06/25/2009

Joe Biden Date Night

Barack Obama is causing me trouble. Me, personally.

The president and first lady are making a habit – a very public habit – of reserving one night a week for a date. Marriage maintenance is important for couples who’ve been together a while, especially if they have kids and the day job demands plenty of attention and energy.

So, it’s great to see the first couple going out to eat or catching a Broadway play. (Some of the Obamas’ opponents have sniped that the Broadway excursion cost the taxpayers money. They’re right. It did. What did those many long weekends in Crawford cost? Why didn’t those same people mention that?)

So I think it’s great the example-setters-in-chief are seen holding hands and making time for each other. On these warm, early-summer nights, it’s nice for Adrienne and I to take an evening stroll along the lakeside, maybe stop for a creamee. (That’s Vermont vernacular for soft-serve ice cream.)
Continue reading »

By floegel | Posted in Civil Liberty, Commentary | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (0)
06/18/2009

Act Accordingly

There are two ways of relating to government: 1) I think my government is acting in my best interest – and act accordingly or 2) I think my government is not acting in my best interest – and act accordingly.

Most of us fall between 1) and 2). I was closer to 2) for eight years and acted accordingly. Finally, those actions - combined with actions by millions of my fellow citizens - have brought me closer to 1). Millions of others who were 1)s for eight years are now 2)s. Some of those people have guns and have turned to tragic acts of terrorism in recent weeks.

In Iran, the country has been heading one way for the last 30 years, although the momentum picked up significantly in the last four years. People finally drifted much close to 2) than 1) and acted accordingly, they came out and – apparently - voted for a change in direction. Change did not take place and the result of that failure to change is leaking out of Iran, despite the regime’s best efforts to slap a lid on communication technology.
Continue reading »

By floegel | Posted in Civil Liberty, Commentary, Electoral Politics | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)
06/11/2009

Boneheads with Guns

This week, the National Rifle Association appealed to the Supreme Court a ruling that upholds Chicago’s ban on the ownership of handguns. A year ago, the court ruled that the District of Columbia couldn’t ban handgun ownership. The district, however, is a federal colony and the court’s ruling applied to federal law. The Chicago ban is state law and the Illinois appeals court ruled that state law can be narrower than federal law. (A federal court in San Francisco ruled the other way. It said Second Amendment rights couldn’t be abridged by state law.)

I support the Second Amendment, but I don’t think it is a carte blanche for owning assault rifles or armor-piercing bullets. I think there’s nothing wrong with background checks and cooling-off periods. Or, for that matter, with local handgun bans.

Why? Because I read the papers (or their on-line equivalents). Here are a couple items from Vermont and beyond.

- A 73-year-old retired college professor was shot to death as he sat eating dinner with his wife. The culprits – so far two have been charged – were boneheads with guns who set up their own back yard shooting range 750 feet from the professor’s home. The weapon that killed the prof was – you guessed it – an assault rifle that one of the men, Brad Lussier, fired several times without aiming.

For those of you who may have missed it, Brad Lussier decided to fire an assault weapon without aiming in a residential neighborhood, killing an innocent bystander and forcing his wife to watch her husband die before her eyes.
Continue reading »

By floegel | Posted in Civil Liberty, Commentary | Tagged , , | Comments (1)
05/28/2009

Tuesday Night in a Small Room

Tuesday, the first day back to work after the holiday weekend and The English Beat was playing at Higher Ground. Dave Rap, my former colleague, calls and says we should go to the show because Dave Wakeling, another former colleague, leads the band.

(In the early ‘90s, Dave Wakeling worked for Greenpeace on the west coast, encouraging celebrities to donate some of their star power to environmental issues. Dave Rap and I worked for Greenpeace on the east coast, on the considerably-less-than-glamorous toxics campaign.)

I knew the English Beat from the radio 30 years ago, but I never really followed the band. Now Dave Rap and I were leaning against the bar at the back of a converted movie theater, one third full of middle-aged white people watching a warm-up band whose name I never did catch.
Continue reading »

By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Tagged , | Comments (0)
05/21/2009

Fiscal Fitness

Among the better pieces of advice I got from my dad was: “The only two things worth borrowing money for are an education and a house.” I took that advice. It took ten years to pay off the education; I’m still paying on the house.

When I landed my first job as a newspaper reporter, I spent every nickel I had moving and getting an apartment. I borrowed 50 bucks from my boss to feed myself until I got my first paycheck ($169.15 a week). Later that summer, I applied for my first credit card ($500 limit) and I’ve been paying the balance every month since.

The point here is not to brag about my fiscal competence. I knew early on I was destined for a low-wage career, so I knew fiscal fitness would be as important to me as physical fitness is to an athlete. My version of stomach crunches.
Continue reading »

By floegel | Posted in Commentary, Economy | Tagged | Comments (0)
05/14/2009

Catching Reality

In the 21st century, change in America happens from the bottom up. That’s a sad commentary on our national leaders. Barack Obama, who has moved the federal government more in the past four months than the previous 30 years, is still playing catch-up to where most Americans have long since been.

A few weeks ago, I noted that four states had legalized same-sex marriage. Since then, Maine has become the fifth state, New Hampshire and New York may join the trend within days or weeks.

There’s another moving trend that’s catching up to American’s reality: in the last two weeks, Minnesota and New Hampshire have become the 14th and 15th states to approve the medicinal use of marijuana.

We have a medical marijuana law here in Vermont. Just as was the case with same-sex civil unions, passing a law letting sick people smoke pot did not cause the walls to fall in. After getting a doctor’s prescription, people whose conditions would be improved by smoking (or eating) marijuana can register with the state and then possess two mature and seven immature plants. Still imperfect, the law does not describe a legal pathway to obtaining those plants, but still… progress.
Continue reading »

By floegel | Posted in Civil Liberty, Commentary | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)
04/30/2009

Like a Rolling Stone

“May you live in interesting times,” is supposedly an old Chinese curse. I doubt it’s really Chinese, but I’m becoming convinced on the curse bit.

I like to keep up with the news, but I’m suffering from sensory overload: a huge economic crisis, what is on the verge of being labeled a global swine flu pandemic (or as the American Pork Producers Council implores, “the H1N1 virus”), a global war on terror (or as the Obama administration corrects, “overseas contingency operations”), an outbreak of euphemisms, the end of the American auto industry as we’ve known it, musical chairs in the US Senate, nuclear Pakistan becoming unstable, nuclear North Korea becoming more unstable, none-too-stable Iran lusting for nuclear capacity.

Hurricane season is just one month away. WooHoo!

In the summer of 2002, I posted a commentary in which I speculated that if I could have accurately predicted 2002’s news (airplanes flying into skyscrapers, shoe bombs) twenty years earlier, I would have been treated for mental illness. By 1989, my mental illness would have been worse that it was in 1982.
Continue reading »

By floegel | Posted in Civil Liberty, Commentary, Global Warming, Iraq Invasion, September 11th | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)