Inalienable Rights

House Takes Up 'Pledge' Protection Jul 19th - 11:02am By JIM ABRAMS Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - House debate on a bill to protect the Pledge of Allegiance from legal challenges because of the "under God" phrase erupted in heated rhetoric Wednesday with lawmakers from both parties using religious references to support their side. (WTOP News)

There they go again, confusing the Constitution and what is in it with trivial poems like the pledge of allegiance (which, when actually looked at is a joke). Why? Well, let us start with the following small details:

1) There is no Pledge in my copy of the Constitution, nor the Bill of Rights, nor does it appear to be a requirement for becoming a citizen.

2) There is nothing about God of any stripe or flavor in the Constitution, nor is there any need for it, other than:
Congress (you, know the blowhards that are wasting time on trivialities while the nation burns) shall make no law (my emphasis) respecting an establishment of religion (which to me, indicates that there is to be no State sanctioned religion) or (my emphasis again) prohibiting the free exercise thereof (which includes not recognizing one to begin with) (Amendment 1 to the US Constitution, ratified December 15, 1791)

The pledge, in its glory includes some wonderfully patriotic language (that George Orwell, in his essay on Politics and the English Language would have a field day with) that is frankly so banner waving, so banal, as to be completely inane and out of place. The Republican party is doing everything in its power to turn the words and the heart of the pledge upside down and backwards as fast as possible. What was meant as a way for people to show their patriotism has become a trite verse that has so little meaning for most, they recite it as rote without any fervor or understanding. There is no liberty in a nation that requires ID cards to cross internal borders by rail, plane or bus. There is no justice if you are not of the ruling (white) class, and there is certainly no God when you cannot define what you mean by the term much less who's god you are under.

Meanwhile, people are struggling to make ends meet as the economy slags into a morass of confusion and lost earnings, prices go up as energy costs skyrocket, and the infrastructure crumbles while intellectuals sit in ivory towers and worry about how to keep atomic bombs out of the country where more people will be killed by gun fire, drunk drivers and obesity in a week than will ever be killed by terrorism.

It is time to stop waving the flag and time to start doing some real work. So, can we perhaps get back to the business of running the country instead of ruining it? Please?

Toronto to bid on Expo

Ottawa must help Toronto lure Expo Jul. 19, 2006. 01:00 AM ROYSON JAMES On a glorious summer day when the Muskokas beckon and the Bay St. executive is thinking about anything but profiteering and city-building nine years from now, Councillor Brian Ashton brings the gospel of Expo 2015 to the heart of the business district. (Toronto Star)

Now, I would be the first to tell you that Toronto is a beautiful city with a myrid of things to do, to see and to enjoy. From the food to the culture to the shopping, it is a beautiful city and that is without leaving the downtown core. So I am surprised that the city is even trying to win the World's Fair. As pointed out in the article:

The event is far away, few people know Toronto's bidding, and Expo is a world event that ranks a distant third to the Olympics and soccer's World Cup as a prized catch.

So, why is Toronto even bothering? The return on investment, if estimates are correct but they so rarely are for this sort of thing, is $7 for every $1 (and that is Canadian by the way) invested. As an investor, that is not a lot of wiggle room, especially given the poor track record of the Olymics and World Cups over the past few years - and this is an event that is third. Does anyone even remember the last World's Fair? (Think hard...Anything? Well, it has been in Canada twice, once in 1986 in Vancouver and in Montreal in 1967 - which is where the baseball team got its name from...the last Expo was in Japan and it was in 2005...the last one I remember was the one in Spain in 1992, but only because my sister was living there at the time).

So the question remains, why host a World's Fair in Toronto in 2015? And even if they win the bid, where are you going to host it? Most of the land in Downtown has been developed and there is not a lot of undeveloped land close into the city that is situated to be easy to use. So you then have to start talking about infrastructure and other financial and logistical issues that the residents have to be convinced are a good thing. Toronto is not as cynical as New York, but that does not make it an easy sell at all.

More information on the World's Fairs

Random Thoughts on Wednesday

A few little things that are bothering me, in no particular order:

From CBS News this morning, they are reporting that the cost of housing some 27,000 illegal immigrants (one has to assume pending deportation) will be close to $1 billion dollars next year and given the current stress on the federal penal system, the money is expected to go to private prisons.

I find two things wrong with this. First, that the government is outsourcing its prisons. There is just something wrong with that in my mind. But second, I am bothered by the rather high cost. That works out to roughly $40,000 a year per prisoner. Now, maybe it is just me, but if, as a nation we cannot afford to pay our teachers $40,000 a year, why are we paying that much to house illegal immigrants? The story did not mention if these people were axe wielding sociopaths or if they were just your run of the mill worker looking to make something better of themselves. Clearly the costs do not seem to add up to me.

Some general thoughts on the evacuations from Lebanon. Some US citizens seem upset (at least) about the way they are being treated by the US government when it comes to being evacuated from the country. The first thought that leapt into my head is that the entire region is a powder keg that makes terrorism in the United States seem like little more than violent crime (in fact, more money needs to be focused on the violent crime than the efforts being wasted on terrorism combined, but that is a different discussion). So what sort of preparations did these people take? Clearly, the answer for a large number of them is none. One man talked about crossing to Cyprus, having to sleep on the deck of the car ferry in the rain with no food. I guess he did not get a chance to check out the Be Prepared web sites (Ready.Gov, MakeAPlan). It just baffles me that anyone that voluntarily is going to the region is not prepared with at least six ways to get out of the region. It has not changed in 20 years.

The second thought that leapt to mind is why bother evacuations at all? Aside from a few people that are there on government business (who, again, should be more than well prepared for getting themselves out of harms way), what is to be gained? If you are in the region, you should be able to go to ground like the locals. You do not see them being evacuated do you? I keep scratching my head over this whole mess. After all, 3,000 years of hostility is not going to go away over night.

Sports-Betting Operation Shuts Web Site Jul 18th - 10:00pm By DAVID KOENIG Associated Press Writer FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) - An offshore sports-betting operation targeted by U.S. prosecutors shut down its Web site Tuesday night, a day after a federal judge ordered the company to stop letting Americans place wagers. (WTOP News)

This is another area that is just bugging the heck out of me. Rather than wasting precious tax dollars that could be better spent in other areas, why not just make on-line gambling legal, collect taxes from it like the lottery and have done with it. This is like trying to hold back the ocean with a strainer.

People are going to gamble, regardless of the moral tags you put on it and the damage it does to families, etc, etc, etc, ad nausium. Las Vegas has give us the model. Let's use it and get back to more critical problems like crumbling roads and failing power grids.

Finally: I am tired of government waste. I have been a government contractor and I have seen the amount of waste every federal office has. Do I have some ideas on how to improve things? Of course. But I am also a realist. The federal government will not clean itself up until it implodes. Unfortunately, by then, it will be far too late.

It isn't the OS

"The problem wasn't with the fact that we moved to open source, but that the move was organised so poorly by school management. If teachers had received the proper training and been introduced to the system, then open source could have been everything we were promised. Unfortunately it wasn't." [Ping Wales]

What is highlighted in this article is the single biggest reason software projects fail, regardless of operating system, or technological superiority. It becausease the move is poorly organized (the article is Welsh, get over it) and little or no training is provided to those that need it most and are expected to be productive with the system.