Monthly Archives: May 2008

The State of the Police State

5/29/2008 – 10:04 am

Tuesday’s New York Times reported an outbreak of corruption among border guards along the U.S.-Mexican border. Although most of the corruption reported involves the smuggling of illegal aliens, similar corruption could introduce drugs, weapons and/or terrorists to the U.S. In short, the corrupt border agents do the opposite of what they were hired [...]

By floegel | Posted in Civil Liberty, Commentary | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

M&M Enterprises

5/22/2008 – 8:35 am

When I was a young man, I read (as every young person should) Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22,” a novel about the absurd bureaucracy of war and the misery it wreaks on those caught within it.
The most absurd character in the book is Milo Minderbinder, who – at least initially – runs the mess hall. A [...]

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

Things I Never Learned in School

5/15/2008 – 11:41 am

History question: In what year did an American woman first cast a vote for president? The standard answer is 1920, after the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution granted suffrage to American women. But it’s wrong.
The first presidential ballot was cast by a woman in the election of 1872. The [...]

By floegel | Posted in Civil Liberty, Commentary, Electoral Politics | Comments (0)

Still Doubting?

5/8/2008 – 10:14 am

One of my more frequent and controversial topics of comment is peak oil. It was nine years ago this week that I first wrote of the phenomenon. For those of you who may have missed all those commentaries, here’s a quick recap.
“Peak oil” is the term used to describe the situation that [...]

By floegel | Posted in Commentary, Energy, Global Warming, Oil, Peak Oil | Tagged , , , , | Comments (1)

I Can’t Blog

5/4/2008 – 4:04 pm

Maybe it’s like dancing, I don’t know. I’m not very good at that either.
Justin, my web guru (whose Green Galoshes is linked down there to the left), sat me a down over a cup of coffee last fall and tried, as he periodically does, to help me improve this page.
He told me to add [...]

By floegel | Posted in Asides | Tagged , , | Comments (1)

Symptoms

5/1/2008 – 8:31 am

Forgive me. Accept my apologies. For the first time in 11 years, I missed not one, but two weeks in a row. I was overtaken by events and in the midst of the overtaking, I realized this is a signature symptom, perhaps the signature symptom, of contemporary life. So I’m trying to [...]

By floegel | Posted in Civil Liberty, Commentary, Economy | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)