RoadDave

Five-time Olympic medal winner, Marion Jones, did the Right thing yesterday.  She pleaded guilty to using performance enhancing drugs in her career as one of the fastest people on Earth.  Her press conference was hard to watch, quite moving actually, as she took responsibility for her actions.

Then there is Senator Larry Craig.  In a press conference earlier this week, he’s come out and said that he’s not resigning and will continue to serve the people Idaho, despite the controversy regarding disorderly conduct in a washroom in the Minneapolis airport.  Larry did the Wrong thing.

Right and Wrong are considered to be absolutes, but they truly are not.  Essentially, we are looking at situational ethics.  Depending on the context, certain actions may be wrong in one context, but right in another context.  Take for instance, lying, the telling of falsehoods.  We are taught from a very early age that we should always tell the truth. 

Did someone ask you today, "How are you?" Did your respond with "Fine, thanks and you?"  Unless your life is utterly fine, all the time, you are a liar. 

Using the judge of absolutes, you should have replied:  "I’m not too good.  My hips hurt, I’ve got an ingrown hair on my shoulderblade.  My kids are lazy, irresponsible bastards.  The boss is a thieving pig who works me like a pit pony. I want to run away to a small tropical island and stay drunk for six weeks while engaging in lewd behavior with a troupe of acrobats.  And I don’t eat enough fibre, so my arse is burning this morning.  Aside from that, Fine, thanks and you?"  Now, that would be telling the truth.  Society would grind to a halt, but it is the Truth (absolute version) 

Killing someone is Wrong, an agreed-upon absolute.  It would make the workday fraught if we could kill without social sanction.  Traffic jams would be a thing of the past, but then there would be gunplay in the local supermarket over the mangoes.  Schools would be battle zones, or, more correctly, more of a battle zone than they are today.  As for organized sports?  Being a spectator would mean being heavily armed, even at Junior Girl’s League Soccer games.

In a military context, killing someone who it trying to kill you, is Right.  Not just Right, but God-Approved, Right.  The Allies in WWII believed that God was on their side.  The German Heer featured a belt-buckle with the initials IHR (Im Himmel Reich) which loosely translates as "God is on the side of the Reich".  It would seem that God was playing the spread, but in either case, killing was accepted as Right, in that context of Global war.  

Which means that what is Right and Wrong are not absolutes. They’re like Pornography or Good Modern Art:  We know it when we see it.  This is not a satisfactory answer either.

I’m proposing an alternative:  Doing the Honourable Thing. 

Marion Jones did the Honourable Thing.  She apologized for lying.  She took responsibility for hurting and affecting a large number of people.  She asked for eventual forgiveness.  She admitted that she screwed up and did something dishonourable.

Larry Craig did the Dishonourable Thing.  He wedged the word "intend" into his resignation so he could have a self-serving escape hatch that he has now wriggled through, staying on as the Senator from Idaho.  Even his own party has said "Larry, go away" but Larry is going to stay.

Honour is a terribly intangible thing that isn’t readily communicated, taught, or performed.  A component of honourable is putting others ahead of yourself. 

If you see someone trying to carry five bags of groceries and wrangling two dogs at the same time, it would be honourable to help them.  Or letting someone go ahead of you in line when they only have a can of coffee to buy and you have enough to fill two shopping carts. 

On a larger scale, like our provincial election here in Ontario, saying that you believe in funding for all religious schools one day, then dumping that platform like a full diaper, when the public says "No damn way!" the next day, is dishonourable.  So is saying "No New Taxes" beforehand, then hosing the taxpayer a few months after the election, is also dishonourable.  

Had the Premier said:  "The Provincial Treasury is a mess.  We had no idea how bad when we promised no new taxes.  This sucks, but we have to put in a new tax, otherwise we’re out of money in six weeks.  I’m sorry to break my promise, but we’ve got no choice, except closing all hospitals and doctor’s offices for the whole summer.  This is what we’ve got to do." 

If Dalton McGuinty (the Premier at the time) actually said something as simple as A New Tax, or No Health Care, then the voters would be angry, but at least understanding.  Admitting you are wrong, then fixing it, is honourable.

Can we do honourable things?  Honourable is very personal.  Marion Jones, by many measures did several dishonourable things, but did one honorable thing that might well make up for all the others.

Larry Craig did several dishonourable things, and continues to wriggle, being dishonourable still.  The honourable thing would be to resign as he knows he has been dishonourable and makes no apologies for it.  He should at least suspend his membership in the Senate until his trial comes up and the appeal gets decided:  That would be somewhat honourable.

As for me: I try to do at least one honourable thing a day.  Somedays I succeed, other days I fail.  Yesterday I bought an Ovarian Cancer leaf, one of those $1 donation things that some stores do.  You write you name on it and they glue it up in the store window to show how many customers have donated. 

I wrote "For Those Who Can’t" on mine and handed it back to the cashier.  I got hit with a half-dozen tears that shot straight out of her eyes.  Which wasn’t what I was expecting.  

I didn’t write that to upset someone, or to grandstand.  Not everybody can afford the $1, or they’ve passed on and I’m doing it for them.  I don’t need to see my name in the window of a drug store on some cardboard leaf to feel like I’m a good person.   

Now, the question:  Was that honourable?  Technically, it made someone cry, which is not a positive reaction or emotion.  Donating $1 to Ovarian Cancer is a positive thing.  Signing it the way I did; I don’t know.  

Honour is something you keep inside, but is also judged very quickly by others.  I have no answer.

Rebranding is something that big businesses do when they’re caught with their fingers in something they shouldn’t be touching.  For example, Phillip Morris Inc.  You and I know it as makers of cigarettes.  Oh no!  It is a division of Altiris Inc. (which also owned Kraft Foods at one time) and has a piece of SABMiller, who makes beer.  Lots of Beer.  And cigarettes.  Which, if you think about it, is a natural pairing.  

The name, Altiris, doesn’t actually tell you this.  General Motors, you get an inkling of what the heck they do.  Altiris is a made up, pleasant combination, of vowels and consonants.

Countries also rebrand.  Yugoslavia was a rebranding of some or all of Serbia, Croatia, Slavonia, Vojvodina, Slovenia, Carniola, Dalmatia, Styria, Macedonia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina.  A couple of the areas were not much bigger than your living room and had a full monarchy.  Rebranding them made sense.

Ceylon rebranded in 1972.  You know it as Sri Lanka.  What used to be on the map as the Belgian Congo, changed its handle to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1960

Then there is Burma.  Having achieved independence from the United Kingdom in 1948 they have changed the business cards a few times:  Union of Burma, Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma, back to Union of Burma then in 1989 settled on Union of Myanmar.

Stuck in between Bangladesh, India, China, Tibet, Thailand and Laos, Burma has been a bit of everyone and everything at various times.  The one person you might know from Burma was a former Secretary-General of the United Nations, U Thant.

Politically, the joint has been a mess.  Democracy went out the window in 1962 when General Ne Win led a military coup d’etat and wobbled over in the direction of the Burmese Way to Socialism.  By 1988 the economy had gone into the porcelain facility and pro-democracy forces staged a bit of an uprising.  This got smacked down hard by General Saw Maung who formed another military junta, the State Law and Order Restoration Council, declared martial law and managed to slaughter a few hundred pro-democracy protestors.

They rebranded as Myanmar in 1989.

By 1990, the government held free elections and, oddly enough, nobody wanted the military junta, the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), as their government.  They voted for the National League for Democracy (NLD), led by Aung San Suu Kyi, who scored 392 out of 489 seats.  The SLORC, said "No effing way is that going to happen!" and annulled the election.

The SLORC, rebranded in 1997 as the State Peace and Development Council, (SPDC) hoped that nobody would notice, or count the bodies.  Now, as the SPDC, the current head of Burma is Senior General Than Shwe, who is Chairman of the SPDC. 

According Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, the military junta has been doing what they always do:  Terrorize the population.  They use the classic tools:  Forced labour, human trafficking, child labour, systematic rapes by the military, taking women as sex slaves and the usual shoot anyone else who complains, then kill their families.

Burma is also known as being very insular.   Not because the people are insular; the military junta wants and is controlling everything in and out.  The Internet is very closely monitored (much like China) and looking at the ‘wrong’ pages or sites can get your ass beat by the police, if you’re lucky, or you simply disappear, if you’re unlucky. 

Foreign journalists invited in?  Only if they agree to be shot and killed on arrival then have their dismembered bodies buried in an unmarked shallow grave in the jungle.  Even FOXNews won’t go for that one, so there is a shortage of independent data on Burma.    

Today, the Daily Mail is reporting that there might be thousands of bodies of Buddhist monks that have been tossed in the jungle.  Military police have raided several monasteries and invited the monks to go for a truck ride that doesn’t end well for the monks.  Democracy protestors who were, with the monks, agitating for open elections, have also been taken for one-way rides.

According to the Daily Mail, a former Intelligence Officer with the military junta, who dropped tools and ran for the border with Thailand yesterday, several hundred monks and several thousand protestors have disappeared.  20,000 military troops have been called out to ‘prevent demonstrations’ and keep order. 

One report has several hundred monks kept in a sports stadium and  university dorm rooms, under lock and key.  Soldiers take them out for beatings, killings, then a bonfire.  Not a good bonfire.

Which brings us back to rebranding.  The name Myanmar is now tarnished as an insane military junta, where murder by the military is a day at the office.  Beating Buddhist monks until the rivers run red with blood and bodies, is considered just Another Manic Monday.  What name should Myanmar choose next? 

I’m taking my cue from the CSI television series.  As best I can tell, there is a CSI:Someplace for every major city in the US and probably spinoffs in Europe too. However, Baltimore has avoided the CSI: handle.  

I respectfully suggest that the military junta rename their savage little corner of southeast Asia, as Baltimore.  I’m not going to call it Myanmar.  Hell on Earth is more like it.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has reported that the Afghan poppy crop this year will be the largest on record.  Afghanistan produces roughly 90 percent of the worlds’ opium.

Some Science Content, so hang on:  Opiates are the chemical things that give pain killers their ability to kill pain, to behave as an analgesic.  Morphine is a highly refined opiate.  Codeine is another one.  They are naturally occurring chemical compounds that have been used in medicines for a zillion years.  For that matter, street heroin is also an opiate and comes from exactly the same source:  Papaver Somniferum, which the ancient Sumerian civilization called Hul Gil, the "Flower of Joy" 

By cutting tiny slits in the seed bud, the plant oozes raw opium-laced plant milk to heal the cuts. This is scraped off a few days later and wadded up in a ball of goo that eventually becomes opium, or black tar, or smack, or the components of legitimate pharmaceutical medicine. 

Afghanistan, Turkey, India, Pakistan, Thailand, Laos, Viet Nam and a few other countries in the area produce almost all the World’s source material for Morphine. 

Medical opiates, like Morphine are very important chemicals.  Ask anyone who has had their wisdom teeth out, or knee surgery, or been injured in wars, calamities, or simple bad luck.  There is nothing that kills pain faster, better and with less problems than Morphine.  It is a wonder drug of the first order, naturally occurring and with known, studied, documented side effects. 

Afghanistan is the biggest producer of opiates for heroin.  The entire agricultural economy and most of the urban economy is set up to produce, refine, distribute and export heroin.  Totally illegal, yes and the source of the vast majority of the revenue of the whole country. 

The SENLIS Council, an international think-tank, has a very simple concept on their plate right now.  Rather than trying to eradicate the poppy crop and all the economic and security structures in Afghanistan that are opiate-based, why not redirect the money and power into producing opiates for medicine. 

This makes sense.  Afghani politics are utterly tied to opiate production.  Poppies are the only way peasants can earn enough money to keep from starving to death.  Poppies are the only way peasants can get some semblance of security, as the buyers offer armed, skilled and thorough protection for the growers, as part of their agreeing to buy the output of the poppy fields. 

International politics do not have any relevance to a farmer up the hills of various provinces of Afghanistan.  For that matter having running water and electricity are considered wild extravagances that only Kings and Queens can ever aspire to having.  Conventional jobs, like you and I have, are only available in the cities, which are so far away as to be on another planet.  Poppy production, they understand.

Now lay a fine mist of International Military Intervention over the top of it all.  The United States wants to defoliate the poppy crop for a couple of reasons.  The first is "Drugs Are Bad"  No debate there, that those who abuse heroin have serious problems beyond being addicts.  Like stealing anything nailed down to support their habit, crime, smuggling, international money laundering, gang violence and the rest of the social impact of illegal drugs. "Drugs Bad" I can buy into. 

However, the "War on Drugs" begun back in Ronnie Regan’s day has never worked.  Despite spending millions of dollars and exercising all kinds of moral and political pressure on various governments, the "War on Drugs" has been an abject failure. 

The second reason to defoliate is more basic:  Someone has to make the defoliant and hire the planes to spray it, then hire the consultants to verify that it has been done.  Naturally, one must never trust local wisdom, so the US Government would have to hire private contractors to do it at exorbitant rates on a cost-plus open-ended contract basis.  Blackwater comes to mind.  Haliburton, KBR, or any other of the crony companies associated with the Republicans and President JoJo The Idiot Boy are more than willing to attach themselves to that kind of money tit and suck until their cheeks collapse.

There are a couple of other reasons the US wants to defoliate most of Afghanistan that are more political.  The Taliban (who were the Good Guys when they fought the Soviets, but are now the Bad Guys because they want a piece of oil revenues) are known to be funded by narcotics revenue.  The Taliban are not renown for playing nice with the US, or going after various "War on Terror" folks like Osama Bin Laden. 

The Bought And Paid For Unocal and US Friendly Afghani Federal Government fronted by Hamid Karzi is having hassles galore with the Taliban.  The thought is to cut off the Taliban funding via opium by obliterating the vegetation on most of the country. 

There is no consideration that the next five generations of Afghan infants will be born with three heads and seventeen legs from being exposed to defoliants.  Or that most of the country, without vegetation will actually blow away and a couple of million subsistence farmers and their families will starve to death.  That’s just the price you pay for winning the War on Terror and defeating the Evildoers of the Axis of Evil Axis of Evildoers.

Besides, nobody who is a friend of JoJo The Idiot Boy is making any money off the Afghan Poppy crop. 

Here’s the nub of the radical idea.  Buy as much opium as you can afford from Afghani farmers.  Pay the going price and rather than have it smuggled into New York City for addicts to shoot into their arms, ship it to pharmaceutical companies for use as feedstock for medical uses.  We need the opiates, and Afghanistan grows it.  Afghanistan has the infrastructure and expertise to grow, process and distribute the goods.  Pharmaceutical companies need it. 

What it comes down to is circumventing the illegal supply chain with a legal supply chain.  Farmers back up in the hills of Kabul can still make a living doing what they know how to do.  The various middlemen can make their cut of the action doing the basic refining and packaging.  The smugglers would be out of business, but that’s ok.  Junkies in NYC would be faced with a shortage of heroin, as the program makes it more lucrative for the supply chain to stay legal, supplying for pharmaceutical uses. 

By the way, the cynic in me says that if we’re going to have wars, we’re going to have wounded and maimed people on either side of the ocean who will need morphine to recover from the horrendous wounds of war.  We might even actually need the expanded supplies of morphine for legitimate medical uses.

Which brings us back to the SENLILS council recommendations.  Their idea is Poppies for Medicine.  There is a precedent for this.  US Pharmaceutical companies are required, by law, to source 80% of their opiates from Turkey and India.  This regulation was put in place 35 years ago to help eradicate the illegal opium industry in Turkey and India and it has worked fine.  (I bet you didn’t know that the source of the codeine in your painkillers or cough syrup was Turkey or India.  I didn’t either.)

About all the SENLIS council wants to do is to add one word to the existing law.  Add the word "Afghanistan" to the paragraph that identifies Turkey and India as the source of legal opiates for pharmaceutical uses.  The rest of the infrastrucutre, except for the smuggling, would be used intact and eventually weaned off the gun-wielding nacortics warlords.  Just like they did in Turkey and India.

This makes so much common sense that it is immediately suspect. 

Notice too, that nowhere have I said legalize heroin, or make smack the next drug of choice among the next crop of Congresspersons. I think that’s a bad idea all around. 

There will always be a market for heroin, just as there will always be a market for booze, cigarettes, sex, gambling and Linux, regardless of how legal or illegal we make it.  The trick, the really clever trick, is to make it financially worthwile for Afghanistan to convert over to legal opium production. 

This would merely require the application of money, to keep an entire population out of the clutches of radicalized groups.  Folks who are making a reasonable living and who have enough to eat tend not to get involved in suicide bombing, protesting everything and blowing up the foreign invaders with improvised explosive devices.  This is good for Afghanistan and is good for soldiers, like the Canadians who are over there.  It’s even good for those injured in various ways as they would have access to modestly priced effective opiate based medicines to ease the pain of their injuries. 

You could even argue it would be good for oil companies, as a vaguely content population, not engaged in active warfare, would not get involved in the politics of oil companies cutting deals with the government. 

The only folks not impressed with the concept of Poppies for Medicine are the ones who look at defoliation on a country wide scale as financially important for their wellbeing.  Big Pharma is a little jittery about it too, as Poppies for Medicine touches their supply chain in a small way:  They’ll have to get by with only making 2,000% markups, instead of 3,000% markups.

Sorry to not post for a couple of weeks, but life occasionally intrudes. 

There was a change of job and a couple of hectic weeks that ran end to end to end to end.  By the time small things like dinner were constructed there were enough hours left to get some sleep and run a shirt under an iron.

However, the new job is great and the employer is actually respectful and appreciative of my efforts.  I’m back.  Not to worry.

Seemingly unrelated, children’s toys, butter-flavor popcorn, condoms, voice mail and nuclear weapons, are all related by the concept of unintended consequences.  Not everything in our world behaves as we expect it to all the time.  This has been ably demonstrated this week.

For instance, we know that lead in paint is a bad thing when the lead is ingested by toddlers who have a tendency to stuff anything in their mouths at any given time.  Kids were found to have elevated levels of lead in their bloodstream from gnawing on window sills and furniture painted with lead paint.  This is why we have laws regarding lead content in toys and why lead paint has been banned in houses for years. 

More correctly we have laws in most of the developed world regarding lead in toys and paint.  In the third, fourth and fifth worlds, the laws may exist, but the kids play with unexploded ordinance, or live on top of a toxic waste dump where inadvertent lead ingestion is the least of their worries.

Mattel is taking their third beating in the last four weeks for selling toys that contain lead, or lead paint, or have small parts that young’uns will eat.  The toys were made offshore, in China where the labour rates are about as cheap as you can get.  Mattel saves a bucket of money having things made in China and this goes straight to their profit. 

The unintended consequences?  Mattel is in a world of pain and will probably have to declare bankruptcy if only to get out from under the class-action lawsuits that are probably lining up right now.  Little Jordan or Alexis is going to be screaming at Mommie and Daddy for the next six weeks for confiscating their favourite toy of the minute.  Psychiatric counseling will increase in 20 to 25 years time as "Mattel Babies" go nuts as adults.

Diacetyl is a naturally occurring chemical that imparts a ‘butter’ flavor but isn’t actually Butter.  For the microwave popcorn fanatics out there, that "Buttery-Flavor" has no butter, but has artificial flavorings that contain diacetyl. 

To make the flavoring, workers are exposed to dusts that contain the chemical.  Some have developed a condition called bronchiolitis obliterans whereby the lungs are clogged with buttery flavoring particles that glom together.  The fix?  A lung transplant is the only route available.  You can eat diacetyl but don’t breathe it.  

This week, ConAgra Foods, the folks behind the Orville Redenbachers and Act II brands said they are phasing out diacetyl in the manufacturing of the "buttery flavor" microwave popcorn over the next year.  Not this week, or by October, but over the next year, as they use up their supply of "buttery flavor" powder.

From the Washington Post, tens of thousands of condoms provided by the District of Columbia to curb HIV/AIDS have been returned to the health department because the condoms are paper-wrapped and would break open if you looked at them sideways.  Therefore they weren’t being used to prevent the transmission of HIV/AIDS or preventing unwanted pregnancy.  The condoms were bulk ordered from offshore and are apparently not even useful as water bombs. 

According to the DC health department’s fartcatcher, they will hold a "contest for the new versions".  Meanwhile, one would suppose that the Minneapolis Airport Men’s Room would be a better source of condoms that could be used with a reasonable certainty of efficacy.  I don’t want to know what the prize would be from the District of Columbia Health Department Condom Contest.  I can think of about five or six things, but I won’t list them here.

Then there was Sen. Larry Craig leaving a voice mail message on someone’s phone where he says that his ‘intent’ is to resign his seat for pleading guilty to disorderly conduct in a men’s room at the Minneapolis airport.  It doesn’t mean he’s actually going to resign for trying solicit a knob shine.  The ‘intent’ is Larry’s way of getting around things and he explained it well in his voice mail. 

At least he didn’t say he was checking into rehab for 30 days or was under the influnce of crack that he didn’t buy or share with a male masseuse or House page. 

The unintended consequence is voters becoming so jaundiced and uninvolved that they’ll vote for anyone who isn’t actively gnawing on a severed human leg during a debate.  The further unintended consequence is Ralph Nader could run and might win this time.     

In our final unintended consequences, A B-52 bomber was loaded with older Advanced Cruise Missiles that were to be decommissioned and destroyed.  Not a story, as this happens every day and the aircraft flew from Minot AFB in North Dakota to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana on August 30th in an uneventful flight.  Except that five real nuclear munitions were loaded in the cruise missile noses that were strapped to the BUFF.

Apparently the ground crew at Barksdale noticed something was amiss when they went to unload the cruise missiles, presumably from the wing pylons.  Fortunately they spotted the warheads before some tech took a cutting torch to them.  Barksdale AFB would be a smoking hole today if they hadn’t. 

Technically, everyone involved in the handling of special munitions has to sign at each stage of movement, storage, transfer, assembly, disassembly, testing, custody and so on.  The weight of paperwork usually matches the weight of the aircraft or the missile.  The whole nuclear munitions system is supposedly set up for Zero Errors, as it should be.

The unintended consequence? There are some folks at Minot who have been and are going to be sleeping face down because a well-shined airforce boot is embedded quite uncomfortably in their rectums.

What do these unintended consequences all have in common?  Stupidity.  Either assuming we’re too stupid to understand, or so stupid to be that gullible or so stupid that we shouldn’t be allowed to breed.

Remember, Stupidity and Hydrogen are two constants in the universe and I’m not sure about Hydrogen

With Sen. Larry Criag (R-Idaho) joining the list of politicians nailed for surreptitious sauciness, we feel it is incumbent upon us to laugh like a truck full of fools at the utter silliness of the whole situation.

Two facts:  Humans like sexual activity.  It is one of those down-in-the-DNA things that are hardwired into us.  It feels good.  It lowers your blood pressure.  You get an endorphin flood from it and it is a somewhat important component for breeding other humans.  Like it or not, we are also animals and we are predisposed to wanting and enjoying sexual activity. 

Morality, the control of where, when, how and in what context humans engage in sexual activity, is a learned behavior.  Religion, family and societal conditioning are very large components of morality that change sexual activity patterns and practices.  The two are inextricably intertwined.  Again, like it or not, we are also socialized animals.

(Personal Morality Disclosure:  If the participants are of the age of majority and can actively consent, I have no issue, as long as the participants keep it private and discreet.  Those three conditions means no kids, no animals, no tonsil hockey on the subway, please.  The details, I don’t want to know about it)

The list of politicians who have been caught in various shenanigans is too long to be recited, even here.  However, the reason many have been caught is quite clear:  Lack of Discretion.

Entering a leadership position in a societal structure usually entails surrendering personal privacy and personal morality for raw, unadulterated Power.  Power, to quote Hank Kissinger, is the ultimate aphrodisiac.  Which leads me to a vivid mental picture of Margaret Thatcher and her consort Dennis, later in the evening, after declaring war on Argentina over the Falkland Islands.  I’ll need an extended session of self-trepanation with a 3/8" drill to get rid of that image.

The immediate loss of privacy is part of the deal for power.  Setting yourself up as a Moral Leader means you must behave as an exemplary example of all things Moral, by what ever definition the electorate is fond of this week.

Where we get all bent out of shape is when those in a leadership position say one thing and do another.  The hypocrisy of it makes us outraged and crusty because the leaders’ lack of discretion has led to us being confronted with hard evidence that our leaders are mere mortals too.

By being humans we’re intertwined in the rope of sexuality and morality in every possible combination, permutation and association you care to mention.  Which is at best, confusing, possibly uncomfortable and potentially unsanitary.

Feel free to lead, but do not take a moral position unless you are willing to back it up with behaviors that reflect that moral position.  Or, if you choose to lead, take a moral stance and get caught deviating from it, learn this quote from the Duke of Wellington:  "Publish and Be Dammed"

I think it would be lovely if a leader caught in one of those situations simply said "So what?  At least I’m getting some.  Next question?"  The media would have a collective stroke and possibly fall over dead.  I’m not seeing a downside to that.

The deep sucking sound you heard yesterday, was Michael Vick’s career going down the toilet.  Having cut a plea deal on dogfighting, the Atlanta Falcons quarterback grabbed the handle and flushed his career away in a press conference. 

The story that Vick had been running a dogfighting ring and betting on the outcomes is almost too grisly to comment upon.  Historically, dogfighting, bearbaiting and the rest of the animal bloodsports have been going on since shortly after humans started walking upright.  Given the right circumstances you could probably get rabbits to fight to the death and it is a given that somewhere nearby a person would be taking bets on the outcome.  Humans are like that.

My bias, I’ll put up front: I do eat beef and wear leather shoes.  Pork is a wondrous meat and fish, fresh from a stream, pan fried on the shore is about as good as you can get.  Veal, I will eat if served, but I don’t buy it, as I think immobilizing a year-old cow or steer merely for tender meat is not right.  Yes, I know we boil lobsters alive and I have done it personally.  I have skinned and dressed the carcasses of a few animals and fish that I have either hunted, or caught.  I know what goes into sausages and I have been to a slaughterhouse, so I know how my steak was made.

I will live with the contradictions, as being a carnivore does not make my opinion regarding animal cruelty less important.  I’m merely going to recognize my contradictions up front.

Wagering on organized animal cruelty compounds the offense.  Which explains the instant suspension without pay from the NFL.  One bright light at the Atlanta-Journal Constitution newspaper has done a bit of back of the envelope calculating and figured that dogfighting has cost Michael Vick about $51 million in endorsements.  The other shoe that we’re waiting on, is how much jail time?

The likelihood is a year, plus probation, which means three to six months, then the probation, as Michael Vick is not your next door neighbor.  If you or I ran a dogfighting ring, we’d be looking at five years, then three on probation.

The mere fact that we have dogfighting, cockfighting or other animal blood sports and I include bullfighting in there, as well as calf-roping and steer wrestling, is the part that makes no sense in the year 2007.  There is no need for it. 

Is it some kind of fashion statement?  Some kind of street-cred machismo to engender respect?

The dumb part is it isn’t actually that difficult.  There is no physical danger, no real personal blood involved.  You’re watching something else do your posing, fighting and dying for you.  It doesn’t take any more bravery than going to the 7-11 in a tricked out Land Rover.

If you want to butch up and show how tough you are, enter bare knuckles fistfights, take boxing lessons, or become an Ultimate Fighter type of athlete.   The truly tough sure as hell aren’t on a football field, ball diamond, race track, soccer pitch, or in the back yard organizing dogfights. 

Those who think they get a bigger dick and more respect from watching pair of dogs fight are cowards and poseurs of the first order because they are not in any danger whatsoever.  None.  They’re in more danger when they go on a roller coaster than running an animal bloodsport.

Want to show the world how big your dick really is and how much respect you really deserve?  Why not enlist?  You get to prove how tough you are when people shoot real bullets at you.  You get to prove how tough you really are if your leg gets removed with an IED and the blood is your own blood, not some dog blood.  Wager on the patrols if betting is what gets you off. 

Those who serve in the military, male and female, have a big set that clank when they walk.  They are truly tough, deserve true respect and have more street-cred in their little finger than Michael Vick or his ilk would have in their whole extended families.  

Poseurs and cowards run things like dogfights and deserve exactly how much ‘respect’ and street-cred?

This weeks’ collection of the lame, the halt and the deeply disturbed, including the last weenie roast of the summer.

From AFP On Wednesday

A Japanese game maker said Wednesday it would withdraw arm-wrestling machines from arcades after three players — two of them foreigners — broke their arms.  Players would choose a strength level from 10 characters, ranging from a maid to a professional wrestler, and face off with an artificial arm on the other side of the table.  A 25-year-old South Korean man broke his right arm while playing the game in Osaka, while a 19-year-old Frenchman and 24-year-old Japanese man also suffered arm fractures, the company said.

Atlus, a Tokyo-based arcade game maker, said it will remove the 155 machines of the game — called "Udedamashii," which means Arms Spirits — which were put into service just a month ago.

"We had done careful simulations on the possibility of injuries before putting it on sale, but unexpected accidents can happen with game machines when people are too excited or fail to follow instructions," a company spokeswoman said. "But I’m afraid some foreign nationals couldn’t understand the instructions well as it was written only in Japanese," she said. By paying 100 yen, or just under one dollar, the player would have two battles of strength.

I’ll pay the $1 to pit any 13 year-old boy without a girlfriend against the machine, as long as he can have a copy of FHM or Maxim to help. 

From the Times Leader in Wilkes-Barre, PA  Police officer charged with prostitution

Part-timer for Newport Township arrested in sting at W-B motel. By Edward Lewis

A Newport Township part-time police officer was working as an escort when he was arrested in a prostitution sting at a Wilkes-Barre motel on Friday, according to arrest papers.  Levi Gibbon Jr., 40, of East North Street, Wilkes-Barre, was charged by the state police Organized Crime Unit with a single count of prostitution. He was arraigned before Hanover Township District Judge Joseph Halesey and released on $5,000 bail.

Newport Township Solicitor Richard Shiptoski said Gibbon has been suspended without pay until resolution of the charge, a third-degree misdemeanor. Gibbon couldn’t be reached for comment on Tuesday.

I know being a part time cop does not pay well, but couldn’t he check the schedule before going to his other job.

From ABCNews  Aug 22, 2007

BEIJING (Reuters) – A Beijing factory recycled used chopsticks and sold up to 100,000 pairs a day without any form of disinfection, a newspaper said on Wednesday, the latest in a string of Chinese food and product safety scares.

Counterfeit, shoddy and dangerous products are widespread in China, whose exports have been rocked in recent months by a spate of safety scandals, ranging from pet food to medicine, tires, toothpaste and toys. Officials raided the factory and seized about half a million pairs of recycled disposable bamboo chopsticks and a packaging machine, the Beijing News said.

The owner, identified only by his surname Wu, said he had sold the recycled chopsticks for 0.04 yuan a pair and made an average of about 1,000 yuan ($130) a day. Wu, who had no license to sell the goods, said he had sold 100,000 pairs a day when business was good.

From AFP under the heading to Tit for Tat

(Xinhua) China said Wednesday it had discovered many safety problems with soybeans imported from the United States, urging US authorities to deal with the problem.  "Inspection and quarantine units in various areas have discovered a large number of quality and safety problems with imports of US soybeans," the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said.

"We have reported this to the US side, demanding that it look into the causes and adopt effective measures to ensure that a situation like this does not repeat itself," it said on its website.  It detailed a series of safety problems, including the discovery of sorghum halepense and other exotic harmful weeds among the soybeans.  There was no mention in the statement of any plan to restrict or halt imports of US soybeans.

Recent global scares over the safety of China’s exports — ranging from toys to clothes to toothpaste — have not made major headlines in the nation’s state-run media. However, frequent reports have emerged about safety problems in goods imported into China, especially from the United States.

On Monday, China said it had returned 272 heart pacemakers imported from the United States after they failed quality inspections.  The Xinhua news agency quoted the general administration as saying the pacemakers posed potential threats to patients’ lives as they could cause misdiagnoses.

Of course there were defective pacemakers, half the components were made in China and the other half in that hotbed of medical device technology, Taiwan.  Perhaps it is just a way for Taiwan to get even…

Survey: Seniors Have Sex Into 70s, 80s
Aug 22, 8:24 PM (ET) BY MARILYNN MARCHIONE

(AP) An unprecedented study of sex and seniors finds that many older people are surprisingly frisky – willing to do, and talk about, intimate acts that would make their grandchildren blush. That may be too much information for some folks, but it comes from the most comprehensive sex survey ever done among 57- to 85-year-olds in the United States.

Sex and interest in it do fall off when people are in their 70s, but more than a quarter of those up to age 85 reported having sex in the previous year. And the drop-off has a lot to do with health or lack of a partner, especially for women, the survey found.

The federally funded study, done by respected scientists and published in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine, overturns some stereotypical notions that physical pleasure is just a young person’s game.  "Most people assume that people stop doing it after some vague age," said sex researcher Edward Laumann of the University of Chicago. However, more than half of those aged 57 to 75 said they gave or received oral sex, as did about a third of 75- to 85-year-olds.

The rumor is that there is sex in the afterlife.  The drawback?  You can’t feel it.

And to wind up with the final summer weenie roast… 

MOSCOW (Reuters) – A woman set fire to her ex-husband’s penis as he sat naked watching television and drinking vodka, Moscow police said Wednesday. Asked if the man would make a full recovery, a police spokeswoman said it was "difficult to predict."

The attack climaxed three years of acrimonious enforced co-habitation. The couple divorced three years ago but continued to share a small flat, something common in Russia where property costs are very high.  "It was monstrously painful," the wounded ex-husband told Tvoi Den newspaper. "I was burning like a torch. I don’t know what I did to deserve this."

Hmmm.  Would sitting around the apartment for three years, watching television, naked and drinking vodka all day long constitute a ‘reason’ for your ex to set fire to you?  She was probably trying to see if you were still alive. 

There has been a lot of blowback about the People’s Republic of China in the media over the last couple of weeks.  The continuing storylines are the usual things:  Food Safety  Lead Paint  No standards  Corrupt Practices  Economic Blackmail  Police State and so on.

Overlooked in all this is the PRC’s determination to take a firm stand on reincarnation. 

From Newsweek in a piece by Matthew Phillips, China has banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission.  I’ll quote the article here:  According to a statement issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, the law, which goes into effect next month and strictly stipulates the procedures by which one is to reincarnate, is "an important move to institutionalize management of reincarnation."

Of course, the real story is the Chinese government messing with Tibet in general and the Dalai Lama in particular, reincarnation of the Dalai Lama being a core tenet of Buddhism.  Perhaps the more absurd side of this, is that the US Department of Homeland Paranoia didn’t come up with it first. 

One could almost imagine Mikey Chertoff and Shotgun Dick at a signing ceremony in the White House:  The bill, called Reincarnation Enhancement as part of the Secure Homeland Institutional Terror Statutes would very specifically outlaw any suicide bombers from getting the 72 nicey-niceys or coming back to this life as anything except illegal aliens. 

I mean really, if President Jo Jo The Idiot Boy isn’t going to protect us from terrorists reincarnating, then, hey, we might as well go on Rush Limbaugh and whine for the next four weeks about how the government is abnegating their responsibilities, leaving us open to another 9/11.  I could probably book an appearance on O’Reilly too.  

I need some letterhead along the lines of Americans Reincarnating Securely Everywhere and a few hundred names on a petition.  If Ann Coulter can draw an audience with her inanities, then protests about reincarnated terrorists isn’t that far a leap.

This might work.  That’s the scary part.  It might just work.