Chemical Spill Near My Office

November 19, 2004 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Current Affairs 

This is taking place 2 buildings away right now.  The spill occurred at 9:45am – or about 2 1/2 hours ago.  The road into our industrial development is closed to incoming traffic – anybody from here who leaves is stuck.

I took a walk next door to the post office and bought some stamps.  There is a single news chopper hovering overhead, and a news SUV was parked at the post office.  (The post office is probably screwed up as well – nobody can get in or out.)

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UPDATE 12:40pm – The link above has a better story now.  Apparently they’ve opened the road again.

Counting Sheep at Bedtime

November 9, 2004 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Can't Make This Up, Life, Travel 

So, I’m lying in bed last night reading before going to sleep.  I still have the police scanner on.

I hear:

“Station 40, respond to the Turnpike mile marker xx.x northbound on an overturned vehicle with possible entrapment.  Use caution for sheep running around on the highway.”

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The story:
Newsday Story

You can’t make this stuff up.

Morals and the Right Wing

November 9, 2004 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Current Affairs 

I’ve been meaning to write a post on morals, and the right-wing’s attempt to control them since Bush’s re-election.  About how the ultra-right “bring back Puritanism” folks feel that they have a mandate after the very close election to turn us all into Bible-thumpers.

However, Michele of A Small Victory said it better in her post “Check your Morals at my Door”.

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I prefer the left.

Election’s Over – Group Hug or Fight Harder?

November 4, 2004 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Current Affairs 

I’m worried.

The election is over. I voted for Kerry. I suppose that I could consider my vote wasted, but my state was actually won by Kerry so that really isn’t true. One of the major reasons that I voted for Kerry was a lack of trust in Bush and Bush’s role as a divider rather than a uniter (maybe that’s two reasons).

What we’ve been left with is a polarized country. This election caused such divisions that people were defacing election signs, Kindergarten teachers were telling their charges how their parents should vote, and families and co-workers were having heated arguments. I remember the 2000 election, and the talk wasn’t about which candidate was evil – it was about which candidate was better (or worse, for those who took the “lesser of two evils” tack). Nobody called either candidate a fascist dictator. This year, things were just plain ugly.

This year’s campaigns were about fear. On the Republican side – fear of terrorism and fear of non-conformists (led by non-Christians and gays). On the Democratic side – fear of unemployment and fear of a military quagmire. I watched all 4 Presidential and VP debates – the candidates spent most of their time talking about how terrible the other guy is rather than how good they are or what they will do.

This fear and attack attitude spread into the general populace. I had family members telling me how bad Kerry was and how a vote for Kerry would cause terrorists to attack. In the blogverse, it was even worse. The right-wing and left-wing went at each other day and night (often depriving themselves of sleep to comment) and used each other’s words to fire up their own side. The right saw the left as “moonbats” in need of medication. The left saw the right as fascists trying to re-create the Nazi party.

The election itself came right down to the wire – 68,000 voters in Ohio. It could easily have been 500 voters in Florida again, or 10,000 voters in Missouri. What some right-wingers are calling a “mandate” was really only a 51-48 popular vote, and a narrow electoral win.

So the big question is:

Can we come together again?

For a short while after 9/11, the country came together united. We all flew our flags. We all gave money ($1 Billion in a week!) to support the victims. I even saw it on the road in increased courtesy by drivers. For a short time, we were united as a country.

The war in Afghanistan was supported by most of the country – only the staunchest anti-war people were opposed. This was a response to an attack on US soil and very few questioned it.

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Enter the US Presidential campaign. The Democratic primary process was, in a word, goofy. The Democrats ended up choosing the candidate least offensive to the most people – not the best but the most acceptable to the hard-core party activists. Rather than having candidates drop out as a single leader emerged, we had candidates whittled away as they made errors on the campaign trail (some quite bizarre). On the Republican side, Bush was a no-brainer as the incumbent.

The campaign took a major swing into the mud pit. The Bush campaign repeated their assertion that a vote for Kerry was a request for terrorists to attack the US again. The Kerry campaign asserted that a vote for Bush was a choice to kill US soldiers in Iraq. It got particular bad towards the end where each campaign started making up their opponents’ position – Bush claiming that Kerry was pro-gay and Kerry claiming that Bush would bring back the draft.

I spent the day and evening of Election Day hanging out at the Command Post chat room. I had expected the room to be a source of news – where each of us posted news that we found locally or nationally about the election in order to stay informed. Instead, I found the sewer of name-calling that the campaign itself had been. The Command Post readership is primarily right-wing, but the name-calling came from both sides in equal measure from each participant. Not all of the chatters were nasty, but the nasty ones more than made up for that and 75-90% of the traffic was worthless.

The election ended in a heap or tired, mangled American psyches. All of us have one heck of an election hangover.

The question remains – where do we go from here? In his concession speech, Kerry stated that it is time for America to come back together again. Bush asked Kerry supporters for their backing of his aims (though those aims are unacceptable to Kerry supporters). The only question in my mind is – do they mean it?

I fear that they do not. I can’t see any reason for Bush to reach out to Democrats or even Republican moderates. There just isn’t any incentive, and there is plenty of incentive for the Religious Right to grip the party more tightly than they do now. On the Democratic side, the party is in disarray. There’s just so much infighting that the Democrats can’t even work together to take back the White House. Elements of the Democrats seemed to be setting themselves up to win the NEXT election in 2008 (against someone other than Bush, and probably not Cheney either) rather than winning this one.

On the street, there isn’t any incentive to change either. It takes a big change to shake someone’s thinking processes. 9/11 provided that push, and the country showed it. Iraq provided that push again, and the country entered the division that we see today. I don’t see what is going to shake us out of that mode.

I truly feel that the division will remain until there is a flashpoint. I think we’re headed for a repeat of the late 60’s here without the drugs. If the anti-war people and the people concerned about unemployment and underemployment ever manage to link up, they can be a major force in American life (not just politics – life).

I hope I’m wrong, but I fear that I’m right. We’re not going to be united any time soon.

I’m a Pilot!

October 30, 2004 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Flying 

Mark Smith Temporary Pilot Certificate

I’m an FAA-certificated Private Pilot – Airplane Single-Engine Land!
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It’s taken me 16 months and more money than you’d like to imagine to get here. You can read my whole story in My Flight Training Diary.

A Useful Voting Test

October 27, 2004 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Current Affairs 

Laurence Simon has come up with a brilliant voting test.

Basically, you give voters conflicting directions and if they fail to question them, their vote doesn’t count.

It can be taken with the help of food or without cialis prescription online food that is completely on you. Because of litholytic nature of apamarg is very beneficial in breakdown of kidney and bladder stone. buy generic levitra The drug brings more oxygen to the reproductive organs. viagra pill Instead eat lots of foods rich in fiber, go for fruits order generic cialis and vegetables. It’s a great idea. It combines a basic IQ test with a test that the person involved questions authority when necessary.

Unfortunately, we’ll never implement it. Our system guarantees the right to vote to idiots and human sheep.

NJ Congressional Race Preview

October 26, 2004 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Current Affairs 

This year, the Command Post Election 2004 board has asked me to be a local New Jersey correspondent for this year’s election. I will be posting at that site starting November 1, 2004. This is intended to be fairly objective, though if it is skewed it will likely be due to my general support for liberal causes and Democratic candidates (a fair disclosure, yes?).

In order to get ready, here’s a preview of the NJ Congressional races. All 13 House seats are up for election – neither Senate seat is due for election this year.

Summary: The incumbents are favored heavily in all districts. No House party balance shifts are likely from NJ.

Read more

Blaming the Victim

October 22, 2004 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Current Affairs, Sports 

In Boston, 21-year-old Victoria Snelgrove was killed by police firing “pepper balls” into a crowd of revelers celebrating the Red Sox victory over the Yankees in the American League Championship series. (AP Article via Yahoo)

The mayor blamed the revelers for her death. Apparently, someone standing near her threw a bottle at a mounted police officer, and another officer fired the plastic balls filled with pepper spray into the crowd. One of the balls pierced her eye and she later died of head injuries.

As a result, the mayor is storming about banning alcohol in Boston during the World Series, and asking colleges to expel any students involved in criminal activity.

I think we have two problems here:
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2. The police overreacted. According to the story, the police are supposed to avoid shooting the pepper balls at people’s faces – something that clearly didn’t happen.

I think that the rowdy fans take responsibility for the riots, but that the police have ultimate responsibility for Victoria’s death. Training was clearly broken in the use of pepper balls anywhere near someone’s head.

(Disclaimer – my brother is a police officer. He probably wouldn’t be too happy about what I’ve written here.)

Freedom of the Press?

October 19, 2004 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Current Affairs 

Sinclair Broadcasting has fired a reporter and chief of it’s news department’s Washington bureau for making comments in the media critical of Sinclair’s decision to air an anti-John Kerry “documentary” just a week before the election. (Yahoo News Story)

In case you’ve missed the story to date, here’s a recap. Sinclair Broadcasting is controlled by right-wing executives. They’re highly critical of John Kerry. They have ordered their 62 broadcast stations to pre-empt programming (in some cases major network programming) in prime-time next week to air the documentary “Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal”. This documentary is a scathing account of John Kerry’s anti-war activities after returning from Vietnam in the early 70’s. It’s being called by some as the right-wing equivalent to “Fahrenheit 9/11”.

Here, Sinclair has clearly crossed the line. Most journalists are careful not to criticize their news organization’s owners, but in many cases when they feel the need to do so they do. Usually, they aren’t fired. In this case, Sinclair took retribution against one of it’s objective news reporters for not toeing the company line in the election. That is wrong.

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————–

Side note: Can you remember when campaigns used to talk about how good THEIR candidate was, not how bad the OTHER candidate is? I think I vaguely remember this from my childhood, but I’m not sure.

Presidential Debate #1 – after picture

October 1, 2004 by · 2 Comments
Filed under: Current Affairs 

(I may flesh this out later – I have a meeting in 15 minutes but I wanted to get my thoughts down before I talked to others.)

John F. Kerry

Overall, I thought Kerry did a good job. He was weak in the first half of the debate – constantly criticizing Bush without offering his own plan. When Jim Lehrer finally asked him point blank about his plan, he started offering about 50% plan and 50% criticism.

I was comfortable with his plans. Many others are likely to complain that his Iraq plan is too vague, but I think he said what had to be said. We will leave when we can, we will bring in more help, and we will train the Iraqis to take over.

I don’t know what the whole thumb thing is about. I know that it’s not polite to point, but the thumb thing is weird too.

Kerry generally appeared much more Presidential than he has in the past on the campaign trail. He also appeared more Presidential than Bush.

George W. Bush

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I still don’t agree with many of Bush’s policy decisions, but I do admire the fact that he sticks to them. He did fail to pin the “flip-flopper” label on Kerry. You can expect consistency from Bush.

I was very surprised that Bush managed to use a 5-syllable word (“vociferously”) correctly and also pronounced it correctly. There were several points where real intelligence showed through the “common folk” facade. Bush did show that he’s not an idiot – but I still can’t understand why he wants us to think that he is an idiot.

Format and General Decorum

I was pleasantly surprised that the candidates followed the format more or less successfully. Kerry lost points here by using his time to reinforce a previous point rather than answering the current question several times. Bush lost points here by being the first to break the rules – by demanding (on several occasions) the one-minute discussion time. Jim Lehrer had made it clear that the one-minute discussion time was at HIS discretion.

The only real difference between the candidates showed in their reactions to each other’s speech. I was surprised that the TV coverage showed the other candidate while one was speaking. I’m sure I’d read that this would not be allowed. Anyway, Kerry took the lead here. He nodded when Bush scored a point against him. This showed respect for his opponent. Bush on the other hand scowled and grimaced when Kerry said something that upset him. I got the sense from Kerry that he respects Bush as a person and a leader, but Bush seems to have nothing but contempt for Kerry. That probably explains the diplomacy problems that Bush is having in the world.

Winner: I declare this a tie. Kerry might have led slightly on the intangibles, but otherwise they were even. Kerry did improve his standing in my mind as a result, however.

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