Madness and politics...

I am insane. I am also politically aware (albeit not to a level of expertise I would prefer). This does not mean I am going to go out and shoot a bunch of strangers, no matter how much I loathe their views or actions. Those who think that it is politics which continues to trigger violent outbursts... well, they have their own insanity, don't they?

Remember when the experts blamed rock and roll music for assassinations? Or, for that matter, the violent television programs and movies? Twinkies? It's easy to point a finger at apparent influences, isn't it? But the trouble is, nuts are nuts. Regardless of what you put into their heads, the noise was already there, driving them to the point of pain and beyond.

And, if I thought it were apt, I might use the late incident of a madman in Arizona as a clear indictment of the mental health care system in our country today.

Unfortunately, treatment for insanity is still iffy at best, especially for those who have yet to do themselves or others any genuine harm. Most of us with mental illnesses live our lives threatening only ourselves, if that. And, from my own experience, I can safely say that clear and accurate diagnosis of a specific disorder may take years... or never come at all. You can not cure what you can not identify correctly. And, what with the shrinking budgets of many states, it is getting harder and harder to find a place where people like me (financially strapped and in a small rural community) can get help, even if we are properly diagnosed. No pointing of fingers... it's just reality, that the bottom line will always affect somebody, no matter how well-meaning the world tries to be.

And, in case you were thinking somebody should have been locked away years ago, when he first started showing signs of being nuts... our civil rights as Americans trump the responsibility of other citizens to take preemptive action against us crazies. Anything less than that, and we would be no better than Cuba or the old USSR (maybe even current Russia, although I can't prove anything, there), locking people away merely for political opposition. I may be nuts, but I'm not nuts enough to trust the system to protect the rest of our citizens from that kind of abuse, should we go down the preemption path again (yes, we did some of that, way back in the dark ages, up until the ACLU came in and emptied out asylums in the '70s).

There is no real fix for the problem of troubled minds. Madness exists, and it does real harm, but unless and until we can find a true, affordable treatment which does not violate our rights as citizens, expectations of safety from madness in this world will still be a fantasy. Life will always be a crapshoot.

Illinois voters, here's your watch list

These guys who ostensibly represent the taxpayers of Illinois in the House of Representatives all voted against defunding the corrupt body known as ACORN:

Danny Davis, (D)

Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D)

Bobby Rush, (D)

Jan Schakowsky, (D)

There's a midterm election coming. These crooks and their ilk can be outnumbered and entirely negated, if enough people of reason run and vote. Pass the word.

When doctors should have refused to give treatment

I'm bug-nutz. I know this. It's been certified by a professional, over a decade ago, that I'm BP (and not in a fossil fuel sense). I've learned to cope with my problems, to keep myself from being a real problem for anybody else (except, occasionally, my parents -- thank all powers that be for their patience).

Even before I knew I was bug-nutz, I knew there was something defective enough with me that I would not have been a good parent. It wasn't just the low self esteem talking. Being crazy is something you don't dump on other people if you don't have to. You especially don't offer it up as an experience for itsy bitsy people. If you know you have a problem coping with life, you don't go off and have as many babies as possible to share the sicknesses. At least, I didn't.

Granted, being diagnosed as nutty as a Stuckey's log is one of those things which will often bring a person lots and lots of sympathy and "tolerance". The public is always ready to support a loon... until he or she costs the public real money (witness twice-elected, newly-impeached Rod Blagojevich). But immediate contact with the cracker, by certain individuals of responsibility, should put a stop to the more reckless behavior of said flake. Note: I said "should".

So, how is it that this woman got doctors in a clinic to give her eight -- count them, eight -- wee ones in a single batch, and not send her, first, for real counseling? The woman needed real help, and all they did was to feed her obsession/delusion. I smell serious ethics board hearings and a malpractice case coming. Hmm. Maybe that's how she can now expect to pay for raising her massive bundle of humanity?

Whatever happens, I sure as heck hope those babies get a lot of really good psychological help. Nuts don't fall far from the tree. Especially when the tree is encouraged to grow nuttier, instead of branching out.

Associated Mess

Associated Press is somehow annoyed that bloggers have been actually quoting them while linking to their articles, and now they've found their solution to the problem of people actually reading their stuff: they're going to bill every one of us who uses their news, regardless of fair usage rules of publishing...

I don't read their stuff when it's run in the dinosaur (print) media, any more. I rarely read past the first paragraph when something of theirs shows up on the RSS feeds at my e-mail homepage. They have been shown repeatedly to be either lax in the fact-checking or downright crooked, even in their photo publishing, so I usually look elsewhere for confirmation, anyway, when I run across something fed through their filters.

Now, there's a movement afoot among bloggers to boycott AP.

Quite frankly, I'd rather spend my energies mocking the AP, mostly by quoting their articles and pointing out every dadgummed error, flaw in reasoning, cheap shot, and so on which are so common to the news "service", and link them like crazy every time they publish something egregiously stupid or fraudulent. But I think Charles Johnson does a magnificent job of that, already. And so, the boycott probably makes sense, there.

On the other hand, I do have enough to mock and boycott here in my own neck of the woods... although I'm assured the local rag has improved a bit since the last editor got run out of Dodge. At least, now, when they label a news article as "local", they mean within 40 miles of this little city. It's a start.

"Papa, what's chutzpah?"

I heard the word "chutzpah" for the first time when I was in grade school, and asked what it meant. At the time, I didn't quite understand the "orphan plea" explanation, so it was later explained:

A bully beat up another person so badly that he had to go to the hospital. While the person was being treated for his injuries, the doctors discovered the poor battered soul had cancer in its early stages. The person was treated and cured.

The bully took credit for saving the person's life by forcing him into the hospital in the first place. That's chutzpah.

Hmmm. Sounds familar. Harry Reid takes credit for Rush Limbaugh's successful fund-raiser....

Iranian leader visits NYC

There is already quite a bit of noise going on, about Ahmadinejad's proposed visit to the UN, his speech at Columbia U, and his proposed tour (now canceled -- and yet, he still threatens to visit there without permission from the city) of Ground Zero.

Personally, I would encourage the city to allow him a visit to the site of the destroyed WTC. Not only should they allow him to visit, they should require that, out of respect for all the victims of terrorism, he stay a while at the site -- at least 444 days.

Pay for power mañana

The Illinois state legislature is aiming to throw us all to the wolves -- in a few years -- in order to make themselves look saintly this week.

A House committee is having what some might call "serious discussions" about refreezing power rates and fining the power companies for charging more than they did in the distant past (before the last freeze forced us to deal with a screwed-up state-throttled monopoly by driving away any likelihood that competitors would want to come in and set up in a free market system).

Hey, this freeze thing worked so well in the 1990s in California and other states, to shut down business as usual and get power to the people... and, under this policy here in IL, we certainly had a lot of new developments in the industry, didn't we? I see wind farms and alternative fuel agencies positively dotting the landscape here. I also occasionally see my cats sprout wings and see Mickey Mouse grazing in my garden. But that's not important right now.

This plan is brilliant!

The plan also would fire the Illinois Commerce Commission members who approved the higher rates and create a new Illinois Power Authority to oversee power buying and eventually power production.

So they aim to fire the last remaining rational people on the Commission, in favor of their political cronies, is that it? And then we make it the job of the State of Illinois to guarantee us our electricity and gas... because our state's bureaucracy is so swift and efficient and so very, verrrry honest.

The utilities complained it would destroy the industry, and ComEd President Frank Clark called the idea -- quote "pure lunacy."

But the bill's sponsor says it could be a good way for lawmakers to force the utilities to offer a larger rate relief package for consumers.

I love it when our elected officials try to help me. It's a given, then, that tax rates will increase and more downstate industry will flee, so I'll have a really good excuse for being unemployed and on public assistance until I'm dead. And that is just absolutely dandy for my mental balance, innit?

I hope the new Illinois Power Authority is as forward-thinking as the Chicago Transit Authority, or the Veteran's Administration, or the Department of Human Services (especially the Department of Mental Health Services, now that they've been forced regularly to reduce the number and size of their available facilities to whatever is still standing in Chicago, and we downstaters can go hang. Literally.)

If so, we'll be increasing our carbon footprint dramatically soon, as we burn all the trees and corn cobs in the region to heat and cook and the like.

Who needs utility companies unencumbered by unreasonable penalties? Who needs companies financially and by law able to develop reliable, modern power sources? We have the state legislators to patronize us, instead. That will keep us hot on a cold January night.

Too bad it's nearly June and nearly 90˚.

lgf: Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism at Victoria's Secret

Charles Johnson, over at lgf, has the latest on “Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism,” in San Francisco.

The question most often asked is why these gays would support a virulently homophobic group like Hamas & the rest of the Palestinians over the open, tolerant Israelis. As far as I can tell, it's likely fairly simple:

I don't care to belong to a club that will have me as a member.

Oh, and if you value your sanity, don't follow his link to the photographs. You'll want to wash your eyes out with lye.

Bomb threat causes Amtrak to evacuate train

Last night, the California Zephyr -- the train which runs from San Francisco to Chicago via Denver, Burlington IA, and my neck of the woods, the train I have often had occasion to ride from Galesburg to the Big City (and one round trip from Denver to Galesburg) -- was stopped just after it left Denver on its way east. Some passengers expressed concerns over one man whose behavior was troubling, so the train held up in Arvada to be evacuated while the Arvada PD did a bomb search.

The individual who had caused the worries did not have an explosive, but he was carrying both a big-ass knife and a supply of crystal meth.

Wow. This isn't the first scare of the sort, either. When my folks were returning from their vacation last month, Mom related the story of their ride out of Flagstaff:

When we came back from having had supper in the dining car, we were pulling out of Trinidad [Colorado] and there was this guy sitting alone in our car, and he mumbled something at us. I didn't understand what he said, so I asked him to repeat himself. "All the way to the back. Go all the way to the back."

I quietly and firmly said, "No, these are our seats," and your dad and I sat back down in our regular seats. A couple of other passengers arrived back, as well, and then, a little bit later, one of the younger car attendants, who asked the man, "Is this your seat?" and, "Where's your seat? Where's your ticket?"

The man seemed quiet, calm, (it was really spooky) as he pronounced, "There's a bomb on this train." He told the attendant he had heard a couple of guys up in the observation car talking about blowing up the train, and they had a duffel bag with a bomb. They had already gotten off the train at the last stop, but they were going to blow up the train. When asked, he indicated he'd had a little to drink, but he didn't seem to be really drunk, just weird.

The attendant said, "Come on up to the observation car and show me what you saw."

The man refused. The attendant got more senior staff to help question the man, who continued to refuse to accompany them to the observation car. When the man was informed that he would either come with them to look for the bag or he would be removed from the train at the next stop, La Junta (his ticket was for the whole ride, all the way to Chicago). Without hesitation, the man said, "I'd love get off at La Junta."

Almost immediately, a crowd of passengers started arriving in the coach car, having been cleared out of the observation car. They were all aflutter, wondering what was going on, chattering and asking questions and such, but indicated that the conductor and attendants had simply said there was a little problem, and that they should take their regular seats.

I don't know how, but we arrived in La Junta forty-five minutes early. The city police were waiting at the station. After several minutes standing and talking with the police, the strange man shook hands with every member of the train staff still standing at the platform, shook hands with police officers, and was escorted to one of the police cars.

The cabin attendant came up to us and told us nothing was found, and asked your father and me if we were okay. We told him we were fine. Which we were.

The train waited at the station until its regular departure time, and then went on its way toward Denver, undisturbed by further incident.

I can't help but wonder why that one didn't get any news coverage... Friday, 20 April of this year... the week of VA Tech shootings.

More about free speech case in Finland

Baron Bodissey has posted an update or five on the Mikko Ellilä case as it comes up before the long arm of the law...

The one thing to point out is that few, so far, actually like the sort of thing that Ellilä says -- it is silly, offensive, even racist. What this is about is a person's right to speak (or blog) his mind.

How do simple statements of belief suddenly morph into a threat to the public? There is no evidence that, in his blog -- anywhere -- Ellilä did anything more than say some things which many rational people would deem impolite. There seems to be no call to rise up in violence against others, there is no finger-pointing or crying "fire" in a crowded theater.

If the decision goes against people like Mikko Ellilä, when will they start globally tracking down and arresting those who truly do incite people to violence?

As a free, educated American, I do not understand the drive of a portion of any nation -- especially those whose histories are chock-full of liberties -- to limit freedoms. Do the people who press for speech codes, who press for "hate crimes" laws, who press for special treatment for certain categories of citizens not understand that, eventually, the legislation will backfire on them? Do they not understand these laws as genuinely hypocritical, as well as, over the long run, indefensible and unenforceable?

How does plain, ordinary, brutal violence become something "special" when it comes accompanied by a racial or sexist slur? How does one gauge whether a savage "spree" killer is worse because he was motivated by racial hatred or by a perceived social slight? Don't results count for anything, these days?

And where is it written that free people have the right to be protected, by law, from having their feelings hurt by some arrogant or spiteful nonsense? I guess we're approaching the day and age when, in the freest nations, sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will get you twenty years in Marion.

Gratuitous Postcard: At the end of the week

I know I'm not the only person having had a difficult week, since Monday. I wish I had been. I wish it had only been angst over having turned another year older, or over having my hands and feet swell to grotesque sausages for my having been bitten by some damned garden spider yesterday afternoon (no worries. I'm good with the first aid stuffs, & have only a little tender spot and some sensitivity to the touch for it all. Thank all the mercies of science for Diphenhydramine Hydrochloride). I wish I had been the only one who wanted to stay in bed and keep my head well-covered.

No, there are plenty of people who have had a worse work week than mine. And I suspect that some will be a long time coming to a point where they will want to discuss, for example, the horrific events at VTech on Monday.

Not that concern for people's feelings ever stopped a blogger or a newsroom from bringing up such a topic. It is news. So is anything genuinely connected to the case, I guess. Which is why I have come reluctantly to believe that it was right for NBC to make available the video that the pitiable wreck of Cho Seung-Hui made as his manifesto.

News is not best known for being in good taste, after all. I think that feelings are going to be hurt, raw nerves are getting rubbbed, but that's the nature of real news. It ain't all feel-good stuff, no matter what we say we want. Personally, I'd probably have opted out of running the video during prime news hour, and simply said, "It's available at our website," with appropriate caveats. But that's just me. I don't make network news decisions, I just blog and stuff.

People have already tried to make political hay over this mess, too.

I don't know about using it as a platform for gun control, though. If you're bound and determined to do damage, you'll do damage, with or without 10- or 15-hollow-point-bullet magazines, with or without "semi-automatic assault" guns. Gifted crazies have already demonstrated this. And, while I am wholly sympathetic to the cause of protecting the second amendment, I don't know if campus filled with armed, beer-drinking bellicose frat boys and angry socialists/anarchists is such a good idea, after all. And I certainly wouldn't put a gun in the hands of some college profs I know, regardless of how great others may prove themselves to be.

One platform which might suit this case, though, is the mental care system for the people of this country. To put it in street terms, our program sucks. And, I'm sorry to say, the well-meaning folks tied to the ACLU have a large part of the blame in that. Once upon a time, it was possible to hold patients who could not care for themselves, without jumping through miles of legal hoops. Addicts, paranoid schizophrenics, delusional folks of all stripes could be held not merely for observation, but for their own protection. In this instance, eliminating the nanny state has actually done more harm than good. It increased the numbers of homeless people forced out onto the streets, it prevents doctors from guaranteeing patients take necessary meds, it chops budgets so that -- for all intents and purposes -- only the dregs of psychiatry willingly work the system for any great length of time. And it makes people afraid to say or do anything about another's extremely bizarre behavior, lest they be sued for hurting the feelings of the nutcase or his family.

Still, even the best systems fail, from time to time. Who knows whether things might have been different if Cho had seen another, more apparently effective shrink when he was younger? Would he have been salvaged, or would he simply have learned to talk like a normal person for a little while longer, before he blew?

Blame has been misplaced over and over again. This is no place for scapegoating. The police did what they were trained to do. They didn't fail the public. They were simply unprepared for the sucker punch Cho threw everybody. The University's policies for safety and security were developed to a reasonable degree and followed properly. This sort of thing is the rare exception, even in the days following Columbine. If a person lives in Minnesota, he doesn't necessarily prepare his home for hurricane conditions. He does what he can to shield his place and his family from predictable disasters. It's all anybody can rightfully be asked to do.

There is, however, one thing which might be done. On Monday and Tuesday, students were asking for a better communication system for disasters. Our small town has its emergency siren, and it can be heard all over the city and for about a half-mile into the country. We also have the National Weather Service alert systems, the Emergency Broadcast Systems tests and claxons, and so on. These are all very well and good, for those folks who are sitting at home. Not so impressive for the students who commute.

Nearly every student now carries some sort of wireless communications system, be it cell-phone or crackberry. Doesn't it make sense to have an automated call alert, with a special ring-tone & text message? Have each student feed his or her contact info into the system (it can be kept anonymous, if necessary, I'm sure. We have the technology, don't we?), and when something like a lock-down is called for, everybody knows about it. It's not too different from the ancient system of ringing the bell in the church steeple to warn the village of disaster.

And, speaking of churches, who knows what would have happened if today's society had not already been flinging about the finger of blame for all wrongs, back when he was younger? It seems he was well and truly following the path of many others, hating and resenting Christians and the well-to-do, regardless of individual worth. Hatred is like that. It feeds on the next generation's frustration. If there had not been an overt movement in the West against Christianity and Christians, if there had been a little less socialistic promotion of class resentment within the ranks of so very many school faculties, would he have found other targets for his anger, or would his rage have been dissipated for want of that focus? We'll never know.

But maybe I'm scapegoating a little, there.

Time to come up for air.

21 32 dead in Virginia Tech shootings

I came to it a little late, but I've just spent the past hour and change watching the news on television. It's enough to have made this agnostic invoke a deity. Several times.

I don't know any more about the VA Tech shootings than anybody else does, which is to day I know nothing, really. Nobody has released the name of the shooter, nobody knows his motive (and it will likely be some time before anybody does). Nobody has answers, yet. We hear nothing.

Unfortunately, what's been going through my head has been the old Boomtown Rats' song, I Don't Like Mondays.

I remember.

It's worse, I think, when you grow up thinking that a school campus is your second home. As a child of a professor, with nearly all my friends being teachers' kids, I want to think that the schools and colleges are safe -- safer than my house. It just isn't so. Aside from the everyday savagery that kids develop and dish out, the large, lethal scale is not a one-time thing. And it isn't just Brenda Ann Spencer, or the boys at Columbine. It has happened repeatedly, over the years, and nothing we can do will prevent it from happening again someday. No matter what we do to try to protect the students and teachers, there is risk in everyday living.

I grieve for every life taken.

Gratuitous postcard: smoke alarmism strikes home

Last night, as I was lying in bed trying to drift off to sleep, I thought I smelled smoke. In fact, it was strong enough, I started to worry. It was strong enough to set off my smoke alarm -- sort of. The device gave out a BEEP BEEP WHEEEEEeeeep eeerrrrrrrrr and then went silent.

I got out of bed, checked out the smoke alarm (it was not the battery. The poor machine had gasped its last). Nevertheless, it had given me warning. I thanked it (in monosyllabic old English of a sort non-repeatable in mixed company) before I put it in the trash can.

I'm not overly fond of the idea of fire in my house. I don't even like lighting candles when the power goes out. I'm surrounded by thousands of books. History has shown that books burn.

Knowing that both my smoke alarm and I smelled something, I stayed up and searched my house, from top to bottom, trying to sniff out a source for said vapor. I convinced myself that it made sense to find the fire before calling in the fire department (I could then tell them "it's in that corner of the bedroom!" or some such detail). My crappy lungs absorbed more dust and mold and mildew last night than I think they had done all winter.

I was up and about for a full hour (I missed the local news and Leno's monologue, among other things -- thank all the patron tech gods of recordability!) wandering about my house in a pair of bib-alls, fuzzy slippers, and that's about all. Finally, having found no single spot in my home where the smell was any stronger than anywhere else, I decided to check outside, to see if, perhaps, it was not actually my house on fire. For that, I put on my jacket, too.

Why I didn't do this external search an hour earlier I can't say. Call it the haze of end of day and heavy doses of allergy medication. By the time I'd circled my house for the second time, at a distance of a dozen or so feet from the walls, I finally figured out that my non-airtight house was allowing the aroma of the meats being smoked at the Smithfield/Farmland pork processing plant on the outskirts of town to waft through.

I went to bed annoyed and frustrated with myself, and more than a little hungry for a ham sandwich, dammit.

This morning, Mom and I went shopping in Galesburg. She forgot to bring her latest completed cross-stitch project along to the frame shop, and I forgot to buy the replacement smoke alarm. I hope my house doesn't get lit up tonight.

Maybe I should sleep in the running shower. Yeah. That would make sense.

Or, I could just live on the edge for a day or two, the way we all used to before laws pretended to make us safe.

After all, as a safety-conscious woman, I have a fire extinguisher. Behind the books, I think. Somewhere.

O'Reilly/Geraldo fight. News at 7. Nap at 7:05.

Gads! I thought once the morning newsy show was over, the discussion over Geraldo and his FoxNews compatriot Bill O'Reilly would die down a bit. After all, they were both concerned about the safety of American citizens.

It's just that each of them thought there was only one real issue at hand, in the case they were discussing: Geraldo says it's exclusively about drunk driving, and O'Reilly says it's about illegal immigration and border controls.

Guess what, fellers? It's about both. If the drunk who killed the two teens in Virginia had been deported when he had been first arrested many moons ago, the teens would likely still be alive. Yeah, that's about scofflaw illegal immigrants. And it's about drinking and driving (personally, I've lost too many who were near and dear to me to have much forbearance for the asswipe who drinks and then gets behind the wheel of a vehicle).

And, as a reminder, it's not the first or last time a drunk illegal immigrant has cost somebody's life.

There is no need to come to blows over which issue is greater, here. They're both huge.

And, there's really no news in these guys having shouted over the airwaves, any more than there is news when my seester and I debate. It's not the first stone falling from the edifice of Fox News, for crying out loud. That station will be around a long while, yet, unless the Left manages to outlaw free speech.

Saddam dead: cars, press and leftists explode

It's a natural result. Put a murderous thug to death, and some folks feel the need to go ballistic.

Saddam Hussein was hanged by the neck until dead, yesterday, and The MSM showed their undying devotion. This is what al-Reuters had to say about the event, too: Saddam hanged at dawn as bombs kill more than 60

Sure, there's a causal relationship there. If he hadn't been executed, there would never have been a car bomb, right? They never occurred anywhere in the world, or even in Iraq, until this morning. Uh huh. But it gets even more entertaining, as the article states:

A triple car bombing killed 25 in a Shi'ite district of the capital -- the sort of attacks that have pitched Iraq toward sectarian war since U.S. troops broke Saddam's iron rule.

So this violence is whose fault, again? Apparently, it's all because of one man:

President Bush, who called Saddam a threat though alleged nuclear and other weapons were never found, said:

"Bringing Saddam Hussein to justice will not end the violence in Iraq, but it is an important milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a democracy that can govern, sustain, and defend itself."

Of course, the requisite reference to the "grim milestone" made its way into the article supposedly on the death of a dictator:

The deaths of five troops pushed the American death toll to just a few short of the emotive 3,000 mark. Bush already faces mounting public dismay at the war as Iraq slides toward all-out civil war between Saddam's fellow Sunnis and majority Shi'ites.

You'd think their teeth would be worn down by their constant gnawing on that stone.

So how, then, does the left react to the reports? Not well.

Pitiful.

Handing the turkey to the Bumpuses' dogs

At Jihad Watch, Marisol shows that Ehud Olmert has a self-destructive streak in him, as he is now allowing Egypt to ship heap plenty arms to the Palestinians.

So, I was reading the article and thinking to myself, maybe Olmert is just giving the Palestinians and their supporters a little more rope with which to hang themselves.

After all, if they get all the financial and military support they want, then they can't blame Israel for their problems, right? Then the world will understand exactly how foamingly fanatically hate-filled these people of Gaza (and points south, east, and north of Israel) really are.... When those weapons get turned on innocent Israelis, the world will rally around them, and this whole savage scene will cease.

And in the real world, there's nobody left in Israel to bury the dead.

(HT: FrontPageMag.com)

Update: It occurs to me that not everybody will know the title reference. It comes from the penultimate scene of Jean Shepherd's "A Christmas Story," when the dogs owned by the neigbors (the Bumpuses) broke through the kitchen door and... well, Ralphie's family had Peking duck for Christmas dinner, that year.

Check forger uses fake check to post bail

As Starfleet's USS Enterprise Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott once said, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." I guess Illinois' Macon County Jail officials hadn't thought of that when they accepted a cashier's check for bail from a woman who was jailed for forging cashier's checks. They're looking for her, now. I don't think they'll let it happen a third time:

The jail isn't accepting cashier's checks for the time being.

I am Satan's weapon!

According to this at lgf , at any rate, Sydney-based Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali says I have the power to turn men into hungry, unthinking beasts by virtue of the ammunition within my gun turrets (if only mine looked so sturdy!).

I love it when some theologically-challenged jackass with a religious title pretends to speak for God. This commenter has my perspective in a nutshell.

It is time people decided whether human beings are base animals or thinking creatures.

I stand accused, and confess my madness

In response to a couple of recent comments directed toward me, not only here at my blog, but via e-mail (partly as a result of my weekly columns, too), I must now admit what they say I must: I'm a card-carrying member of the Republican party. I hate everybody and everything different from myself -- you know, people of color, gays, furriners, and stuff. I know nothing. And my party is doomed, next month, to ignominious defeat and to the impeachment of "my" president.

Except that, I don't have any card saying I'm a Republican. My voter registration card simply lists my name, address, voter registration number, and the precinct in which I live. It also says I'm supposed to vote at the National Guard armory, but since 9/11, that has changed, and they haven't bothered to issue me an updated card. And I have yet to vote straight ticket, even when I was a registered Democrat, so I suppose the Republican party wouldn't send me a card, now, anyway.

Also, I have up until now failed to hate. Well, not entirely true. I hate taking prescription Tussionex when I get a really bad cough with my biennial bronchitis. The stuff is like snot on a spoon, with bubbles, because you have to "Shake Well Before Using." I hate cleaning a cat litter box. I do both of them, though, because the alternative is worse. As to people, though, I've yet to find a person I truly hate. Distrust, perhaps. Envy, occasionally. Fear, naturally (and there are greater fears outside the primate circle). But not hate.

As to the lack of any knowledge... pegged right off the bat, I'm afraid. But then, I'm crazy, so what do I know?

All I know is what I've seen with my own two eyes -- and even that is in doubt, since I'm nuts. But I have read quite a bit, and can't seem to quit the habit. And, I have an unfortunately strong memory when it comes to that sort of thing. I may not be able to tell you where my shoes are, or what the name is of the person who lives with the Jack Russell terrier next door, but I can recite to you, from memory, more than a dozen "Little Willie" poems, as well as some less gruesome fare. I can recall π to the 6th digit past the decimal point. I can write up a lesson plan. I can balance a checkbook -- if I ever get one, again. I can rewire a lamp, refit a door frame, build a cat playground from scrap lumber and carpet. I can read a map, and can find my way home from just about any point in the Midwest without a map or a compass. And those are just for starters. Still, I'm not Einstein or Leonardo or even Ezra Pound.

And I tend to be a tad on the optimistic side. I think the moderates will look around and think to themselves that, given the choices we have, it's better to elect a self-made ninny over a ninny who was trained by, and to be, a jackass. But then, I'm crazy, so what do I know? What I know is I don't really like any of my choices, this year. I didn't like many of the choices we had last election, either. But, as an optimist, I'd rather choose the one who hasn't already listed attitudes I find indefensible than the one who goes all the way down the line as a partisan hack.

And, if the Democrats win everything (which I can't yet pretend I think will happen), and they then try to impeach the President, they will have one helluva legal fight on their hands. Because if "Bush lied to get us into war," then so did all the members of the intelligence committee... including Democrats. So, in pursuing that goal with any sense of honor, they should resign their offices and wait to be prosecuted, as well. I don't see this happening.

But then, I'm crazy, so what do I know?

What makes madness? (gratuitous postcard included)

Anybody who has read more than three of my posts on this blog knows, I'm a bit of a nut. Actually, more like an entire pecan grove. I've lived most of my adult life fighting bipolar disorder, and always coming out more bruised than my opponent.

A few of my good friends are in the same straits as am I -- but they are at least fortunate enough to be able to take medications for the problem (in theory it helps. Mostly, I guess, it takes the edge of the noise in the head). I don't get to do that.

So, anyway, I was discussing madness in general with one of my co-conspirators, and she had complained that her general practitioner seemed to think that she wasn't really ill (you know the type -- the "get over yourself" sort). He offered to refer her to a shrink, but he made it fairly clear she didn't need one, that if she just got out and stopped dwelling on herself, there would be no problem. He acted as though mental illness were not so much an actual illness as a general weakness, along the lines of somebody who eats too many McDonald's double cheeseburgers -- a moral failing, rather than a chemical imbalance in the brain.

I hadn't realized Tom Cruise was practicing medicine in IL.

But this got my tongue running, again (quel surprise!), and I told her I'd rather considered mental illness to be original sin.

I reckon that, if, indeed, we are to say that Adam & Eve ate the fruit of knowledge of good and evil, then they let loose the very thing which keeps us irrational and self-damaging. And, dammit, I resent the irregular sleep patterns they left for me.

Nevertheless, if we accept that original sin exists in this fashion, we have the right to seek help in overcoming out tendency toward it. Some are blessed with a smaller portion of it, and some are unable ever to rise out of its mire. The rest of us must slog through it, day after day, in the hopes that some day we will find release and self-forgiveness. Prayer, exertion (chop wood, carry water), meditation, medication -- whatever delivers us from evil should be respected and made available to those of us who would use it.

Sanctity and sanity are not things whose absence we can ignore or accept. It isn't as though those without them are, say, incapable of growing eyebrows or have oddly-shaped birthmarks we eventually can get used to. Those who are without a trace of one, the other, or both, can suffer greatly, and often cause others around them to suffer equally or moreso. But sanity and sanctity aren't necessarily about God or gods or angels and demons or whatever, either. They're about humanity, piecemeal and together, rising above the defects which were within us from the start. The goal is not to settle for second-best. The goal is to make ourselves again in God's image.



Through any honest means available.