The Hefty Weight of Democracy

It's one of those odd psychological moments.  You have a forum with some political guy or gal running for office, and some idiots are free to ask stupid questions.  So you have one gal ask you....knowing you ARE a Republican....if you voted for Bush in 2000.  There are basically three answers...."yes", "no", or "I don't remember".

This leads onto a second question....especially if you answered with anything beyond "yes".

The idiot could ask you....if you didn't vote for Bush, then who did you vote for?  The quick answer and better comeback would be you didn't vote for anyone....feeling that none of the candidates were competent.  Nobody would fault you for such an answer.

If you answered "I don't remember"? They will ask about your memory lapses and how often they occur...making you look foolish.

Out of a hundred Republicans or confessed right-leaning guys.....I would imagine that ninety-nine would just simply say "yes, I voted for Bush".  The one guy?  He might freak out and say "no", getting the more difficult questions next.

Over the past thirty years, and various Republican candidates.....I'm guessing most right-leaners would go the same way.

Democrats?  Well....I'm guessing up to 2000.....the numbers would resemble the right-leaning folks.

This week.....the gal running in Kentucky against Senator McConnell.....was after a newspaper endorsement.  They wanted her to appear up against a board, and answer some questions.  These weren't rocket-science questions.....just simple position questions.  Then they asked if she'd voted for Obama, and she went through various gyrations of avoiding an answer.  She couldn't answer "yes" or "no" or "I don't remember".

I wouldn't call this stupidity......but a naive gut feeling that you feel like you screwed up not just once, but twice, and you don't want to admit this in public.

How many of a hundred Democrats would go through this gut feeling answer?  I'd take a guess that three or four.  It's not a lot, but it's enough that draws some puzzling thoughts.

If these four individuals act this way....what happens in the future?  Will they ask some really tough questions of Democrats running for office, and demand some blunt truths?  Will they expect more evidence on the table of past performance?

This Kentucky Democrat?  I suspect that she lost five-percent of her support from this unique answer, and it won't be coming back this late in the election period.

Influencing the 2016 election period?  I'm willing to guess that someone is watching all this stuff, and will make the same question come up on numerous occasions....forcing people to admit who they voted for or against.

Democracy is an odd thing.....now, you have to remember who you voted for in past elections, and be willing to admit this in public.  We are lucky to remember who the governor is....the past record of the Dallas Cowboys....the ingredients of a good cocktail.....the pin number for the ATM machine....and when we last did an oil change for the pick-up. Now?  Our voting record?

Bama and Ebola

I was reading over Bama news this morning, and noted that our state governor (Robert Bentley) came up and did a media speech deal yesterday with the state health officer, and some infectious disease expert from a Montgomery hospital.

The deal?  Well....the governor wanted everyone in Bama to know that things are OK, and all planned out if Ebola arrives in Bama.....no matter if it comes via Gulf Shores, the Tennessee border, or via the Birmingham airport.  There's a plan.

Somewhere in the talk, the mention of a checklist for state medical folks was disclosed.  There are questions now that get tossed early on in a medical interview....like....have you been traveling recently....like to Africa?  There's some mandated procedures that got mentioned, and the governor kinda summed it up....Bama was ready.

Where does this leave us with the normal Bama scenario?

Well....first, we tend to find different ways of pouncing words that we don't commonly use.  So, I'm betting on several creative ways of folks saying "Ebola".  Maybe E-bul-lie.....E-bull-ly....Eb-o-lie....etc.

Somewhere down the line....some Bama folks will pull out their Bibles and look through Revelations (always a popular place to find agreeable stuff), and point out that God already forecasted this, and it's all part of the master-plan.

At some point here, some Bama or Auburn football coaches will sit and ponder over various strategies if their quarterback gets Ebola, and how they would handle it with the back-up quarterback.

Bama graveyard managers will start to eyeball expansion, talking up the need to double up on space in the near future.

Bama lawyers will see potential income angles by calling up folks who have wills and hinting that maybe it's time for another review, and maybe cutting out folks or including folks....ifing you got Ebola and suddenly passed on.  Folks might talk passionately about the Ford 150 pick-up and who it might go to.....if they got Ebola.

These African missionary missions might draw more negativity.  Folks might say they'd do some missionary work, but only in Texas or Utah.....just to be on the safe side.

Bama airports?  You can imagine the cleaning services folks getting some note from the Airport Manager that they need to wear hazmat suits whenever some guy throws up in the concourse...even if it's from too much booze at the airport bar.

Guys will sit around the general store in Bama and discuss cleaning solutions for Ebola....mostly from experimental ideas that they got from their three years in the Army, or from the county agricultural agent that visited recently.  It'll always involve some element of diesel and some weed-killer....be highly flammable....and eat paint off a car in sixty seconds.

We'll even have a few guys who talk up an underground bunker idea....where they and the family will huddle up for six months while Ebola destroys the heartland of Bama.  The wife isn't aware of the bunker or the plan, and would likely divorce the guy once the plan gets mentioned.

The problem in Bama....is that we tend to think too much.  We don't see a simple problem.....we see a vast multiple-scenario complex mystical situation....that demands a frustrating answer beyond human reckoning.  It's the five-side barn, the horse that adds numbers, the septic tank that has worked for forty-five years without replacement, or the twenty-year old Dodge car with an automatic that has never required rebuilding.

Even now....this moment.....over 300,000 Bama folks are working hard on Ebola prevention and handling.  They will casually mention this at the Waffle House as they meet with friends and peers.  It'll get brought up in Sunday Bible School this weekend....that they just acquired some special special cream from Canada that dissolves Ebola on contact.

The governor?  Well....he's simply putting himself into the same position....thinking ahead.

Frankly, it's a shock to some Bama folks because they still thought that Guy Hunt was governor (1987-1993)....forgetting that Guy had to resign in 1993 after the conviction of taking $200,000 which was used mostly for marble figurines and high-end lawn mowers.

So, don't get too excited if your Bama neighbor talks up Ebola.  He's just thinking ahead.

On the Topic of Free College

I read a piece today from Yahoo Finance....over "free university" deals in Europe.  It was kinda comical....they came to some point and suggested that America ought to offer the same deal....free college.  They noted....Germany was already doing it.

I sat there....mostly laughing.  There's some differences between the US and Germany on college.

First, NO German university has any NCAA-related action. No football...no million-dollar coaches...no massive sports complex....no alumni program...no volleyball team for ladies sports...no softball program.

Second, if you screwed around and played drinking games all the way through your first semester...they’d invite you to leave, and you would not find much sympathy with a second chance. Party schools in Germany?  None.  Forget about that angle.

Third, German university programs don’t have a bunch of support staffs with imaginary job descriptions and ample incomes. A German university likely functions with half the staffs that most US colleges have.

Fourth, towns around the university programs in Germany have a high value on the students...mostly because they go to recruit them to sign up as residents of the town....getting to the 100k, 200k, or 300k level....which means more handouts from the national government. This relationship to the town, makes the university a pull partner of the local city and of value. Most cities run more transit buses through a university district...subways are added...and they are part of the local community. 

Fifth. Cops who protect the German university...are city cops or state cops. There are no hired thugs or wannabe cops patrolling a German university, nor is the cost dumped onto the college. Nor are the legal proceedings separate. If you do something stupid on a German campus...you get a city judge, and the DA after you....so you don’t have to worry about getting expelled....you get actual real jail-time, with no campus lawyer helping you.

Sixth and final, all these instructors and professors are part of a national level of pensions and benefits. Some guy is watching the whole trend, and ensuring that stupid individual university administrators aren’t lining up some guy for a $300k a year pension deal. If some German governor woke up tomorrow and got wind that some professor in his state is about to retire and get more monthly income than his job....someone would be dragged to the state capital and be asked some pretty difficult questions, and it wouldn’t be a pleasing situation.

They can offer free tuition...the question is....would US university programs be willing to offer the same deal? My guess is...NO. I should point it....it generally takes 4.5 to 5 years to get a bachelor’s degree in Germany. And it’s around seven years if you count in the master’s degree.

I should also note....they also don’t run up bogus ethnic studies degrees, how-to-feel-good physic 116 classes, or Bigfoot studies courses. Got a professor who gets into trouble with some student for relationship woes? They turn the evidence to a state prosecutor and let him handle the mess from that point on...no worries for the university in terms of legal issues.

The Club

In twenty-two years of traveling around with the Air Force....I probably entered at least fifteen Enlisted/NCO Clubs along the way.  It was the social side of the Air Force....sometimes being a bit humorous, and sometimes being a one-star marginal place where you just wanted to sit and sip a beer for twenty minutes.

I came to a number of conclusions about these clubs.

1.  Until the early 1990s....no one ever cared if they made a profit or not.  Suddenly, almost overnight.....a club had to be profitable, and you started to see managers go fairly frequently.  The ones that stayed.....invented all kinds of gimmicks....and they cut zero profit situations entirely.  It was like day and night, in just a year or two.

2.  Every single club throughout the 70s and 80s....had a room in the back where the senior NCOs would gather and play poker.  It was their home, away from home.  They drank while they played, and I imagine that a quarter of them needed alcohol rehab.  At some point in the 1990s....these rooms rapidly started to disappear.  Maybe it was the type of entertainment that looked bad, or just a whole generation of NCOs retired.

3.  For some reason, almost every single club could hustle up and lay out a fabulous Sunday buffet dinner which attracted just about everyone on base.  But from Monday to Friday....this was the last place on Earth that you wanted to go for noon lunches.  It was like an entirely different crew running the place on Sundays.

4.  I can remember twenty-five-cent pitchers of beer in 1979.  That basically all disappeared in the early 1990s as the anti-alcohol agenda came into play.  The cop patrols in the parking lot?  Yeah, that started about the same time in 1990.  The problem with profits?  Well....yeah, that started about the same time too.

5.  For years and years....the Ramstein club had live entertainment at least five nights a week.  You could walk in on a Thursday evening and there would be four-hundred folks sitting around.  Live entertainment today?  If lucky....they  might run something up once a week.

6.  I spoke to a NCO a couple of years ago and asked them what the chief draw of the local NCO Club was, and he admitted that they were running a mystery dating game agenda, and that would usually draw around a hundred folks on a Friday night. No band?  No.  No DJ?  No.   It was reality dating as entertainment.  I questioned this guy.....how could this draw any crowd?  And he simply admitted that it was fairly lame, but this was "safe" and would pass the base morals agenda easily.

7.  In all the time I ever spent in an Air Force Enlisted/NCO club.....I've only witnessed two fights.  The first one was in 1977, and between three drunk guys over one gal.  The SPs arrived....totted the three off to the jailhouse, and the gal just walked out the front door with some fourth guy.  The second fight was between two drunk housewives....arguing over something of a nature involving a spilled drink.  The truth is....Air Force guys just weren't the type to fight much over anything....even when drunk.

8.  Bingo was a gimmick to draw in Asian wives of Air Force guys.  I worked with a guy who was hired by the club to run their bingo operation.  In a normal one-night operation.....my associated hinted that over $10,000 would easily run through the bingo operation.  I asked about the profit take, and he said it was almost zero.  The club's whole game was to make it last two hours and ensure they drank and ate a fair amount.....which was where they made profit.

9.  The worst club I ever went into....was an annex of the main club.  I actually showed up on opening night....shocked at bright colors, bright lights, pool tables in the open, and a modern-style bar.  The burger bar was four-star and I was amazed at the offerings of the club.  Six months go by, and I show up at the same club on the second occasion....finding it a dark, shadowy place....no pool tables, just open floor.....and weird music in the background.  Everyone was dressed weird, acted weird, and you felt like you were at some San Francisco bar.  I quickly sipped through one brew, and left.  Four months later....they busted the place one night for immoral activity in the bathroom, and some hint of drug activity.

Clubs aren't like clubs of the 1970s, or for that matter....of the 1980s....or for that matter.....of the 1990s.  Most clubs have been modernized over the last decade....offer up commercial style food, and have a small pub/bar for the marginal crowd that might show up for one single drink.  The fear of drinking on base?  I think it weighs heavily upon folks today.  In 1979.....you might have three-hundred folks fairly drunk on a Friday night at the Rhein Main Air Base NCO club.  A typical club today on a Friday night?  There might be one guy drunk, and you can put a 50-50 bet on him not avoiding the cops and some arrest.

A different world.

My Lego Story

I was walking down the street the other day, in the shopping district, and came to the one-and-only Lego stores in town.  That's all they deal in.....Lego stuff.

I browsed at the window for several minutes and then came to the high-end choices.....a Simpsons house, for the equivalent of roughly $240.

It's an awful lot.  Course, it's time-consuming as well.  I'd take a guess that it'd take pretty much an entire Sunday afternoon to put the whole thing together.

And then?  What?  How exactly will you display your Simpson's house?  Will your wife allow it on the coffee table?  Is there any place that it'll fit in the cubicle of your office?  Will you even display it?

A toy for a kid?  I kinda doubt it.  I'd suspect that you'd have to be at least eight or nine....to read through the instructions and assemble it.  But how many kids would want to sit there for four hours and assemble such a thing?

I'd almost like to stop and ask how many they sell in a year, but I suspect it's more for looks than actual sales.  At best.....I'd guess that a dozen get sold.....mostly bought by girlfriends for their geeky boyfriend.

In the 1970s.....nothing like this would have ever been sold in any town or at any major store.  The minute you spoke of a $50 Lego deal.....it was a no-go.  Today?  Ample funds, wild ideas, and a natural tendency to do crazy things.

On the adjoining shelf was a pirate ship, which ran into the $400 range.  It was double the number of parts and man-hours.

Yeah, for me....it just begs a lot of questions on common sense.  But apparently, we've lost that quality of life.

The Problem With Cultural Evolution

There's an interesting case coming up in Colorado.  I doubt if the national media will pick up on it or discuss it much.

The case relates to the state's new laws over medical marijuana, and a private company's rules on employment.  Company X (a satellite TV service) has an employee.  The employee is a quadriplegic who has been advised by a Colorado doctor to utilize medical marijuana, which is legally sold in the state.  The company has a drug-testing program, which marijuana is one of those drugs that is listed on the forbidden list.

The chief reason that the company will say is that they are fearful that employees might show up at the work-place, with lingering affects of the drug in their system, and cause safety issues (for themselves or the public).

The guy in this episode, had been with the company for three years, and the original drug test occurred in 2010, with dismissal as the result.  The original court episode resulted in the company being proven innocent...the dismissal was allowed.  The appeal?  Again went for the company.  So we are at the level of the state supreme court listening to the case.  Personally, I expect them to render for the company again, and the case will move to the national level for one last chance.

The medical experts tend to side mostly with the guy in this case.  His health has improved with the use of marijuana.  Safety experts will generally side with the company.

If you go to the Fortune 500 companies.....almost all of them have some type of drug testing requirement.  You could work for them for over forty years and never get tested.  You could be tested yearly.  What generally happens within the Fortune 500 companies is that an event occurs which makes a division chief question the individual in question.  The HR office will send a note to this guy and require him within X-number of hours to report to a nearby lab and give a sample.  Failure to do so.....results in automatic dismissal.  It's usually written into your contract.

The problem here....is that we have an evolution going on with medical marijuana where one part of the nation has progressed on, and the standards of the remaining nation remain with certain rules.  There is more than ample proof that serious usage of marijuana disrupts your thinking process and could potentially cause an accident.  Hence.....even for buying medical marijuana.....they generally instruct or require you to leave the premises of the "store" and go home.  They don't even want you smoking this in their parking lot.

All of this leaves a regular user with limited options for employment.  A Piggly Wiggly shelf stocker, a gas station clerk, a french-fry guy at Burger King, or a pizza delivery guy.  At some point a decade down the line....some journalist is going to write up some big long story about the woeful problem with medical marijuana users and the unfairness of laws and forced drug-testing.  Some political party is going to promise a safe conversion for the nation, and we will all wonder a year or two later why accident rates have jumped a couple of percent.  

Battlestar III?

I sat this weekend....reading up on entertainment news and came to this odd story.  Someone has picked up Battlestar Galactica, and decided that there might be a third series out there.

I thought.....hmmm....so this story would tell the rest of the story of version two on Earth?  No.

What the writer of the article suggested was that they'd just rebuild the entire general script and tell the story fresh....yet again.

How different was version one versus versus version two?  It was an entirely different story, with different angles that you just couldn't do in 1978.  In 2004, you had real graphics....so you could build up six minutes of every show with some dynamic battle in space.

About a year after the 2004-version started up.....I happened to catch an episode and was amazed at the storyline, and characters.  It was crisp.  It was leading you onto various mystery elements, and motivating you to come back for the next show.

How to build version three?  I'm not sure that it can be done in a different way, and lay out a totally different outcome.  It's amazing.....so much creativity around, and the best that folks can suggest.....is to just redo it once again.  Thankfully, we haven't had idiots come to do this with Gilligan's Island or Gunsmoke.