Weekend Update - Can We Get a Little Break Here?

(Okay, I'm ready for Spring.  Did you hear me, Oh-Great-Whomever-Is-In-Charge of this?  This silly little mind game you've been playing with us is no longer funny, not even remotely.  You give us a little sunshine, bring the temperature up to about 70, convince us it's okay to wash the car, then rips it all out from under us the very next day with a deluge of rain and wind.  We haven't even got all the damage done during the big ice storm we had a month ago cleaned up.  Come on. There's flowers to plant, seeds to be cast, decks to power wash; you know, the usual springtime stuff.  I'm giving you one more chance, Oh-Great-Whomever, and if you do this to me again there'll be hell to pay.  Do you hear me?  Hell, I say.  But I digress ...)

"...and when I get REALLY excited ..."

• Let's start with news we barely care about.  Apparently actress Gwyneth Paltrow and  Coldplay singer Chris Martin have split up.  This news shouldn't be news to anyone but the most ardent of fan club members, except for something the couple included in their press release about the break.  They used the term "conscious uncoupling."  You know, like in "Things didn't work out between us, so we consciously uncoupled."  Oh brother. I'm sorry, but crap like that is what keep my eye sockets lubricated with copious amounts of eye-rolling. When I think of divorce I think of death-wishes and name calling, dishes being thrown and clothes tossed out onto the lawn.  You know, normal stuff.  But "conscious uncoupling?"  Please.  However not everyone feels like I do on this subject.  Mark Morford weighs in with "How Not to Murder Your Ex."
• Nothing gets our blood boiling more than a good alcohol fueled discussion of the Junior Bush years, and the conversations get the loudest when it gets to the subject of the Iraq debacle, and especially Dick "We Call Him Dick" Cheney.  Discussing The Dark Lord calmly is almost an impossibility, because we know, we KNOW, Dick Cheney has never admitted he did anything wrong during his years in the administration, and as a matter of fact he thinks most of things he did were heroic.  But lest we forget, there's one other person who took part in all that, who, when you think about it, was even worse.  We called him "Rummy."  Donald Rumsfeld served as Secretary of Defense under Cheney, and practically everything he ever uttered about his actions turned out to be wrong. (Lies.)  Documentarian Erroll Morris has released a documentary about Rumsfeld entitled "The Unknown Known," after one of Rummy's most famous misspeaks, and it's a doozy.  The fact that Rumsfeld sat for this documentary shows how demented this man is.  Check out Alternet's "Rumsfeld Documentary Reveals What an Unaccountable Slippery Bastard He Is."
• And since we mentioned Dick Cheney, we can't help but pass this along.  Yet another pro-gun Republican politician has taken careful aim and accidentally shot a fellow hunter in the face.  Must be something going around with these fellows.  Oklahoma Representative Steve Vaughan afterwards said he was sorry, but apparently that's just one of the hazards one has to contend with when one goes hunting with a conservative.
• I was watching The Today Show the other day when I got up to get another cup of coffee.  When I got back to my seat what I saw on the TV screen almost made me loose my Wheaties.  There was Dubya Bush, being interviewed by his daughter Jenna (who now works for NBC,) and they were standing in a room full of paintings, purportedly painted by Dubya himself.  The paintings, grade school level at best, were of world leaders, and even old Dubya himself.  He began heh-heh'ing his way through the "interview," and made an alarming statement.  "Painting has really opened my mind," he said, and then stood there frozen with his Alfred E. Newman grin waiting for his daughter to give him a little hug, or something.  Opened his mind?  Holy shit.
• If you have not watched an episode of "Cosmos" on TV's Sunday nights, you have been missing the most fantastic stuff anywhere on the tube.  Bad Hat highly recommends it, and be sure to gather the kids around the set with you.  That is unless you're a devout radical Christian who believes the Earth is 6000 years old, and mankind used to ride around on the backs of dinosaurs.  Then I'm thinking you probably wouldn't like this show so much.  You see, it has a lot of "reality" and "science" and yucky stuff like that in it.
• From the Miami Herald:  " CIA officers subjected some terrorism suspects after the Sept. 11 attacks to interrogation methods that were not approved by either the Justice Department or their own headquarters, and illegally detained 26 of its 119 captives in CIA custody, the Senate Intelligence Committee has concluded in its still-secret report, McClatchy has learned."   Uh oh.
  
  Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/04/03/4037714/mcclatchy-senate-panel-finds-cia.html#storylink=cpy

Thanks, Lyndon

So I sat there for the longest time trying to figure out what was wrong with my foot.  Since I was in an aisle seat, and the plane had landed, I was fast becoming a roadblock of sorts to the fellow inhabitants of my row, but I was, at least for the moment, more concerned with my foot than I was with their inconvenience.  It was numb.  No, more than numb, it wasn't there.  I couldn't feel it anymore.   My knee was there, but since I couldn't actually see beyond my knee I wasn't sure if my foot was there anymore.  We had been on this stinking airplane for approximately 21 hours straight since we left Travis Air Force Base in California, and somewhere around the International Date Line we not only had traveled back, or forward, in time, I had also lost a foot somewhere.  "Hey asshole, how 'bout gettin' out of the way."  That came from my seat mate to my immediate right, a rather large swarthy dipshit from Merced, California who had not only fallen asleep with his head on my shoulder several times, he had drooled while doing it.  I mumbled something about my foot being asleep so he kindly kicked it.  My foot, I mean.  It woke up.

Several hours before, we had plummeted through the dark of night headed toward Tokyo International Airport, and we were apparently low on fuel because the pilots in their infinite wisdom decided it would be cheaper to fly directly through a monstrous thunder storm than to go around.  I have never been afraid of flying ever since that night, because that night the Flying Gods had their chance to do away with me, and chose not to.  It was September of 1966, and I would live another day, at least.  I would tell you the details of the wings flapping up and down like an actual bird, and the engine pods swinging back and forth, but I'd have to double-up on my medication again.  We'll just let it go for now.

But now we had just landed at Tan Son Nhut airport, in the heart of Saigon, South Viet Nam, a freaking war zone. I stumbled forward down the aisle with the drooling dipshit bumping my backside like he was in a hurry to get out and kill something, but they hadn't opened the door yet.  Something was wrong with it, apparently, and two of the stewardess's (stewardi?) were teaming up trying to get the handle to swing down. I figured the storm we went through in Tokyo had twisted the plane so much that we were trapped, and they'd have to cut us out like sardines in a can.  Now, the air in that plane was not good.  It smelled like Hank Kucera's South Eugene High School gymnasium right after football workouts.  We needed air, and we needed it fast.  Drooling Dipshit pushed past me and yelled "get outta the way!" and grabbed the handle and almost ripped it off the door frame.  The door opened.  We suddenly regretted that action.

If you ask anyone who's ever been to Viet Nam what it was like to be there, the first thing they'll try to describe is the smell.  But I'm going to begin with the heat.  The door flew open and it all hit us right in our faces.  When I had left home in good ol' Eugene, Oregon it was cold and rainy, so I decided to wear my Air Force blues, a full uniform consisting of wool and other natural warming fibers.  When the door opened, a wave of kerosene scented heat made our eyes squint like we were staring directly into the sun.  Then we were walking down the ramp, walking and coughing, walking and squinting.  It must have been near 90 degrees.  It took me a few minutes to realize it was also actually raining.  Raining!  In the twenty or so minutes it took to get to the terminal, my rumpled Air Force blues got soaking wet, and heavy.  And hot.  I sat on a bench in the terminal to collect what was left of my thoughts and heard my first thump of an explosion.  Then another.  And another.  They were a ways away, but it was an otherwise alarming sound, and as I looked around, I could see the people in charge didn't seem concerned at all about them.  Steam began rising from my uniform.  It would be two more hours, including a harrowing 18 mile trip by military bus northward up a narrow, very busy road, until we reached Bien Hoa AB, my home for the next 12 months. And that was the first day.

I've include the above in this report because (1) it's part of what I've been doing lately - writing my memoirs, such as they might be; and (2) to tell you of the following.  I'm now receiving a monthly check of over $400 for being exposed to Agent Orange while I was in Viet Nam, and developing Diabetes Type-II afterwards.  Seems there's some sort of connection.  I had odd feelings about accepting this money, because, well, hell, lots of people have diabetes type-II who were never anywhere near Viet Nam.  But then I thought of Lyndon Baines Johnson.  He was the President of the United States when I was drafted, "Greetings," (okay, I avoided the draft by joining the Air Force), and he was the one who sent me to Viet Nam, somewhere I definitely did not want to go, under any circumstances.  Now, if Lyndon was alive now, I'm sure he'd feel guilty about all the shit he did to us, the young people he ripped away from their homes to go fight a war that was probably illegal, and definitely immoral.  But we did it, and he did it, and I look at this monthly check like it's a check directly from ol' Lyndon himself.

So thanks Lyndon.  I appreciate it.  It'll help pay the bar tab when the nightmares come, and I can see the steam rise off my uniform again.  And I'll raise a glass in toast to you, you who had no sons to send off to the fight, and I'll remember those of us who never came home, and maybe I'll sleep tonight.  But then again . . .

JP

In My Opinion

(Our friend Foonman was discussing the last Oregon Duck game with us the other day, and he was admonishing us to write something about the team.  So on a whim we challenged him to write something for us.  Just like that, he did - see the following.  We've known Foonman since the glorious 70's.  He's a University of Oregon graduate Alum and as you'll soon discover is very passionate about the Ducks. Foonman is retired and lives in Oregon City, Oregon.  Bad Hat has never had a sports commentator until now, and we hope he continues to give us His Opinion. - ep rush)

            SSFF…  (Started Stumbled Farted and Fell)…That was our wonderful (sic)

 U of O Ducks on Saturday last.  Or was it?  Ah, the plot thickens.  Actually someone made a grave error and ran in North Eugene High School at the last minute.  Perhaps I shouldn’t say that, but face it, I’ve seen high school teams play with more fire than the Ducks did on Saturday against Arizona.  Ever since the loss to Stanford and subsequently losing a shot at the title, our Ducks have played without desire.  You could see it on their faces and practically read their minds:  "Without the title game to shoot for, why work so hard?" and "Rose Bowl? been there, done that."  And as for the look in the Arizona players' eyes we could see that they wanted to win, they wanted this game and they wanted to beat Oregon.  

Obviously, we were out-played, and certainly out-coached.  When we got put down, we didn’t get up swingin’.  Oh, there was an occasional effort, but in the words of Yoda "Do or do not, there is no try."  Alabama doesn't have that choice.  Their only option is to WIN!  They have that fire. Their coach has that fire, their whole staff has that fire.  We didn't, and sadly, don't.  We “try”…We fail.  

Mostly I blame the coaching.  You can bet that if Chip Kelly was still here they would have won.  He wouldn’t have let them lose.  He wouldn’t have let them just "try" to win.  I say get rid of this Mark Helfrich guy and get a decent coach.  It’s like Chip gave Helfrich the keys to this finely tuned, extremely technical, perfectly working Maserati with these instructions:  "Just keep it on the road."  But Helfrich wasn’t qualified (or capable) of driving such a machine and ran it off the road.  Whatever happened to the spread offence that worked so well?  And what about Nick Allioti?  How many times do you run your boys into solid stone wall before it dawns on you that "gee whiz, this doesn’t seem to be working."  DUHH!  

Do this:  Add up the number of plays up the middle in both Stanford and Arizona games, and divide by how many times the play was successful.  What’s the average?  Is this good coaching?  And what the hell happened to our defense?  How is it that they can get to our Quarterback but we cannot get to theirs?  When I played, it was hit and hit and hit again if necessary.  Now it seems that our linemen hit and fall down, or worse, hit and hang on.  I can’t say how sharp these linemen and defensive backs are, but it doesn’t take a lot of intellect to know that if you close your hands and/or arms on a opposing player in defense, you're going to get called for...wait for it…HOLDING…another DUHH.  At the beginning of the season we were so confident in the red Zone and especially at the goal line, that we regularly went for 2.  Now we can’t even punch it in from 2 feet out.  I was so disappointed with Saturday’s game that I almost couldn’t finish my whiskey.  Almost.  I’ll tell you what - I’m seriously concerned about the civil war game.  I can see it now - the icing on the cake - beaten by OSU. Oh the pain, the heartbreak, the shame. OH THE HUMANITY ...!

One more thing.  Who in hell makes the decisions concerning uniforms?  This is ridiculous.  Forgive me, but I think school colors are necessary!  Who in their infinite wisdom decided that silver and gray (or whatever that color was) promotes school pride?  Or brown/olive green or whatever that was?  Why not just put them in fatigues.  Oh wait, they did that too. Now I’m damn proud of my school colors.  And I want to see them on my football team’s uniform.  No college team needs 180 different football uniforms.  I think 6 is plenty. Enough for home and away games, and enough for a little variety, but all having some yellow and/or green on them.  U of O is a very well-to-do school thanks to our “special” alum, but it’s just plain rude to flaunt our financial position the way we do.  Much better to take ½ to 2/3 of that revenue and use it on lowering tuition for low income students.  See you next week.

G.B. Foonman   

The View From Mudville

(Our precious Duck football team got their collective butts kicked yesterday afternoon by a highly motivated Arizona team in Tucson.  And along with that loss went our chances for a BCS championship game, PAC-12 Championship game, and our chance to put our thumb on our nose and wiggle our fingers at every football team on the East Coast.  It wasn't even close.  The Wildcats plowed through us like snakes through a blackberry patch.  Final score: 42-16.  Ouch.  But as we sit here licking our wounds and preparing chips and dip for the Pity Party sure to come, we Duck Fans remain loyal to the team.  The Ducks gave us a very exciting year, and we're still going to finished the season with a 9-2 record, assuming we beat the OSU Beavers next Friday night.  But I digress ...)

• Have you heard, or even actually used, the cute little app called SnapChat?  Apparently it's a little app that lets users send photos of gawdknowswhat to other people and then within minutes the sent picture just disappears forever.  Pretty handy for those of us who post drunken half-naked pictures of our latest post-football parties on Facebook. The app was invented by a 23-year-old Stanford student named Eric Spiegel.  Well it turns out that this little app is so cool that some really rich dude named Zuckerburg offered Eric 3 Billion Dollars for it.  That's Billion, with a "B."  $3,000,000,000.  But Eric turned the offer down flat.  Nope.  Not gonna sell it.  Mark Morford explores the reason behind Eric's refusal in "13 Reasons To Turn Down $3 Billion"
•  The United States government has issued a warning to all Americans who wish to travel to North Korea for vacation:  "Don't."  Well that certainly makes a lot of sense to me, and in spite of all those plans I made to travel to Pyongyang next Spring, I will heed the warning.  At first I reasoned that the US government was merely trying to keep Dennis Rodman home where we can keep an eye on him, but then I found out that an 85-year-old Korean War veteran named Merrill Newman had been "detained" by North Korean authorities while he and his wife were on vacation in Pyongyang.  Will someone tell me what the hell was he doing there?  What, Club Med in Siberia was all booked up?  Good grief.
•  As I said before, I hate George Zimmerman.
• Who says big, huge, enormous, corporations don't have heart?  Take McDonalds, for example.  McDonalds understands it's $7 per hour employees might be a bit money stressed this holiday season, so they've offered advice on the corporate website to help their people save money.  They advise, for example, that employees sell their Christmas presents for cash.  And what do employees do if their company doesn't do much for their employees?  Help themselves, bygawd. A Walmart store in Canton, Ohio is holding a food drive to help out employees whose wages might not be enough to pay for food.  Don't that just make you feel warm all over?
  
• Back in 2005, Hendrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker, wrote of filibusters:  Absent Senate filibusters, the anti-lynching bills of 1922, 1935, and 1938 would have become law, bringing federal force to bear against racist violence and possibly allowing the civil-rights movement to achieve its victories decades earlier; direct election of the President would have replaced the electoral college in time for the 1972 election; and nearly all Americans would now be covered by a program of national health insurance.  Now shift to 2013 and the Democrats have pulled what someone named "the nuclear option," and filibustering is now practically a thing of the past.  This is good, right?  Right.  As long as Democrats hold the majority.  (Click Here)
• California now has the largest number of people without health insurance in the nation, according to the California Healthcare Foundation.  More than 20% of Californians are uninsured. Paul Krassner writes "Healthcare Is So Horrible Here That Thousands Rely On Free Clinics - And You're Fined If You Don't Use Prescription Drugs."  Long title, but an interesting article.

  

  Happy Thanksgiving

• I never have liked John Stossel.  Uppity in-your-face pretend know-it-all, Stossel is consistently not only wrong, but irritatingly so.  He's a perfect fit for Fox News.  Thursday morning on something called "Fox and Friends" Stossel shared a clip of him sitting on a New York City sidewalk with a fake beard and a cardboard sign asking people for help.  He said he just begged for an hour, but added "If I did this for an eight-hour day I would've made 90 bucks.  Twenty-three thou for a year.  Tax free."  Elizabeth Hasselbeck, who just recently bought a $4 million home in Greenwich, "gasped in horror at the prospect of poor people earning $23,000 a year."  Their conclusion?  Don't give homeless people money, it only encourages them. To do what?  Eat?

Organized Treason

When you watch the news over this next year, here is a lot of what you are likely to hear from Republican
Congressmen, and probably to a lesser extent from Republican Senators, who tend to think and speak more individually.

But the GOP Congress Members?  Umm, not so individual.  They seem better at memorization, and appear more wedded to the idea of marching in lock-step...  rather than doing anything heretical like independent thinking.  If they were working to unite our people, to encourage the American people to work together to solve an issue that threatened our Country, I'd be far more sympathetic to such behavior.  For example, in a time of war, there would be social value in uniting behind a single point of view.

But when the issue is to try to hamstring the effort to reform America's staggeringly costly and not notably effective healthcare system, I think it is fair to say that this sort of "party line" attack is as tawdry as the mindless slogan pandering of those who waved Mao's "Red Book", and through their efforts cost the lives of something in the range of 100 million Chinese people, before the "Great Leap Forward" and the "Cultural Revolution" were over.  How many Americans will needlessly die as a consequence of this partisan hogwash?  10,000?  100,000?  What could one call the actions that cripple and kill our fellow Americans?  Traitors, perhaps?  Think about it.  These cheese heads are using a well-meaning effort to reform, expand, improve and rein in the costs of America's healthcare "system" as leverage for their efforts to grab political capital.

If this were happening in Italy, we'd all shake our heads and ask, "What can you expect from such a corrupt system"?   During this year, the rest of the world is going to be asking the same question about us.  The effort will fail, healthcare will improve in this country, preventive care will save enormous personal and social costs for the indigent and impoverished, but the pace of positive change will be slowed by these well-dressed weasels, busy banking donations from parts of our massive Medical/Industrial Complex.  17.8% of GDP.  Gosh, it sounds "too big to fail", right?  We HAVE to let it keep preying on the public, or else...  I mean, or else we might have a recession or something, right?

Uh, no, the money not wasted on our current healthcare system could be spent and invested in things which improve the lives of individuals and are of enormous value to our economy.

It will all work out, but how many will have to needlessly die because of these troglodytes?  Who will hold them responsible?  I suspect the voters will, in spades, but what a terrible cost will have been paid, in the process.

It's like watching a slow-motion train wreck. 

It's ironic.  When a Congressman gets caught scoring "coke" he gets a $250 fine and a year of probation, while an African-American kid might do some jail time.  When a bank embezzles a Billion or so, they get a fine, which doesn't seem to be used to compensate the homeowners who have lost money.

If your actions lead to the death of one individual, the penalties are serious.  But when thousands are killed, by misguided partisan boneheadedness, who pays the penalty for that?  You guessed it.  No one.  Instead they get a very cushy healthcare plan and a generous pension.  Even if they might have failed a drug test or two along the way.

But the wind is being sucked out of the current Republican Party.  One might even say that "the party is over".  Those who blindly believe their slogans are sharply divided between a smaller group of reasonable conservatives and a steadily growing group of those who are misogynist, racist and hate "big government".  The battle between the old-school GOP and the whatever we're supposed to call it camp is going to be as passionate as their disjointed attack on the Democratic Party in this mid-term election.  And a house divided can rarely stand.

Are we on the way to becoming a three-party nation?  You know, kind of like Italy?  (no offense to Italians, but really, a Prime Minister who has "bunga-bunga parties"?)

But as we get started on this, these will be the sounds of the Republican echo-chamber; and this is the "playbook" that these overage elementary school students will be working to learn to recite, in lockstep, ad nauseum; (click here)

Arthur

"I'm Afraid I've Got Some Terrible News"

Fifty years ago I was an eighteen-year-old high school student, a Senior, at South Eugene High School.  On

November 22 of that year I was sitting in "study hall," an assigned class where students actually had to sit at desks and quietly study, something which is not a big part of our school systems' curriculum these days, or so I've been told.  These "study halls"  were each assigned a teacher, this one was watched over with stern kindness by Alyce Sheetz, also my journalism instructor, and who ranks somewhere in the top 2 of my all-time best teachers' list.  I'm not sure of the exact time of the following event, it was somewhere near noon, but suddenly the studious quiet was broken by the P.A. system's speaker suddenly coming to life with the squeaky sound of someones hand picking up the microphone.  It was the school Principal, Clifford Moffitt.  "I'm afraid I've got some terrible news," he began, "President Kennedy has been shot during a motorcade in Dallas, Texas."

I had been glancing up at the P.A. speaker over the blackboard during the start of the announcement, but at the end of it I remember staring straight into Alyce Sheetz's eyes.  For some reason, out of all the 20-some kids in the room, she was looking directly at me.  For just a second, she and I shared the most devastating news I had ever heard.  For a moment, pictures of JFK flashed before my eyes.  Kennedy, the youngest President ever elected, who had followed the oldest man to hold the office; this vibrant, healthy, handsome man had been SHOT.

Since it was near lunch time, and because all sense of time seemed to just melt away, Mrs. Sheetz told us to just go, and report back after lunch.  I wandered out into a hall full of hushed chatter, shocked faces, kids walking like zombies.  Some of the girls were crying.  I walked out of school, heading for the little burger shack down the street.  As I left school one of the things I remember hearing was some kid suddenly blurting out "They finally GOT the son-of-a-bitch!"  I don't know what happened to that kid, but I didn't hear him again.

The burger shack was about three blocks away from the school and as I walked I began to realize I was in some stage of shock.  I was breathing strangely, the colors of the day were oddly off, pale, washed out, and I seemed to be on auto-pilot, not really knowing where I was going, but knowing I would get there anyway.  I'm sure I was walking with someone, or perhaps several others, but I have no recollection of who it was.  The next thing I remember, I was in the burger shack, lots of people milling around, no one really ordering anything, the radio blaring in the corner (remember, this was before video machines, and even TVs were rare in cafes'.)  I ordered nothing, just stood there.  It was there I heard it.  On that little cheap radio in the corner. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was dead.

I left the shack alone, and walked purposefully back to my high school.  Perhaps I was hoping for the sanity of an afternoon class, or maybe Mr. Moffitt would come back on the P.A. and tell us it was all a mistake, that the President of the United States is just fine, that people were going to be punished for this horrible joke.  I was within a half a block of the school when several of my classmates walked by going the other way.  "School's been cancelled, go home," I was told.  Apparently it was no joke after all.

Since it was Friday, we had the weekend to recover slightly, at least, but then they declared the following Monday a national day of mourning.  The rest of the week is a complete blur, except I remember clearly, sitting in front of our Stromburg-Carlson black and white TV, watching the funeral procession, listening to the steady beat of the funeral drums, and the clip-clop of that riderless horse.  I think I cried for two days straight, off and on.  So did most everyone else.

JP

Congressman Radel's "Problems"

How about tossing Trey Radel out of Congress, for life?  He failed a drug test, badly, and so he should be recalled immediately and prevented from ever running for Public Office again.

Does that seem too harsh?

That's exactly what Radel voted for, with regard to Food Stamps.  Fail a drug test and you're disqualified.

Ironically, there is some logic to the idea of giving drug tests to those applying for Food Stamps, as long as it isn't a disqualifier.  The costs of giving those using drugs a course of intensive therapy would be far, far less costly than imprisoning them in a street bust.  You know, like the one that nabbed the Congress-critter.  Who was all drunk, so he had to repeatedly score coke in order to...   in order to what?  Sober up?

The logic of the "Rob Ford" defense is dubious, at best.  Can Radel point to any incidents of public intoxication?  None have been mentioned.

The idea of buying a highly illegal and addictive drug in order to self-medicate one's alcohol problem is...   what would you call it?  Astoundingly poor judgment?

A childhood friend's father was a Doctor who apparently had a drinking problem and attempted to deal with it by taking Morphine instead.  How's that for questionable judgment?  Apparently that is a fairly common phenomena among Physicians.  One could even suggest that working in a hospital was as dangerous as living in a bad neighborhood where drugs were readily available.

Let's start talking about drug abuse, instead of letting it be the cash cow of the Prison/Industrial Complex.  Poor guys without good legal representation?  Send 'em to the local Prison, which incidentally is run by a private corporation, who in some cases are giving Judges "back-handers" for sending them healthy inmates, who can be put to work at slave labor wages in order to enrich the parent Corporation.  Seriously, isn't that a gussied-up modern form of slavery, with about ten or twenty moral shortfalls involved?

How on EARTH can we permit bullshit like that to continue to thrive in our "exceptional" country?  In Bangladesh one might expect it, or in Romania or Zimbabwe.  But here?  In our country?  in 2013?

Can some tech guru divert their attention and resources from the exploration of an endless lifespan or space and please set up an organization to focus on the plight of the hundreds of thousands who should NOT be in prison, but instead should be out in the community, under close supervision and counseling.  Oh gosh, just like Congressman Radel says would be appropriate for him.

I'm going to give Radel the benefit of the doubt.  It is possible that he will come to his senses and realize what a hypocritical dick he has been, with his vote against Food Stamps.  He may also (let's hope) become a voice for less imprisonment.  If he was poor and black, he'd be in prison right now.  Guaranteed. If he grasps that truth, and has an ounce of moral sense, this could in theory turn him into a far, far better and more principled man.

Or else he can continue to be a Republican Tea Party douche.  He has an opportunity to become a better and decent human being.  What he does with that opportunity will be worth watching.  But in the meantime, resignation would probably be the most appropriate step.  That should give him a lot more time to get therapy and reconsider his views on life, instead of him rushing through an upscale "rehab" clinic and rushing back out to try to cling to his Congressional seat.  That's a recipe for disaster.

Arthur