...on being monetized

"Thou great Judge of the nations...we humbly plead with Thee, asking that Thou will forgive our arrogance, pass by our sins, be kind and gracious to us."  -Gordon B. Hinkley

In a poignant scene from the movie Unforgiven, set beneath an overcast sky on a windswept hillside, the teary-eyed "Kid" sits with his back against a solitary pine tree and tells Clint Eastwood's character, William Munny, how he shot a man to death who was sitting with his pants down in an outhouse.  This despicable act was his first kill, a far cry from the guns and glory outlaw life he imagined and something that now fills him with disillusion and regret.   

"It don't seem real.  How he ain't gonna never breathe again.  Ever.  How he's dead.  And the other one too.  All on account of pulling a trigger."

Then, taking a deep swig from his whiskey bottle, in a sorry attempt to assuage his guilt, he quips, "Well, I guess they had it comin'."   To which William Munny delivers the devastating moral of the entire film in one terse line:  "We all have it comin' kid."

But surely we don't all have it coming.  Only those who, like outlaws before them, seek gain through wicked deeds.  In modern vernacular, we might call this monetizing evil, if the notion of evil weren't too religious for contemporary sensitivities.  

Take pornographers.  They monetize lust.  They're pretty open about their business model and are therefore shunned (at least publicly).  We point to them as an example of societal corrosion.  

Illicit drug dealers exploit human addiction and the need to escape stress.  But they're amateurs compared to pharmaceutical companies (doctors peddle their drugs), Big Tobacco and alcohol vendors.  

The ten giant companies that control almost every large food and beverage brand in the world not only promote gluttony, they formulaically ensure it with the sugary, fatty, addictive poison they pay to be placed at eye level in grocery store aisles.

Like any business, the news media has always been about making money, but the original idea was to monetize information.  Now they've discovered it's much more lucrative to monetize anger, outrage and tribalism.  

Of course, politicians have stoked the fires of rage to great effect for ages.  But their real forte is fear.   Pair the two and you've got a fundraising juggernaut.   

Many religious institutions play on the sinner's fear of judgment while simultaneously stoking the choir's pride and righteousness indignation.

And institutions of higher learning appeal to ambition and greed on one hand and the middle-class insecurity of being left behind on the other.  They'll take your money either way.  

Businesses--from seedy used car lots to glass towered corporate leviathans--are relentless students of human weakness and know exactly which triggers to pull to exploit it.  Their hedonistic sales pitches pander to greed, discontent and ambition rather than true need.  

Big Tech are especially shrewd marketers, unscrupulously leveraging data to turn their customers' inadequacies, vulnerabilities and hedonism into profit margins.  

Social media giants simultaneously create and prey on the vanity, envy and insecurities of their own users, all the while serving up algorithm-driven content calculated to fan the flames of division, righteous indignation and hate.  

And the list goes on.....

So who's left?  Is there a profession out there that doesn't have their finger on the trigger of a gun aimed at a society in the proverbial outhouse with its pants down?  Maybe.  And maybe we, like the Kid, can renounce our lives as professional gunfighters who exploit their fellow man for a paycheck.  

Or maybe Will Munny was right.  Maybe we all have it comin'.

...on being subject to the 'Rona masters

It's been years since I've posted (and looking back, some of my opinions have moderated or changed).  But 50, or 60 or something-like-that days into the madness that is the global COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic and associated quarantine, and after countless (by now trite) exhortations to be "data-driven", "follow the science", "listen to the experts" and "we're all in this together", I find myself oscillating between frustration and exasperation.  An endless stream of media calculated to shock and scare me now just annoys me. While I'm willing to do my meaningful part, I have growing concerns about the virus-related public policy/restrictions being rolled-out by bureaucrats and their experts.  Here are my chief complaints and rationale.  

1. The numbers being presented lack a helpful context.

"COVID-19 has killed more Americans than the Vietnam War."  That's a sensational headline that ran on multiple new sites last week(ish) when the death toll surpassed 59,000.  It is, by design, clickbait.  What it is not intended to do is provide helpful context.  Quite the opposite, it uses a cherry-picked example to elicit an emotional response, making 59,000 seem like an impossibly huge number (wars are horrible and kill lots of people, right?).  But how big is it really?  

Here's what I mean by context (the following statistics are from Statista).  Shark attacks are horrific and sensational. Every time a shark kills someone, it makes the news.  Yet sharks kill just 6 people a year!  That's a fraction of a fraction of the 20,000 people snails kill each year.   Dogs--man's best friend--kill 35,000 people annually.  And mosquitos kill a whopping 750,000 humans every year!  So, sharks may be terrifying, but in context they're not very dangerous and only worth a headline if the intent is to make advertising dollars.  Which it is.  Side note: Humans kill each other at a rate of around 437,000 each year.

Here's a more relevant example of sensation without context:  The CDC estimates 30-60 million infections in the U.S. alone in 2020, with up to 370,000 hospitalizations and 34,000 deaths.  The WHO predicts global deaths this year could reach 650,000.

Wow!  Scary, right?  Except that these estimates are for the flu, not COVID-19.  Who knew that the seasonal flu kills 30,000-65,000 Americans every year?  More than the Vietnam war some years!  If like me, you're surprised to hear that many people die of the flu, it's because flu deaths don't generally make the news.  We're used to it.  30,000-65,000 flu deaths happen every year.  It's background noise.  But it's important to know because this disease-to-disease comparison, this context, helps us decide how we respond to 59,000 COVID-19 deaths.  

Context matters.  So here's more:

59,000 COVID-19 deaths is more than the 38,000 Americans that die in traffic accidents each year, the 16,000 annual homicides, and even the 47,000 annual suicides.  But it's lower than the 65,000 annual drug overdose deaths and much lower than the 480,000 smoking-related deaths in America each year.  

According to the CDC, around 2.8 million Americans die each year.  And 74% of these deaths occur as a result of just 10 causes. Here's the breakdown (numbers from 2017):

1. Heart disease: 647,457
2. Cancer: 599,108
3. Accidents (unintentional injuries): 169,936
4. Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 160,201
5. Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 146,383
6. Alzheimer’s disease: 121,404
7. Diabetes: 83,564
8. Influenza and Pneumonia: 55,672
9. Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome and nephrosis: 50,633
10. Intentional self-harm (suicide): 47,173

So, in context, COVID-19 has (so far) killed about as many people as die from the flu each year.  Granted, the number of COVID-19 deaths will very likely continue rising significantly, but at least this gives us some context to use in assessing our risk.

Ideally, context should also guide the decisions of the bureaucratic COVID-19 masters as they craft and issue executive orders.  It seems like that would be a good thing.

9/17/2020 UPDATE:  As the number of deaths in the United States nears 200,000,  COVID-19 has become the number three killer of Americans, behind only heart disease and cancer.  More troubling still is how the Trump administration has downplayed and politicized the virus.  Neither Trump nor his base will wear a mask in public.  American citizens have now been banned from traveling to most of the world due to the high rate of infection here.  The United States rate per million of infections is near the highest in the world.  This context is important because it shows that many of these deaths could have been prevented had we responded differently.

2.  The numbers being presented are wrong (and/or misleading)

I read an inane article a few weeks ago that said 60,000 Americans have recovered from COVID-19 compared to 37,000 deaths, leaving the credulous reader with a calculator to infer a 38% mortality rate (60K + 37K = 97K and 37K/97K = .38 x 100 = 38%).  These are the confirmed numbers.  Are politicians and infectious disease experts using these numbers to make policy?  Surely not!  That would be ridiculous!  But maybe they are.  Here are the May 8 numbers from Johns Hopkins University, as presented on the Information Is Beautiful website:

You can see they are using the same formula to derive a 6% fatality rate for the United States.  Confirmed cases + deaths = N.  Then, deaths dived by N x 100 = fatality %.

And these numbers are used by the news media and "experts" many, many times every day.  But does anybody really believe that Russia has a 0.9% fatality rate while France has a 15% fatality rate?  If so, what's the explanation?  Is the average age of population and quality of healthcare so different between these two countries?  Wouldn't these numbers make the average 3rd grader suspicious?  Are these numbers even accurate? 

No, not even close, but they are "confirmed" by medical facilities nationwide. In other words, they're the numbers we have.

Unfortunately, the confirmed numbers are laughably incomplete and very biased towards sick people who have sought medical attention (and thus been counted).  Moreover, there's mounting evidence that COVID-19 deaths are being counted creatively in a way that maximizes their number.  Illinois State Health Director, Dr. Ngozi Ezike, recently explained something that I had initially rejected as right-wing propaganda too stupid to be true.  But here's the quote: "If you were in hospice and had already been given a few weeks to live, and then you also were found to have COVID, that would be counted as a COVID death. Even if you died of a clear alternate cause, but you had COVID at the same time, it's still listed as a COVID death. So, everyone who's listed as a COVID death doesn't mean that that was the cause of the death, but they had COVID at the time of the death."   

So, if you are shot or drown while you have the COVID virus, that's a COVID death?  

6/2 ADUNDUM:  On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man suspected of passing a counterfeit $20 bill, died in Minneapolis after a white police officer pressed his knee to Floyd's neck for almost nine minutes while Floyd was handcuffed face down in the street.  This outrageous murder has sparked massive protests and riots nation-wide that are still ongoing as of this writing.  Not surprisingly, the autopsies found that the cause of death was homicide--Floyd died of heart failure and asphyxia.  Oh, and by the way, the autopsies also showed that George Floyd had COVID-19.  Uh-oh.  Are we still going to count Mr. Floyd's death as a homicide, or is someone from the government going to get in front of the cameras and tell the world that his death is being reclassified?  No, I didn't think so.  That would be truly asinine.

If this were simply a problem of insufficient data, that could be understood and excused.  The experts could (and should) easily say, "Look, these are the best numbers we have today.  They're incomplete and we know it.  So take them will a grain of salt."  Instead, these fantastically fallacious numbers are being taken and presented at face value, used by bureaucrats to craft public policy and monetized by the media (fear drives more traffic than nuance). 

Although we may not have all the data, we have enough to be far more accurate in our estimates than we are.  The data is growing and the picture becoming clearer daily, as more and more studies are done.  Of critical note are a number of recent studies that have, without exception, shown that the virus is far more widespread--and thus far less deadly--than the confirmed numbers show.  

Here's part of a New York Times article entitled, "Coronavirus Infections May Not Be Uncommon, Tests Suggest" from April 21.  It's representative of many similar articles I've read (though such articles are certainly not front-page news anywhere):

"Two new studies using antibody tests to assess how many people have been infected with the coronavirus have turned up numbers higher than some experts had expected.  In both cases, the estimates of the number of people infected in those counties were far higher than the number of confirmed cases.
"The studies, conducted by public health officials and scientists at Stanford University and the University of Southern California.....tested 3,330 volunteers for antibodies indicating exposure to the virus.  After adjustments intended to account for differences between the sample and the population of the county as a whole, the researchers estimated that the prevalence of antibodies was between 2.5 percent and a bit more than 4 percent. The county’s population is 1.9 million. That means that 48,000 to 81,000 people were infected with the coronavirus in Santa Clara County by early April, the investigators concluded.

"In Los Angeles County, researchers conducted tests at drive-through sites and at participants’ homes and estimated that 2.8 percent to 5.6 percent of the county’s adult population carried antibodies to the coronavirus. There are 10.4 million people in Los Angeles County. If accurate, that would mean that 220,000 to 442,000 residents had been exposed. By comparison, only 8,000 cases had been confirmed in the county by early April, when the testing was done."

And test after test is showing similar results:

"Antibody studies in other countries have produced similar numbers, noted Dr. John Ioannidis, a professor of medicine at Stanford University and an author of the paper on Santa Clara County.  If the numbers prove accurate, he added, the virus may be much less deadly than originally expected, with a fatality rate more closely resembling that of a bad flu strain than a pandemic of profound lethality."

The bottom line: The vast majority of people who have or have had the COVID-19 virus are not being counted in the official numbers, either because they were asymptomatic or they didn't feel sick enough to seek medical attention.  In Los Angeles Country, the extrapolated number was up to 55 times higher than the confirmed number.  Thus, the actual fatality rate of COVID-19 is likely less than 0.5%, not 6%.  How is this not a headline somewhere?  Why is such data not being presented as at least a caveat to the confirmed numbers?  

9/17/2020 UPDATE:  Nearly 7 months into the pandemic, it appears that the death rate for COVID in the United States is indeed around 0.5-0.7%.  Still, that's 5-7X as deadly as the flu.  Worse yet, it's higher than it would have been due to the political response to the pandemic by the Trump administration.  

Testing (or the lack thereof) has been a perverse and persistent problem from the outset of this pandemic.  The more we test, the better our numbers are and the better our decisions have the potential to be.  But testing in the U.S. has been insufficiently available and slow coming up to speed.  Fortunately, more tests are being administered every day and the trendline is moving up and to the right.

But while too little testing has clearly caused problems, the increased testing is causing its own less obvious problem.  In brief, two months into the quarantine the numbers of COVID-19 infections should be dropping steadily, but they're surprisingly flat.  Does this mean that the quarantine isn't working?  Or that we need to quarantine harder and longer?  These would be unfortunate conclusions.  The far more likely explanation is that the more you look, the more you find.  

Here's a simple hypothetical (using small, made-up numbers) that illustrates my point:

Last week we administered 100 tests and 10 were positive for COVID-19.
This week 50 tests came back positive!  Holy crap!  Write the headline!  COVID-19 explodes!  Call the governor!  Shelter in place!
But wait...did I mention that we administered 1,000 tests this week?  Yep, which means that the rate of positive test results fell by 50%, from 10% to 5%.    

Yes, the quarantine hopefully/likely/logically helped reduce the number of infections.  But at the same time, thanks to more testing, a high number of infections are being found among a decreasing population of those infected.  Thus, the number of infections line remains flat.  The concern is that policymakers and their "experts" will accept the unfortunate conclusion that we need to quarantine harder and longer based solely on the number of confirmed infections, ignoring the favorable trend in positive test %.  

9/17/2020 UPDATE:  Well crap, Trump used this same argument.  But while it's a valid concern, it doesn't explain the full picture.  Seven months into the pandemic, the testing is actually going down in the United States but infections are going up.  Here are the latest numbers for the United States.  Undoubtedly still not accurate, but if they're even in the ballpark, we've got a big problem and--after 7 months--we're doing a piss poor job of fixing it.

3.  The goalposts keep moving  

The original goal for the quarantine was to "flatten the curve" so that hospitals would not be overwhelmed.  Everybody got behind that goal.  Well, with rare exceptions, hospitals never were overwhelmed--certainly not here in Washington.  And the curve has been flat for weeks!    

So we can lift the quarantine, right?

Nope! That's no longer good enough! Washington state's criteria for exiting lockdown changed to the death rates dropping for two weeks in a row.  And then the criteria changed again:  Now there's a four-phase plan, and to move into phase 2 (ever so slightly eased restrictions) a county must have less than 10 new cases per 100,000 residents over a 14 day period.  

Epilogue:  The criteria changed again when the powers that be realized that we were likely never going to get to 10 cases or fewer over a two week period.  The number has now moved from 10 to 25 and the authority to move to a new phase has been pushed to ~10 people/committees at the county level.  It's too confusing to explain (and will thus be ignored) but the gist of it is the governor is no longer the bad guy and if any single person in the string of people/groups required to approve a phase move decides to hold-out for any reason, the county is not able to move to the next phase.

This all reminds me of the day in grade school when your teacher tells you, "Remember, i before e!  i before e!"  And you're thinking, "i before e.  OK, that's easy enough."  And then they say, "Oh, except after c.  Then it's e before i.  And also except when sounded like a, as in neighbor and weigh.  In such cases also put the e before the i rather than the i before the e.  And um, also not i before e when the c sounds like sh, as in proficient.  Oh, and there are a number of exceptions, like neither, leisure, seizure, foreign and so on and so forth."  The rule becomes a joke.

4.  Everybody has a bias, if not an agenda.  

There are people who have an agenda when it comes to the virus.  They're self-interested in influencing an outcome. Maybe you think Trump wants to end the quarantine ASAP and get the economy going again to increase his chances of being reelected.  Maybe you think the Democrats want to hand out trillions in bail-out money to so that they literally become the hand that feeds the people.  

But even without an agenda, you and I and everybody else are biased, even if subconsciously.

Imagine the infectious disease geek toiling away for decades in the basement of some government agency, perpetually ignored, constantly getting their funding clipped, all but invisible.  Then suddenly they're being pulled out of their hole, marched in front of the cameras and asked their opinion about the one thing to which they've devoted their entire unappreciated life.  What does human nature predict that doctor will do with their 15 minutes of fame?  Downplay the crisis?  Offer a big picture view that considers multiple socio-economic factors?  Provide a nuanced look at the pros and cons of various actions?

Or is it more likely that doctor will ride the media horse for all it's worth, proving to the world--including the highschool bully who gave them a wedgy--exactly how vital and momentous they and their field of study are.

But even if such experts resist the natural urge to toot their horn, the politicians never will.  Consider this:  Government "essential" businesses allowed to remain open during the lockdown include the state lottery, liquor stores and pot shops.  

9/17/2020 UPDATE:  The biggest, most harmful and idiotic bias has been introduced and fostered by President Trump.  He's politicized the virus to the point where most Republicans won't wear masks and his more devout followers think the virus is a hoax.

5.  We're too afraid to go back to normal.

The media has done such a thorough, effective job of terrorizing the public that even when the quarantines are eased and lifted, many people will be too afraid to return to work, travel, shop, take a vacation, etc.  At best I suspect we can expect a 90% economic recovery, which will keep unemployment above 10% for the foreseeable future.

6.  A happy path is assumed when there is none.

Supporters and advocates of extended, rigorous quarantines seem to think that if we, as a nation, just follow the quarantine path, everything will be fine. Or at least vastly better than if we don't.  This is their "happy path", and it is naively fictional.   

There is no happy path in all of this, only a number of bad options.  When COVID-19 arrived, a lot of people were going to die.  The question was--and still is--the cause of death.  No quarantine means more deaths from the virus.  Extended, rigorous quarantines mean fewer people will die from the virus.  BUT....it also means more will die from other medical conditions that weren't diagnosed/treated because "non-essential" medical procedures were banned.  It means more depression, anxiety and suicides, etc.  It means that millions will fall below the poverty line.  Among the poor and in the developing world, millions will suffer from malnutrition and starvation, as aid that used to flow from strong first-world economies dries up.  It will take a long time to fully assess the impact of the quarantines on the world, but that there will be many deaths, either way, is a certainty.  And I strongly suspect that we have a fleeting opportunity now to trade tens of thousands of virus deaths for millions of non-virus deaths.  And I just as strongly suspect we won't take the opportunity.

There is no happy path. We must pick our poison.  It's not an easy decision, but a balanced approach certainly seems worth discussing.  Instead (at least up to this point), anyone who suggests that we ease restrictions is shamed and shouted down by the virtue signalers.

7.  Some policies don't make sense.

My pet peeve in all this is the fact that they've shut down national forests.  Seriously?  Even if the numbers are every bit as bad as CNN wants them to be (and not even close to as good as FoxNews wants them to be), do we really want to keep everybody together instead of inviting them to go outside and hit the trails, where you might run into another human being once every few miles?  

9/17/2020 UPDATE:  This policy was stupid and has been reversed for some time now.

While being touted as frontline heroes, thousands of doctors and nurses have been laid off or furloughed.  With rare exceptions, the wave of patients never materialized.  And because all non-essential medical procedures were put on hold as part of the quarantine, whole floors of hospitals became ghost towns.  Numerous hospitals have been pushed to the brink of closure financially.  

...on being a fundamentalist

So I'm reading a very interesting article about the recent discovery of the Higgs particle and how it may indicate that our universe is unstable and (according to Hawking) we might be gone in an instant.  And then comes this quote from the author:

"A leading physicist dubbed it the "God particle" -- a name I wish would disappear, as the particle and the laws of physics tell us nothing whatsoever about God, and God, if she exists, has not opined about the Higgs particle."   -Meg Urry, Director, Yale Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics

The quote caught my eye because I find it deeply representative of modern-day scientific orthodoxy when it comes to God.  Namely, that a created (by God) universe and a scientific universe are mutually exclusive, even diametrically opposed.  The universe is a zero sum game, in which each new scientific discovery erodes the possibility of God's creative role, or even existence.

I find this reasoning so problematic as to be nonsensical.  News programs seeking ratings can (and do) find a Bible-thumping religious  fundamentalist to take one side of this argument, but it never ceases to amaze me that distinguished scientists with high IQs and PHDs will voluntarily wade in and take the other side.

So physics tells us nothing about God?  The writing between the lines here is that God and physics have nothing to do with one another.  But why not?  Surely we can agree that science has not disproven the existence of God.  So, if God were to exist, and if God were to "create" the universe, why couldn't--indeed, why wouldn't--physics be a law of that universe?  Surely it would!

Or must we suppose that God is nothing more than a magician?  But less than that really, for the straw man God that scientists too often set forth is one who has no laws beyond His own will and whimsy.

What if God and science are not only not mutually exclusive, but essentially connected?  What if God is the greatest scientist of them all, and the laws of science are His laws?

Is it a lack of imagination that keeps both sides from envisioning a universe where God and science coexist?  Or is it an entrenched adherence to dogma, be it religious or socio-scientific?  I suspect the latter.

I strongly believe that there is a union between God and science.  If both God and the laws of science exist, it's a certainty!  That said, there's so much that I don't know, and I'm comfortable admitting as much. Thus, as a religionist, scientific discovery holds no fear for me.  It fascinates me.  And while I try not to draw premature, too-easy conclusions, I do believe it tells me a lot about God.

But the purveyors and mutually exclusive adherents of science too often think and behave like the wild eyed religious zealots that they disdain.  Exclusive, over confident and condescending, they place themselves at the same level as the fanatics they deride.  They are, in a very real sense, fundamentalists.

Here's what I think: It's OK not to know all the answers now.  Stay calm and keep learning.

...on being together forever

The bedrock LDS belief that, "families can be together forever" is feeling more and more like a platitude than a legitimate belief.  Yes, in theory we all want to be together as families in heaven, but in this life few make much of an effort to keep extended families together.  We want to be together forever, it seems, after we die.

So it is that many LDS families are geographically dispersed across states and countries and eternal relationships are relegated to social media.  In some cases this "just happens," in others it's actually viewed as a good thing, as siblings and children purposely distance themselves from difficult relationships.  Relationships, it turns out, are hard work.  Of course, in heaven everybody will suddenly get along fine and we'll all be happily together forever plucking harps as we sit on our fluffy white cloud in the sky.

A crucial missing concept here--an obvious one, but one that eluded me until I became a father--is that families extend.   Ask a child who their family is and you'll usually get mommy, daddy, brothers and sisters.  Most adults would likely say the same.  So dad, mom and kids, that's family unit.  For a while at least.  Then the kids go off and get married and form their own family units, and mom and dad (now grandma and grandpa) are not included.  At least not as much or as often.  And great grandparents, if they're still around, are so far out of sight and out of mind that they barely exist.  That's what the $100 billion dollar a year nursing homes industry is for.  And dead ancestors--forget it!  Genealogy is for old people with nothing else to do.

So the family unit is transitory, with people moving in and out as they move along the conveyer belt of life.  Not an unbroken chain, but a trail of broken links.  Certainly not the beautiful picture we profess, but all too often the ugly reality we live.

Call me a heretic, but professed religious beliefs regarding the eternal family are starting to matter less than real estate and relationships to me.

...on being thrown out of the jury pool

Last year it finally happened.  I was selected for jury duty.  So I took a few days to do my civic obligation, and learned a few lessons in the process.  Chief among these is that the vast majority of cases you'll encounter in county court involve driving under the influence of alcohol.  All of mine were DUI cases, and each time I was removed from the jury pool by the defense lawyer because I don't drink.  

That's one of the qualifying questions they ask:  "Is there any body here who does not drink?" You can imagine how few hands go up. The lawyer then wants to know why.  Is it because of my religion?  I chafe at Mormons who say they don't drink because their religion forbids it.  Come on!  That's a cop out!  And it makes you sound like you belong to a cult whose totalitarian leader demands strict obedience...or else.  I always answer that it's a personal decision based, in part, on my religious beliefs, but that I can still be a fair juror.  That's how I answered the lawyers each time.  And although there were more questions asked and answers considered, the fact that I don't drink got me ejected every time.

Now, there are things that you do and don't say in polite company.  Sitting there among a large group of potential jurors, in front of a judge, lawyers and the accused, I kept my answers courteous and socially acceptable.  But in hindsight--and knowing that I was destined to be booted from the pool anyway--I wish I had been a little more honest and a little less politically correct.  Something like this:

Defense Lawyer:  Is there anybody in this group who doesn't drink at all?
Me:  (I raise my hand)
Defense Lawyer: Juror number 7, have you ever drunk alcohol?
Me: No sir.  
Defense Lawyer: Number 7, can you tell me a little bit about why you don't drink?
Me: It's a personal decision.
Defense Lawyer: Is it related to your religious beliefs?
Me: In part, but to be honest my religious beliefs are a secondary consideration when it comes to my decision not to drink alcohol.  My primary reason is that alcohol is a poison, and I don't need religion to tell me I shouldn't drink poison.
Defense Lawyer: So you think that alcohol is poisionous?
Me: I don't think it, I know it.  It's a scientific fact.
Defense Lawyer: OK, but isn't it true that if you drink enough of anything it can be poisonous?  Drinking too much water, for example, can kill you.
Me:  Too much of anything can kill you, but that doesn't make a substance like water poisonous.   Water is not poisonous to humans.  Drinking too much water can cause hyponatremia, which is over-hydration that results in a dangerous imbalance of electrolytes in the body.  Deadly, perhaps, but not because water is poisonous.
Alcohol on the other hand--even a drop of it--is toxic to the human body.   To neutralize this toxin, the body produces an enzyme in the stomach called aldehyde dehydrogenase, which steals a hydrogen atom from the ethanol molecules, making them non-toxic.  This works until the body can no longer keep up with the amount of alcohol it needs to detoxify.
Defense Lawyer: But if our bodies do this automatically, then drinking a manageable amount of alcohol isn't a problem. Would you agree?
Me: I would not.  You could say the same thing about ingesting rat poison or snake venom. 
Defense Lawyer: Do you accept that drinking a certain amount of alcohol is legal?
Me: I do.
Defense Lawyer: So you're OK with people drinking alcoholic beverages as long as they stay within the law?
Me: I didn't say that.  Look, I can set my personal beliefs aside in this case and strictly and dispassionately apply the law based on the facts I'm presented.  But I do have a problem with people drinking mind altering poison. It's a high risk game, as decades of grim statistics bear witness.  People want to drink enough alcohol to make them feel good and loosen their inhibition.  To do that they need to get enough ethanol into their bloodstream to alter their cognitive function and compromise their brain's ability to send neurological signals to the body.  But then, having reached this desired state of inhibition, they're expected to exercise good judgement; to restrain themselves from drinking too much poison, which would further compromise their cognitive and physical abilities and make them dangerous to themselves and others.  Frankly, I think that's a stupid, unnecessary gamble.
Defense Lawyer: So you disagree with the law, then?  You think that even when a person has a blood-alcohol level at or below the legal limit, they're too compromised to operate a vehicle?
Me: I think that you should try this case with a blood-alcohol level right at the legal limit and see how that works out for your client.  I also think that you want to find six people in this group who believe that drinking poison is a reasonable thing to do.  And I'm telling you that I'm not one of them. 
Defense Lawyer:  Your Honor, I move to have juror number 7 removed on cause.
Judge:  Granted.  Juror number 7 you're excused and may leave the courtroom.

As an epilogue, I'm sick of the fallacious argument that, "the dosage makes the poison."  Even doctors, like David J. Hanson, make this argument.  He points out that, "too much salt in a diet can cause serious health problems, hyper hydration can kill athletes, and too much oxygen given to a premature infant can cause permanent blindness."  Pure genius doc, but these are not toxicologically poisonous to humans.  Alcohol is.  If your sweeping definition of poison is, "any substance that is capable of causing injury, illness or death to an organism" then EVERYTHING  is poisonous.  In your world water, Twinkies, bread, spaghetti, milk, cabbage--everything--needs to have a skull and crossbones poison label on it.  But in the real world they don't sport such labels, because a) they're not poison, and b) if everything is poison then the idea of poison is meaningless. 

Look, you want to drink poison up to the legal limit, go ahead.  That's your right.  But don't expect me to condone it.  And please, don't pretend that what you're drinking isn't poison.

...on being robbed by popular demand

As a practicing Christian who absolutely believes in the principle of charity and who is definitely not rich, I have a major problem with President Obama's push to raise taxes on just the top 2% of Americans.  Forget technical arguments like the fact that many small business owners artificially fall into the top 2% and raising their taxes will have a negative impact.   Excellent point, but I'm going to take it off the table here and focus instead on another undeniable fact that the President, with the support of the majority of Americans, is moving to steal money from a minority group.

Assumptions and clarifications:  I'm assuming here that President Obama's reelection by a majority of American voters is, as he claims, a mandate to raise taxes on the wealthy.  

Here's the quote from Peter Schiff:  "I'm in the top two percent.  [And] I don't care what the majority voted to do, they don't have a right to steal my money just because they vote for it."

His assessment is dead on accurate.  What's happening isn't unconstitutional, but it's wrong.  The majority has singled-out a minority group that has what they want and are taking it from them by force.  By force of law, in this case, but by force none the less.  

Senator Dick Durbin points out that, "Two out of three Americans want the rich to pay more."  But so what?  What if two out of three American's wanted to repeal civil rights laws?  Does that give us the right to do it?  Better yet, does that make it right?  The president and congress have the right to raise taxes, but when one group get's singled-out to pay for everybody, that's not right.

This is "might = right."   The majority has the political might and that makes stealing money from a minority group right.  And it's justified because the rich need to "pay their fair share."  Of course, "their fair share" is determined by the majority.

...on being lower than a dog

So you've got a dog, or a cat, or several of either, and you like to tell people that, since you've chosen not to have kids, these are your "children."  Maybe you fancy the way it rolls off the tongue, or enjoy the put-upon feeling of responsibility that it imparts, or crave the sense of warmth and devotion you're sure it imbues your public persona.

Well, let me do you a favor.  In fact, let me do you, me and so many, many others a favor.    Here it is:  They're not your kids. Not even remotely close. They're not kids at all (unless they're goats).  They're animals.  And besides driving people like me who actually do have real children crazy, the only thing that referring to your pets as your kids garners you is the well deserved pity of others.

Hey, I'm not anti-pet.  I had pets growing up, they were great, I loved them.  But best case scenario, referring to your pet as your child makes you seem lonely and sad.  Like the kind of person who, in later years, will make local headlines when the police remove 93 cats from your two bedroom apartment and cart them off to the animal shelter.   The portion of the police report they quote online will talk about how the floor was two inches deep in newspaper and feces.  Now, I'm not saying that's going to happen to you just because you call your dog your "baby," but I'm also not gonna lie--every time you say it the image does flash through my mind.

Worst case scenario, you're not only sad, you're offensive.  If you really, truly believe that your pets are the apples-to-apples equivalent of children, and you want to insert your "kids" into the conversation any time the real parents are talking about our real kids, that's just not cool.  It chafes.  You see what you're doing there?  Yep, your putting your pug on the same level as my daughter and two sons.  Just so we're clear:  Your pets and my kids--not even remotely equal.  The relationship you have with your pets and the relationship I have with my kids--not even remotely equal.  Not in magnitude, not in quality, not in nature, not in intensity.  And if you don't realize that...sad.  But see, deep down I gotta believe that you really do realize it and you choose to make the implied comparison anyway.  And that's offensive.

Of course, if you want to be simultaneously offensive and ridiculous, then don't limit yourself to talking.  Feed your dog human junk food 'til it's clinically obese (just like the human kids!), then get its doctor (aka vet) to put it on a diet.  And by all means go out there and put some serious money down on pet apparel.  Don't scrimp--pimp that puppy out!  Dress it up in an outfit so bodacious that even your pet is thinking, "What the..."  For the full effect, of course, you'll want multiple outfits.  Oh, and one for halloween that puts every kid in the neighborhood to shame.  Cuz your kid deserves the best.  He won't be going to Harvard on account of he's too busy drooling and licking himself, but your baby-waby will dang sure be the best dressed kid in the neighborhood. 

...on being right. Unfortunately.

Rather than gloat in the accuracy of my prognostication that Obama would beat Romney in the presidential election, let me admit that I was surprised and depressed.  The polls showed a very close race, the results did not.  I expected a cliffhanger not a landslide.  I anticipated that voter turnout would be high, not low. No matter, my guy lost and I'm sad and disappointed.

I also hoped to get an elusive answer to a simple question: How piss poorly does a president have to perform before the American public will vote them out of office?  This is an inexplicably open question at this point.  Honestly, how bad does it have to get?  And how long does it have to stay there?  How high does the national dept need to climb?  Or how many tens of millions of Americans have to be unemployed?

Honestly, I believe that as a country we've got the equivalent of battered spouse syndrome.  Oh no, we say, he's a good president.  He loves us.  The black eye and the bruises?  ...oh, we just ran into the door, that's all that is.  We just tripped and fell.  He didn't do that.  Don't take him away.  He loves us.  He takes good care of us.

Well, here's to four more years of violent beat-downs and denial.

__________________________________________________________________________

"Mitt Romney and his family would have been the essence of exactly what this country needs.  
 Romney's recipe was the old standby: American route to success--hard work.  That gets sneered at.
In a country of children where the option is Santa Claus or work, what wins?  
Romney put forth a great vision of traditional America, and it was rejected. It was rejected in favor of a guy who thinks that those who are working aren't doing enough to help those who aren't. 
And that resonated." 

-Rush Limbaugh

__________________________________________________________________________

One comic moment of the evening came when President Obama told the crowd at his victory rally that, "the best is yet to come."  I almost laughed.  We could have elected a bruised avocado as president and reasonably deduced that the best is yet to come.  We could have elected a three-legged hampster as president and been confident that the best is yet to come.  We could have elected a bowling ball as president and searched in vain for anybody to challenge the claim that the best is yet to come.  Considering the last four years, how could it be otherwise?  When you're lying flat on your back at the bottom of a deep hole, the only way is up.  But hey, it's always nice to hear the guy who helped put you there call down, "Don't worry, the best is yet to come!"

Another bit of straight-faced hilarity followed when The New York Times wrote, "Now that President Obama has overcome Mitt Romney and a sluggish economy..."  Oh thank heaven above, Obama has overcome the sluggish economy.  Hallelujah, hallelujah, he has overcome!!!  Now that doesn't mean that any of you 23,000,000 out of work Americans will be getting a job any time soon.  Because YOU didn't overcome the sluggish economy, HE did.  Hope and change! Forward!

Another depressing result of last night's festivities was the legalization of marijuana for recreational use in both Colorado and Washington.  And the vote wasn't even close!  We're now a majority soulless, morally bankrupt society that has no compass and no rudder other than our own carnal desires.  And the whole argument that legalizing marijuana will bring in taxes is so shortsighted that I'm actually embarrassed for anybody who sincerely makes it.  Our two existing legalized drugs (tobacco and alcohol) have a roughly 1:10 benefit/cost ratio.  In 2007, the government collected $25 billion in tobacco taxes, but spent over $200 billion on health and other tobacco related costs.  Also in 2007, the government collected $14 billion in alcohol taxes, but spent $185 billion to cover health, crime and other alcohol-related costs.  And I'll wager this fails to account for the enormous social and financial costs of broken homes, shattered marriages and loss of productivity associated with alcohol.  The economics of marijuana will be no different, and perhaps even worse.  To advocate legalizing marijuana, one must possess neither moral compass nor higher intellect...or posses and be high on marijuana.  Same basic condition.

And the initiative to legalize gay marriage passed in multiple states, of course.  Nobody wants to be a hate monger or bigott (one can't possibly defend traditional marriage for any other reason), and very few today appreciate what marriage actually is, so such initiatives pass.  And will continue to do so.  So rather than stand in the way of progress I'm going to accelerate it.  I'm advocating for polygamy   It's the next logical step.  And anybody who opposes it is really just a hate mongering bigot.

And why stop there?  What if we legalized pedophilia?  Like homosexuality  it's genetic--the pedophile gene is called Progranulin (PGRN).  They can't help the way they are and we're a bunch of bigots for the way we, as a society, treat them.  And by legalizing it we could at least regulate it, right?  Like marijuana.  Hey, maybe we could even tax it somehow.

And what about zoophelia?  I have yet to read of an identified genetic link there, but we both know they'll find one if they look.  So legalize it!  And please don't attempt the pathetic argument that, "there are hardly any people who are attracted to animals."  Who cares!  Fair is fair, regardless of the numbers.  We're talking about a principle here, not a popularity contest!  

If you think anything I've said here is radical or unrealistic, you're wrong (and a bigot).  Just keep following the road we're on to it's logical and inevitable terminus and you'll be there too.  See ya soon.

...on being hung separately

I was irked that I even felt I needed to go to the Washington State caucus today.  The Republicans inexplicably have failed to unify around the only--and obviously only--candidate that has a chance to beat Obama in November.  They've wrung their hands and hopped form one not-Romney option to another, putting their bigotry on display while dragging the contest out, weakening Romney and forcing him to spend heavily and unnecessarily to eek out victories in states that he should take easily.

So Saturday morning I went to caucus with my precinct. Arrived and was told that the online info was wrong and I'd have to go to another location across town.  Got there and the one person volunteer staff was totally overwhelmed and unorganized.  It took an hour just to get started.  Meanwhile, a lively discussion had started among some of the caucus goers as to how Obama was obviously not an American citizen and his birth certificate was a sham.  Yep, Ron Paul T-shirts.  Not surprising.  Finally somebody had enough sense to interject that that argument was done.  Had failed.  Was actually hurting the cause.  Oh no, it's a new election, came the retort, time to march it out again.  At this point I just wanted a private place to puke and then get out of there.

Those for Paul were deep into their fantasy, insisting that polls clearly showed he could beat Obama, that all other candidates wanted to destroy the constitution and that the rest of American would embrace Paul if not for the media conspiracy to black ball him.  The Santorum supporters marched out the usual garbage about Romney--the same stuff they marched out when they were Bachman supporters, then Cain supporters, then Perry supporters, then Gingrich supporters, then...good gravy, is Santorum still in the race?  Well then he's our man!!!  Woo-hoo!  Santorum in 2012!  Go anti-birth control guy!

Finally the Romney supporters got a chance to speak in our caucus, and most endorsed their choice by saying that they didn't like him but thought that he had the best chance to win.  The caucus chairperson got up and said that she likes Paul, but was going with Romney and that we should do the same and set aside the distasteful fact that he's a Mormon.  Well, bigotry aside, at least somebody is serious about winning.

What a truly pathetic display.  After nearly three hours (it should have taken 10 minutes) I was glad to get out of there and firmly convinced of a few things:

First, Republicans truly and richly deserve to have Barack Obama as their president for another four years.

Second, when Obama is re-elected (and he will be) they'll blame Romney (yes, he will be the nominee), but it will absolutely be their own fault.  They wouldn't hang together, so they'll be hung separately. Show me a Ron Paul supporter, and I'll show you somebody who doesn't want to win badly enough.

Third, there is no ideological purity in the Republican party.  They're hypocrites!  I had them pegged as the party of Sharron Angle--willing to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory rather than abandoning principle.  But when I saw them trample principle and ethics in their headlong rush to embrace Newt "the man whore" Gingrich in South Carolin, I knew the truth.  Of course they abandoned him a month later in favor of Santorum, but not because of his adultery or say-anything lobbyist work.

Fourth, Republicans say they want liberals to change their minds about things like abortion.  But when somebody like Romney does change his mind, they reject it as a lie.

Finally, I have no interest in becoming a registered republican.  I could go for the idealogically pure party or the winning party, but the Republicans are the opposite in both counts.  Their ideals are a  matter of convenience AND they excel at losing.

...on being a churchgoing zombie (part 1)

"The Lord could get along very well without me and He lost nothing by my falling out of the ranks; But O what have I lost?!"  -Thomas B. Marsh

I was deeply saddened yesterday when my wife told me that some friends from our time in Texas had just announced via Facebook that they have left the church. This is a tragedy (in the most Greek sense of the word) involving families and children, so it's not something that I take lightly or wish to mock. This then will be less of a rant than an opportunity for me to express my thoughts and make my case for what some few at least must perceive as my poorly thought-out membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

Any time someone you know leaves the church, it's jarring. I get a sick feeling inside and can't stop thinking about it (thus this post). But announcing your exit in a ubber-public forum like Facebook is problematic. In this case, our disaffected friends offered to answer any questions that others might have, then posted a link to an article that they said fairly captured their reasons for leaving.

But to my friends in Texas, I would say, what questions can I really ask? If I disapprove and ask challenging questions, I not only force you to defend your position (thus becoming further entrenched in it) but provide you the opportunity to publicly (if unintentionally) proselytize against the church.

I read through the article you had linked to and it was the standard roll call of complaints against the church by the disaffected: The church is not progressive, too secretive, down on women, down on gays, down on dissenting opinion, anti-science, anti-social, etc. Not a single nuanced argument, which truly surprised me. I thought, Seriously? You left the church because of that? No, you're not the only ones, but that's a lemming argument. 

As I think about it, I wonder what you must think of me. You must think that I'm an auto pilot member of the church, a creature of habit, attending church without thinking too deeply about it, animated solely by "the traditions of [my] fathers," largely unaware of the bigger picture, having never grappled with the substantial issues with which you've grappled. You must, in short, think that I'm a churchgoing zombie. Or just not very smart. I couldn't have seriously and intelligently thought about the things you've thought about. Couldn't have truly and fairly considered them. Couldn't have ask the tough questions. Because if I had, I must have arrived at the same inescapable, painful conclusions as you.

Or perhaps you think that I have a higher threshold than you for what you perceive to be the obvious problems in the church--that I'm a bottom feeder, willing and able to sit in the dirty bathwater of Mormonism while you take the high road of principal?

Oh no, you say, you don't think that! You certainly don't think I'm stupid, and if the church works for me then that's great. For me. Except that it's not. It can't be. Because if an intelligent, principled adult has diligently considered the same evidence and arrived at a completely different conclusion and subsequent course of action, then your departure is, at best, premature.

For your decision to be right, I don't have to be a bad person. Nor do I have to be mentally deficient or even delusional. But is sure would help your cause if I were wrong.  For whatever reason. We can't both be right; and if I'm right, then there is a way forward for you in the church.

In my experience, people who leave the church do so because they've taken offense with other people in the church. They seldom see it that way. They maintain that they disagree on principal with a doctrine, policy or program.  But in reality they disagree with one or more of the people in the church who are attempting to interpret a doctrine, implement a policy or teach a principal.  Ironically, this is at its heart the same flawed but superficially effective method employed by the anti-religion, atheist movement: They take what they perceive as God's standard, measure it against the actions of religious mortals, then present the delta as proof of everything from hypocrisy to intentional malfeasance. Mere mortals always falls short of God's standard.  Case closed.

Or is it?  So my BYU professor tells me to stop reading scientific journals. So what? Am I seriously willing to abandon my testimony and membership in the church for him? What if he told me that science was awesome and I should learn more about it? Would I build my testimony on that?  Of course not.  When I was a teenager, my Stake President told us (from the podium) that the second coming would happen between 1996 and 2004.  Well, he was wrong.  And my testimony is just fine.  And so is his.  

The point I'm trying to make is that we're drawing the proverbial battle lines far from the true battle front here. Activity in the church is not a matter of perception, or your pain threshold vs. mine, or what this leader said, or how that program appears to exclude a group of people, or how a certain policy is behind the times.

The true measure and foundation of membership is testimony through revelation--everything else assumes a subsequent position of relevancy.

Is the Book of Mormon true? How do you know? Do you know because your mother or your bishop told you? No, you know the Book of Mormon is true because, like me, you read it, thought carefully about it, believed it, then prayed sincerely and asked God if it was true. And, like me, you received an answer. That happened. You can choose to deny that it happened, or rationalize why it wasn't really an answer from God, but that is a completely and remotely different issue than the church's position on marriage or whether your Sunday school teacher believes that the earth is six thousand years old.

It is both possible and of paramount importance to gain a testimony of the truthfulness of the gospel. That simple testimony becomes the foundation and context through which all other issues are viewed. You may not know all the answers--I certainly don't--but you know that the church is fundamentally true. And you proceed from there.

...on being in a state of emergency

As it does once every few years, it's snowing in Seattle, which can only mean one thing: The end of the world in a most violent and cruel fashion!!!  Has the mayor resigned yet?  No, but today, a day after being overwhelmed with a whopping two inches of snow in Seattle and Bellevue--two inches I say!!!--Gov. Chris Gregoire issued a State of Emergency. 

They got 4.3 inches at SeaTac, enough to close all three runways. Do you know what they call a day in January where you get 4.3 inches of snow in Idaho, where I'm from? Tuesday. Unless it happens on another day of the week.

The governor's declaration means she may mobilize the National Guard, and I for one hope she does.  After all, as King5 Weather reports in a large, bold headline, we're experienceing "Sub-Freezing Temperatures!"  That means below 32 degrees, for those of you keeping score.  They say temps may dip into the teens!  Holy taco!  The teens, people!  The TEENS!!!  Do you know what they call a day in January with temperatures in the teens in Idaho?  Tuesday.  Wednesday.  Thursday.  Friday.  Saturday.  Sunday.  Oh, and Monday.

The local media has hyped this storm as the worst since the 1930s--12 inches of white death!  And by 12 inches they mean two.  So yesterday was D-day and my drive into work was awesome--no cars. And I had the office to myself. Alfred Hitchcock was a visionary when he said, "There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it."

We got stuck beind another driver on the only road out of our community yesterday.  He was stuck on a short incline that leads to the main road.  About half way up, he gunned the engine and spun his tires.  That didn't get him anywhere, so he gunned the engine and spun his tires again.  Nothing.  OK, so he gunned the engine and spun his tires.  Still nothing.  So he gunned his engine and spun his tires.  Nada.  Arighty, so he gunned his engine and spun his tires.  Well, this went on for ten minutes until there was obviously only one thing for him to do.  So he gunned his engine and spun his tires.  Finally, he stepped out of his car with a stunned look on his face, seemingly shocked that doing the same thing over and over again had produced the same result over an over again.  He looked at the ground in front of his car (yes, that white stuff...that's snow).  He was a grown adult, capable of higher reason.  He studied the situation, then got back in his car and...well, you know what he did.  Thankfully, he finally slid off to the side and stopped long enough for us to drive around him (in our Mazda5 filled with kids) to the top of the incline and be on our way.

So the truth of the matter is that the snow is not the problem.  Nor is the temperature or the hills or any of the other tempting and convienient excuses that Seattlites like to use in apocalyptic times like these.  And I would argue that its not even a matter of snow driving skill.  Those can be learned quickly enough by anybody who's observant and calm enlough to learn.  The real enemy, as they say, is us.  At least those of us whose brains shut down and go into panic mode at the first mention of snow in the forecast.

...on being groped with politically correct sensativity

The Transportation Safety Administration's (TSA) decision to step-up airport screening measures has ignited the short fuse of public discontent and outrage. Many find the choice between a see-through scan or having their privates groped by a TSA agent unsavory and unsatisfactory. Stories and video footage are all over the web, the flames being fanned ever higher by the likes of Matt Drudge. People are being arrested for refusing to be aggressively patted down, children are be strip searched, and TSA agents are being paid to do things that would otherwise land them in jail for sexual assault. And no surprise, the law suites are already being filed.

If this were the only or best way to ensure the safety of American citizens from possible terrorist attacks, I'd say go ahead and grope me. Scan me. Do what you need to do for the greater good. But the sad fact of the matter is that groping and scanning are not the only or best option. Profiling is (and everybody knows it).

Until now, the question was whether we were going to profile or opt for a little less security. We chose the latter in the name of sensitivity and political correctness. Fine. I disagree, but I get it. But now the government has decided that having TSA agents grope citizens (and arrest them if they refuse the groping!) and take naked pictures of them is better than profiling? Are you kidding me? When did politic correctness become so overtly incorrect? Is there an ACLU wing-nut out there who thinks that what is going on at our nation's airports is still better than profiling?

The notion that we shouldn't profile is just absurd and stupid. The equation is simple: Not profiling = random. And we're not at war with random people. We're not at war with every tenth passenger getting on a plane. We're at war with radical islamists! It's so dirt simple a five year old could see it and yet we refuse to make intelligent decisions based on a clear historic pattern. And why? It used to be because we didn't want to offend or appear to be insensitive. Safe to say, that's clearly not the reason anymore!

But at least we're being insensitive and offensive to everybody, right? No discrimination here.

We need to discriminate. I know that's inconvenient right now if you're a young Muslim man with ties to a country on a terror watch list, but I'd like to think that the average Muslim's top priority when they get on an airplane is the same as mine--to live through the flight. Look, if there were a clear recent history of white, American, Mormon men blowing up planes, I'd not only tolerate the TSA profiling me, I'd expect it. In fact, I'd demand it!

At the end of the day, I guess I prefer sane, rational inconvenience to blind stupidity.

...on being non-confrontational

"If you are planning on loading up the station wagon and taking the kids to Disneyland, the federal government doesn't advise going through Arizona - it's too dangerous and they can't protect you. These signs say to American citizens, the federal government has ceded this area to the drug cartels. Don't come here; we can't protect you."
- Texas Representative Ted Poe

The BLM no doubt had good intentions when they posted signs along a major interstate in Arizona, more than 100 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border. The signs warn travelers the area is unsafe because of "armed criminals" and "drug and human" smugglers moving through the area.

I suppose warnings are appreciated, but they beg several questions. First and foremost, why are there armed foreign criminals and smugglers roaming around in the United States? And what is the government going to do about the problem besides put up a bunch of signs? Don't we have federal immigration laws that address this very problem and which the president and federal government are legally and constitutionally bound to enforce?

These are all good questions that deserve and urgently need answers. There's another, though, that illuminates the real intent of the federal government when it comes to enforcing federal immigration laws (not to mention myriad criminal laws) in places like Arizona. I'll preface it by pointing out that the BLM signs instruct citizens not to "confront" any foreign criminals, traffickers and smugglers they encounter, but to call 911. Sounds sensible, right? Let the professionals take care of the situation.

But where does your call go when you dial 911? Does it go to the White House? To Secretary Napolitano's cell phone? To the FBI? Of course not--it goes to local law enforcement. That makes sense, except for the fact that the Obama administration just sued the State of Arizona for trying have state and local police enforce federal immigration laws.

Now to be fair, if a Mexican drug runner is brazenly chasing you down the highway, state and local police officers will be able to help you and apprehend the bad guys. But in most cases the rules of the game go something like this: If you encounter drug or human smugglers in Arizona do not confront them. Instead, call 911 for local police who cannot confront them because they're legally prohibited from doing so by the federal government who will not confront them.

Do Not, Cannot and Will Not. Sounds like a Jim Carey movie. Maybe the BLM had better order some more of those signs. And maybe a few white flags while their at it.

...on being guilty by association

Standards are good. Or at least common. Even the claim that, "I have no standards" is a standard. We call them rules, laws, codes, ethics, and many other names, but standards are as ubiquitous as man. They're also, by their very nature, exclusive and divisive.

Setting a standard is analogous to drawing a line in the sand. No problem, unless the obvious majority of people on the far side of that line are from a single group that's different than the people on the near side of the line. When standards come in conflict with homogeneity, however innocently, there will be fireworks.

Take immigration for example. The United States, Canada and Mexico all have challenges related foreign nationals illegally entering their country. But generally only in the U.S. has the idea of opposing illegal immigration become associated with racism. The explanation is simple: In Mexico, it's Hispanics crossing into another Hispanic country. In Canada, it's a heterogeneous collection of people from around the world entering. But in the U.S., it's primarily Hispanics entering a country of WASPs--the division falls along racial lines. A Mexican, a Canadian and an American may each oppose illegal immigration for purely principled reasons, but only the American can and will be labeled a racist.

Gay marriage provides another example. From the Judeo-Christian perspective, marriage is ordained of God and is a covenant between a man, a woman and their God. Generally speaking, there was never any visible person or group to exclude. But with the rise in visibility and social acceptance of homosexuality, that has changed. Now there is a homogeneous group being excluded by the age-old standard. And since the line in the sand divides according to sexual orientation, 'bigot' and 'homophobe' are the natural labels of choice for the disenfranchised. Can one oppose broadening the definition and scope of marriage on purely principled grounds because they believe there is a sacred standard? Technically yes, but in reality proponents of legislation seeking to uphold traditional marriage are aggressively labeled as backward, bigoted homophobes.

In these and other cases, it's guilt by association. Are some of those associated also guilty? Certainly, there are racists, homophobes and haters of all stripes in this world. But there are also many good, principled individuals to whom things like sexual preference and race are coincidental to the point.

But no matter. If the standard that you keep happens to exclude a homogeneous group that is in some way different than you, then principles are not up for discussion. Whether you ever intended to engage in conflict is irrelevant--the war will be taken to you. And in truly ironic fashion, you will be attacked and labeled by righteously indignant victims of labeling and attacks.

...on being discriminatory

Discrimination has a bad connotation these days, but I think it's fair to say that, admit it or not, we all discriminate in one way or another. So, since abstinence from discrimination isn't a realistic expectation, here are some guidelines for safe discrimination in modern-day America.

When it comes to immigration, discrimination, no matter how principled, is very bad and basically makes you a racist. Legal vs. illegal immigration is irrelevant, as are federal immigration laws.

When it comes to affirmative action, discrimination is both good and proper. Race, ethnicity and gender must be considered. State police officers may not be able to ask certain questions based on skin tone, but the departments for which they work hire and promote based on this very criteria.

When it comes to marriage, discrimination is bad. One must not discriminate based on sexual preference because that's bigotry.

On the other hand, when it comes to judicial appointments, discrimination is highly desirable. So adding your voice to the throng of people outraged that we have no openly gay justice on the supreme court would be politically correct.

When it comes to airport security, discrimination is bad. Statistics be damned, profiling is not what this country is about!

Unless you're talking about our progressive tax code, in which case discrimination is a legislative mandate. The rich must be identified and made to pay a disproportionate share of their earnings. To do otherwise would be discriminating against the poor.