rubella (the particular combined vaccination attacked by the paper). That is relatively trivial, compared to what could happen if scientific fraud motivated by the quest for BILLIONS of dollars in nuclear power plant construction and operation, were to produce a catastrophic event.
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Aside from the issue of whether an accident could happen, we must always consider deliberate sabotage by people who work in a nuclear plant. Highly trusted people have been revealed as double agents, spies, and saboteurs in many countries throughout history. Let's consider a scenario. A highly educated employee at a nuclear plant experiences serious adverse developments in his life — the crumbling of a marriage, the death of a child, an automobile accident that kills everyone in his family when they were on their way to meet him for dinner — and thus becomes despondent and suicidal. He seeks solace in religion, but the religion he was raised in (Catholic, Baptist, Congregationalist) doesn't reach him. He casts about for something that will provide answers that will give him peace, and encounters a charismatic religious leader who involves him in a cult, or produces a secret conversion to an extremist sect within Islam, and he comes to see that he can end his unhappiness and strike a major blow against The Great Satan by deliberately producing a catastrophic explosion in a U.S. nuclear facility. Is it impossible that such a thing could happen? I don't think so.
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Extremely dangerous technologies are as much subject to accident and hijacking as relatively harmless technologies. It is little short of amazing that there hasn't been an accidental launch of a nuclear missile. Have there been accidental nuclear explosions inside missile silos in remote parts of the (former) Soviet Union that were successfully kept from the West? Who knows? A search on "nuclear accidents" produces some unsettling information. Wikipedia even has an entire article devoted to the topic "Nuclear and radiation accidents". Anyone who blithely assumes that there are no serious risks in nuclear power production is being very naive.
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And what of those terrorists who want to get their hands on radioactive materials right at hand, and not have to risk interception when trying to bring such materials into the United States? Is it inconceivable that they could find willing accomplices within a nuclear facility who will give them plans, details of security measures, the schedule of security officers' rounds, or even meet them at the gate and let them in? Is that really impossible? Surely not.
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So why has Obama's betrayal of the anti-nuclear constituency that supported his election not met with furious outrage and denunciation? He has tried to present his sudden pro-nuke stance as environmentalist, a devotion to a "non-polluting" technology that will "reduce greenhouse gases" and thus combat "global warming". What a load of crap.
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And where are all those nonpolluting "green jobs" in "new technologies" that are to harness solar power, wind power, water power, wave power, hydrogen, and all the other renewable, clean-energy sources that Obama was supposed to create?
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Obama has even started to play footsie with the oil industry, making noises about allowing more offshore drilling! Why aren't the environmentalists FURIOUS with him? And if they are furious, why aren't they making any noise about it?
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,376 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:39 PM

 
Money is Not Speech. In voiding limits upon money poured into elections, the Supreme Court has made another absurd decision. It must not stand. Believe it or not, it is possible to undo a decision of the Supreme Court. But you wouldn't know that from the feigned helplessness of members of Congress. "Oh, woe are we! Judicial tyrants have made a decision, and we are helpless to do anything but obey!" No. Congress is not helpless. If anything, the Supreme Court is the very weakest of the three branches of the Federal Government. It is only 9 individuals; the decision at issue was made by 5 of them. Congress is 535 people, in the same town. If Congress wished to do so, as a matter of simple, physical practicality, it could send a deputation of, oh, 60 or so of its strongest members to the Supreme Court building, to grab the offending would-be tyrants, and beat them to death. Sic semper tyrannis and all that.
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The Constitution was never intended to make it impossible for the people to defend themselves from the rapacity of the rich, nor to empower the obscenely rich to buy elections. Conservatives are fond of talking about the "original intent" of the Framers of the Constitution. Let's see if they mean it.
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Bill Moyers does a good job on his PBS show in presenting the views of the Liberal/Left in behalf of the downtrodden. Unfortunately, the show ends up being infuriating to me because it never finds ways around the obstacles placed between the little guy and justice.
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Moyers addressed the recent Supreme Court decision that removed restrictions on corporations, including mega-corporations each of whose annual receipts are greater than the gross national product of many individual nations of the world. Moyers explicitly stated that the Court ruled that money is speech. I hadn't heard that in summaries of this most recent ruling, but the Court has in prior rulings equated money with speech, in a totally fraudulent and absurd misuse of language. Money is not speech. Money says nothing. Speech, that is, the passing of breath thru the vocal apparatus of a human being, or even the creation of meaningful noise by a speech synthesizer, is speech. Writing could be regarded as "speech", or "the press" for First Amendment purposes. But the rights of individuals set out in the Bill of Rights are not rights of business entities. That is plain to anyone with a brain. Alas, it is not plain to a majority of the Supreme Court of the United States.
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I suspect that those Supreme Court (in)Justices understand full well that a corporation is not a person and thus not entitled to the rights of a person, for instance, the right to vote. If a corporation is not entitled to vote, how is it entitled to influence the outcome of elections? Foreigners are not entitled to vote. Are foreign corporations entitled to influence elections? How can the Supreme Court prevent such influence, if an entity incorporated within the United States is actually controlled by foreigners?
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The fact is that the Supreme Court does not have the authority, under the Constitution, to void laws duly passed in accordance with the procedure set out in the Constitution. Article III, which establishes the Supreme Court and defines its powers, is a total of 6 short paragraphs. I defy anyone to find in Article III any right to void a Federal law.
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The Court simply grabbed that power, and no one stopped it. Most tyrants become tyrants because the people who could have stopped them failed or refused to do so.
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A Tale of Two Rivers. Perhaps the most notorious case in the past century is Adolf Hitler's marching troops into the Rhineland in defiance of the Treaty of Versailles. Many historians have observed that if the Allies who had insisted on demilitarization of the Rhineland had told Hitler to withdraw or the Allies would invade, Hitler's ambitions for territorial aggrandizement by force would have been ended, and the world would have been spared World War II.
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Now we face a comparable legal Rubicon, where the Supreme Court asserts supremacy over every person and institution in the United States: rule over 308 million people by 5 unelected judges. This is our Rhine, our Rubicon — one of many the Supreme Court has passed without Constitutional permission. It's time to drive the Court back to the original bounds established by the Constitution. It's time for Congress and the President (a) to pass legislation forbidding the Supreme Court (and thus, by extension, any lower court) from voiding any law passed according to the procedure established by the Constitution. Congress could as well (b) put before the States a Constitutional Amendment that would permit the Supreme Court to void a law BUT as well set out a process by which Congress, by a stated supermajority, with or without the President (or different supermajorities depending on whether the President joined in an override measure or vetoed it), could override a decision of the Supreme Court, on any matter whatsoever, just as Congress can override a Presidential veto.
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This would complete the system of checks and balances intended by the Framers of the Constitution. They never provided a means of overriding a decision of the Supreme Court voiding an act of legislation because they never intended the Supreme Court to have the power to void legislation.
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The purpose of the courts is very simple: to apply the generalities of the law to the specifics of a particular case. It is not for the courts to judge the law itself, only to APPLY the law to a particular set of circumstances. That was the British tradition, from which the Framers had only very recently emerged. Courts did not overrule Parliament. They wouldn't dare, and Parliament wouldn't put up with it. A jurist who claimed the right to overrule Parliament would find himself at the least looking for work, and very possibly bouncing at the end of a rope, or having his head separated from his neck by a sharp ax. Good system.
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Here, when the Supreme Court first asserted the right to void a law, in Marbury v. Madison in 1803, Congress should have passed legislation forbidding the Court from voiding a Federal law, and thus vacating the ruling in MvM. Alas, that was Congress's Rhineland moment, and it failed us. The Supreme Court crossed its first Rubicon, the Congress did not send troops to oppose it, and the Supreme Court established a disastrous precedent, by default.
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In the intervening centuries, the Supreme Court and subordinate courts have reduced the United States to a judgocracy, in which courts void laws and even mandate tax increases, legislating not just the amount of taxes but also how they are to be used. Nowhere in our system are courts entitled to do any such thing. But because Congress doesn't want to do these things, and be held to account for doing things that are necessary but unpopular, it has sat on its hands and permitted the Nation to be reduced to judicial tyranny.
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The Framers would be horrified at how supine and useless Congress has become in the face of judicial activism. Oddly, the "conservatives" who were furious at "judicial activism" when it ended segregation or established Miranda rights, are not just content but even ecstatic to have the Supreme Court's tyrants rule that corporations can spend billions to try to buy elections. What a sorry state this Republic has fallen into, when principles fall by the wayside and tyranny is accepted when it advances your side.
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The reality is that Congress can forbid the Supreme Court to do things it does not want it to do. The Constitution contains the following express provision (Article III, Section 2):

In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions , and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make. [Emphasis added.]

What this means is that the Supreme Court can rule on only such matters as Congress PERMITS. If Congress does not want the Supreme Court to void laws, it can deny the Court the power to void laws, by one simple act of legislation to this effect:

Whereas, the courts of the United States exist only to apply the generalities of the laws, as duly enacted in accordance with the Constitution, to the specifics of a particular case; and

Whereas, the courts were not granted, by the Constitution, the right to void laws passed in rigorous adherence to the procedure set out in the Constitution; and

Whereas, only Congress and the President were given a role in passing legislation by the Framers of the Constitution, and by the States that ratified the Constitution; and

Whereas, Congress and the President are the sole judges of whether a law is consonant with the Constitution, and the courts have no say whatsoever in such determination;

Therefore be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, that no court may void any law passed in accordance with the Constitution, but may only apply the laws relevant to a case at hand.

Problem solved, and not just for this particular matter, tho the Congress could specify at the end of a law reinstating McCain-Feingold and any other relevant legislation, as the last section in that legislation,

No court is authorized to void this legislation. Any judge, or judges, who attempt to void this legislation are guilty of an act of insurrection, punishable by death. The mere acceptance of a challenge to the Constitutionality of this legislation by any judge constitutes incontrovertible proof of guilt, which requires an automatic conviction and execution. Conviction for insurrection in attempting to void this legislation is unappealable, and the death penalty will be executed within one week of conviction.

Congress and the President are not helpless against the nonexistent might of the Supreme Court. Five old fools, or even the full nine members of the Supreme Court, cannot stand against the might of Congress and the President, the latter of whom has under his command military forces of 1.2 million people. To pretend there is nothing we can do about Supreme Court tyranny is not just preposterous. It is a LIE.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,376 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 12:14 AM

 
Crushing the Senate's Antidemocratic Procedures. How did the United States Senate develop its own rules in defiance of the Constitution? Not only does the Senate require a 60% supermajority to do any normal business, but it also permits ONE Senator to prevent the Senate from acting to confirm Presidential appointments. This is the notorious, insane "hold" practice — not even a formal, written rule — utilized this past week by Alabama Senator Richard Shelby.

A hold is a device [emphasis added] by which Senators can block or delay action on a treaty, nomination or legislation, merely by telling their party leader that they want to delay floor action on the matter in question. Whether to grant that request is a decision of the leaders.

Nowhere in the written Senate rules is the tradition of “holds” to be found, and
it is not clear when the practice began. The very nature of the holds process gives the
majority and minority leaders a great deal of discretion in deciding whether to honor
a request for a hold and, if so, for how long. However, implicit in a request for a
hold is the ability of a Senator to use parliamentary tools to filibuster or to delay
consideration of the nomination or legislation at issue. Also implicit in a request for
a hold is the desire of the Senator to be consulted by party leadership on the matter
subject to the hold. Holds can sometimes kill a nomination, but more frequently they
delay action.

Whether a Senator has placed a hold on a nomination or legislation is not
publicly available information, and the information is closely held by the two party
leaders. Only when a Senator announces that he or she has placed a hold on a
measure or a matter does the information become public.

How can we permit such madness? This is the ultimate antidemocratic coup against the people: the wishes of 308 million Americans mean nothing. The arrogance and desires of ONE Senator are enuf to stop the nomination of anyone, to any post, by the President. This must end — in bloodshed, if need be.
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Do we have to storm the Senate, with lengths of sturdy rope to string up enemies of democracy like Senator Shelby? Do we have to take out our guns and mow down the entire obstructionist Republican leadership? We can do that. Ours is a revolutionary tradition, and we have changed history with guns, starting with muskets in the 1770s and proceeding thru assassinations of key people at key junctures of our history. The enemies of democracy in the Senate apparently believe all that 'unpleasantness' is behind us, and that today's Americans are all pussies who wouldn't dare to kill their enemies. This seems to me an odd stance for Senators from a country that is reported to have 200 million guns out among the people, is involved in TWO wars at this very moment, and has hundreds of thousands of people addicted to hyperviolent video games in which killing is not just normal and normative, but the way you get points to win the game!
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How on Earth did anyone come up with the idea that it is OK for one Senator to hold up Senate action on ANYTHING?
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When I discussed the unconstitutional nature of the filibuster rule here on January 19th, I carried the filibuster rule to its logical extreme, requiring unanimity — 100% of the Senate — to do anything. That may have struck some readers as "silly". But here we have a practice that actually DOES require unanimity, because ONE Senator can keep the Senate from holding confirmation hearings on Presidential appointments. So my taking the antidemocratic filibuster rule to its logical extreme was, alas, not the slitest "silly".
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Nor is the malicious frustration of the people's will by self-important members of the Senate merely "silly". It is criminal behavior that should produce expulsion from the Senate, at the least. But stringing up such an enemy of society by a stout rope thrown over a strong limb of an old tree and watching him dance his way to Hell would be very satisfying, and instructive to every Senator not (yet) executed by the people.
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How can we consider ourselves a democracy when the tiniest of minorities, ONE PERSON in a Nation of 308 MILLION, can keep the Nation's work from being done? What's the point of elections, if the people sent to the Senate are not required to obey the most basic principle of elections: the majority rules?
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Plainly the Framers of the Constitution never intended anything like what the Senate has become, a stridently, militantly antidemocratic monstrosity. The Senate must be forced to abolish ALL its antidemocratic practices, and operate by simple majority in all things. If it refuses, the President should contrive to send Congress home, and rule by decree until he decides to permit Congress to convene again. If just one person is to run the Nation, it might at least be the one elected by a majority of the Nation, not by a few hundred thousand people from one state. If Congress refuses to do anything, why should it be in session? Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution says:

[The President] may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper[.]

I'd say that an inability to get anything thru the Senate qualifies as an "extraordinary Occasion". Maybe if Congress were sent home for six months, and the President did as ever he pleased, according to existing laws as he interprets them during that time, Congress might find a way to conduct the people's business efficiently and in bipartisan fashion when the President does eventually permit it to reconvene.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,376 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 10:29 PM

 
Asian Carp. ABC News today aired a report by Eric Horng about a chef who has developed recipes to make use of what is now a dangerous nuisance in the Mississippi and threatens to invade the Great Lakes very soon, the Asian carp. When I first heard about this fish becoming a hated invader, I immediately thought what anyone of any sense would think: catch and eat it. Make it a food fish, for people if it is palatable, for pet cats, zoo animals, and livestock if it is not found tasty by people. What could be simpler? A nuisance becomes a very inexpensive, plentiful, domestic source of food for multiple groups at home, and perhaps even, as canned, for export.
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Moreover, if this fish grows well in the wild, it might well become a source of food for people and livestock in the Third World. Why haven't the powers that be, who have been agonizing over what to do about this invader, seen that it might be a huge BOON to the Nation and the world?
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Because they're stupid, that's why. If overfishing threatens the fish of the oceans, surely we can fish the Asian carp to tolerable levels, or even overfish it to the edge of extinction. A country that made the passenger pigeon extinct and nearly did the same to the bison can surely control the Asian carp.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,376 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 7:19 PM

 
Gay or Straight Matters. I left this comment today at "Ramon [Johnson]'s Gay Life Blog", about a post concerning Johnny Weir, U.S. championship figure skater who refuses to come clean about his sexual orientation. The original post is from January 12th, but it was linked to, indirectly, from a FanHouse.com article yesterday, so is not pointless. (CAPS are for emphasis; not all online Comments areas permit HTML coding, so rather than risk italics or boldface codes appearing onscreen, I just used caps.)

There are gay kids who commit SUICIDE because they are convinced they are alone in the world and always will be, because COWARDS in public life refuse to come out publicly. If Weir is gay, it is NOT his own business but EVERYBODY’S business. And if Weir doesn’t accept his manhood but grew up thinking that “gay” means “feminine”, then he needs to FIX HIS ATTITUDE and find his manhood as a homosexual man. “Too gay” means EFFEMINATE, not masculine. Gay men are drawn to masculinity, so taking on an artificial ‘feminine’ persona dooms the effeminate to unhappiness. No straight celebrity has ever denied being straight. Ergo, Weir is gay (I avoid the convenient but oppressive rhyming Q-word). Gay boys and men all around the Nation, and world, need to know that, need to be able to point to someone and say, “Look — he’s the best in the Nation, and he’s gay, like me.”

- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 1:02 PM