The Great EPA Reprt Suppression Affair

To listen to most of my compatriots lately you'd think that Alan Carlins EPA report "disproving" global warming is being suppressed and he is also being "reassigned" is the most Earth shaking example of aluminum hat conspiracies on the left side of the world.

Peshaw.

Three things to consider. First, for all it matters Alan Carlin and his magical report could be right - global warming could be a complete and ToTaL hoax. But for all the reports, books, articles and discussions out there already, Alan Carlins' report is meaningless and it will convince no one. If you still believe in Global Warming, Alan Carlin is not going to change your or anybody else in Congress' mind.

Second, although he could be right, Mr. Carlin is NOT a scientist. He's an accountant. So, while it might be an entertaining and correct report of the facts, the idea that it is an accountant presenting the position of the entire anti-Global Warming Movement isn't going to help matters. Don't we have an actual Scientist with the same data, opionions and interpetations? (Yes, we do)

Lastly we pay Mr. Carlin to be an accountant. His supervisor improperly "allowed" him to produce this report on company (taxpayers) time. Again, the report might be correct, but we don't pay him to write global warming reports, we pay him to account. The supervisor was wrong to allow him to produce such a report on our time, and now feels (according to Mr. Carlin) that he (the supervisor) had to "reassign" Mr. Carlin or lose his own job. Well of course he did - he should never have allowed Mr. Carlin to do this "report" on our time to begin with. Now he has to "suppress" an unsolicted, unsupported, unnecessary and un-scientific report in order to cover his own Accounted Department behind.

For all it matters, the report (such as it is) might be absolutely correct, BUT it's not from a person who (a) should be making the report or (b) is paid to make the report or (c) ought to be doing his real job and is poorly supervised.

By this point in time, if you need Alan Carlin to support the anti-Global Warming position then you've been asleep for a decade. In the meantime we've been paying Mr. Carlin to not do his job.

Surreal Day

I woke up to the news of the death of Farrah Fawcett had passed away after a long battle with cancer. It was somewhat expected but still a little surprising and jolting as an icon of the era that I grew up in, the 1970's was now gone. It's getting harder and harder with each passing day to see my own life's history pass on, it certainly brings into focus my own mortality.

Two hours before I went on the air today, the news broke the Michael Jackson had been rushed to the hospital with cardiac arrest. My first thought was that he had passed away - I know the odds on cardiac arrest survival - but like most people I held on to a little hope. I am not a MJ fan, but my own history as a child of the 1970's was full of listening to the Jackson 5, and of one afternoon calling the local pop station over and over requesting "Back to Indiana" by the Jackson 5.

It's hard. But it's life. The wold is a smaller place again today. I think that tonight I will watch Logan's Run again, and listen to Dancing Machine...

The FDA Takes on Tobacco

I guess that I am happy that on the same day he announced that we the Tax Payers would increase our debt to pay for more Medi-Care Prescription Drug Coverage (by the by, didn’t President Bush promise us that was solved a few years back?) he also announced that he personally had finally and at long last defeated the evil tobacco companies that kill 400,000 Americans every year. By his actions that now remove the management of Tobacco from the ATF and put it under the FDA, supposedly all will be well and 400,000 Americans will not die next year from smoking.

Peshaw.

First off, is there anybody actually left who doesn’t know that smoking is (a) stupid and (b) will seriously harm your health, (c) kill you and (d) most importantly annoy me?

For all the posturing by the POTUS yesterday you have to ask the standard questions about any Government policy such as just where will all that tobacco lobby money go now? If raising tobacco taxes actually worked to get people to stop smoking why does the government continue to subsidize tobacco farmers? Most importantly if you really want to stop smoking, why not just make it illegal, you know, like owning a gun or keeping your own money?

The fact is that not a single life will be saved by this action, and in fact the Tobacco companies will get richer since they will have to raise their rates to cover the cost of the new packages with the “enhanced visual” warnings on the labels. Just think about that, the warnings now are comic books because the oh-so-successful school system is producing kids who can’t read the current warning labels, not that they would matter if they did.

In the end, this won’t stop a single kid from trying to be cool and fit in with his or her friends because peer pressure is what sells cigarettes, not advertising. And this new FDA managed tobacco policy still won’t stop the stupid wonks – there’s one near you right now – who insist on smoking in their cars but have the window open and the cigarette hanging out the window so that everybody can suffer from their own stupidity.

If it’s so great, why not keep it in the car with the window up? Maybe GM can also deal with smoking after the FDA proves to be ineffective?

Madame Boxer

So the latest meaningless big flop and twitch in the Conservative world is over Senator Barbara Boxer’s dressing down of a Brig General Michael Walsh who had the fortune of testifying before Congress about some minor issue that nobody will remember in a day and insisting that the General refer to her as “Senator” as opposed to “Ma’am” which is they way Military people are trained and expected to respond to Senior ranked females.

In many cases, Conservatives are blowing a gasket over the perceived slight to the General and the presumptuous snobbery of a Senator who presumes to claim in one sentence that she both has no sense of decorum or manners AND that nobody else ever had to work to become a Senator. By the by, Madame Boxer won her first Senate election when it turned out that her opponent had “gone to a strip club.” She won her second election by 10 points, by all definitions a landslide, her last by 20 percentage points. Barbara Boxer running for US Senate works about as hard as Casey Stengel managing the 1950’s Yankees.

But for the moment, Conservatives are trying to Letterman Madame Boxer for her verbal gaffe, and at the same time, missing the real issue. The fact is that in the Modern world, most etiquette experts define the term “ma’am” as unnecessary and even borderline inappropriate. I didn’t say that I agree with them, just that the people who actually set the rules say that addressing a person by title or name is preferable in 21^st Century America.

The real insult though was in how the rebuke was handed out. Brigadier Generals and Privates all understand what happened there and why Madame Boxer DOES in fact need to apologize, but not for the “ma’am” part. Meanwhile, all you folk who want to Letterman Madame Boxer, let me ask you a simple question, why was General Walsh at the hearing and what was he testifying about?

I submit to you that was far more important than Madame Boxers public nekulturny display.

Grish

On my first day as a Sophomore I was headed to one of my classes, walking in my typical head down fast paced manner when a hand slammed down on my shoulder and turned me around. Standing suddenly still I found myself face to face with Grish, my French Horn Section Leader. "Dave," he said, "Freshmen run...."

In the Pueblo South High School Band Culture, Sections leaders were powerhouse leaders, expected to be both mentors and encouraging. Grish was a great Section Leader, and being the Number two Chair, it was also my job to learn from him so that when the time came, I would move up. My folks got moved after my Sophomore year and I never had the chance to be the Horns Section Leader, but I did use a lot of Grish in my later Section Leader of the Trombones Sections at Ogden High in Utah.

If you look at the pic of Grish and I from those days, you'd never guess which is which, given that one of us was an All-American Conservative Football player and the other a borderline last of the Hippie movement authority questioner. One looked like a clean cut kid, the other a long shaggy haired freakazoid. And of course, the pics were completly opposite of reality.

Grish was the one who talked me into playing in Orchestras. The School Orchestra was trying to branch out and use more brass, and needed some horns, Grish told me it would be fun and different, and that the Beethoven wrote some really kicking French Horn parts. Which was true, and sitting on stage in a tux playing the Egmont Overture was topped only by our sense of humor that caused us to be late getting on stage to play it int he first place. That's when I discovered that Orchestra people don't have the same sense of humor that Marching and Pep Band people have.

Grish talked me into Music Analysis class, and into taking new challenges and considering new things. He was funny, friendly and a leader who still influences me even today, thirty years later.

When my folks were transferred to Utah after my Sophmore year I never had the chance to talk to Grish or tell him that we were leaving. I never saw him or heard from him again. And this week, I connected again with another of our old French Horn section, April, who told me that Grish had passed away some time ago.

I suppose that she presumed that I already knew, because there were no details, no time frame, no how or why, just that Grish was gone and even thrity years after we last all saw each other with what was the best and most exciting musical time of my life, there is suddenly a huge hole that I cannot explain.

In the back of my mind I always imagined that at some point the three of us would somehow or another run into one another and share the success that our lives had become, and I would have the chance to tell Grish that I still remind myself almost everyday that "Freshmen run...."

My world got a little smaller and sadder, and even the kick-ass French Horn parts of the Egmont Overature seem a little softer and sadder today.

Reforming What About Health Care?

Between the President, Congress and the Media, I am totally confused as to what’s going on with health care. I keep hearing – as I did yesterday – that we “have to do something right now” which strikes me as politician’s logic (i.e. “We have to do something, this is something, and therefore we must do this.”). The fact is that I keep looking at Health Care and while I have my opinion that the morons who run the HMO’s are certainly operating both a monopoly and a heartless one at that, there doesn’t seem to be anything actually wrong with the actual medical care itself. In point of fact, people come from all around the world to see our Docs and nurses, but bypass the HMO and bureaucracy.

Which is what I have said for years, the HMOs and idiots who run them are what is driving reasonable people to conclude that our Health Care System is broken and thus demand reform without really thinking about what we mean by demanding that “reform.”

Like most things, there are always the populist ideas that – in this case at least – seem to appeal to leftists and the President which ought to make anybody who thinks about it suspicious to begin with. I ask the question again – what exactly is wrong with the actual health care that we receive – other than the control systems we have to go through to get to that health care and then decide what will and/or will not be paid for as health care?

I noticed yesterday that the latest Supreme Court Nominee, Judge Sonia Sotomayer took a bit of a tumble and ended up breaking her ankle on the way to Washington, D.C. As t turned out, she was able to get it treated and not miss a beat, making her important meetings all day long with Senators. If that had been you or I, we would still be on the phone trying to get a referral to an Orthopedic Doctor or at least an X-Ray.

Which is what is really wrong with the system – the HMO’s have created a functional monopoly. Justice Sotomayer, an apparatchik in the system either paid for it herself or “had it taken care of” while the rest of us are forced by the HMO’s to rely on them to pay for our care. In effect, the HMO’s have hijacked the Free Enterprise system and made us their slaves.

But I am certain that the Government taking over the HMO’s will solve that and make it ever easier to get to the actual health care, which as far as I can tell, doesn’t need to be reformed at all….

Beha'aloscha

As a general rule I try not to mix my theology and my show topics, but the fact is that that today's Torah reading and the daily Rashi commentary made it pretty hard to ignore the relevance both to my life and to my show.

The lighting of the Menorah both in its initial state and on the regular basis by the Priests and the position of the wicks for each of the branches of the Menorah is juxtaposed by Rashi in such a way as to show the importance of proper preparation for teaching. Granted I am not so much a teacher as a commentator but I am always cognizant of the fact that there are (a) always those who trust my opinion and (b) do in act learn from the subjects and material that we use on the show. I understand the mentality of some former NBA players who didn't want the responsibility of being role models and I am not presumptuous enough to put myself in the position of "role model" but there are those who take my opinions and information to form their own, and so in that manner it is similar to being an Instructor again.

Senior Chief Petry used to tell us that if a student failed it was our (the instructors) fault. We always got mad at him for that because, let's face it, some kids were just rocks and in some ways it was or job to rid the fleet of them. But now it is apparent that even Rashi seemed to have influenced (albeit unknowingly) the good Senior Chief. In essence, Rashi demands that Torah instructors be 100% prepared, and positioned in order to insure proper followup. In the same way Instructors had to be prepared and able to follow up, and presuming that we were the students should have been fine. A student who failed under those circumstances truly was incapable of becoming an FTB.

Interestingly enough the further discussion of the Siddur brought in the Pesukei D'Zimrah for Shabbat, focusing on Psalm 19 - which as you know is my favorite portion of the Tanach. Given the importance of Verse 2 and its effect on my understanding of Einstein and Gerald Shroeder and Rashis' insistence on proper preparation just seemed to be a pretty cool combination.

66% Roman Catholic Supreme Court?

It would be funny if it wasn't so sad, but once again I get eMails blaming the "liberal Jews" for all the ills of the world and country. On the same day, some anti-religious group is complaining that "if" Judge Sotomayer is approved and seated on the Supreme Court that the religious makeup of the court would be 66% Roman Catholic.

Putting aside the obvious "so what?" response, lets delve a bit deeper. Judge Sotomayer does not belong to any parish or church. She is "Catholic" in name only and since Senator Feinstein thinks that her position on abortion is just dandy, one could conclude that Judge Sotomayer is about as Roman Catholic as I am.

Moreover many of the more liberal Justices have been and indeed are Roman Catholic which flies in the face of logic except that the fact is that most so-called religious people really aren't and don't actually believe the things that they say they believe (which is generally true of Western Christianity in any case). From Nancy (Catholic) Pelosi who supports abortion to Judge Sotomayer whose position on abortion is acceptable to leftist, it is pretty clear that the Roman Catholics in the Judicial branch don't really believe their own religious faith in the first place.

But I equally as certain that I won't get an eMail decring the failure of Catholics on the most powerful liberty smashing bench in the world to live up tho their religious tenents instead of the typical "I hate Jews" eMail that I will get.

If God Told Them To Run, Then Run Away From Them...

Look I have no monopoly on theological issues, but I do know this, the Deity doesn’t deign to anoint politicians to run. Invariably when there is a public claim that the Deity did tap somebody on the shoulder to run for office they lose which begs the question of whether or not God understands what makes a good politician or if He just is too dumb to pick a winner. I guess the trade off is that if (and that is a huge presumptive if) the Deity does bother to wander down and tap somebody on the shoulder and tell them to run for any given office given His divine track record you have to conclude that it could be a giant practical joke.

Or I suppose, given Occam’s Razor, it is more likely that anytime a political candidate for any given office publically and openly announces that the reason they have decided to run for some office is that God told them to, it’s as good a reason as any to find another candidate to support as that one is clearly at least a touch whacked. I just don’t believe for a minute that people who run for religious reasons make either good candidates and worse, if somehow they manage to get elected, they don’t usually turn out to be all that effective legislators.

Now before you start lighting the fire to burn me at the stake or launch the Spanish Inquisition, consider a few things and debate from those instead of proprietary doctrine. If God really wanted people in charge that are there solely because He ordained them, wouldn’t some church or other religious organization already be in charge? Moreover, whenever some candidate says that THE reason they are running is to express their faith or because the Deity told them to, what are they really saying to you, the voter?

“God has picked me (I know because He told me) and if you don’t vote for me then you are anti-God and therefore a heathen condemned to the fires of hell” or whatever his or her personal theology happens to believe will become of those who chose not to believe their particular theology.

Moreover, it gives the candidate an easy out on any of the issues, as if you question their position on any given issue it gets twisted into an attack on their religious beliefs.

I am not saying that religious people shouldn’t run for office, I am saying that if the reason that a candidate is running is to express their personal faith or because God told them to, run away. Run as if your hair is on fire.

Monday Start the Week Thoughts

I am already hearing from what I can only categorize as "gloating" anti-abortionists who are "happy" that Dr. Tiller was gunned down in church. Even as opposed to abortion as I am, I cannot see this as anything other than a crime and a vile one at that. Sorry folks, if you claim Christianity as your faith then you have no choice either. This is a pathetic and despicable act that will HARM the anti-abortion movement.

I am also hearing from those who are angry that the coming Budget cuts are going to "disproportionally effect" the poor. Well, maybe the "poor" should have taken the time to show up and vote to raise taxes and spending. They couldn't be bothered to show up to vote and participate in the process as something other than societal parasites, so I can only conclude that they either don't actually care or they aren't savvy enough to figure out that the producers in society are tired of carrying them.

The PDRK continues to make noise about flinging ICBM's about the North Pacific. Nobody cares.

Am I the only person happy that Susan Boyle not only lst but had a breakdown over it? What a fake!

Oh... and Sasha Baron Cohen and what's-his-name just isn't all that funny.