The fact that 66 United States senators voted to add a flag protection amendment to the Constitution ought to scare the hell out of anyone who still holds the slightest shred of hope that our elected officials are actually concerned about upholding their oath of office.
That would be the oath to support the Constitution. The oath has no codicil, no loophole along the lines of “unless I need to appease the superstitious yahoos who might vote against me in the next election.”
And yet 66 Senators--66 out of 100!--voted to start dismantling the document they’ve sworn to protect. Are they intellectually incapable of doing so, or are they just terrified of the yahoos?
Now, in today’s dishonest, cutthroat, and superficial campaign climate, it’s entirely possible that they’re terrified of some future political opponent twisting their “Nay” votes into a campaign issue. But there’s also a good counter-argument to that sort of sensationalism, if you can pull it off. Let’s say Senator Bob Fudknuckler of Iowa finds himself opposed in the next election by Candidate Steve Jingo, whose entire campaign is built on questioning the incumbent’s patriotism. Candidate Jingo might run a TV spot that says “My opponent Bob Fudknuckler voted against protecting Old Glory from the flag-burners. Why does he hate the flag? Does he want to see America burn, too?”
Fudknuckler’s response, then, would be something like this: “I voted to repeal the tax cuts for the wealthy in order to help fight our growing deficit and make taxation fair for all Americans. I voted to raise the minimum wage so working families can have a fighting chance to get out of poverty and live the American dream. I voted for measures that would prevent corporations from sending jobs overseas and screwing the working man while lining their own pockets with the increased profits. I would ask my opponent which is more important to the future of this country: its people, or a symbol?”
Yeah, I’m an idealist. And I get a kick out of the name Fudknuckler.
But moving on. Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah sponsored the flag amendment, and actually had the nerve to say the Senate had nothing more important to be concerned about. This is one of the most mind-bogglingly stupid things I’ve ever heard come out of someone’s mouth. You’re an elected official, Orrin, and you’ve been elected to make the country a better place than it was when you took office. If you consider protecting the flag more important than the economic well-being of your constituents, if you consider it more important than finding a way out of the quagmire in Iraq, if you consider it more important than protecting freedom itself, then in my opinion you aren’t qualified to do your job. I don’t believe you have the smarts.
Speaking of not having the smarts, the ever-quotable Bill Frist said the flag “is the single symbol that protects our liberty and freedom.” Really. I enjoy a good bit of anthropomorphizing now and then, but I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a flag enlist in the army. I’d like to know how a mere symbol protects anything at all.
One vote away, folks. I can’t imagine being so terrified every election year that you throw common sense to the wayside and spend a single minute on time-wasters like these.
Oh Wait, There’s More
+ By the way, it’s a little disingenuous for them to constantly refer to “the” flag, as if there were just the one in existence instead of the millions flying all over the place--most of them mass-produced in China, as I understand it.
+ Hillary Clinton, who just a few months ago sponsored legislation to criminalize flag-burning, voted against the amendment. I don’t know what to make of that, but I’ll give her probationary kudos.
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Friday, June 23, 2006
Fighting Them In Miami
Kudos to the FBI agents and local police officials who uncovered the terrorist cell in Miami and thwarted a plan to bomb the Sears Tower and other locations.
And our occupation of Iraq helped this how, exactly?
The report on CNN.com said an undercover operative was used to infiltrate the gang, leading to the arrest of seven people described in the story as "al Qaeda wannabes." Hey, wait a minute--an undercover operative? That's a great idea! Since your standard terrorist yahoos operate as a sneaky, shadowy organization, let's approach them in a sneaky, shadowy manner. Not only would that be more cost-effective than using thousands of troops to occupy some godforsaken hellhole in the Middle East, it might actually help prevent future acts of terrorism from occurring.
Which any president who wasn't mentally defective would already understand.
And our occupation of Iraq helped this how, exactly?
The report on CNN.com said an undercover operative was used to infiltrate the gang, leading to the arrest of seven people described in the story as "al Qaeda wannabes." Hey, wait a minute--an undercover operative? That's a great idea! Since your standard terrorist yahoos operate as a sneaky, shadowy organization, let's approach them in a sneaky, shadowy manner. Not only would that be more cost-effective than using thousands of troops to occupy some godforsaken hellhole in the Middle East, it might actually help prevent future acts of terrorism from occurring.
Which any president who wasn't mentally defective would already understand.
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
Beware the Marauding Judges!
My clock-radio is set to come on at 5:30 every morning, right at the beginning of the NPR news. For the last two mornings I’ve been treated to the stupid Texas twang of acting president Bush, delivering a speech in support of a federal marriage amendment. The good thing is that it gets me out of bed fast, because as I’ve mentioned before, any time that guy speaks I know it’s either going to be a lie or something intended to stir up the flag-worshipers.
But today he said something so absolutely moronic that I knew it was time to fire up the Runes again. Today he said this:
“When activist judges insist on imposing their arbitrary will on the people, the only alternative left to the people is an amendment to the Constitution, the only law a court cannot overturn.”
Oh, where to begin.
How does one become president of the United States without the simplest understanding of how the judicial system works? In Bush’s fanciful world, bands of marauding judges are roaming the land imposing their arbitrary will on the people. It’s like he has no idea what judges do or where they come from, which might in fact be true but in no way diminishes the reality that judges don’t make laws, they interpret them.
And their guide to interpreting laws is, say it with me, the U.S. Constitution.
Bush knows just enough about the Constitution to be dangerous, which can also be said for how much he knows about economics and foreign policy. He’s correct that an amendment to the Constitution can’t be overturned by a court, but he’s overstating the case when he says “the only alternative left to the people” is a Constitutional amendment.
The only alternative to whom? Who are these people so desperately turning from place to place, looking for a solution to the problem of gay marriage?
Why, they’re bigots, that’s who. People who aren’t affected by gay marriage in the least, except to the extent that it doesn’t fit into their narrow view of the world. They’re people who can’t see the difference between marriage as a legal partnership and marriage as a union of blessed souls. Sadly, though, they’re people who don’t pay a damn bit of attention to what a mess this president has been making until he gets them all fired up with some non-existent bogeyman.
In an election year, of course. And people call me a cynic.
But today he said something so absolutely moronic that I knew it was time to fire up the Runes again. Today he said this:
“When activist judges insist on imposing their arbitrary will on the people, the only alternative left to the people is an amendment to the Constitution, the only law a court cannot overturn.”
Oh, where to begin.
How does one become president of the United States without the simplest understanding of how the judicial system works? In Bush’s fanciful world, bands of marauding judges are roaming the land imposing their arbitrary will on the people. It’s like he has no idea what judges do or where they come from, which might in fact be true but in no way diminishes the reality that judges don’t make laws, they interpret them.
And their guide to interpreting laws is, say it with me, the U.S. Constitution.
Bush knows just enough about the Constitution to be dangerous, which can also be said for how much he knows about economics and foreign policy. He’s correct that an amendment to the Constitution can’t be overturned by a court, but he’s overstating the case when he says “the only alternative left to the people” is a Constitutional amendment.
The only alternative to whom? Who are these people so desperately turning from place to place, looking for a solution to the problem of gay marriage?
Why, they’re bigots, that’s who. People who aren’t affected by gay marriage in the least, except to the extent that it doesn’t fit into their narrow view of the world. They’re people who can’t see the difference between marriage as a legal partnership and marriage as a union of blessed souls. Sadly, though, they’re people who don’t pay a damn bit of attention to what a mess this president has been making until he gets them all fired up with some non-existent bogeyman.
In an election year, of course. And people call me a cynic.
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Whose Side Is She On?
There was a time when I would have enthusiastically supported Hillary Clinton for president, but no longer.
She has provided no leadership in getting us out of an illegal, immoral, stupid occupation of a nation that had nothing to do with 9-11. Of course, she's not alone there, but with a majority of Americans now in support of withdrawal (vindicating those of us who said three years ago that going in was a mistake), we need elected officials who can stand up and do the right thing. Men like John Murtha. Women like Nancy Pelosi. Someone has to stand up to this administration of corrupt chickenhawks, and I don't see Ms Clinton doing it.
The last straw was her sponsorship of a bill to make flag-burning illegal. This is insane. Why pander to the superstitious know-nothings? Not only is flag-burning an extremely rare and victimless act, but to even think about it while we're in Iraq, and while the gap between the rich and the poor continues to widen, is grossly irresponsible for an elected official.
Ms Clinton either needs to stand up on the side of reason, humanity, and liberty, or just join the Republicans.
She has provided no leadership in getting us out of an illegal, immoral, stupid occupation of a nation that had nothing to do with 9-11. Of course, she's not alone there, but with a majority of Americans now in support of withdrawal (vindicating those of us who said three years ago that going in was a mistake), we need elected officials who can stand up and do the right thing. Men like John Murtha. Women like Nancy Pelosi. Someone has to stand up to this administration of corrupt chickenhawks, and I don't see Ms Clinton doing it.
The last straw was her sponsorship of a bill to make flag-burning illegal. This is insane. Why pander to the superstitious know-nothings? Not only is flag-burning an extremely rare and victimless act, but to even think about it while we're in Iraq, and while the gap between the rich and the poor continues to widen, is grossly irresponsible for an elected official.
Ms Clinton either needs to stand up on the side of reason, humanity, and liberty, or just join the Republicans.
Friday, November 11, 2005
Watch Your Backs, Dover!
It looks like Pat Robertson just blew his chances of ever being named grand marshal of the Dover, Pennsylvania Christmas Parade. Earlier this week, the citizens of Dover wisely voted out a school board that had been leaning toward introducing intelligent design as a alternative to the theory of evolution, and Robertson took the opportunity to cast judgment on them. “If there’s a disaster in Dover, don’t turn to God,” he said. “You’ve just rejected him from your city.”
(To which I would add “Don’t turn to FEMA, either, because it’ll take them three weeks to respond and they’ll probably go to Dover, Delaware first.” Or not, since FEMA jokes are pretty much outdated by now.)
Robertson went on to recommend that if the citizens of Dover run into any future problems, they should call on Charles Darwin. “Maybe he can help them,” he said. I’m sure he thought that was a clever quip, and I have no doubt that he had a shit-eating smirk worthy of George W. Bush on his face when he said it, but let’s face it, if a disaster were to hit Dover, nobody would be calling on Charles Darwin, because, well, he’s not alive. They’d call the Red Cross, and they’d call the local rescue squads, and they’d pitch in and help each other out, just the way human beings do whenever a disaster hits anywhere.
And if a miracle happened and someone claiming to be God showed up to help, I’m pretty sure his first words would be “Pat Robertson doesn’t speak for me.”
Who does Pat Robertson speak for? One would hope the number of deadheads who believe everything this guy says would be declining steadily, for a couple of reasons, the cynical being that he’s conned them out of so much money that they can no longer afford the ramen noodles and Alpo they were using for sustenance, and the optimistic being that even the most sheeplike fundamentalists have the wherewithal to recognize that when their “religious” leader starts calling for the CIA to assassinate foreign presidents (as Robertson did a few months ago), then maybe, just maybe, he’s crossed the border into Kookyland.
Pat Robertson is worlds apart from the Christianity I grew up with, and I’m betting he’s worlds apart from the Christianity followed by sincere believers today (this would not include the George Bushes of the world). Robertson is a self-worshiping fame whore who absolutely will not pass up a chance to call attention to himself, especially when it gives him a chance to pretend to be an Old Testament prophet: “Yea, verily, the Doverites have sinned against the Lord, and lo, they’d better watch their backs.”
But Pat, what about the people who voted to keep the superstitious school board members in office? Surely God would pluck them out of a disaster, right? “Yea, verily. I’m pretty sure.”
Robertson’s little tirade served no purpose other than to get his mug in the newspapers again. At one point he said the citizens of Dover had “voted God out of the city,” which is the sort of thing zealots trot out every so often to scare people who haven’t had an original thought since the first time they set foot in Sunday School. But, honestly, Pat, which the hell is it? Is your gravy train omnipotent or not? What kind of deity lets himself get voted off the island?
Kudos to the people of Dover for standing up to the backwards thinkers who want the magical theory of creation taught as science. And kudos to the media who reported Robertson’s latest nonsensical outburst. The more you can expose this charlatan as a crazy old coot, the sooner he can wither away.
(To which I would add “Don’t turn to FEMA, either, because it’ll take them three weeks to respond and they’ll probably go to Dover, Delaware first.” Or not, since FEMA jokes are pretty much outdated by now.)
Robertson went on to recommend that if the citizens of Dover run into any future problems, they should call on Charles Darwin. “Maybe he can help them,” he said. I’m sure he thought that was a clever quip, and I have no doubt that he had a shit-eating smirk worthy of George W. Bush on his face when he said it, but let’s face it, if a disaster were to hit Dover, nobody would be calling on Charles Darwin, because, well, he’s not alive. They’d call the Red Cross, and they’d call the local rescue squads, and they’d pitch in and help each other out, just the way human beings do whenever a disaster hits anywhere.
And if a miracle happened and someone claiming to be God showed up to help, I’m pretty sure his first words would be “Pat Robertson doesn’t speak for me.”
Who does Pat Robertson speak for? One would hope the number of deadheads who believe everything this guy says would be declining steadily, for a couple of reasons, the cynical being that he’s conned them out of so much money that they can no longer afford the ramen noodles and Alpo they were using for sustenance, and the optimistic being that even the most sheeplike fundamentalists have the wherewithal to recognize that when their “religious” leader starts calling for the CIA to assassinate foreign presidents (as Robertson did a few months ago), then maybe, just maybe, he’s crossed the border into Kookyland.
Pat Robertson is worlds apart from the Christianity I grew up with, and I’m betting he’s worlds apart from the Christianity followed by sincere believers today (this would not include the George Bushes of the world). Robertson is a self-worshiping fame whore who absolutely will not pass up a chance to call attention to himself, especially when it gives him a chance to pretend to be an Old Testament prophet: “Yea, verily, the Doverites have sinned against the Lord, and lo, they’d better watch their backs.”
But Pat, what about the people who voted to keep the superstitious school board members in office? Surely God would pluck them out of a disaster, right? “Yea, verily. I’m pretty sure.”
Robertson’s little tirade served no purpose other than to get his mug in the newspapers again. At one point he said the citizens of Dover had “voted God out of the city,” which is the sort of thing zealots trot out every so often to scare people who haven’t had an original thought since the first time they set foot in Sunday School. But, honestly, Pat, which the hell is it? Is your gravy train omnipotent or not? What kind of deity lets himself get voted off the island?
Kudos to the people of Dover for standing up to the backwards thinkers who want the magical theory of creation taught as science. And kudos to the media who reported Robertson’s latest nonsensical outburst. The more you can expose this charlatan as a crazy old coot, the sooner he can wither away.
Monday, October 31, 2005
Congratulations on Your Use of the Language, George
Normally when I hear George W. Bush’s voice on the radio I just turn it off, on the assumption that whatever he says is either going to be (a) hyperpatriotic mush or (b) patently untrue. This morning, however, I was in the process of dressing and couldn’t get to the snooze button in time to avoid hearing him announce Samuel Alito as his latest Supreme Court nomination.
The fact that some people are calling Alito “Scalia Lite” is probably enough reason to devote an essay to him, but that’s not the topic here. What I want to discuss is what Bush said at the end of his speech this morning. He turned to Alito and said “Congratulations on your nomination.”
And I thought: “Did this dumbass forget he was the one who nominated him?”
You don’t congratulate someone for something that wouldn’t have happened to him if you hadn’t made it happen. Other people can come up to Alito and congratulate him on his nomination, but it makes absolutely no sense for Bush to do it. Bush can congratulate himself if he wants to.
This would be like a baseball player hitting a grand slam and then congratulating the runners who were on base: “Way to go, guys—way to score those runs!”
You know, it’s not that hard to use the language in a thoughtful, logical way. The alternative is to do what Bush does and repeat stuff he’s overheard in other conversations and hope it’s appropriate.
And by the way, how would you like to be the second choice behind Harriet Miers?
The fact that some people are calling Alito “Scalia Lite” is probably enough reason to devote an essay to him, but that’s not the topic here. What I want to discuss is what Bush said at the end of his speech this morning. He turned to Alito and said “Congratulations on your nomination.”
And I thought: “Did this dumbass forget he was the one who nominated him?”
You don’t congratulate someone for something that wouldn’t have happened to him if you hadn’t made it happen. Other people can come up to Alito and congratulate him on his nomination, but it makes absolutely no sense for Bush to do it. Bush can congratulate himself if he wants to.
This would be like a baseball player hitting a grand slam and then congratulating the runners who were on base: “Way to go, guys—way to score those runs!”
You know, it’s not that hard to use the language in a thoughtful, logical way. The alternative is to do what Bush does and repeat stuff he’s overheard in other conversations and hope it’s appropriate.
And by the way, how would you like to be the second choice behind Harriet Miers?
Monday, October 24, 2005
Now That's What I Call Rapture
Back when I was a churchgoin’ sort of fellow, there was a pretty catchy hymn I liked that contained the lyric “When we all get to heaven/What a day of rejoicing that will be.”
That sounded pretty good to me at the time: all your old friends and relatives gathered around, praising God, whooping it up, looking forward to an eternity of more praising God and whooping it up. It seemed to me that anyone who had the opportunity to get in on something that sounded like so much fun would be crazy to take a pass on it.
Yes, sir, after praising God for a billion years, you’re just getting warmed up for the next trillion.
Anyway, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but these days I take a more rational view of the world. There are enough solvable problems on this planet that everyone ought to be able to find a niche in one of three categories: (1) people trying to solve the problems, (2) people trying to entertain the people trying to solve the problems, and (3) people who have sense enough to stay out of the way of the people trying to solve the problems.
But the way I see it, there’s a fourth category of people who want you to believe that it doesn’t matter if anyone solves these problems or not, because in just a few years it’ll all be over anyhow and several million people will be taken up to heaven in something called the rapture.
What a day of rejoicing that will be—particularly if you have any inclination toward looting. But I digress.
Sad to say, there’s a lot of energy diverted from problem-solving into rapture-preparedness. I refer you now to a website known as Rapture Letters (www.raptureletters.com), a site for people who are convinced they’ll be among the raptured. These people are encouraged to submit the names and email addresses of people they’re pretty sure won’t be raptured, so that when the big day comes, an automatic email will be sent to these people, explaining that their friends and neighbors have been taken up to heaven and offering them an opportunity to get on the right track, too, for whatever comes next. The post-rapture, maybe, or the rapture wrap-up.
Now, call me a cynic, but I think they’re collecting those email addresses for a whole ‘nother reason. I think they’re just trying to build the world’s largest database of heathens and free thinkers. If you read the site carefully, nowhere does it say “We will not spam the person whose email address you send us.”
If you haven’t checked out the site yet, here’s how it’s supposed to work: You send in the name and email address of your unbelieving buddy. That address is added to the database of people scheduled to get the “rapture letter,” which begins “This message has been sent to you by a friend or a relative who has recently disappeared along with millions and millions of people around the world. The reason they chose to send you this letter is because they cared about you and would like you to know the truth about where they went. This may come as a shock to you, but the one who sent you this has been takenup to heaven,” etc etc.
Now, the superpowered mainframe computer at Rapture Letters Headquarters has been programmed to send the rapture letter to the entire database every Friday—unless the head man in charge manually resets it before then. Naturally, the man in charge has no doubt he’s going to be raptured, so if he’s not around to hit the reset button, there can be no other explanation: It’s rapture time.
(The website says that the mailing list will receive the rapture letter on the first Friday after the rapture. So if the rapture happens on a Saturday, it’ll be six days before you get your letter. You could drop a note in the corner mailbox on your way up to heaven, and it'll get there faster than the email.)
The website doesn’t indicate whose brilliant idea this was, but I just imagine that someday, many years from now, the programmer on his deathbed will call his firstborn son to his side: “Son—I’ve been pressing the reset button on the rapture letters program every Friday for the last 57 years. I’d like you to take over for me, son.”
“I promise, Dad.”
And then two hours after the funeral, delete goes the database and Dad’s old computer gets tossed in the landfill.
It’s free to have a name added to the database, but there’s also a section of the website that says they accept “love offerings.” They assure us that only 10 percent of donations are used for administrative costs, while 90 percent are used to “further the kingdom of God.”
I suspect that furthering the kingdom of God covers about as much ground for these people as it does for charlatans like Pat Robertson.
If you think a rapture is going to occur in your lifetime (and it would pretty much have to, if they don’t want all those emails to bounce back), by all means, send the folks at Rapture Letters a name or two and pat yourself on the back. But once you’re done doing that, take a look around and see if there’s something helpful you can do now.
That sounded pretty good to me at the time: all your old friends and relatives gathered around, praising God, whooping it up, looking forward to an eternity of more praising God and whooping it up. It seemed to me that anyone who had the opportunity to get in on something that sounded like so much fun would be crazy to take a pass on it.
Yes, sir, after praising God for a billion years, you’re just getting warmed up for the next trillion.
Anyway, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but these days I take a more rational view of the world. There are enough solvable problems on this planet that everyone ought to be able to find a niche in one of three categories: (1) people trying to solve the problems, (2) people trying to entertain the people trying to solve the problems, and (3) people who have sense enough to stay out of the way of the people trying to solve the problems.
But the way I see it, there’s a fourth category of people who want you to believe that it doesn’t matter if anyone solves these problems or not, because in just a few years it’ll all be over anyhow and several million people will be taken up to heaven in something called the rapture.
What a day of rejoicing that will be—particularly if you have any inclination toward looting. But I digress.
Sad to say, there’s a lot of energy diverted from problem-solving into rapture-preparedness. I refer you now to a website known as Rapture Letters (www.raptureletters.com), a site for people who are convinced they’ll be among the raptured. These people are encouraged to submit the names and email addresses of people they’re pretty sure won’t be raptured, so that when the big day comes, an automatic email will be sent to these people, explaining that their friends and neighbors have been taken up to heaven and offering them an opportunity to get on the right track, too, for whatever comes next. The post-rapture, maybe, or the rapture wrap-up.
Now, call me a cynic, but I think they’re collecting those email addresses for a whole ‘nother reason. I think they’re just trying to build the world’s largest database of heathens and free thinkers. If you read the site carefully, nowhere does it say “We will not spam the person whose email address you send us.”
If you haven’t checked out the site yet, here’s how it’s supposed to work: You send in the name and email address of your unbelieving buddy. That address is added to the database of people scheduled to get the “rapture letter,” which begins “This message has been sent to you by a friend or a relative who has recently disappeared along with millions and millions of people around the world. The reason they chose to send you this letter is because they cared about you and would like you to know the truth about where they went. This may come as a shock to you, but the one who sent you this has been takenup to heaven,” etc etc.
Now, the superpowered mainframe computer at Rapture Letters Headquarters has been programmed to send the rapture letter to the entire database every Friday—unless the head man in charge manually resets it before then. Naturally, the man in charge has no doubt he’s going to be raptured, so if he’s not around to hit the reset button, there can be no other explanation: It’s rapture time.
(The website says that the mailing list will receive the rapture letter on the first Friday after the rapture. So if the rapture happens on a Saturday, it’ll be six days before you get your letter. You could drop a note in the corner mailbox on your way up to heaven, and it'll get there faster than the email.)
The website doesn’t indicate whose brilliant idea this was, but I just imagine that someday, many years from now, the programmer on his deathbed will call his firstborn son to his side: “Son—I’ve been pressing the reset button on the rapture letters program every Friday for the last 57 years. I’d like you to take over for me, son.”
“I promise, Dad.”
And then two hours after the funeral, delete goes the database and Dad’s old computer gets tossed in the landfill.
It’s free to have a name added to the database, but there’s also a section of the website that says they accept “love offerings.” They assure us that only 10 percent of donations are used for administrative costs, while 90 percent are used to “further the kingdom of God.”
I suspect that furthering the kingdom of God covers about as much ground for these people as it does for charlatans like Pat Robertson.
If you think a rapture is going to occur in your lifetime (and it would pretty much have to, if they don’t want all those emails to bounce back), by all means, send the folks at Rapture Letters a name or two and pat yourself on the back. But once you’re done doing that, take a look around and see if there’s something helpful you can do now.
Monday, October 10, 2005
Grasping For A Harriet Miers Analogy
To help you fully understand my position on George W. Bush’s nomination of his personal legal counsel Harriet Miers to a seat on the Supreme Court, I have to take a paragraph or two to discuss a game called Strat-O-Matic Baseball.
Strat-O-Matic, or Strato, is a simulated baseball game using one red die, two white dice, charts for fielding and baserunning, and individual cards that reflect each player’s statistics for the previous year. There are three columns on each card: The hitters’ columns are numbered 1, 2, and 3; the pitchers’ 4, 5, and 6. Under each column is a list of 11 possible baseball results (strikeout, single, groundout, etc) numbered 2-12. Let’s say Bob Gibson is pitching to Carl Yastrzemski, and you roll a 4 on your red die and a total of 7 on the two white dice. You look under Gibson’s 4 column, find the 7, and note that Yaz has struck out.
That’s Strato in a nutshell. Every year you can buy all the major league teams from the previous year, replay the whole season or part of it, trade players between teams without hurting anyone’s feelings, and jot it all down in a notebook—or, if you played as much as I did, in dozens of notebooks.
Basically, playing Strato is how I spent a great deal of my time from eighth grade on through college. I was the manager of 24 big-league teams, and even though I had unlimited power to throw games, make lopsided trades, or shred the cards of players I didn’t like, I maintained the integrity of the game by keeping it as realistic as possible. There were no light-hitting shortstops batting cleanup in my leagues, no iron-horse pitchers throwing all four games of a series.
It was a clean game, by golly. I wouldn’t let myself play favorites.
But usually, somewhere late in the season, I’d get the urge to do something a little strange—and usually it involved giving some lame middle reliever a spot start, even though he had a horrendous ERA, an embarrassing strikeout-to-walk ratio, and a tendency to give up a couple of home runs every time he pitched. We’ll call this incredibly luckless pitcher Harry Myers.
Harry would spend most of the season in the bullpen, only coming in to get some mop-up work in games his team was leading or trailing by ten runs or so. I wouldn’t put him in a close game because it’d look like I was throwing the game to the other side. He was just there to fill out the 25-man roster.
But then once in a blue moon, just to see what would happen, I’d let Harry Myers start a game. The imaginary fans would go berserk: What’s Myers doing in there? What’s the manager thinking? Who in their freaking right mind thinks this weenie-armed righthander deserves a start?!
At no time did Harry Myers ever reward my confidence—he always got shelled. There was a possibility, of course, that the dice could have fallen the right way every time and he could have defied the odds by twirling a three-hit shutout. But he never did. In the whole league, there were dozens of middle relievers who would have performed better in a spot start—but in my more impish moments, I decided to start the worst possible pitcher.
So I don’t know if Harriet Miers would be a good Supreme Court justice or not. She’s been quoted as saying George W. Bush is the smartest man she’s ever met, which would seem to indicate she’s not that bright herself (that or she’s carrying one hell of a torch). All I know is that this nomination is the work of a complete dingleberry, a guy who’s just screwing around, a guy who won’t put out the slightest mental effort to do the right thing. From Iraq to the Supreme Court, he’s like a kid who starts playing with a chemistry set without reading the instructions: “Let’s see what I happens when I do this!”
You think there might be a handful of brilliant, experienced jurists with slightly better qualifications than Harriet Miers? Two or three, maybe? It doesn’t matter to this president. At least when I started a goofball pitcher in a game of Strato, it had no effect on the other 250 million Americans.
Strat-O-Matic, or Strato, is a simulated baseball game using one red die, two white dice, charts for fielding and baserunning, and individual cards that reflect each player’s statistics for the previous year. There are three columns on each card: The hitters’ columns are numbered 1, 2, and 3; the pitchers’ 4, 5, and 6. Under each column is a list of 11 possible baseball results (strikeout, single, groundout, etc) numbered 2-12. Let’s say Bob Gibson is pitching to Carl Yastrzemski, and you roll a 4 on your red die and a total of 7 on the two white dice. You look under Gibson’s 4 column, find the 7, and note that Yaz has struck out.
That’s Strato in a nutshell. Every year you can buy all the major league teams from the previous year, replay the whole season or part of it, trade players between teams without hurting anyone’s feelings, and jot it all down in a notebook—or, if you played as much as I did, in dozens of notebooks.
Basically, playing Strato is how I spent a great deal of my time from eighth grade on through college. I was the manager of 24 big-league teams, and even though I had unlimited power to throw games, make lopsided trades, or shred the cards of players I didn’t like, I maintained the integrity of the game by keeping it as realistic as possible. There were no light-hitting shortstops batting cleanup in my leagues, no iron-horse pitchers throwing all four games of a series.
It was a clean game, by golly. I wouldn’t let myself play favorites.
But usually, somewhere late in the season, I’d get the urge to do something a little strange—and usually it involved giving some lame middle reliever a spot start, even though he had a horrendous ERA, an embarrassing strikeout-to-walk ratio, and a tendency to give up a couple of home runs every time he pitched. We’ll call this incredibly luckless pitcher Harry Myers.
Harry would spend most of the season in the bullpen, only coming in to get some mop-up work in games his team was leading or trailing by ten runs or so. I wouldn’t put him in a close game because it’d look like I was throwing the game to the other side. He was just there to fill out the 25-man roster.
But then once in a blue moon, just to see what would happen, I’d let Harry Myers start a game. The imaginary fans would go berserk: What’s Myers doing in there? What’s the manager thinking? Who in their freaking right mind thinks this weenie-armed righthander deserves a start?!
At no time did Harry Myers ever reward my confidence—he always got shelled. There was a possibility, of course, that the dice could have fallen the right way every time and he could have defied the odds by twirling a three-hit shutout. But he never did. In the whole league, there were dozens of middle relievers who would have performed better in a spot start—but in my more impish moments, I decided to start the worst possible pitcher.
So I don’t know if Harriet Miers would be a good Supreme Court justice or not. She’s been quoted as saying George W. Bush is the smartest man she’s ever met, which would seem to indicate she’s not that bright herself (that or she’s carrying one hell of a torch). All I know is that this nomination is the work of a complete dingleberry, a guy who’s just screwing around, a guy who won’t put out the slightest mental effort to do the right thing. From Iraq to the Supreme Court, he’s like a kid who starts playing with a chemistry set without reading the instructions: “Let’s see what I happens when I do this!”
You think there might be a handful of brilliant, experienced jurists with slightly better qualifications than Harriet Miers? Two or three, maybe? It doesn’t matter to this president. At least when I started a goofball pitcher in a game of Strato, it had no effect on the other 250 million Americans.
Saturday, September 24, 2005
One Nation Under Whatever
Last week a federal court in San Francisco declared the phrase “under God” unconstitutional in the pledge of allegiance. This prompted the usual suspects to put up their usual clamor, as in “This is another example of the persecution of Christians!” and “We’re playing right into the Soviet Union’s hands!” (Seriously—everyone raise a hand who knows someone who thinks the Soviet Union still exists. I have a family member who said, when the Berlin Wall came down, “It’s a trick.”)
In the midst of all the clamor, I don’t see anyone stating the obvious, which is the fact that complaining about “under God” in the pledge of allegiance is like complaining about finding a fishhook in your tainted salmon. The pledge is a ridiculous waste of schoolchildren’s time, whether it’s two words shorter or not.
As a reminder, here it is: I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Now, surely I’m not the only person who realizes that everything after the word “stands” is fluff. It’s irrelevant. It’s nothing more than a description of the republic for which the flag stands, and as such it’s unnecessary. You’ve already pledged allegiance to the flag and the republic, so there’s no need for a commercial at the end. It might as well say I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all, the land of the free and the home of the brave, a place with 50 states, and the birthplace of jazz, professional baseball, and David Letterman.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re a believer or not: “Under God” has nothing to do with what you’ve pledged allegiance to. It’s fluff, and it’s fluff that was crammed into the pledge in the 1950s to show the Russians that we were just as good at indoctrinating kids as they were. I'll assume there were protests at the time, protests that they should be taking stuff out of the pledge instead of putting stuff in, although now that I think of it I’m sure that would have prompted a visit from HUAC.
So now for the sake of argument, let’s imagine that the fluff is gone, and that the pledge is down to its bare bones: I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. Now what do we do with it?
Do we make people say it every day? Well, that seems silly. It’s a pledge. Once you’ve pledged something, you’ve pledged it. If someone comes along and tries to make you pledge it a second time, your reaction should be “No, thanks, I’m good—I already pledged that.”
That’s especially true of allegiance. Unless you see a second-grader sneaking off to pledge allegiance to Great Britain or Antarctica or the “Soviet Union,” I think we can safely assume that his or her allegiance still lies with the country it was pledged to yesterday.
And that brings me to my final point. Does anyone believe that even the smartest kindergartener has the slightest idea what he’s doing when he says the pledge of allegiance? Good lord, no. When I was in fourth grade, we had to write a one-page paper on what the pledge meant to us. As I placed my essay on the teacher’s desk, I noticed that the kid ahead of me had titled his “The Pledge of the Legions.”
So here was a guy who thought he’d been saying the Pledge of the Legions every day for the last five years—which had to mean he thought he was saying “I pledge of the legions to the flag…,” which isn’t exactly common English syntax, which means he didn’t have a clue what he was saying.
Just like the rest of us.
All the energy expended on pursuing a court case to remove “under God” from the pledge of allegiance seems misguided to me. It’s aiming at the wrong target. Take out “under God” and you’re still left with a pointless exercise, because no pledge is valid if someone makes you stand up and say it.
If the goal is to create loyal Americans, I suggest discarding the pledge and using that time to study the Constitution. The short-term benefit of that is less wasted classroom time. The long-term benefit is a more conscientious electorate.
One Additional Thought on Pointless Exercises
+ I’ll never forget that time in grade school when that KGB agent disguised as a set of monkey bars offered me five bucks for a map of the locations of Defense Department missile silos. I told him I’d have to ask my mom and dad, but heck, now I know I should have said “Sorry, man, I just pledged allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands—for the 387th straight school day.”
In the midst of all the clamor, I don’t see anyone stating the obvious, which is the fact that complaining about “under God” in the pledge of allegiance is like complaining about finding a fishhook in your tainted salmon. The pledge is a ridiculous waste of schoolchildren’s time, whether it’s two words shorter or not.
As a reminder, here it is: I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Now, surely I’m not the only person who realizes that everything after the word “stands” is fluff. It’s irrelevant. It’s nothing more than a description of the republic for which the flag stands, and as such it’s unnecessary. You’ve already pledged allegiance to the flag and the republic, so there’s no need for a commercial at the end. It might as well say I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all, the land of the free and the home of the brave, a place with 50 states, and the birthplace of jazz, professional baseball, and David Letterman.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re a believer or not: “Under God” has nothing to do with what you’ve pledged allegiance to. It’s fluff, and it’s fluff that was crammed into the pledge in the 1950s to show the Russians that we were just as good at indoctrinating kids as they were. I'll assume there were protests at the time, protests that they should be taking stuff out of the pledge instead of putting stuff in, although now that I think of it I’m sure that would have prompted a visit from HUAC.
So now for the sake of argument, let’s imagine that the fluff is gone, and that the pledge is down to its bare bones: I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. Now what do we do with it?
Do we make people say it every day? Well, that seems silly. It’s a pledge. Once you’ve pledged something, you’ve pledged it. If someone comes along and tries to make you pledge it a second time, your reaction should be “No, thanks, I’m good—I already pledged that.”
That’s especially true of allegiance. Unless you see a second-grader sneaking off to pledge allegiance to Great Britain or Antarctica or the “Soviet Union,” I think we can safely assume that his or her allegiance still lies with the country it was pledged to yesterday.
And that brings me to my final point. Does anyone believe that even the smartest kindergartener has the slightest idea what he’s doing when he says the pledge of allegiance? Good lord, no. When I was in fourth grade, we had to write a one-page paper on what the pledge meant to us. As I placed my essay on the teacher’s desk, I noticed that the kid ahead of me had titled his “The Pledge of the Legions.”
So here was a guy who thought he’d been saying the Pledge of the Legions every day for the last five years—which had to mean he thought he was saying “I pledge of the legions to the flag…,” which isn’t exactly common English syntax, which means he didn’t have a clue what he was saying.
Just like the rest of us.
All the energy expended on pursuing a court case to remove “under God” from the pledge of allegiance seems misguided to me. It’s aiming at the wrong target. Take out “under God” and you’re still left with a pointless exercise, because no pledge is valid if someone makes you stand up and say it.
If the goal is to create loyal Americans, I suggest discarding the pledge and using that time to study the Constitution. The short-term benefit of that is less wasted classroom time. The long-term benefit is a more conscientious electorate.
One Additional Thought on Pointless Exercises
+ I’ll never forget that time in grade school when that KGB agent disguised as a set of monkey bars offered me five bucks for a map of the locations of Defense Department missile silos. I told him I’d have to ask my mom and dad, but heck, now I know I should have said “Sorry, man, I just pledged allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands—for the 387th straight school day.”
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