Cheerful Curmudgeon

Cindy and Geoff did a great job and produced Caedmon Geoffrey, a wonderful, healthy baby boy at 7:12pm on May 20. He’s 9 lbs 1 oz, 21 inches tall. His plumbing works so well that he peed on the doctor during delivery. I take that as a great omen!

Candidate Barack Obama promised change and more government transparency. President Barack Obama’s Department of Justice is delivering change for the worse: continuation of the Bush administration’s assertions that the US government can conduct warrantless wiretapping coupled with a new assertion that the government is completely immune from litigation for illegal spying under any federal statutes.

In plain language: According to the Obama administration, if the US government spies on you and you do not like it, there is nothing you can do about it. You cannot even sue in federal court.

Details in the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s article, In Warrantless Wiretapping Case, Obama DOJ’s New Arguments Are Worse Than Bush’s.

Sad as that is, it’s the Department Of Justice’s second argument that is the most pernicious. The DOJ claims that the U.S. Government is completely immune from litigation for illegal spying — that the Government can never be sued for surveillance that violates federal privacy statutes.

This is a radical assertion that is utterly unprecedented. No one — not the White House, not the Justice Department, not any member of Congress, and not the Bush Administration — has ever interpreted the law this way.

Trite though it may sound, it is not safe to assume that “we’re from the government and we’re here to help you” is anything  short of misleading. We emperil ourselves if we allow the executive branch to place itself outside the system of checks and balances of the judicial branch.

I am fed up with wasting clients’ dollars “fixing” web sites so that they look good in Internet Explorer 6. IE7 has been out for 2 1/2 years. IE8 is available as a free beta. There are lots of other browsers available for free. All of these browsers work better than IE6. If you still use IE6, it’s time to get over it and move on. Upgrade for free to something better.

This web site, and the others for which I am responsible, now display a warning similar to this when visited with IE6:

Sample IE6 warning message

For more information, see Moving Past Internet Explorer 6.

Watch this. I think Vanessa Hidary has something to say to all of us.

I have ranted about our national paranoia before. We are still paranoid and it still bothers me. Over the last few days, I have read about:

• AirTran Airways ejected nine people from a flight (including two women and three children, ages 7, 4, and 2) because two of the men in the group discussed the proximity of their seats to the engines.
• Amtrak police arrested photographer Duane Kerzic for refusing to delete pictures he had taken of Amtrak trains. Kerzic took the photos while standing on the public platform of New York’s Penn Station. He was trying to enter Amtrak’s own Picture Our Train photo contest.

AirTran has since apologized to the people who were removed from the flight and given them full refunds. Amtrak has changed Kerzic’s arrest charge to trespassing.

We all know the old joke: Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you. As a society, we seem to have taken this to heart… and it is wrecking our quality of life. Our paranoia is making people miserable while neither saving lives nor improving safety. If we want to keep people alive, to improve the level of safety in our lives, we are working way to hard in much the wrong areas.

Here is one example. I am quite sure that you can think of dozens more.

In 2001, just 2,976 Americans died from the terrorist attack using airliners. I say “just,” though this is a terrible trajedy, because 17,448 people died from alcohol related traffic fatalities in the same year. Worse, the drunk driving deaths go on year after year after year: 17,419 more people in 2002; 17,013 people in 2003; 16,694 died in 2004; 16,885 in 2005; and 16,005 in 2006.

That’s about 101,000 dead from drunk drivers and about 3,000 dead from maniacs in airplanes.

What the heck are we doing? How can anyone, in good conscience, profess that all of this paranoia is about saving lives?

The beginning of the new year is a good time for resolutions. Let’s resolve to set aside our paranoia and turn our attention and our resources to things which can actually make our lives better. We live in a bountiful world, courtesy of a loving G-d and the the loving attentions of our fellow human beings. Let’s enjoy it.

I know what I am going to dress up as tonight. A Halloween costume so scary that my wife will be upset that I am wearing it in public. I am going to wear a disguise so socially unacceptable that three entire school districts will close for a day to assure they their students do not come anywhere near these creatures.

I am going to dress up as a voting United States citizen.

Yup; you read that right. I am going to dress up as a voter because voters are so potentially dangerous that several school districts (Ft. Zumwalt, Francis Howell, and Wentzville) have canceled classes on election day, November 4. I blogged about this last February, in Paranoia is Not Safety. Since then, I forgot about it, figuring that this was so ridiculous that nothing would come of it. Wrong!

When I look around my county, I see students coming into contact with voters all over the place all the time: in stores, in shopping malls, at movie theaters, on sidewalks, at public libraries, in public parks, etc. Of course, no one recognizes these voters as the predators that they are because 364 days of the year, the voters are cleverly disguised as ordinary people including trustworthy neighbors. Thank goodness that for one day of the year, all of these perpetrators are unmasked and gather at polling places so that we can keep our children away from them.

Someone should make a list of all of these voters. If it is not safe to let our children be in the same building with them on November 4, I cannot imagine how it would magically become safe on November 5. If any of the school teachers, administrators, and support staff happen to vote, by no means should they be allowed back into the schools the day after election day. Someone should also check for 18 year old voters who are still enrolled in high school, a particularly pernicious bunch. These heinous fiends intermingle with teenagers on a daily basis and might never be spotted if we do not catch them at the ballot box.

Here are a few tidbits from “Several Schools to Close on Election Day,” published in the Suburban Journal, October 29, 2008, page C1. I cannot link to the article because it did not appear in the on-line edition of the paper.

Fort Zumwalt School District Superintendent Bernard DuBray said,

They’re expecting a huge turnout. We’re concerned with that kind of turnout about the security in the building, so it just made sense to close the schools.

What kind of turnout is that, Dr. DuBray? Do voters become a marauding pack above a certain critical mass? Is there evidence of such behavior? Has it been observed in the wild?

Rich Chrismer, director of elections for St. Charles County responded to phone calls from people “wondering why he would allow strangers to vote in a school building” by getting the superintendents “to agree to shut down their schools on November 4.” Mr. Chrismer, did you ever think to point out that these voters are not strangers? Did you mention that the voters are people who live within the same voting district as the school? Did you tell the callers that these voters live in the same neighborhoods as the kids who attend the schools?

[Added 11/4/08] I sent a copy of this posting to Dr. DuBray. He was kind enough to reply and point out that the newspaper misreported this item. All of his schools are closed on election day. The make-up day is Friday, November 7. It gets more absurd: The same Dr. DuBray who decided that voters are too dangerous also decided that they are not too dangerous if the students have already missed a day of school recently. Some of the Ft. Zumwalt schools will hold classes on November 4 because they had been closed on October 9 and those students need to make up the day. Are the voters dangerous or not, Dr. DuBray?

This foolishness will not stop until we citizens, that would be you and me, loudly voice our opinions. We deal a hard blow to our children and ourselves and our country when we pretend that students need to be physically separated from American citizens exercising the right to vote.

I am down on most career politicians (are there any other kinds?) but the Republican party has become particularly scary during the Bush administration. The Grand Old Party has shifted farther and farther right. McCain and the current party leaders are grandly continuing this new tradition. It looks like McCain’s platform, like Bush’s, boils down to this:

• Fundamental Christian Americans know what is right, not just for America but for the whole world.
• The laws of the USA should reflect fundamental Christian beliefs (e.g., anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage).
• The United States of America has a moral obligation bring its vision of “right” and “truth” to everyone in the world.
• The ends justify the means (witness the Iraq war and trumped up security theater which does little to actually enhance our national security).

Selection of Sarah Palin as vice presidential candidate illustrates this brilliantly. She is certainly pro-life and very Christian. She is also powerfully driven to realize her visions for the city and state which she has governed. She is such a “babe” that one of my neighbors actually has a sign in the front yard reading, “I (heart) Sarah.” Is that supposed to be a good reason to vote for someone???

Palin comes with a bunch of political baggage neatly summarized by an email written by Anne Kilkenny which is circulating on the internet. In all my years dealing with email, this is the first chain letter which I remember being objectively verified as factually accurate. Even with all of Palin’s bizarre and sometimes illegal behavior, McCain chose her as his running-mate. Why? I think because what she did is less important to McCain than that she follows his “platform” as I wrote it.

Do I want a president who will tolerate a VP who has knowingly violated Alaska ethics act to try to get someone fired? No.

Do I want a president who will tolerate a VP who creates the political and legal turmoil which is coming to light these days? No.

I love the inconvenience of airport security. The fact that I am paying for the privilege of being inconvenienced, in lieu of having my security enhanced, makes the whole experience all the more charming. Recently, Jeffrey Goldberg took all of these goodies through airport security at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

Read Goldberg’s entire article on airport security at The Atlantic’s web site.

I buy a lot of music on-line and it breaks down like this:

• 1,268 completely unlocked MP3 files, easily playable on any computer or device, all purchased from eMusic.com. (Here’s a link to get 25 FREE iPod® compatible downloads from eMusic! Choose from over 2.8 Million songs! )
• 0 DRM-locked files from iTunes, Audible.com, etc.

I hate paying money to be abused. Here is this morning’s tale of woe regarding customer “service” at the Anthem insurance company.

A few weeks ago, I received a letter telling me that the co-pay on my Zetia would increase dramatically and that I should switch to a statin instead. That is patently ridiculous advice, though, because I am also taking a statin (Lipitor). Were my cholesterol controllable with only a statin, I would not be taking both a statin and Zetia. So I just called the member service phone number and had this conversation:

Me: What is the process for appealing this increase in my co-payment?

Anthem: There is no appeals process.

Me: To whom would I send a letter appealing this increase?

Anthem: To our Grievance and Appeals department.

pregnant pause while I wait for more useful information to be offered — none was

Me: And what is the mailing address of the Grievance and Appeals department?

Anthem: You can send your letter to: Anthem, Grievance and Appeals Department – MO, PO Box 33200, Louisville, KY 40233.

I bit back my sarcastic questions about why she had told me that there was no appeals process. For what I pay for health insurance, why do I expect that I should get an honest answer to a simple and straightforward question?