Woody's Woundup

I'd Have Written Sooner, But I Just Woke Up

2011-10-21T12:24:00.000-07:00

I'm a few days late for my annual birthday essay, but I have an excellent excuse:

I forgot.

Not my actual birthday, of course. I have a wife and daughters that keep me well in mind of my actual birthday. They do this with a series of increasingly subtle hints as the day approaches.

"What would you like to do on your birthday, Dear?"

"Daddy, what's your favorite [insert random item here]?"

"Can we stay home while you and Momma celebrate your birthday?"

So remembering the day was not the problem.

Nor do I have a problem with my actual age. Chronologically I turned 53 this year, which is, I dunno, about 137.4 in programmer years. At least that's the way the newer crop of programmers make me feel. I just attended the annual Adobe MAX conference a few weeks ago, and the saddest sight in the world is an old programmer who tries to dress like the hip but nerdy youngsters for which these conferences are really created. I saw one complete with a full head of extremely gray hair in a long ponytail. He was wearing leather (pants and jacket) and a black tee shirt. There were probably piercings, too, but my highly-developed inner eyelid closed before the vision could cause any further damage.

I'm okay with my apparent lack of hipness, however. I've earned my gray hair, by golly, and I'm ready to accept the fact that when I move, it's not without first having checked to see if my back muscles are in complete agreement with my intended direction. This baby does not turn on a dime, y'know.

I'm also okay with my need for increased sleep. I've always been a comfortable sleeper, and have been known in past years to sleep even through the occasional six-point-something earthquake. (Sylmar, 1971. Barely registered on my subconscious.)

Lately I've found myself desperately needing a short nap in the afternoon, no matter how much sleep I get the night before. It generally hits me shortly after lunch, and I can feel my head getting heavier and heavier. Before I know it I startle myself awake with crick in my neck from having slept with my head at a weird angle.

No, I think my main concern this birthday is my shrinking brain mass. It used to be that we thought we were losing something like a million brain cells every year. It turns out, though, that what really happens is that we lose brain "mass," which is a polite way of saying our brains shrink over time. Again, I'm completely cool with this idea, but I sure wish I could control which portions of my brain engage in said shrinkage.

Victor Borge used to say, "There are three things I can never remember."

[pregnant pause]

"Four!"

I know what he meant now. My wife and I will be having a conversation, generally having to do with my going to the store to buy something or other. Immediately subsequent to this conversation, my brain will finally remind me that I've just been asked to go to the store. "Just one thing, Honey. What do you need me to get at the store?" To which she replies with that look that women have perfected over centuries of evolution that immediately communicates to the men that they are in Big Trouble because they Haven't Been Listening. "Did you not hear me just tell you what we need?" she will ask.

Ummmm. Apparently not.

Here's the part of my brain that I'd love to shrink: Whichever part it is that impels me to believe that I know what I'm doing.

Really. My Dad was a supremely confident man, at least as I remember him. When he spoke, it was generally with a voice of authority with which other people tended to agree. This may have been because Dad had a somewhat intimidating presence, which is akin to saying that the South Pole is somewhat frozen. But I always thought it was because Dad just always knew what he was talking about.

Then, however, I think back on some of Dad's homeowner projects when I was growing up. Building walls between rooms in our house, for example. Dad was convinced that we didn't need an open path between our living room and our dining room. Since we had a perfectly serviceable pathway to the kitchen, he decided to wall up the dining room and turn it, briefly, into a "den." That poor den suffered through quite a number of Dad's homeowner projects over the years, until ultimately he tore out everything he'd ever built except for the wall, and turned it back into a dining room.

Likewise our backyard gardens. Dad was the world's greatest armchair gardener. He had a long-standing subscription to "Organic Gardening" magazine and even took classes at the local junior college on the topic. These resources were, of course, applied directly to his children, whom he employed as migrant farm workers. I don't mean to say that he didn't get out there himself and work; I'm just saying that I always felt like I was getting more than my fair share of garden-related assignments.

These two examples, however, illustrate perfectly this idea that, as an adult, I always feel that I not only know what I'm doing, but I'm not generally happy when a) not everyone else seems to think so, and b) my ideas frequently seem to turn out differently from the way I originally planned them.

That part of my brain I would never miss. But it seems to be the only part of my brain that not only isn't shrinking, but seems to be expanding. Probably sucking up mass from other parts of my brain, like my memory, or my attention to detai...

What was I talking about?

Nuts. Now I can't remember. Guess I'm done with this one, then.

Statistically Speaking

2011-09-20T09:42:00.000-07:00

Just based on my own observations with respect to any argument related to Global Warming or any data quoted by the current Administration:

Statistics are the artful manipulation of raw data in such manner that the end results are entirely disconnected from that raw data.

Or so it seems to me.

Raising the Bar for "Dysfunctional"

2011-08-29T13:10:00.001-07:00

Because, at the end of the day, we're all just one big happy family, right?

If they qualify as a "family," then they have serious in-breeding problems.

Just sayin'.

(H/T: Michelle Malkin)

It Isn't Supposed to Be Easy

2011-08-22T10:42:00.000-07:00

A few thoughts on homeschooling, from a perspective of having done this for awhile now:

1. It's not for everyone.

We have met many, many homeschooling families over the years. Often it's just a chance meeting at a large gathering, such as when Sea World hosts a "homeschool" event. There you get to see thousands of families in split-second tableaux. Such encounters always have me wondering why many of these families choose to homeschool. Is it rage against the machine? A sincere desire to instill family values (like — I swear I saw this — matching tattoos on their teenagers)? Shouldn't they look happier if they're pursuing a family dream?

Just watching parents dealing with their kids in public makes me ask one other, even more troubling question: Are there parents who school their kids at home out of fear that some authority figure is going to sic child welfare services on them because they are obviously lousy parents? Of course, perhaps we were just catching them on a bad day...

2. The decision of whether to homeschool is never an easy one, even if it was never really a question at all.

My sweetheart and I had decided to homeschool before we ever brought a child into the world. The fact that Mrs. Woody had been a public school teacher in her past life only cemented the obvious: the state of public education was changing at an alarming rate, and not in a good way. Reading between the lines of various reports and debates throughout the nation even fifteen or sixteen years ago, it was clear that if we wanted our children to learn solid fact, rather than socialized ephemera, we needed to do it ourselves. Besides, if we want our children to learn something other than solid fact, I much prefer it be based on a gospel I can support, rather than the gospel of the micro-managing labor unions that currently control public education today.

These reasons alone, however, were not sufficient to make our final decision to homeschool our daughters. They were the "why" of the equation. The "why" is hardly ever in doubt; it is the "how" that makes homeschooling such a difficult decision. "How" are we going to teach our daughters everything they need to know, and can we possibly do so without interference from (or even notice of) state and local authorities. Those are questions that must be researched carefully and thoroughly before committing yourselves and your children to such a venture.

When we talk to perspective homeschoolers, the questions we get are never "why." They are "how." And they are legion.

3. Homeschooling is a noble act, no matter what your friends, family, neighbors, and especially the government may think.

This of course assumes that you are meant to homeschool. Interestingly, living in California is actually quite a blessing when it comes to homeschooling. I will tell you this, however: the level of potential interference from an administrative perspective increases exponentially if you live in a part of the state that is considered "liberal" in its base politics. We have had the good fortune of living in two counties that are traditionally considered "conservative" in their base. School districts in these counties largely shrug their collective shoulders where homeschoolers are concerned, and some even attempt to open their doors and allow homeschoolers access to their resources.

At a state level, California makes it possible to homeschool largely under the radar. Legally there are no real obstacles to homeschooling in this state. Challenges are usually the result of some moral diarrhea being suffered by a local authority who simply cannot accept that public education is anything less than spectacularly wonderful for every child. We even had one candidate for Superintendent of Public Instruction in our last election who could not for the life of him imagine any campus in California not being perfectly "safe" for our children. This candidate had obviously never visited any campus anywhere in East or South Central Los Angeles.

I know there are families in California who have had to defend themselves legally, but by rights (and by law) they should never have been prosecuted in the first place.

4. Homeschooling is fun! Eventually!

Make no mistake: homeschool is hard work. It requires hours of planning; constant modification based on what works or doesn't work; daily fine-tuning to make sure you're understanding all the nuances that your children are experiencing as they grow (and learn!). In the early stages, frustration mounts whenever an attempted curriculum fails to do the job. This isn't working! What am I doing wrong? (Legal notice: frustrations may include, but are not limited to, curriculum, lack of internet access on any particular day, the attitudes of children or spouse, interference from "concerned" but "well-meaning" extended family, Mondays, Fridays, "that time of the month," full moons, or the latest ant infestation in your kitchen.)

It isn't necessarily you. Even if it is, you may simply need to rethink things. If one curriculum isn't working, there's bound to be one that will. Just check to make sure the problem isn't the way in which the curriculum was applied. Some people need to have every aspect of their school day scheduled out to the nth degree. Others abhor scheduling of any kind and just let things happen as they will. Either way, expect to be in a state of constant change until both you and your student(s) hit your stride. Finding that rhythm that works in most cases is the hardest thing you'll ever do. Once you've accomplished that and found the materials that properly support that rhythm, the rest is easy.

And fun.

Great Communication (or: Great. Communication.)

2011-04-26T00:59:00.000-07:00

Instant messaging has its place, but I'm a traditionalist. In today's terms, probably even a fundamentalist. My problem is that I insist on complete sentences in my business communications.

Typical IM exchange between me and a co-worker:

Me: Are you there?

Co-worker: y

Me: When you say "y," do you mean "yes" or "why?"

Co-worker: wut
Co-worker: y do u ask

Me: See? In that last sentence, "y" clearly meant "why," but without context your first sentence could have meant "yes I am here, thanks for asking," or "why do you need to know? Am I late for a meeting?"

Co-worker: ?

Me: Ah! So you DO know what a question mark is!

Co-worker: go away

I blame my mother. She has always been a strong typist and I decided at some point early in life that I wished to master the realm of QWERTY. I remember sitting at our small portable typewriter upstairs carefully transcribing my collection of Bill Cosby records. By the time I took typing as a class in junior high, I was already typing around 35 words per minute. I think in my prime I got that all the way up to around 70 or 75. Fast enough to prefer typing to all other forms of writing, but not quite fast enough to be an office admin.

Then Dad bought our first home computer. I was still on my mission at the time, but it didn't take me long to immerse myself in the world of microcomputing and begin learning a third language: BASIC. (Fourth, actually, if I count both K'iche' and Spanish as my second and third languages. Unfortunately, I've all but lost the Mayan dialects now.)

BASIC was fun because I had to master a whole new slate of keys to which I'd never paid attention on the old typewriters. Things like the colon, for which I could never find a use in normal correspondence, but which are found in nearly every line of BASIC code in any given application. Likewise the @ symbol. I can't even remember covering that silly thing in typing class, yet have been using it faithfully since 1980. Almost lost my skills when migrating from the old TRS-80 keyboards to today's standard PC keyboards, though. The Trash-80's character keys were in different positions, so I had to re-teach myself how to type them when I received my first XT Boat Anchor (640K RAM! Two — count 'em — TWO 5-1/4 inch floppies!)

Even then, however, I refused to give up on traditional English when writing memos, even as a lowly expediter working in a factory.

(For those who really know me, this is especially ironic. My family nickname is "the Great Communicator," because I pretty much never communicate with anyone who is not in the immediate room with me. I have kids living in Minnesota who are now convinced that I am about as real as Santa Claus because they only hear from me once a year, and about all I say is, quote, "Ho, ho, ho," as in, "You need money? Ho, ho, ho.")

(Secondary sidebar: Do you have any idea how ludicrously difficult it is to frame a formal letter in the old DOS version of Lotus 1-2-3? Yet that was what we tended to use because we weren't allowed an actual word processing application for a few years. Then we printed them out on our dot-matrix printers, some of which forced everything into ALL CAPS WHETHER YOU TYPED THEM THAT WAY OR NOT. The result was that our business communications, however well formed, tended to look like we'd printed them using $1.99 rubber stamp kits such as you'd buy at your local supermarket to get your kids out of your hair on rainy afternoons. Weren't those days fun?)

Now, of course, we have a whole new generation of college-educated kids hitting the workplace (assuming they won the mud-pit wrestling match at the jobs fair) with really fascinating degrees in business and communications. Except that they can't form a complete sentence to save their souls. These days it's not at all uncommon to receive requests like this one:

Woody,

Someone said to me that you are the guru for UCA datas and I need a report but I need it last quarter and first quarter and you can have it for me by tomorrow? Early? Thx

You guessed it: another MBA from Pepperdine just hit the rolls. I'll probably be working for this person in another six months or so.

I may be poor, but I'm a terrific communicator.

Unless you're related to me.

It's Too Soon!

2011-04-03T02:14:00.000-07:00

Next year is Election Year(!), and a presidential election to boot. And while 2012 cannot possibly get here fast enough for most Republicans, I have to say it's far too soon to have to deal with sharks in the water already.

The odd thing is, we have good reason to hurry. The ruinous health care fiasco foisted on us by an over-zealous Congress and President last year continues to rankle. The list of waivers is growing nearly as fast as the debt ceiling, with no end in sight. Even with Republicans in control of the House, no one seems quite ready to engage in more than token spending reductions at this point. Heck, I may actually have to file an extension on taxes this year just because some rule changes are harder to figure out than others.

But I am definitely NOT ready to have to listen to all the posturing, finger-pointing, mud-slinging, and other forms of lying that will accompany either the candidates themselves, or the rabid liberal press who will insist on pounding us with their social justice agenda.

Time once again to buy more stock in whomever makes Motrin®.

Besides all that, I am nowhere near ready to write up two more Curmudgeon's Guides for Young Conservative Voters next year. And heaven only knows when the primary election for California will be. We were so concerned with getting "out front" last time around that California Republican officials very likely torpedoed any chance we had of gaining even one significant state-wide office, much less making any sort of difference at the national level.

(NOTE TO CALIFORNIA REPUBLICAN PARTY LEADERS: Next time you throw support to a candidate for Governor or United States Senate, let's get out in front of the whole alien employee situation, hm? It's embarrassing to live in the most populous state in the country, yet one that is incapable of putting forward even one serious contender for state or national office in the last twenty years. Let's work on that one, 'kay, guys? Let's also make sure they have solid conservative creds this time. That last bunch were RINOs to the core!)

Already wishing it were 2013.

New Year's Resolution?

2011-01-02T10:50:00.000-08:00

So I have this talent. No, not this talent. This talent tends to annoy people who lean a certain direction politically and can't understand why we aren't falling that direction right along with them. No, this is in reference to my other talent, which only annoys people who don't want to believe that anything their favorite pop or rock star is performing was already written two hundred years ago by some dead composer.

Most of my family possess this talent to one degree or another. We were blessed with two hugely talented parents, both of whom are (or were... it's awfully hard to write this stuff when one of them is living and the other one is, oh, terra-challenged) dedicated to the craft. I certainly won't deny that most of what I know is what they taught me over the years, while the rest is attributed to whatever I could glean from working with various conductors beginning in high school.

Indeed, part of the reason I'm a fairly decent sight-reader today has more to do with Dad than perhaps anyone else. Dad was a tremendous fan of the march. He'd served in both the Army and Air Force and was in the band both times. He had a dance band at one point (in a rare glimpse of his past, he even admitted to once having owned a zoot suit, of all things!), and was constantly seen with his pad working on some composition or other. The problem was that his piano skills were not quite in keeping with the rest of his talent (although his favorite calling - ever - was Primary Pianist). Hence he would drag Mom out of whatever project she was working and make her play through his score.

Now, Mom is an incredible accompanist. She was the ward organist from my earliest memory until many years after I moved away and started my own family. She could play almost anything, but Dad stumped her. Frequently. Part of it was Dad's notation style. If you've ever cracked open a Schirmer edition of "Messiah" and seen that reproduction of Handel's original manuscript, Dad's tended to look a lot like that, only not as neat. He didn't write notes so much as hash marks that often weren't distinguishable from ledger lines. He gave new meaning to the term "accidentals." I personally struggled to determine whether I was looking at a sharp or a natural. Flats were easier, but looked like anemic h's.

The other part of our common struggle was Dad's compositional style. He tended toward an avant garde style that never quite resonated with me. He would have been a fabulous film composer, which was one of those not-so-secret dreams he had for his retiring years. But I am not and never was a film studio musician, and I struggled with Dad's choral stuff. However, by the time I graduated high school I could by golly read his music. And once you could read Dad's compositions, the rest wasn't all that difficult.

What I struggle with today is my own rather serious lack of musical knowledge. I go through this personal inventory of skills and knowledge every once in awhile, and music sits at the top of a very long list of things I should know more about than I do. I am the poster child for under-acheiving musicians.

Talent is a wonderful thing, but in a character like mine it has the effect of dampening my desire or need to do anything about it. Music as a lifestyle came naturally to me, but I am a lazy cuss and have never applied this talent toward any practical end.

I started two instruments and never finished either one of them. Singing was easier because I didn't have to coordinate my voice with anything my fingers were trying to do at the moment. Violins and pianos are like that; demanding mistresses that need you to pay attention to too many things all at once in order to keep them happy. The voice is a lower-maintenance relationship. Keep it healthy, treat it with respect and it will continue to perform for you. Oh, sure, it requires technique and following of rules, but it's all self-contained. Don't even have to worry about carrying it around in a case, or keeping it dusted and polished.

Which brings me to my resolution for this year. It's a relatively simple one, but one I've needed to make for a long time now. I need to learn more about this talent I have but for which my skill set is seriously lacking. I need to begin a course of study (probably informal... I still have a day job) that will enhance my theoretical knowledge of the music I love so much. Let's face it: music is my eternal calling. I may prefer teaching callings, but any given ward has relatively few people who can serve as choir directors. I can do the calling, but it would be nice to know what I'm doing.

Although, for people of a certain political persuasion, that never seems to stop them.

Let the Traditions Begin!

2010-11-29T00:22:00.000-08:00

There are Christmas traditions with which I grew up that have not translated well into adulthood. The cardboard fireplace, for example. Absolutely the hokiest decoration ever. I have no idea where on earth Mom picked it up, and after the first year I suspect I was the primary reason it got assembled every subsequent year until the poor thing itself became a fire hazard. But I loved it. Since I was the one to assemble it, I guess I took on a pride of ownership sentiment; it was one of the few things that I could actually build year after year that didn't look like a really bad shop project in junior high. I can remember sitting for hours and staring at the cheap little tin propeller that spun over the red light bulb and simulated "fire" glowing in the fireplace. Growing up in Simi Valley it was the closest to a real fireplace that I'd ever seen. Not much call for them except for two or three weeks out of the year, really.

By the time the fireplace became fodder for the recycling bin, I'd moved on to bigger and, arguably, better traditions.

Most of those traditions revolved around Christmas music. Not any particular song, necessarily. Just the joy of singing wonderful music centered around this unique blend of the spiritual and the secular that result in just about the most fun a musician can have and still be considered legal.

By the time I'd entered high school, my internal calendar pretty much revolved around a standard concert season. Most concert seasons seem to be based on the standard school calendar, beginning in fall and ending either in spring or early summer. After an all-too brief hiatus in the summer, it's back to the rehearsal grind and the arrival of the first octavos of...

CHRISTMAS MUSIC.

In high school we occasionally had a reprieve of a few weeks before the good stuff showed up, whilst our director dithered over whether to bother with a fall concert. When working with kids, that's not a lot of time to slam together a concert of any length with two or more of your active groups, only to turn around and have them begin to memorize the Christmas repertoire. More typically we'd keep a few generic pieces that could be performed at the drop of a hat at, say, the Knights of Columbus hall, or the VFW, and spend most of our fall rehearsal time working on the holiday tunes.

My life has chugged along in this pattern, year after year, whenever I've been fortunate enough to work in an active choir.

For the last seven years, though, our actual holiday "season" hasn't officially gotten underway until our annual Messiah Sing-Along. The Yorba Linda Arts Alliance was looking for ~~a really, really cheap tenor~~ soloists that first year who would work for the right price (FREE) and I was recommended by a mutual acquaintance. I've been the tenor soloist for this event every year since. (Proof here.)

So there are two things that make this a wonderful way to begin our season. First, the family gets to listen to Daddy do a not-bad job on a mildly challenging solo ("Every valley shall be exalted"). Even better, we begin our celebrations with a recitation of some of the more significant prophecies surrounding the birth and mission of the Savior by listening to a setting that comes nearer to celestial music (in my mind) than practically anything written before or since.

Musically, "Messiah" (I will NOT entertain the whole "The Messiah" vs. "Messiah" debate here... Schirmer wrote "THE MESSIAH" bold as brass on my 1912 edition of the score that I use every year, and I have to continually remind myself that many music snobs get VERY UPSET when you use "The" in front of "Messiah." Phooey, I say!) may quote extensively from Handel's earlier works, but what musician doesn't borrow from their own work when they live and die by the commission? We love the music, and find it a perfect companion to our festive spirit.

All this by way of saying that our traditional holiday season has begun here at Hacienda Woody. May yours be every bit as celestial as you can possibly make it this year.

Flying the Flag

2010-11-12T14:59:00.001-08:00

My dear spouse yesterday reminded me that we had utterly failed to fly the flag for Veterans Day. I was deeply chagrined, as I enjoy flying the colors for every appropriate holiday so long as we are in town. We fly the flag because it represents our feelings towards this country we call home. We are truly grateful to be citizens of the United States of America, and flying the flag is an appropriate expression of that citizenship.

That's why this particular story raises my blood pressure a few notches.

Understand, however, that it is not the actions of the school administrators involved with this incident that have me seeing red. They acted on information that they possessed and experiences that they had recently had with the flying of a Mexican flag during Cinco de Mayo (according to at least one account), and decided to ban the adornment out of safety concerns for their students. It was probably a reflexive reaction to a situation and driven at least partially by a desire to not have any child's blood on their hands. I can understand the sentiment.

What leaves me short of breath in this case is the need for making such a decision in the first place.

If you read my post from yesterday, wherein I honored my Dad as part of my Veterans Day celebration, then you understand how I feel about this country. Displaying an American flag on American soil is fundamentally no different from displaying any given nation's flag on their own soil. It is, in fact, encouraged in most countries to display the banner of their homeland, often in ways far more aggressive and ostentatious than we do here in the United States. Certainly it was that way in Guatemala, and I have seen plenty of photographic evidence from other countries as well.

Citizenship 101 would also indicate that, even if you choose to honor the country of your birth and fly a flag from any other nation, say, Mexico as an example, then that flag should always be flown underneath the Stars and Stripes to demonstrate that you recognize the United States as your country of choice and the nation to which you owe your circumstances, including the opportunity to earn a living and provide for your needs and those of your family.

I myself come from a background that is heavily English and German in origin. I do not, however, feel any overwhelming urge to fly the flags of either nation here at home. I am grateful for the heritage, and may even try to emulate certain of their traditions in my own life, but I owe them no other allegiance whatsoever.

My feelings can best be summed up thus: Flying any other nation's flag above the Stars and Stripes indicates to me that you do not belong in this country, or, at the very least, do not appreciate being here. And for those who simply hate the United States, the exits are clearly marked and always open.

It really is that simple.

I try to be a tolerant man. I have no ingrained or deep-rooted prejudices against any race or nationality of which I am aware. If I have a lack of tolerance, it is mostly reserved for those people who lay claim to living and working in this country, while clearly despising everything else that this country represents, including those most basic of rights wherein we may freely express our thoughts and opinions, and worship as we see fit. If these things make you uncomfortable, you ought not to be here.

So the next time you see a kid riding a bike with an American flag attached, remind yourself to not only be grateful that we have such a privilege, but that we should jealously defend that privilege when suffering the mockery and scorn that so many other nations level at us when displaying such patriotism.

Don't just tell me you want to live here.

Prove it.

Honoring a Veteran

2010-11-11T08:59:00.001-08:00

He was a double veteran, actually. Served twice, in two different services.

Timing was everything. He joined the Army just at the end of World War II when everything was winding down. Just couldn't graduate high school quite fast enough, it seems. No matter; he joined the band. Did his stint and accepted the thanks of a grateful nation.

Then came the Korean "conflict." He decided to join up again, but this time opted for the Air Force, and once again served in the band. Did time in Alaska. Made, I believe, Staff Sgt.

He told exactly two stories about his time in the military. To me, at least. One had to do with lips freezing to the mouthpiece of his horn in Alaska. The other was a story with a moral. Something about having "borrowed" a superior officer's Jeep, but under orders from his own superior. When the offended officer called him on it, his response was, "Guilty with an explanation, SIR!" I always got a kick out of that one.

At some point, probably in his military career, he got a tattoo. He pointedly refused to ever discuss it. No idea what the circumstances may have been. Certainly at that point he would have been considered a man of the world, and in my imagination could well have been out on furlough with some buddies, imbibed somewhat more than would be considered legally safe these days, and got the tattoo. But we'll never know that story now, at least not in this life.

This veteran is, of course, my father. Dad passed away about a decade ago. There's a marker at his grave denoting his two branches of service. I've not been back to see it since the funeral. I've meant to, of course. In fact, the one time I tried during one of our family excursions the cemetery was closed. It doesn't trouble me that I've not been back. We'll get there one of these days, and the desire to see it hasn't fled. But I'm comfortable that my memories of Dad are still fresh enough that I find comfort in them.

Dad was loyal to his country. I don't say patriotic, because that smacks of more overt acts of flag-waving and pontificating that were never Dad's style. His was a quiet patriotism. But he understood, as well as or better than most, just how important this country was in the wide scheme of things throughout the world. Why else join two branches of service only to suffer through two different boot camp experiences and never see combat? It was because he saw it as being important. A duty that he would not shirk.

I would venture to guess that none of these thoughts were terribly profound to Dad. He had been brought up to love and support his country, and he took his citizenship seriously. According to his mother, who all but declared that the man walked on water, he was just built that way. More likely Dad took a pragmatic view of his service at the time. Certainly he never bragged about it in later years. It was just a fact of his life up to that point. Something that added to his world view and his luggage full of experience.

That his oldest son would be somewhat more openly patriotic would not have surprised Dad. While I have a lot of Dad in me, I also represent Mom and her expressiveness. This is where my desire to write comes from. Dad was never that expressive. While serving my mission he wrote me exactly two letters. One encouraging me to stick to the work. The other giving me a few details of his wipeout on his Vespa (long story). Those represent the only two letters I received from my father ever. At some point he kept a journal, but mostly because it was on a computer and he loved to tinker with computers.

I appreciate two things about Dad's service in the Army and the Air Force. First and foremost is an appreciation of all things we love about our veterans. Their willingness to serve and protect our nation from enemies of freedom. It is, however, his love of and devotion to this country that I appreciate most. It is that characteristic that I have adopted in my own life, and I treasure it. I was never brave enough to volunteer for service; the draft ended by the time I was old enough to enlist, and the mandatory registration requirements weren't reinstated until I had just passed that age limit. Probably would have gone Navy if anything, but Dad would have been cool with that. But even without having served directly, I have long supported our military by helping in a small way to build the materials that they need to be able to carry that fight wherever duty may require. It is a work that I cherish beyond simply bringing home the bacon.

So we honor our veterans (Mrs. Woody's Dad also served) on this day. May their devotion to duty never be counted against them, and may God protect them, one and all.

Rest in peace, Dad.

The Aftermath

2010-11-03T12:00:00.000-07:00

While not a bad night overall for Republicans (control of the House, gains in the Senate), here in California we have proven that, no matter how bad things are, it can always get worse.

First, the Propositions. Uncle Woody did about as well as expected, but is still sore about the whole redistricting commission thing. See my summary of results in the Curmudgeon's Guide.

As far as candidates go, I always do better with local and county slates just because we still live in a predominantly conservative section of California, but one that is quickly becoming a conservative oasis in an otherwise progressive wasteland. My picks for Anaheim mayor and city council came through. We'll see how long before Disney Appeasement Syndrome kicks in (characterized by an overwhelming urge to plant lips on Disney's fanny).

Races for things like local school boards really don't pique my interest as I have no dog in the hunt. Likewise court positions. Since I try to live such that I won't need to avail myself of their services, I don't tend to keep an eye on them. (That said, the one fellow I voted against in this election made it handily anyway. More power to him.)

It is, of course, at the state level where the sting is most sharply felt. Republicans were, once again, pathologically incapable of fronting any candidates serious enough to challenge the oppressive Bay Area progressive junta. The closest we came to a victory was Steve Cooley, and as of now it looks too close to call but is leaning toward the Democrat.

I can't really claim to be surprised that Boxer won. Fiorina had her points, but not enough of them to overcome the liberal's ultra-left Darling in the Senate. The wrench, though, is Jerry Brown re-entering the Governor's office. (One immediately wonders whether he'll avail himself of the Governor's mansion this time around, now that he's, you know, married and everything.)

The only thing I can figure is that enough voters were young enough this time around to have no memory of Brown's first attempt to destroy the state of California. As I told a friend of mine last night, the next sound you hear may very well be helicopters loaded with more malathion to dump on your ~~families~~ trees.

Oh, well. I have high hopes that Cooley may still pull off a miracle so we can watch the dynamic between a Governor who has no regard for California law, and an Attorney General who would actually work to enforce it. Still, we can look for ol' Moonbeam to make for plenty of late-night comedy fodder over the next several years.

Utah is looking better all the time.

Election Day Reminder

2010-11-02T08:15:00.001-07:00

VOTE!

It is the most basic responsibility of citizenship in this country. Our ability (and right) to vote separates us from so many nations, we should consider this right to be both precious and significant.

I voted absentee this year for the first time in many elections, and it still feels good today. I know that I have participated. I hold no delusions that my choices will agree with everyone else, but I am certain that my voice has been heard. Above all, I can (and often do) speak volumes about the foibles of our elected officials, knowing that if I disagreed with them I did so at the ballot box.

VOTE!

Woody Is a Doll

2010-11-01T12:44:00.000-07:00

In the run-up to tomorrow's big election, I've been monitoring site activity to watch how many hits the Curmudgeon's Guide gets (which, by the way, see, if it's not too late!). Usually folks come here having looked for some form of the search string "conservative voters guide," and manage to find the Woundup in the process. Some folks even stick around for a bit and actually read the Guide. I thank you for even considering my opinion while forming your own.

Every once in awhile, though, this blog is visited due to some rather, oh, peculiar search strings that have little or nothing to do with politics. I do still get searches for "montebello hoax," meaning that school teachers are still assigning students to write about the incident wherein a Mexican flag was flown over an inverted American flag during a protest at Montebello High School a few years ago. Sorry, teachers, it really happened. That fact has simply been too well documented to insist on calling it a "hoax." Blame for that incident is still widely disputed, but not the incident itself. Back to your social engineering blackboards with you.

The search that caught my eye today, though, was "how to fix Woody's head." It is a question that has, I confess, triggered a primordial response deep within my psyche.

First, of course, there's the obvious fact that I was completely unaware that my head was in need of fixing. Not that various liberals and alternative religionists haven't gently suggested such a thing in the past. My comments section is chock-full of folks who somehow question my intelligence. But even when they do, they never imply that my head needs fixing. Re-educating, yes. They universally seem to agree that I need serious re-educating. But not fixing.

Then I looked to the source of the question. The chap (we'll assume a male of the species for strictly generic purposes) is based in India, or at least was using the India version of Google, so there may be something of a language barrier at play. I spent time in Guatemala some thirty years ago, and the local Mayan dialect used the question "is your face good?" to ask whether you were, in fact, feeling fine. "Good my face," I would reply (although not, obviously, in English) which seemed to satisfy local custom. Perhaps "fix head" is, in one of the Indian dialects, an indicator of bad taste, as in "you would better appreciate this snake stew if your head weren't broken."

But, no, I have long known about my blog's title and its uncomfortable similarity to "Woody's Round-up" which figured so prominently in "Toy Story II." Now, I have every admiration for Pixar and their writing teams, and I picked the name "Woody's Woundup" as (I thought) a clever play on my long-standing nickname and the allusion to Toy Story, but which could also be interpreted as my being constantly "wound up" about something or other (meaning politics). Hence I get visited by numerous folks — primarily in Japan for some reason — who are looking for information on the Round-up. Google's infamous search engine uses that fabulous proximity logic of theirs and sends them here. Thanks, Google!

Hence, in the final analysis I'm forced to conclude that this individual was actually concerned with the state of Woody's head, meaning that he has a Woody doll from the movie, and has somehow broken the poor thing's melon. It is a tragedy, to be sure, and one for which I hope this person finds immediate relief. After all, a cow may be sacred in India, but who knows what significance a Woody doll may have?

Curmudgeon's Guide for Young Conservative Voters (AMENDED)

2010-10-07T00:59:00.000-07:00

California General Election 2010 Edition (AMENDED) (UPDATED TO REFLECT RESULTS AS OF 11:00 PM)

Scroll down for updates in red

It's time once again, boys and girls, for Uncle Woody's Patented (Pend.), 100% Effective, Accept-No-Substitutes-or-Imitations Curmudgeon's Guide for Young Conservative Voters®©™.

Every election that rolls around here in California (and believe me, with as many fault lines as we have here in California, when I say they "roll," I mean they slosh around like loose barrels on a storm-tossed dinghy) gets this treatment from your genial host (remember him?). We suffered through the Primary Election back in June, wound up with mediocre (at best) candidates from which to choose, and now we prepare for the General Election, which will (or perhaps won't) be a turning point in Congress during this so-called mid-term election cycle. It will (or perhaps won't) be an indictment of President Obama's numerous failures to do anything except learn how to kow-tow before various heads of state (see: Seat of Pants, Government by). So the results will (most likely in this case) be interesting, to say the least.

So, fellow citizens, we come to bury the Propositions here in California, not praise them. I will examine them one by one, attempting to rein in my hyperactive gag reflex, and tell you in as concise a manner as I am capable how I think you Young Conservatives should vote. Or not. This is a very relaxed voters guide, here at the Woundup.

First, though, ~~allow me to provide you with a handy clip-out summary of the measures so you can carry Uncle Woody's brilliance with you to the ballot box~~ check the results as of late Tuesday evening (I'll blog about the candidates tomorrow):

Measure	Uncle Woody	California	Uncle Woody's Reaction
19 - Legalizes Marijuana Under California But Not Federal Law. Permits Local Governments to Regulate and Tax Commercial Production, Distribution, and Sale of Marijuana. Initiative Statute.	NO	NO (56.1%)	Send the pot-heads to Mexico to deal directly with the cartels!
20 - Redistricting of Congressional Districts. Initiative Constitutional Amendment	NO	YES (64.p%)	Uncle Woody is not surprised, though disappointed.
21 - Establishes $18 Annual Vehicle License Surcharge to Help Fund State Parks and Wildlife Programs, Grants Surcharged Vehicles Free Admission to All State Parks. Initiative Statute	NO	NO (61.4%)	It failed the duck test.
22 - Prohibits the State From Borrowing or Taking Funds Used for Transportation, Redevelopment, or Local Government Projects and Services. Initiative Constitutional Amendment	NO	YES (63.8%)	Don't blame Uncle Woody when they grab your property for a strip mall.
23 - Suspends Implementation of Air Pollution Control Law (AB 32) Requiring Major Sources of Emissions to Report and Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions that Cause Global Warming, Until Unemployment Drops to 5.5 Percent or Less for a Full Year. Initiative Statute	YES	NO (58.1%)	Kiss those jobs bye-bye, Young Conservatives. Progressives have once again proven they want everything paid for with non-existent revenue.
24 - Repeals a Recent Legislation That Would Allow Businesses to Lower Their Tax Liability. Initiative Statute	NO	NO (60.6%)	The news is not all bad. Progressives must have been caught sleeping on this one.,
25 - Changes Legislative Vote Requirement to Pass Budget and Budget-Related Legislation From Two-Thirds to a Simple Majority. Retains Two-Thirds Vote Requirement for Taxes. Initiative Constitutional Amendment	NO	YES (53.7%)	Hoo, boy. Hopefully Uncle Woody will be able to retire to Utah before they pass their first simple majority budget. After that there won't be any retirement money left in the state. The unions will get it all.
26 - Requires That Certain State and Local Fees Be Approved by Two-Thirds Vote. Fees Include Those That Address Adverse Impacts on Society or the Environment Caused by the Fee-Payer's Business. Initiative Constitutional Amendment	YES	YES (55.5%)	Fees = Taxes. They finally got it!
27 - Eliminates State Commission on Redistricting. Consolidates Authority for Redistricting with Elected Representatives. Initiative Constitutional Amendment and Statute.	YES	NO (60.9%)	Again, predictable. Uncle Woody further predicts LOTS of belly-aching over the first attempted gerrymander by the Kommission.
Anaheim Measure J	YES	YES (62.3%)	No real passion or controversy with either of our city measures this time around.
Anaheim Measure K	YES	YES (72.9%)	Let's hope we're not proven wrong on this one.

Let's begin, then, with:

Proposition 18

Hah! The joke's on us, Young Conservatives! There IS no "Proposition 18." At some point (August 10, 2010, according to the ever-helpful "Official Voter Information Guide") this proposition was removed by both the Legislature (motto: "Budget?") and the Governor (motto: "Budget?"). Can they even do that, Young Conservatives? Did anyone happen to inform Proposition 18 that it was no longer running for office? Did they let it down gently, or was it (more likely) some soul-less form rejection letter?

Dear Proposition 18,

We regret to inform you that your services are no longer needed by the State of California. As such, you will be summarily removed from the ballot for the November 2, 2010 General Election...

Heartless and cruel, that is.

Oh, well. Moving on.

Proposition 19 - Legalizes Marijuana Under California But Not Federal Law. Permits Local Governments to Regulate and Tax Commercial Production, Distribution, and Sale of Marijuana. Initiative Statute.

Apparently, Young Conservatives, whoever came up with the title of this Proposition had already had a toke or two, if you ask Uncle Woody. Not that I have ever toked, Young Conservatives. Although, since Uncle Woody was in high school in the 70's, it's entirely possible that I inhaled without ever knowing it.

Anyway, Uncle Woody cannot for the life of him figure out where these initiatives come from. Aliens would be Uncle Woody's guess (the UFO kind, not the illegal ones) (although, by definition, the UFO kind would be here illegally too, right?). We're supposed to believe that legalizing the weed will somehow weaken the drug cartels, for example. Right. Legalizing something that nearly everyone currently living in Berkeley grows in their front yards, for Pete's sake, is really gonna take a huge bite out of those Mexican drug lords' profits.

Uncle Woody suspects that the real reasons for this initiative lie in the doped-up title of the Proposition itself: Words like "tax" and "regulate" make this the work of the Democrats, or Uncle Woody is much mistaken.

Don't light this one up, Young Conservatives. Bury it. Uncle Woody votes NO.

Proposition 20 - Redistricting of Congressional Districts. Initiative Constitutional Amendment

Oy. This one is silly, Young Conservatives. We voted on Proposition 11 back in the General Election of 2008. Uncle Woody, you may recall, urged a No vote on this Commission but was shouted down by 50.5% of California voters (this happens a lot to Uncle Woody). Now, Proposition 20 appears to try to somehow empower this already-voter-established Commission to actually do the job they were created to perform.

Since the Commission itself is nothing but a boondoggle, Uncle Woody could not care less whether they receive any actual "power" to redistrict this state, period. There's no way any resulting redistricting will ever be considered "fair" to anyone but the benefactors of such gerrymandering, so how will this be different from any redistricting done in the past?

Uncle Woody is a STRONG NO on this one, Young Conservatives. See my notes on Proposition 27 later.

Proposition 21 - Establishes $18 Annual Vehicle License Surcharge to Help Fund State Parks and Wildlife Programs, Grants Surcharged Vehicles Free Admission to All State Parks. Initiative Statute

Uncle Woody smells Sierra Club somewhere in all this, but I can see why they want this. If there's one thing California does relatively well, it's preserve significant portions of the state in the form of State Parks. We also boast a number of National Parks, along with monuments, and other forms of refuge that are intended to provide us with a protected environment as well as aesthetic enjoyment for years to come.

Here's Uncle Woody's beef: Creating the surcharge means everyone who drives a car in California will be paying what amounts to a usage fee for these parks whether they actually use them or not. It's already bad enough that in California we have to pay the State to not drive our junk cars every year, so why should we pay to use parks or facilities that we may not ever use? I personally have been known to go years without ever visiting a State Park.

The other part of that beef is that none (read closely, Young Conservatives: NONE) of the promised benefits that have increased our vehicle license fees over the past several years have ever come to pass in this budget-wasteland of a state. I repeat: NONE. So, I stubbornly refuse to believe that any of this $18 "surcharge" (a tax by any other name...) will ever end up benefiting our State Parks.

Uncle Woody votes NO

Proposition 22 - Prohibits the State From Borrowing or Taking Funds Used for Transportation, Redevelopment, or Local Government Projects and Services. Initiative Constitutional Amendment

Skeptic that I am, Uncle Woody may actually be tempted to vote for this one. Not that I believe it has a snowball's chance of actually preventing politicians from ever robbing their own coffers, but because it should at least be on the books that they're not allowed to. Also, Uncle Woody notes that the primary opposition to this Proposition comes from a union, and Uncle Woody is not feeling any too friendly toward fat-cat union bosses these days. They're part of the reason this country is in this current fiscal nightmare.

~~Uncle Woody breaks with his own protocols and votes YES on Prop 22.~~

Uncle Woody has repented, Young Conservatives. After reading an editorial by the OC Register, Uncle Woody is reminded that "redevelopment" is a euphemism for "land-grabbing by local government because they can't stand the fact that landowners enjoy, you know, owning land." That fact alone kills this proposition in Uncle Woody's mind. Vote NO on Prop 22.

Proposition 23 - Suspends Implementation of Air Pollution Control Law (AB 32) Requiring Major Sources of Emissions to Report and Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions that Cause Global Warming, Until Unemployment Drops to 5.5 Percent or Less for a Full Year. Initiative Statute

Whew! That's a mouthful, Young Conservatives, and it magnifies one of the biggest problems with our current political environment. In today's political world, Young Conservatives, everything that happens, whether natural or not, has got to be someone's fault! "Global Warming" is one of those catch-all phrases that encompasses everything that's filthy in today's politics. What's that phrase, Young Conservatives? "Lies, damned lies, and statistics!" We have seen report after report debunking the Al Gore-created myth of anthropogenic global warming, and yet the spittle-emitting extremists still insist that we have the power to turn back the earth's natural warming and cooling cycles.

Worse, we continually sacrifice jobs on the altar of Global Warming because it makes someone, somewhere, feel better when we do. This proposition appears to take a somewhat more practical tone by suspending crippling legislation that has killed more jobs than any politician cares to admit, and allows us to stay suspended until unemployment drops to 5.5%.

Uncle Woody thinks it's worth a try. Uncle Woody votes YES on Prop 23.

Proposition 24 - Repeals a Recent Legislation That Would Allow Businesses to Lower Their Tax Liability. Initiative Statute

See my notes under Proposition 23 above, Young Conservatives. But be careful; where Proposition 23 requires a Yes vote in order to provide relief to California businesses, this Proposition requires a No vote in order to give businesses a necessary break.

Hey, Uncle Woody is all for having everyone, businesses included, pay a fair share of taxes to the state of California. But Uncle Woody would like to remind California of a couple of things:

1. Businesses are revenue generators for the state. When you cripple them with larger tax burdens, those businesses either fold up or leave the state. Hence you receive no taxes from those businesses for your precious social programs.

2. The State of California is apparently incapable of budgeting within their means in any given year, so whether you continue to tax businesses in this manner or not, it won't make a lick of difference to the budget. Speaking of which, how's all that Lotto money working out for our schools?

Reason Number One to Vote No on Proposition 24: The California Teachers Association (see: Evil, Personified) wants us to vote Yes.

Uncle Woody says we should man up and vote NO on Proposition 24.

Proposition 25 - Changes Legislative Vote Requirement to Pass Budget and Budget-Related Legislation From Two-Thirds to a Simple Majority. Retains Two-Thirds Vote Requirement for Taxes. Initiative Constitutional Amendment

Another waste of tax-payer time, Young Conservatives. Either you pass a budget (i.e., live within your means) or you don't. The move to a simple majority only means that it will be that much harder for Republicans in this state to stop Democrats from spending money they never intend to have on projects that benefit no one but the labor unions of this state.

What Uncle Woody would prefer to see is to give the Governor line-item veto authority over the budget. Uncle Woody realizes that this can be a dual-edged sword, but when the Legislature hands you a crock of a budget, you need the ability to cross things out.

Uncle Woody votes NO on Proposition 25.

Proposition 26 - Requires That Certain State and Local Fees Be Approved by Two-Thirds Vote. Fees Include Those That Address Adverse Impacts on Society or the Environment Caused by the Fee-Payer's Business. Initiative Constitutional Amendment

Sigh.

Uncle Woody sometimes wonders what our legislators are smoking, up there in Sacramento. There are numerous reasons why this state is one of the (if not THE) most expensive states for cost of living in the country. Uncle Woody has already determined that he will not be retiring in this state because he simply will not be able to afford it. And while there is much about California that he would miss, Uncle Woody can always visit (at $18 per State Park, it's a bargain, right?).

That said, Uncle Woody somehow instinctively knows that if California is ever to survive and not turn into the largest hippie commune in the country, it needs to find ways to encourage businesses to not only stay in this state, but find a way to help them make a profit as well. This is the sort of thing that encourages businesses to hire people to work for them, as opposed to laying them off and sending their work to other business-friendly states like Texas or Utah.

Uncle Woody therefore likes the idea of making it harder for our insatiable state legislators to continually burden our businesses with fees and other charges that make it impossible for them to maintain healthy staffing levels and provide benefits for them.

Uncle Woody votes YES on Proposition 26.

Proposition 27 - Eliminates State Commission on Redistricting. Consolidates Authority for Redistricting with Elected Representatives. Initiative Constitutional Amendment and Statute.

If you were reading my notes under Proposition 20, Young Conservatives, then you can probably guess that Uncle Woody would not mind having you vote Yes on this one. Uncle Woody did not like the idea of a Commission back in 2008, Young Conservatives, for one primary reason: They never work. Really. When was the last time, Young Conservatives, you ever heard the Public Utilities Commission do something useful? Me, neither.

Commissions have a way of becoming entrenched, in Uncle Woody's experience. Entrenched is not a good word, Young Conservatives. It's one of the contributors to the Entitlement Culture that has created a strangle-hold on our economy in the past several years. The more entrenched a commission becomes, the less likely they are to ever represent you or anyone related to you on any issue.

Uncle Woody urges a YES vote on Prop 27, Young Conservatives, even though he suspects it'll never happen.

Uncle Woody's Recommendations on Candidates

Normally, Young Conservatives, Uncle Woody simply tells you to vote your consciences and pray for the best. However, there are a few candidates that Uncle Woody feels a need to pontificate about, whether Uncle Woody knows what he's talking about or not.

Governor

It is with heavy heart that Uncle Woody endorses Meg Whitman for Governor. The reason is simple: Voting for Whitman is the only viable way to keep Jerry Brown out of the Governor's office. Voting for any other candidate, even if that candidate is Mickey Mouse and would probably do a better job than the last three governors put together, is effectively a vote for Jerry Brown. There's a reason, Young Conservatives, why we called Jerry Brown "Governor Moonbeam" back in the day. He was living with Linda Ronstadt, for crying out loud. We also called him "Governor Med Fly" or "Governor Malathion" because of continual fruit fly infestations in this state which resulted in frequent Malathion rain, generally without notice. Anyway, if anyone remembers far enough back to include Brown's administration in Sacramento, they MUST VOTE FOR WHITMAN AT ALL COSTS. Not because she's any sort of true conservative — in many ways I fear she'll be even more ~~moderate~~ liberal than Schwarzenegger — but at her absolute worst she still has to be better than Jerry Brown.

If that's damning with faint praise, it's the best I can do.

Lt. Governor

I really don't care who you vote for in this case, Young Conservatives. Just don't vote for Abel Maldonado. He has betrayed the conservative wing of the Republican party far too many times to be given any serious consideration for any elected job, including dog catcher. Heck, vote for the Libertarian, if it makes you feel good. The Lt. Governor of California is perhaps the only job even more ceremonial than Vice President of the United States.

United States Senator

Another move on the chess board, Young Conservatives. Go out and vote for Carly Fiorina. As with Whitman, there is much about Fiorina that I don't trust, but I trust Boxer far, far less. If we have any hope to break the liberal gridlock from California, it's Fiorina.

Everyone Else

Now Uncle Woody is ready to tell you Young Conservatives to go vote your conscience. Vote Republican if it makes you feel good, or pick and choose. Damon Dunn is running for Secretary of State and has the delusion that if he grills the businesses that are packing up and leaving, he'll be able to tell the Legislature why they're leaving and the Legislature will then fix the problem. Not sure what the weather is like on Mr. Dunn's home planet, but if he believes that, then okay.

I can't say much about Steve Cooley for Attorney General, primarily because he wasn't all that visible while serving as DA for Los Angeles. He'd surface every few months whenever a high-visibility crime was being prosecuted, then retreat into his office to hibernate until the next press conference.

Mike Villines figures he'll protect consumers and crack down on fraud as Insurance Commissioner. I've got news for Mr. Villines: he'll be so busy trying to figure out why insurance companies are going out of business because of Obamacare, that his first fraud case will probably not cross his desk until three years after he's voted out of office. He'll be spending most of his time trying to dodge questions about how he (Villines) could possibly let the insurance companies go bankrupt when Obama promised us that we'd all have free health care for life!

Additional Notes, Including Local Issues for Orange County and Anaheim

Rather than paint this entire section red, just consider this to be one of the amendments to the Guide, okay Young Conservatives?

Okay.

Propositions 20 and 27

Uncle Woody knows he's swimming upstream here, and doesn't care. I don't like the idea of a Commission for redistricting that we can't vote on. Period. Just because they consist of members representing all viable political parties in this state, there is NO GUARANTEE THAT THEY'LL REPRESENT MY OWN INTERESTS IN THIS PROCESS. And no one can ever guarantee that to my satisfaction. This is politics at its absolute worst, Young Conservatives, and I refuse to trust any commission, no matter how well intentioned, any more than I trust any given incumbent politician today. [/RANT]

City of Anaheim Measures

Measure J allows the use of design-build procurement for public works projects that support the city. Not a problem for Uncle Woody: this is just an acknowledgment that the rules of procurement can evolve over time as new methods for accomplishing things in a more efficient manner are discovered. Uncle Woody votes YES on Measure J.

Measure K wants to prohibit ever allowing the city to install a red-light camera at any time. Uncle Woody is of two minds on this issue, my young friends. On the one hand, red-light cameras are more an invasion of privacy and smack of "big brotherism" than I believe they're worth. Also, many, many people have made the point that the business case for red-light cameras actually saving lives has never been made. Agreed.

My only hesitation is that there may one day be a case where it can be absolutely proven that not doing everything possible, including installing such a camera at a given intersection, would be irresponsible if it has any chance at all of preventing traffic fatalities.

After some vacillation, however, Uncle Woody must agree with the majority here. Traffic cameras are unproven deterrents. Uncle Woody votes YES on Measure K.

Batting Clean-Up

If you're at all interested or care in any way, here's a run-down on how Uncle Woody plans to vote for candidates not mentioned elsewhere:

Lt. Governor: Uncle Woody is making good on his threat to vote for the Libertarian in this race, Pamela J Brown. I cannot and will not pull the lever for Maldonado.

Secretary of State: Damon Dunn. Yeah, he's deluded, but he means well.

Controller: Tony Strickland. I'm a big fan.

Treasurer (State): Mimi Walters

Attorney General: Steve Cooley

Insurance Commissioner: Mike Villines. Do these people ever understand what they're getting themselves into?

State Board of Equalization - 3rd District: Michelle Steel

US Representative, 42nd District: Gary Miller

State Assembly, 60th District: Curt Hagman

Judicial: I'm only voting one name down in this entire list, and that's Carlos Moreno. Nothing personal against the man, really, except that he espouses some opinions with which I happen to disagree. I have no idea if the man is a good judge or not.

Superintendent of Public Instruction: Larry Aceves. You might think that Uncle Woody, being a homeschooler, could not possibly care less about who helms the education department of the state. You couldn't be more incorrect. Homeschoolers have everything to lose if the wrong person makes it to this office. The real problem with our two choices is that neither candidate, Aceves or Torlakson, would go on the record as to where they stand on homeschooling as a right of the parent. So, in this case, the absence of such statements makes me at least hopeful that whoever wins will, as others have done before them, pretty much ignore homeschooling in the state of California for the next term. It's the best we can hope for. In voting for Aceves I am only acknowledging that, were my kids in public school, he more closely mirrors my own vision for school reform and accountability.

North Orange County Community College District:
Barbara Dunsheath (Area 2)
Jeffrey P. Brown (Area 3)
Darlene Allen (Area 4)

Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District:
Karin M. Freeman (Full Term)
Kim Palmer (Full Term)
Susan M. Eckles (Short Term)

Treasurer-Tax Collector (Orange County): Shari L. Freidenrich

City of Anaheim - Mayor: Tom Tait
City of Anaheim - City Council:
Gail Eastman
Kris Murray

End of Amended Post

Good luck, Young Conservatives! Our future is in your capable hands. Uncle Woody will be in Utah, if you need him.

Come and Get Me, Joe

2010-10-06T09:47:00.000-07:00

Hey, Mr. Vice President! Your federal budget stinks and you guys have no idea how to fix it. Whatcha gonna do about it? (H/T: Drudge)

Money quote:

He quickly added: "To the press, that's a figure of speech."

Uh, huh.

Well, as one of the VP's potential targets, all I can say is you'd better bring your cast-iron underwear, Joe. Hair plugs will not save you in 2012.

Beaming Up the United Nations

2010-09-27T08:49:00.000-07:00

I wish I could say I made this up, but I can't.

It's one of those stories where the mockery almost writes itself.

The United Nations, having finally solved their last remaining problem now that we've elected an Apologizer-in-Chief in the United States, has created the "Office for Outer Space Affairs" or "Unoosa." (Yes, yes, I know... sounds a bit like "unusable," doesn't it?)

Scarier still, they've actually appointed an ambassador to fill this office; a woman by the name of Mazlan Othman, a Malaysian astrophysicist. I'm not implying that Ms. Othman is scary, mind you, but rather that it scares me that the UN would 1.) create such an office, and 2.) staff it.

Being an inveterate consumer of pulp science fiction movies like "E.T.," or "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," this announcement brings up all sorts of wonderful possibilities.

First, there's the rather obvious problem of communication. In "Close Encounters," the aliens left extremely helpful hints about how best to communicate with them when the inferior earthlings had finally gotten a clue. This enabled the eggheads (we were never certain whether they were UN eggheads or just US military eggheads in the film) to build a super-computer capable of carrying on an intense conversation that no one, including the eggheads that designed the thing, were able to understand.

I think Ms. Othman's best bet in the absence of such a super-computer would be the online Klingon dictionary:

[Othman, while making the Vulcan sign that Kirk could never master]: "nuqneH!" ("What do you want?")

[Aliens, with puzzled expressions on their faces]:

[Othman, undeterred]: "Hutlh may'ron!" ("Have an accordion!")

[Alien 1 speaking to Alien 2 with a British accent]: I say, Sheldon, you were right. They don't quite seem to have mastered the art of communication yet.

Of course, there's always the ~~hope~~ thought that the aliens would simply take out whatever highly advanced weaponry they've brought along with them and blast the entire delegation into another dimension.

Then, of course, Ms. Othman would need to familiarize the visitors with the rules and regulations of the United Nations:

[Othman]: So the Security Council can vote to censure any member nation, but only one dissenting vote is sufficient to veto any such action. This has been particularly useful in denying the United States anything but an occasional attack on peace-loving nations run entirely by psychotic ego-maniacs. China continues to do pretty much whatever it likes, and the rest of us sit around and think up ways to blame mankind for every natural disaster that the planet experiences. Also we get diplomatic immunity in the United States so we can all keep our illegal drugs flowing through their country without fear of reprisal.

[Alien 2, slapping Alien 1 on the back of the head]: "We don't need the Universal Positioning System on this trip," you said! "If there's intelligent life in this galaxy, I'll find it," you said! This is absolutely the last time I let you get away with that sort of nonsense, Griswold.

So I'm certain that Ms. Othman has her work cut out for her. We desperately need, after all, to make a good first impression. She'll be kept plenty busy developing the precise protocols needed in establishing that all-important first contact. It's unclear at this point, of course, whether bowing would be part of that ceremony, but I'm sure Obama could give her some tips.

Still, as I once read on a coffee mug: The surest sign of intelligent life in the universe is that none of it has ever tried to contact us.

'Iq Ha'DIbaH

To Profile, Or Not...

2010-09-11T20:57:00.000-07:00

I keep my 9/11 remembrances pretty much to myself. The images and feelings are still there, deep in my memory, to be recalled on certain occasions. It's not just an anniversary thing, this horrific event. No more than Pearl Harbor was merely December 7 to our parents and grandparents. It was a life-changing thing, and it has shaped my perspective on life — and the tenuous nature of life — forever. I don't need September 11 to roll around every year in order to remember what it meant, and means, to me.

But thinking about it a little extra today did shunt my mental engine off onto a spur, if you will. I found myself pondering the idea of profiling, and how this nation can possibly believe that profiling is some great evil that creates targets where none exist.

Truth to tell, this train of thought began not so much because of 9/11, but rather because my youngest daughter has been watching Disney's "Peter Pan" the past couple of days. It's one of my favorites from Disney's Golden Age. Good story; terrific animation; well written and directed. But it would never play in today's politically correct universe. In fact, when the studio finally wrote a follow-up to the original and decided to use Wendy's daughter Jane, they brought back nearly all the denizens of Never Land except for the Indians. That disappointed me, even if I understood why they couldn't. In today's world of hyper-sensitivity to all things diverse, any attempted caricature of an indigenous culture would bring down the wrath of every tribal council, race-mongering hypocrite, and civil rights grievance group you could possibly imagine.

Likewise, Disney's "Song of the South," which has some wonderful music to accompany the delightful animations that featured Br'er Rabbit and the rest, will likely never again see the light of day. Not even as a special release from "the Vault." Too demeaning of black culture, that one is.

Folks have tried to tell me that I couldn't possibly know what it means to be profiled. To be denied the life I want merely because of the color of my skin. Yet I am profiled nearly every day in some way, shape, or fashion, by numerous people who feel that my own white skin has somehow magically entitled me to a life of carefree self-indulgence.

The sad truth is that this perception is a fallacy. At work they hold me back; not because I'm white but because I do not hold a college degree. It is the last bastion of prejudice to which Corporate America can cling today without incurring the wrath of Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton. While many around me have taken the plunge late in life to return to school and get that diploma, circumstances in my life have precluded my doing the same. For these circumstances I am not bitter. Life is what it is, and I made choices many years ago that I was, and still am, willing to live with. However, that does not stop my incredulity at the idea that my lack of a degree makes me in any way less valuable to the company than many of the educated ~~idiots~~ people that leapfrog over guys like me to enter the ranks of management.

There are similar prejudices at play in my choice of religion. If I were still tweeting (gave it up as a worthless hobby), I would tweet something to the effect that "Islam may very well be the second most misunderstood religion in the world today." Every day I read analysis after analysis and report after report that all claim to understand completely what Islam must mean to every one of its followers. Yet I can't shake the feeling that all their analyses may only apply to a relatively small percentage of its adherents. Most believers and followers of Islam would likely love to be left completely alone and wish never to bother anyone else, yet because of the actions of the demonic few, we paint them all with the same wide brush.

If my own religion weren't even more misunderstood than Islam, I'd probably feel sorrier for them. (If I tell you that I am a Latter-day Saint, does that answer the question of which religion is more misunderstood?) We may be at war with Islamic nations, but not because they adhere to Islam. (That may be why they are at war with us, but that's beside the point I'm making here.) Yet this country drove my ancestors out of the country because of their religious beliefs and were never adverse to slaughtering us for refusing to renounce our prophet. Even those "enemy combatants" at Gitmo have never been asked to renounce Islam.

So, yes, I understand a thing or two about profiling. True, anyone who profiles me is not likely to deport me. I have nowhere to go. I was born here, can prove it, and besides, England wouldn't know what to do with a conservative like me. They'd kick me back across the pond faster than they can down a pint of Guinness'. But have I been "denied" things because of who I am or choices that I have made? Most certainly.

The way I see it, kids who wear gang colors and pants that hang down around their ankles are literally flashing a giant marquee on Times Square that says "PROFILE ME." Want to live in this country but refuse to learn English? I reserve the right to believe that you might not belong here legally. In other words, I profile. It happens every day.

Interestingly enough, there is a relatively new market next door. "Wholesome Choice" it calls itself. It features exotic foods that you are less likely to find at your local supermarket from parts of the world that you are even less likely to have visited. Spices, sauces, even certain fruits and vegetables, all from middle eastern or southeast asian cultures. I have shopped there on occasion and found everyone who works there to be very pleasant people. If I despise the store for any reason, it is because they are so busy that I have difficulty finding a parking space anywhere within half a city block of my barber shop. Or Baskin-Robbins. Otherwise, I have no problem with the store or its employees. Likewise, because I happen to speak (some) Spanish, I am conversant with many Latinos who live and work nearby. Fine people, all. If I have profiled them, at least I choose to keep it to myself.

But can I stop profiling them? Not likely.

The day I stop is perhaps the very day that I see someone who should have attracted my attention. Someone who may try to cause the next life-changing event in this country. And for that reason alone I cannot, and will not, stop profiling.

Trying to Buy an Election

2010-09-06T14:19:00.000-07:00

Elections aren't cheap, even with our current down-valued economy. Heck; unlike thirty years ago or so, your election dollar just doesn't stretch as far as it used to.

Part of the problem is that we're not manufacturing dollars anywhere near fast enough to fund all these stimulus packages that President Obama is so convinced are the only way to put America back to work.

Now, even though President Obama is not up for election himself this fall, plenty of his enablers in Congress are. Unfortunately for the President, the price tag for re-electing these enablers has skyrocketed in direct proportion to the precipitous drop in value of our current money supply.

Having already committed to spending $896 billion for a stimulus package that itself seems to be in desperate need of Viagra™, the President is running out of options. He needs a sure-fire way to convince Americans this November that Democrats hold the answer ("spend more money that we don't have!") to all of our economic woes.

His answer:

SPEND MORE MONEY THAT WE DON'T HAVE.

The President's advisors ("Spending Your Money So You Don't Get To") have come up with a brilliant plan to plug up existing tax breaks for oil, gas, and multinational corporations to the completely made-up tune of $50 billion in order to pay for a huge upgrade to existing infrastructure projects. Things like rail lines, runways, and highways will magically — a la historical Works Project Administration boondoggles — create jobs. Which, if memory serves, was what the original $896 billion stimulus was supposed to do.

Where are we at now? 9.6% unemployment? If my own company is any sort of bellwether, we're not out of the woods yet. Not by a long shot. Every internal communication in the last several months has said something to the effect that "we can't possibly predict when this economy will improve to the point where we can quit laying people off, let alone start hiring again."

The President, as always, urges patience on the part of those of us who are either laid off, about to be laid off, or struggling to keep up with all the work that still must be done in the absence of our laid off colleagues. Stimulating the economy is never an overnight thing, he cautions. Hey, once Congress actually gets around to reading the Health Care package they ramrodded down our collective throats last year, they may have to further modify their projections to include all the doctors and nurses that will be out of work because no one will be able to afford them without incurring huge penalties.

But I think the President has a plan for that, too. Here's how Hilda Solis described this latest $50 billion gravy train:

In a Labor Day interview on CBS'"Early Show," Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said the plan Obama was to unveil Monday would "put construction workers, welders, electricians back to work ... folks that have been unemployed for a long time."

I know this plan. Many companies are adopting a similar scheme wherein workers agree (on pain of extermination) to not work for one or more days every month. "Work furlough days," I believe they're called. The idea being that if you don't work that day, the company doesn't pay you for that day and saves an undetermined amount of money for their bravery.

Well, according to Solis, the idea here would be a twist on the work furlough idea: Take the people who have been out of work the longest — in this case, electricians, construction workers, and the like, who are all, in an incredible coincidence, union workers — and put them back to work with this freshly inked money. At the same time, give those workers who have been struggling vainly to keep everyone else's unemployment benefits afloat a chance to enjoy the fruits of their labors by having them take the unemployment money for awhile. Certainly Obama and his congressional enablers will just keep those benefits recharged ad infinitum for the next several years. This way, instead of taking a day off without pay here and there, we'll have American workers take entire years off without pay, and nothing but unemployment benefits to tide them over until the economy gets tired of all the stimulus being thrown at it, and decides to wake up on its own.

There you have it. Well worth the $50 billion, I'm sure, and the President won't waste any time selling it to a war-weary populace.

But will it buy him an election? Time will tell.

Another Milestone!

2010-08-08T00:29:00.000-07:00

During what we now grandly call my "starter marriage," we wore our then-teenage daughter completely out. She had come into the family with an already one-year-old brother, and two more foster brothers almost literally around the corner. As she matured we started giving her more and more opportunities to babysit until, finally, she was literally our on-call sitter. If Mom and Dad decided they needed to go somewhere, we just took it for granted that our daughter was ready to step in and watch the kids.

Flash forward about fifteen years, and we're finally in a position once again to have a teenager available to babysit for Mom and Dad for an occasional short date or shopping trip. Jelly stepped up to the plate this week for the first time so that Mrs. Woody and I could go to the movies and see "The Sorcerer's Apprentice." (Not bad. Completely predictable but nicely done. A few nods to the Fantasia version of the story here and there.)

Upon returning home we were delighted to note that a) the house had not burned to the ground, and b) the kids were still speaking to each other. This becomes treacherous ground as the older sibling takes on more responsibility and walks that strait path between being a helpful junior home exec on the one hand, and a tyrant-in-training on the other.

Back in the day, yours truly held no delusions about being a helpful anything where his siblings were concerned. I was a full-fledged tyrant until about the time baby sister appeared on the scene. She was the first one who would benefit from my new, more mellow approach to life. Whereas with my other siblings, and particularly my brother, I would simply handle any conflict with a balled-up fist, at least with the baby I was more likely to put it through some cheap paneling on the wall.

Jelly, on the other hand, has inherited more of her mother's genes than mine. At least where older-sibling issues are concerned she has, and that's a good thing. It means that, while they occasionally still get into it like a couple of sparring cats, for the most part they handle their own conflicts in a far more diplomatic way than I ever did at that age.

It's another one of those milestones that remind parents just how fast their kids grow up. I'd say it's not fair, but, heck, I've been waiting for this day for quite awhile now. About thirteen years, in fact. Cute as she was from the moment she was born, my fatherly instinct to have ready-to-order babysitters in the house kicked in at about the third diaper I changed. When Doodle came along, that instinct intensified. Now that moment has arrived, and I like it. I like the idea that we can leave our daughters alone for limited amounts of time while Mommy and Daddy have some adult time together. Alone.

There is, of course, the bittersweet angle as well. The girls are growing, as I've mentioned before, far too quickly. Our phone answering message still has a five-year-old Jelly's voice announcing, "We can't answer the phone right now. Please leave us a mes... sage." That hesitation in "mes... sage" is vintage Jelly, and it's far too cute to ever discard willingly. Now she's the secretary for her Beehive class and actually uses the phone more than her telecomm-challenged father. Likewise Doodle, who is nearly 11, is not truly in need of a babysitter at this point. She looks after herself just fine, and in another era would likely have been left alone by her parents as I frequently was at that age.

As a parent, however, I worry. Worry is part of the Master Plan, isn't it? I worry for my kids as my parents worried for me, and their parents worried for them. There's always something. It might be whispers and then shouts of war. It might be drugs and radical culture. It may be that predators abound that lure innocent children into worse-than-death experiences. Whatever the cause, the worry is essentially the same: how can I ever hope to keep my babies safe? What can I, as a parent, do that would ensure they live a long and prosperous life?

The answer is that we continue to do what we have been doing to prepare them for life. Keep praying. Keep talking. Keep understanding. Keep it up.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Jelly's working up a pretty good head of lather these days. Here's to many more repeats.

Attention Hypocrites San Francisco and Los Angeles

2010-07-06T10:47:00.000-07:00

Looking for a state to boycott? May want to look a little closer to home:

834b. (a) Every law enforcement agency in California shall fully
cooperate with the United States Immigration and Naturalization
Service regarding any person who is arrested if he or she is
suspected of being present in the United States in violation of
federal immigration laws.
(b) With respect to any such person who is arrested, and suspected
of being present in the United States in violation of federal
immigration laws, every law enforcement agency shall do the
following:
(1) Attempt to verify the legal status of such person as a citizen
of the United States, an alien lawfully admitted as a permanent
resident, an alien lawfully admitted for a temporary period of time
or as an alien who is present in the United States in violation of
immigration laws. The verification process may include, but shall not
be limited to, questioning the person regarding his or her date and
place of birth, and entry into the United States, and demanding
documentation to indicate his or her legal status.
(2) Notify the person of his or her apparent status as an alien
who is present in the United States in violation of federal
immigration laws and inform him or her that, apart from any criminal
justice proceedings, he or she must either obtain legal status or
leave the United States.
(3) Notify the Attorney General of California and the United
States Immigration and Naturalization Service of the apparent illegal
status and provide any additional information that may be requested
by any other public entity.
(c) Any legislative, administrative, or other action by a city,
county, or other legally authorized local governmental entity with
jurisdictional boundaries, or by a law enforcement agency, to prevent
or limit the cooperation required by subdivision (a) is expressly
prohibited.

The key, of course, is the state Attorney General who doggedly refuses to enforce California law. Or, more accurately, enforces only those laws he supports. The rest of the Penal Code, being highly inconvenient to his viewpoint, is blithely ignored.

San Francisco, in particular, would have a huge problem with this law as it directly interferes with their standing policy of offering sanctuary to dangerous alien felons. Oh, well. It's not like they support our state constitution, either.

When Single Women Ask Me...

2010-07-05T21:30:00.000-07:00

...if I have a brother, I say, quote, "No."

Thoughts From the Fourth

2010-07-05T12:15:00.000-07:00

I've been fighting a blazing head cold all weekend, which scuttled our travel plans and made it hard to truly enjoy the real spirit of this holiday. But watching the vicarious celebrations hosted on CBS and NBC last night helped bring a few thoughts into focus.

First, who were these people?? I recognized (nor cared about) not one single "celebrity" that performed on the CBS Macy's celebration. Not one. They do this to me with the Thanksgiving Day Parade, too. In fact, the only recognizable part of the entire hour was during the fireworks when I could at least identify the composers and, for two songs, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

Next came the Boston Pops celebration on the Esplanade. Now, follow me here: The event is sponsored by the Pops, right? So you would expect to hear a lot of music performed by the Pops, right? So how is it that we get injected into the middle of the 1812 Overture when the show begins (waiting until just about the time the guns are fired off across the river)? Then we get to listen to them provide backup for Toby Keith for a couple of songs, plus the sing-along.

Big whoop-dee-do.

Even funnier: with an orchestra sitting right there in the amphitheater, they have to use a soundtrack during the fireworks. Television at its laziest.

Oh, well... I don't much like Keith Lockhart anyway.

At least they had Craig Ferguson to host this one. Recent attempts to highlight certain celebs have proven to be downright painful. Dr. and Mrs. Phil, for example. That was an embarrassing nightmare. The word "vapid" just kept scrolling across my mind all night like a Times Square marquee with only one message.

Compare and contrast with our local community Patriotic Concert that was held last weekend. We do this every year. There's a town council, of sorts, that sponsors several events every year for the 4th. The Patriotic Concert is our kick-off event. We throw together a small (but mighty!) choir from the community to perform between 30 to 45 minutes' worth of patriotic tunes. The highlight is our Salute to the Armed Forces, which takes us through the hymns for all five services (don't forget the Coasties!), and gives us a chance to clap and whistle for the folks who stand to be recognized during the song. We have a color guard composed of either local Marines or Boy Scouts, depending on who's available. We also get to sit and listen to several speeches from the committee. These range from begging for more funds so we don't have to cancel events (last year it was nearly the fireworks; this year the parade got deep-sixed) to presenting our senior Mr. and Mrs. Anaheim Hills and our citizen of the year. Scholarships are handed out. And we get introduced to the current Miss Anaheim Hills, who has been practicing the Rose Queen Wave. Finally, a speech from our representative on the Anaheim City Council, Bob Hernandez, who never fails to give us a terrific speech (in both substance and length of time) reminding us all that this country is a gift of providence, and we need to keep ourselves grounded in religious principles if we are to succeed as a nation.

We follow all this with a good old fashioned Ice Cream Social so we have a chance to rub elbows with members of the community.

Being of a more-or-less old fashioned bent myself, I much prefer our local celebrations to the national ones.

It's funny, really. It seems to be easier to feel patriotism at the local level than it might be at the national level. I suspect it's at least in part because we feel more connected to our community than we do the nation as a whole. Is there anything I can really do about the rest of the nation directly? Not generally. But I can make a difference here locally by participating and striving to make it a good place to live. That's all that's really required of us who claim citizenship in the United States.

Some of us, of course, have gifts for participating at higher levels. Those who feel they can will try to make a difference at a county, state, or national level. (As an aside, I did get one chuckle this weekend: One pundit in Great Britain, writing for the Globe, I think, and having solved all their own problems, wondered what in heck we were doing over here with such a "gifted" president. His word, not mine. We seem as a nation to be wasting the poor chap, according to this writer. My advice for him would be: look to the source of the trouble. It wasn't G. W. Bush.)

One thing I've noticed over the past several years: perhaps it's really been the result of my blogging for the past six years or so, but I've noticed that "patriotism" as a concept is getting more of a bum rap than it used to. There are many people throughout this country, it seems, who really can't stand those who feel a sense of patriotism for this nation. They even claim to be offended by something as simple as the Pledge of Allegiance, as if we were asking them to indenture themselves to some terrible tyrant, rather than remind themselves of the very principles of freedom that allow them to think and act for themselves as no other nation on earth will allow.

These are people who, I believe, confuse patriotism with politics, and can't see past the abuses or excesses of any given administration, thus allowing themselves to feel embarrassed or ashamed to be an American.

I don't know about them, but my patriotism is not constrained by my feelings about the evils of the current administration.

The 4th of July is, for me, a nearly sacred holiday. If Christmas is sacred because it celebrates the birth of the Son of God, July 4th is sacred to me because it celebrates the birth of a nation conceived by men who understood that God's law, to which they referred as natural law, should be our ultimate authority. It is God's law alone that can truly liberate a people. The Founders understood this, and those who have been great leaders in this country through the ensuing years have also understood this principle. When our leaders are righteous, the nation prospers. When our leaders are self-absorbed demigods, we suffer accordingly. The correlation is fairly striking.

Patriotism is not truly dying in this country. It may be taking a beating. It may even have become a hiss and a byword among certain sectors of society. Yet it will live on so long as those of us who still remember the higher purposes of this republic refuse to let it go.

God bless this land.

Maybe She Meant the Canadian Border...

2010-06-25T12:02:00.000-07:00

Every once in awhile, someone puts truth to the axiom "It's better to keep one's mouth shut and be thought a fool, than to open it and remove all doubt."

I mean, really: what are they teaching up there?

Pardon the Dust

2010-06-03T23:43:00.000-07:00

The Woundup was in need of spring cleaning. Fresh coat of paint, new look, streamlined gadgets in the sidebar.

Got rid of things like the "Twitter" gadget. I fell in and out of love with Twitter pretty durned quick, truth to tell. It encourages thinking in sound bites. If it can't be said in 140 characters, it's not worth saying? Thanks, but I can't even tell you my name in less than 140 characters.

Likewise I have severed my temporary ties with Haloscan's annointed (and annoying) successor, Echo.com. Comments have reverted back to Blogger control, and that's fine. I'll probably enforce a little more moderation on comments because the Google spammers are coming out of the woodwork again.

One change, strictly for fun, was to turn the labels display into a cloud. Kind of fun to see which ones I use over and over. Equally dismaying to see how many I've created over time that have never been used more than once or twice.

Anyway, I like this new layout, I think. It's cleaner and feels less crowded. Now if only I could think of something worth writing about...

UPDATE: Full comment moderation now. The spammers seem to feel they've wasted their time if they haven't slipped in all sorts of links to malware, porn, or other dangerous content.

Curmudgeon's Guide for Young Conservative Voters - 2010 Primary Edition

2010-06-02T01:28:00.001-07:00

It's time once again, boys and girls, for Uncle Woody's "Curmudgeon's Guide for Young Conservative Voters;" the only voters guide that has consistently provided the fewest possible facts in election after election while still claiming to know what it's talking about. The only such guide that could, if nominated, do a better job at governing than most of the current slate of candidates. The only guide that could conceivably cause severe headaches and abdominal swelling if ingested. The only guide with a preamble that should have ended about three sentences ago.

This is primary season, Young Conservatives, and as such it's important to realize that NOTHING YOU DO NEXT TUESDAY WILL MAKE A LICK OF DIFFERENCE. Oh, sure, certain people may be forced to drop out of the race, and our entire political process may change irrevocably for the foreseeable future, BUT THE HIDEOUS POLITICAL COMMERCIALS WILL STILL INFEST YOUR TELEVISION. Let us be clear, Young Conservative Voters: if Uncle Woody hears the phrase "let us be clear" one more time, he will sue President Obama and his estate in perpetuity for the next twenty five generations. Uncle Woody has heard that phrase in every commercial, news report, and radio commentary for what feels like the last fifty seven years, and Uncle Woody is NOT THAT OLD. Not yet, anyway.

But you're not here to listen to Uncle Woody carp about election advertising, Young Conservatives. You're here to listen to Uncle Woody carp about the carp for which you're expected to vote next Tuesday. So let's get to it, beginning with the inevitable and ad nauseum

California Ballot Propositions

There are only four of them this time around, but there's a lot of stealth politics embedded in these little jewels. They're supposed to cure everything from lazy voters to how electricity is generated and provided to new customers. In other words, lots of pork, plenty of chicanery, and almost zero accountability for wasting our taxpayer-subsidized time. First up:

Proposition 14 - Elections, Increases Right to Participate in Primary Elections

The most telling statement related to this boondoggle-in-boondoggle's clothing comes straight from (WARNING: Incipient Fact Notification) the California "Official Voter Information Guide." Right there, on page 14, bold as brass, are the words "Encourages increased participation in elections for congressional, legislative, and statewide offices by changing the procedure by which candidates are selected in primary elections." This proposition even includes a graphic showing how that process would, in fact, be changed. Bottom line: this is less about motivating "participation" than it is a pathetic attempt to winnow the number of players that reach the General Election stage by limiting the final slate to two candidates of "any party," meaning you could conceivably wind up with two Democrats in the General Election, or, worse still, two Green Party candidates.

At least one analysis that I've read calls this a move towards a "caucus" system for California. The only way you'll get this state to become a caucus is if you equip everyone's SUV or Prius with video conferencing equipment. Uncle Woody says absolutely not!

Proposition 15 - California Fair Elections Act

Call this the "Leveling the Playing Field" proposition. It sounds very high-minded and altruistic except for one teensy little flaw: it would never work. Certainly not in California, to put it mildly. What this really seeks to do is pump more taxpayer money into the campaign coffers of more politicians during an election so that everyone has equal abilities to spew lies like used car salesmen on television and over the internet.

Uncle Woody never fails to be amazed at how surprised everyone is when a candidate says "I will never accept money from lobbyists," only to find out exactly three minutes after his opponent concedes the election that they did, in fact, accept money from XYZPac for the express purpose of having wind turbines built in the middle of Lake Tahoe. Do we honestly think that employing legislation of this nature is suddenly (after numerous failed attempts at the federal level) going to result in "fair" elections? If Uncle Woody is stupid enough to donate money to a candidate, he deserves whatever he gets. Keep our taxes out of it, thanks. Uncle Woody says no way.

Proposition 16 - Imposes new two-thirds voter approval requirement for local public electricity providers. Initiative constitutional amendment.

Uncle Woody really wants to like this one, Young Conservatives. It requires a two-thirds vote before a municipality can provide or expand service to new customers, and that sounds really nifty. Gee! They want my approval before they're allowed to act! But a closer reading of this proposition leads Uncle Woody to believe that what they're really trying to do is limit the availability of public funds and bonds for what may be necessary expansion of service into territory currently claimed and serviced by existing utilities. Truth to tell, Uncle Woody thinks they're barking up the wrong tree here. Far better in Uncle Woody's mind would be to eliminate the existing Public Utilities Commission and create a board that has enough teeth to actually punish utilities when they're found in collusion for hiking rates without justification. This proposition will actually end up costing us more by having long and expensive court battles over such issues in the long run. Uncle Woody says vote this one down and come back with something that works.

Proposition 17 - Allows auto insurance companies to base their prices in part on a driver's history of insurance coverage. Initiative statute.

Pardon Uncle Woody while he yawns and lies down for a quick nap. Insurance regulations frankly bore Uncle Woody because he's old enough and experienced enough to have earned his Good Driver discounts and tries to drive safely. This proposition wants to allow insurance companies to come up with another new "magic" discount for drivers who have a continuous history of coverage. The problem here is that we're trying to reward behavior that is already required by law. Period. If you don't have insurance, you're not supposed to be driving. So even though he has insurance, and has had insurance (with extremely brief lapses here and there because he forgot a payment) for his entire adult life, why on earth should Uncle Woody receive any monetary consideration for obeying the law in California? This sounds like entitlement run amok to Uncle Woody.

The other problem, of course, is that thanks to Obama Care, we have no idea what the insurance industry in general is going to look like in a few short years, and Uncle Woody certainly wouldn't want people to get addicted to discounts that may just as suddenly disappear because the companies are going belly up at a frightening rate. But that's mere conjecture on Uncle Woody's part. Vote no, Young Conservatives, and tell the insurance-mongers to get a real job.

Finally, Young Conservatives, Uncle Woody actually has one or two recommendations for elected officials this time around. Uncle Woody normally avoids recommending one candidate over another, but this election has been a little different. Specifically, this is the first time Uncle Woody can remember in recent years that Republican candidates are calling each other "liberal" on any number of issues, and trying to remember when the last time was that we could get away with making "liberal" a dirty word. So, Uncle Woody's two key picks:

For Governor

Uncle Woody has to side with Steve Poizner on this one. Meg Whitman has some very impressive credentials, Young Conservatives, and Poizner has his history of unreliable alliances with the Dark Side. But Poizner has a necessary stand on illegal immigration that Whitman does not share, and Whitman refuses to acknowledge that taxpayer-subsidized abortions ought to be verboten. For those two reasons, Poizner gets the nod. Fiscally, Uncle Woody doesn't believe California is poised to achieve any significant growth until the nation as a whole begins to recover in a meaningful way, and there's just no telling how long that will take. Uncle Woody doesn't see economic recovery as Priority One for our next Governor. Important, certainly, but not as important as doing more to control the flood of immigrants into a state (and country) that has insufficient resources to support them.

(As a sidebar, Young Conservatives, Uncle Woody doesn't really care who you pick for the largely ceremonial job of Lt. Governor, so long as it isn't Abel Maldonado. He had his chance and blew it.)

For United States Senator

You might think, Young Conservatives, that Uncle Woody would be happy to throw his support to anyone who could unseat Barbara Boxer this November, but you would be wrong. At this point, the odds seem to favor Carly Fiorina, of dubious Hewlett-Packard repute. But there are facets to Fiorina's personality that worry Uncle Woody. Perhaps it's a sexist thing and Uncle Woody is somehow threatened by Fiorina's decidedly feminist statements. Or perhaps it's because Fiorina seems to Uncle Woody to really be just a Republican version of Boxer herself with an affinity for large government and dangerous open borders leanings. Whatever the case, Uncle Woody just can't pull the lever in her favor.

Neither can he support Tom Campbell. Uncle Woody had high hopes early for Campbell, but those hopes faded with Campbell's opposition to Proposition 8 and that's all you really need to know about him.

That leaves Chuck DeVore. DeVore appears to have the conservative creds that Fiorina lacks, particularly in fiscal management. He also sports endorsements from some high-powered conservatives whom Uncle Woody admires. Chuck DeVore gets Uncle Woody's vote next week.

* * * * * * * * * * *
So that's about it for this edition of the Guide, Young Conservatives. The Curmudgeon, as always, just encourages you to get out next Tuesday and vote. Please! But vote your conscience, because after this election it may be all you have left.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction

2010-05-26T10:55:00.000-07:00

Jack McConnell is being "termed out" as California State Superintendent of Public Instruction this year, and the field of potential replacements is large. Education is, rightly, an area where folks tend to have strong emotional preferences, and this particular slate of candidates is no exception.

While Uncle Woody is busy priming the pump for the inevitable "Curmudgeon's Guide for Young Conservative Voters" in support of the June primaries, allow me to share with you the thoughts of one particular candidate for SSPI this year, Leonard J. Martin. He wrote the following to Michelle Huele, a homeschooler in Yucca Valley:

Home schooling's appropriate for children who have special difficulties that make it impossible for them to participate in traditional schooling. But under California law, a parent has the right to home school provided the parent is qualified to offer instruction. Personally, I believe nearly all kids would benefit more from being in traditional schools. Many parents home school for religious reasons, because they still hold outdated views on race or ethnicity, or for what they consider to be moral reasons. Since we have provisions for students to attend a school outside of their local community when there are legitimate reasons to do so, home schooling as an alternative to "unsafe" campuses is hardly a legitimate alternative. For the most part - overwhelmingly - the public schools of California are not only safe but are providing a high quality education. Yucca Valley should be no exception. If it is, as Superintendent I would like to hear the complaints.

There has also been a tremendous amount of fraud connected with home schooling. Corporate organizations have sprung up to drain precious taxpayer dollars from the state budget to "supervise" home schooling. That has been to the detriment of those children, who by necessity, must be home schooled.

My advice? Send the kids to a traditional public school.

http://leonardmartin.us/wordpress/

Best Regards,
Leonard J. Martin
Home (661) 297-4815
Cell (661) 400-0059

If McConnell was no friend to homeschoolers, he at least had sense enough to not try to enforce a liberal interpretation of the "law" mentioned by Mr. Martin in his letter. The real problem with that law is, of course, that the label "qualified" is highly ambiguous and, of greatest interest to homeschoolers, does not include the word "credentialed." McConnell made some noise early on as he "fretted" over the unregulated masses of homeschoolers infesting the Golden State, only to back down under pressure from numerous homeschooling support groups and the Home School Legal Defense Association.

I bring attention to Mr. Martin, however, because his statements are quite typical of public education elitists, and reflect the fear-mongering approach that such politicians (and political hopefuls) always enlist when discussing the vastly complex issue of homeschooling.

Note that his very first statement brings up the taboo of homeschooling only being appropriate for kids with "special difficulties." This is particularly telling of Mr. Martin's predisposition to anti-homeschool bigotry. We instantly understand that homeschooling is something to be sneered at; a mess on the sidewalk over which we carefully step. Only "disadvantaged" children would ever "require" homeschooling; the rest must submit themselves to Dickensian workhouse-like apparatuses where the collective will of the children can be better molded to a carefully state-approved curriculum.

Let us never forget that, however well-intentioned and altruistic the concept of public education may have begun, it has over the years become nothing more than a union-run autocracy, sponsored by the state, and dominated by liberal think-tank elitists. This is why our schools have become the sorry ghosts of what they once were. Mr. Martin's attitude strongly suggests maintenance of the status quo, so far as political exigency is concerned. He will not rock the union boat, except to threaten to "fire bad teachers."

His bigotry is further revealed in this statement: "Many parents home school for religious reasons, because they still hold outdated views on race or ethnicity, or for what they consider to be moral reasons." Now, having raised these "reasons" for homeschooling, you might think that Mr. Martin would then address them. He does not. Instead, he focuses on school safety. Not only does he pooh-pooh the idea that schools may be unsafe (they are "overwhelmingly" safe, he believes), he also uses the canard of being able to attend a school "outside of their local community" where "legitimate reasons" exist. This is patently absurd. Anyone who has tried to get an exception just to attend another school intradistrict can tell you that the local education bureaucrats tightly control those movements, and "unsafe" schools are not one of the politically correct reasons for granting such a request. The moment you threaten one school's per-child budget, they start digging the moat and raising the drawbridge.

The final shaft in his quiver is to decry the "tremendous amount of fraud" in homeschooling. He brings up something he calls "corporate organizations" that have sprung up that "drain precious taxpayer dollars" to "supervise" homeschooling.

Huh? To what organizations does he refer, and why haven't I heard about these things before now? Certainly such corrupt corporations would be big news in a money-starved state like California! More amusing to me is the idea of supervising homeschoolers. The only possible reason I can even think of for supervising a homeschool family is where that family chooses to participate in a school district-sponsored homeschool program where supervision is the trade-off for having use of district resources and district-sponsored testing. Would those school districts qualify as the "corporate organizations" being vilified by Mr. Martin? Even were that so, it wouldn't affect me or my subversive academy because we answer to no one. We file our little Private School Affidavit form every October, in return for which the Great State of California valiantly ignores us. Every other effort to supervise homeschoolers necessarily fails because, as I have mentioned before, homeschoolers are the most unorganized bunch you'll ever come across. (Caveat: there are, Uncle Woody admits, some fabulous homeschool organizations in California. They tend to be aberrations.)

At the end of the day, even a politically dangerous candidate like Mr. Martin will have his hands full if he wins the election. Our public schools are undoubtedly in a serious decline. Whoever takes that office will be so busy balancing the needs of a voracious union with the seriously under-regulated public school cuisine requirements that there will be precious little time available to go after those seditious homeschoolers.

He won't be getting my vote, though.

Cameron moving to Wordpress

2010-05-03T02:31:00.000-07:00

Howdy, Greg. Just on the off chance you see this before you see my notice on Facebook, I'm moving the bulk of my blogging activity over to Wordpress.

Would you mind removing me as a participant on Woody's Woundup? Nothing personal, of course. I'm just in a real serious Let's Get Organized! moods right now.

My new blog is here.

Woody: We'll miss him here on the Woundup, but I understand the restless feeling. That's one reason why I moved "Inner Dad" to Wordpress last year. I just haven't killed the old site yet. The trick is what to call his new blog on the blog roll. His masthead says "Music. Literature. Stuff." But the URL says "culturalrumbles," which would be cool, too. Maybe I'll just compromise and call it "The Blog Formerly Known as Way Off Bass."

A Trudge through Drudge

2010-04-06T13:54:00.000-07:00

I went wandering around Drudge today. Two items caught my limited attention. (Head cold, y'see.)

1. Drudgeline: "GROVE: Death of the White House Press Corps..."

Seems the White House press corps is feeling more like the White House press corpse these days. Not surprising, since the O hasn't given a formal press conference in, what, nine months now. Yet, buried in the angst as reported by Lloyd Grove for "The Daily Beast" was this chestnut:

Every so often, the president takes his revenge, as Obama did on Friday, mocking skeptical reporters who have been questioning the positive impact of health-care reform. "Can you imagine if some of these reporters were working on a farm and you planted some seeds and they came out next day and they looked—Nothing’s happened! There’s no crop! We’re gonna starve! Oh, no! It’s a disaster!" Obama told a town meeting in Maine. “It’s been a week, folks. So before we find out if people like health-care reform, we should wait to see what happens when we actually put it into place. Just a thought.”

And there it is in a nutshell. The real reason why the health care reform package so recently thrust upon us is so dangerous: the idiots who voted it into existence and signed it into law truly have no idea what will happen until it happens.

Remember all those promises? "If you like the coverage you have, you won't have to give it up." "Death squads? What death squads?" "This bill will provide universal coverage without causing a deficit." The problem with promises is that they're only valid if the one making the promises actually knows that he can deliver. Obama's request to "wait to see what happens when we actually put it into place" can (and should) be translated to mean: "We have no idea what we just created, but we want you to shut up about it until someone shows up at your door to arrest you for refusing to buy into it."

2. Drudgeline: "Reid mocks Palin during campaign speech..."

[Stunned silence]

Um... Matt? I kinda thought the whole reason for reporting things was to point out something that we didn't really know before. That's the definition of news, right? What's the old adage? "If a dog bites a man, that's not news. If a man bites a dog, that's news."

Well, Sir Drudge, I've got news for you: Reid (or any left-leaning politician and more than a handful of Republicans) mocking Sarah Palin is not news. Now, if Reid or any of his ilk actually said something like, "Hey, that Palin just might be a force to be reckoned with...," THAT would be news.

Sheesh.

Stick a Fork in the RNC

2010-03-30T00:22:00.000-07:00

Take a good look. It's The Statement. The one to which all politicians resort whenever they've been caught being naughty.

Of course they always staff it out. Michael Steele will not "dignify" this atrocious claim with a direct response. His director of communications will do that for him. The smart money says you never directly acknowledge the problems in your own house. This makes you somehow "above" the fray.

Ridiculous. Michael Steele presides over a party that is bleeding itself dry. Having turned its back on its conservative "base" (whatever the heck that means anymore) it finds itself losing the confidence of its registered voters; the very voters that it desperately needs to pull off any real victory this November. It claims to need a bigger tent, to be somehow more inclusive of fringe voters that have been artificially elevated to an ethereal status of near omnipotence at the ballot box. Yet the tent itself is damaged. Far from providing any sort of shelter within which voters may take shelter, it has been ripped, torn, slashed, and haphazardly patched back together so that it provides no cover against the force of even the smallest political storms.

So now we find that the machine behind the politicians is dirty. It's not just the grease that's getting old; there's grit in the gears, and a few cogs are even missing.

It's not that the charges themselves are overly incredible. Heck, this is what political machines do, isn't it? They spend money promiscuously and indiscreetly, then pay staff to cover their tracks, or throw themselves under the bus when they don't do a good enough job. Someone, at some point, had to see a receipt in the expense accounts for a strip club and should have raised the roof at that point. But they didn't, and we are left with Larry, Moe, and Curly pointing fingers at each other, or poking each other in the eyes, while the national press have a field day with the committee's ethical lapses.

Mark me: If Republicans do not fare well, and I'm not ready to predict any sort of significant turnover in Congress this fall, fingers will correctly point back to this incident as the beginning of the end. It won't be the failure to prevent health care reform, it won't be the decided lack of economic recovery in the face of stimulus after stimulus, and it certainly won't be Sarah Palin. It will be the complete failure of the RNC to provide any meaningful support or direction to its candidates.

In fact, I might even go out on a limb here and say that if (IF) Republicans do at all well in the upcoming elections, it will be because they did so despite the best efforts of the RNC. Michelle Malkin has a running meme of "RNC Rejection Slips" where people who are disgusted with the RNC and its current direction are sending back requests for donations with all sorts of reasons why the committee doesn't deserve their hard-earned money. Their reasons largely echo my own: the committee has demonstrated time and time again that they have no interest in fronting for true conservatives. They seem to have pinned all their hopes on moderates who will give them plenty of rope with which to hang themselves. This is why we have so many "representatives" who refuse to represent my particular interests: secured borders; fiscal conservatism; a return to constitutional limits of government power.

The RNC is more than done. They are toast.

President Obama's Expired Promises Thus Far

2010-03-29T11:48:00.000-07:00

Courtesy of Jim Geraghty, who, unless I'm mistaken, was the one who coined the meme that all of President Obama's promises come with expiration dates.

Enjoy.

Cameron's Gettin' All Political Again

2010-03-29T01:48:00.000-07:00

Greg, If you don't want me posting on the blog, you better take the keys away pretty soon. I'm a-gettin' angry again.

I'm feeling a need to . . . say . . . things.

I promise to keep it clean.

Woody: Hey, the welcome mat is always out. That's probably why 'possums are always eating it.

The Oath of Office

2010-03-19T23:34:00.000-07:00

Every United States Representative upon entering Congress after their election (or re-election) is administered the oath of office. The oath, once a much simpler fourteen words, was expanded in the days following the beginning of the Civil War in order to impress upon these elected officials the seriousness of their duties and responsibilities as legislators:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.

In the past few days, many words have been written about the move by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to act upon the recommendation of Rep. Louise Slaughter and her Rules Committee to "deem passed" the Senate bill rather than have the members of the House actually vote upon it.

Forgive me, but I can't help wondering whether anyone else recognizes this act as a direct violation of the congressional Oath of Office. Being curious, I undertook to do a bit of research and found this nugget on the "Friends of Article V" web site:

5 U.S.C. 3333 requires members of Congress sign an affidavit that they have taken the oath of office required by 5 U.S.C. 3331 and have not or will not violate that oath of office during their tenure of office as defined by the third part of the law, 5 U.S.C. 7311 which explicitly makes it a federal criminal offense (and a violation of oath of office) for anyone employed in the United States Government (including members of Congress) to “advocate the overthrow of our constitutional form of government”. The fourth federal law, 18 U.S.C. 1918 provides penalties for violation of oath office described in 5 U.S.C. 7311 which include: (1) removal from office and; (2) confinement or a fine.

If I'm not mistaken, encouraging members of Congress to "deem passed" such a major piece of legislation which is, after all, the cornerstone of President Obama's entire domestic policy, appears to "advocate the overthrow of our constitutional form of government." And if that is true, then certainly it would not be improper to seek the immediate removal of Nancy Pelosi, Louise Slaughter, and every single Representative who allows this blatant violation of the Constitution to take place.

Should the House of Representatives follow the recommendations of Slaughter's committee, I hope someone will have the courage to begin impeachment proceedings against, at a minimum, Pelosi and Slaughter. By extension, anyone who likewise supports this action should also be held equally accountable for their own perfidies.

That about sums up my feelings on this one.

As Bad as Film Gets

2010-03-16T19:56:00.000-07:00

So we're browsing through Blockbuster last weekend, looking for entertainment. We do that occasionally, and we're not too proud to scan the tables for bargains, either.

Whilst scanning the recent releases, I saw one called "The Bracelet of Bordeaux." Looked like one the Woodyettes might enjoy as it had a solve-the-mystery back story, and the girls tend to enjoy those. We decided to make this our dinner-time movie tonight (Del Taco taco night!) and settled in to watch.

Those in my family will appreciate this next statement. "The Bracelet of Bordeaux" is the Mrs. Miller of cinematic achievement. But less comical.

It is my habit with films of this caliber to check out IMDB for certain details. Two things caught my attention. It was previewed in 2007 at the "Austin Film Festival" (two and a half stars!). The Austin Film Festival purports to celebrate the "writers' contribution to film." This film must have been entered under the prestigious "Writers Not Yet Having Graduated Junior High School" category. The film apparently did so well that the producers required a full year and a half to recuperate enough to give the film a "limited" release last May.

Equally impressive was it's reported budget of $70,000. That's right: seven-zero thousand. I'm guessing most of that went toward bribing theaters to actually show the film. At $70K this film is clearly overpriced. I'm not entirely certain the producers didn't need to take out a second mortgage to cover the cost of pressing the two or three copies of the DVD that eventually found their way into unsuspecting homes like ours.

The thing is, it could have been fun. The premise, while not original, sounded fun: kids solve a local mystery with the aid of a magical bracelet. The set-up scene, by the way, was far more impressive than the rest of the film. A lady spy is seen at the end of World War II putting the bracelet into a trunk, after showing just a hint of the bracelet's power. Had the movie ended at that point I would have considered it a fair effort.

Sadly, they plowed ahead and finished it. Worse yet, so did we.

Now, the Woodyettes watch their fair share of fluffy kid movies. They have every kid movie of any note (that have girls in them, anyway) from the Spy Kids all the way down to every Barbie movie ever foisted on the public. They love Matilda. They lap up the American Girl films. Eloise was a big hit for them.

They could not WAIT for this one to be over.

Neither could I. In fact, I wrote this entire review in the closing fifteen minutes of the movie, including the big breakup of the dog-napping gang. At fifteen minutes, this column is entirely too generous to this film.

Avoid at all costs.

The Not-So-Cranky Reviewer

2010-02-21T11:56:00.000-08:00

Your humble reviewer has occasion to immerse himself in theatrical experiences in a variety of venues covering a fairly broad expanse of this nation of ours. I've visited theaters throughout California, Arizona, Utah, Oklahoma, and Washougal, Washington.

If you're anywhere near the Vancouver/Portland (the other Vancouver!) area today or next weekend, you owe it to yourself to enjoy "Beauty and the Beast" as presented by the Christian Youth Theater group. This is, of course, the Disney version of the show and is being staged in the Washburn Performing Arts Center at Washougal High School, about twenty minutes' drive from Vancouver, Washington.

Back in the day, yours truly was privileged to participate in the Teenage Drama Workshop. This was a summer drama camp that presented several musical productions throughout Simi Valley, California. The format was that of a true workshop; classes were given in various stage techniques, including set design and construction, as well as music and acting. It was all-inclusive and gave the students a chance to participate in all of the theatrical disciplines. The Christian Youth Theater is similar to this concept, except that it runs throughout the school year. They offer ten week sessions, at two hours per week, and an opportunity to participate in a major production. (I use "major" in the sense of "one humongous headache for the producers, but one thrilling show for the actors.")

The results are impressive.

Director Starleen Benke has crafted a wonderful children's fairy tale that can be enjoyed by audiences of all ages. This is possible because the kids, typically aged 10 through 18, have tremendous energy and not an insignificant amount of talent. The casting was extremely well balanced as to the ages and abilities of the principals. The chorus performed with tremendous gusto. On the one hand it's possible to argue that it's hard to go wrong with a Disney score, but it's altogether too easy to over-do such things. In the case of an iconic Disney characterization with so many familiar and favorite characters (Belle, the Beast, Cogsworth, Lumiere, and so on) it's even easier to fall into the emulation trap.

However, Benke largely succeeded in making the show her own, and allowing the kids to develop some wonderful characterizations along the way. My only quibble was with Belle (Abby Thompson). A wonderful actress with the chops required for the songs, they tried too hard to make her sound like Belle from the animated original. Indeed, it's hard to do any such production without at least trying to somewhat emulate these characters, but a female voice like Belle's is unique with its own timbre and cadence. Trying so hard to match those vocal qualities is akin to all those child actors of the 30's and 40's trying to sound just like Shirley Temple. It grates on the nerves after awhile. Still, such things are the responsibility of the director, and Ms. Thompson's performance was in all other respects equal to the task. Her singing left nothing to be desired, and she played a perfectly delightful Belle.

Also delightful was Casey Pitel as the Beast. A tall, good-looking young man, Casey brought a nice touch of vulnerability to his cantankerous exterior. He was also quite athletic in leaping about the stage, and highlighted the skills and talents of the ever-unseen set designers and carpenters.

All other support characters, from the pompous and fragile Cogsworth, to the effervescent and over-the-top Lumiere, down to the "Silly Girls" who titter and giggle endlessly over Gaston were all well casted and fun to watch. Mrs. Potts had to reach down in her range to handle the eponymous "Beauty and the Beast" number, but did a very credible job. Also worth mentioning are LeFou (Alex Low), Madame De La Grand Bouche (Janelle Harriman), Cogsworth (Scott Bradner), Lumiere (Caleb Adderly) and a wonderfully flirtatious Babette (the very French feather duster from the original) played by Aimee Hogan.

The production numbers were all comprised of a terrific form of controlled chaos, including some better-than-average dancing.

All in all, this show is well worth the $10 per seat. My entire family enjoyed themselves tremendously, and I'm pretty sure you will, too.

Blogging for the Sake of Blogging

2010-02-02T09:18:00.000-08:00

New glasses are like the vernal equinox. Or not.

Today's Sports Glossary

2010-01-24T22:27:00.000-08:00

Super Bowl, The

An annual event wherein two performance-enhanced teams compete to see who can score the most points in between commercial advertisements of costly yet dubious quality. Known more for "entertainment" involving "wardrobe malfunctions" during half-time than for the actual game.

Yikes!

2010-01-20T10:20:00.000-08:00

Ushering in the holiday season last month, my extended family participated in a creche exhibit/concert series for the Simi Stake. We called ourselves "The Kindred Carolers," and we may have a return engagement this year if they get desperate enough or have very short memories. Anyway, Cameron links to a duet that we did (following a solo effort by yours truly) that was actually quite fun. We haven't sung together for about 20 years. In my own defense, I will only say that I was trying to ward off a very nasty case of bronchitis, and hadn't quite recovered my full upper register when we performed this in early December.

If you're feeling adventurous, scroll to the bottom of his post and check the video. There are others if you care to hear the whole family in action. We had a good time, all things considered.

Miracle? In Massachusetts? Hardly.

2010-01-20T00:17:00.000-08:00

I've been reading with interest the bloggy reactions to Scott Brown's unprecedented win today, and I have to say: Don't over-do it, folks.

Scott Brown is, except for a few pithy quotes that you'd never have heard from a Democrat, largely an unknown quantity. Folks in Massachusetts may know this guy, but the rest of us are waiting to see what he does once he occupies the "Peoples' Seat."

It is nice to know that we have that critical 41st vote available, but of course that only applies when the rest of the senators on that side of the aisle actually act like Republicans. With Snowe, Collins, and Voinovich still in control of 3 of those votes, heaven only knows when all 41 will work in lock-step on the really important issues. We're still not convinced that Voinovich, for example, will hold to his stated intent to vote against Obamacare when the next opportunity arises.

Also, as my brother so eloquently puts it, the GOP has a fairly predictive pattern of screwing up every advantage they ever gain in Congress. In other words, we ain't holdin' our breath.

The fact is, Brown's election is just one step toward a much-needed reform of the GOP. If Brown can deliver on the promise, that's all to the good. From statements made by Barney Frank, Jim Webb and others, it may already have the effect of making legislators take a deep breath and admit that perhaps they've been a bit hasty in ramrodding this health care fiasco down our taxpaying throats. Too bad this comes too late to do the same for the "stimulus."

Now it remains to be seen whether the GOP can capitalize on voter unrest in the independent and moderate Democrat ranks in the November elections this year, and put a few more right/center-right fannies in more of the Peoples' seats. If they can, just please promise me that we won't have any of that Contract On America nonsense that torpedoed us back in the good ol' days.

That means, of course, that Michael Steele must go. Quickly.

We Won't Win California.

2010-01-19T23:40:00.000-08:00

The GOP will screw it up, even with all momentum Scott Brown's win has just given us. On that note, Happy Celebrating!

ccwbass be bloggin' again

2010-01-07T23:06:00.000-08:00

Yup. I'm back.

Have No Fear

2010-01-02T11:06:00.000-08:00

So, with one exception my blogs have been more or less dormant for the past two months. Illness and the holiday season are the obvious reasons. Yet there's also been a metamorphosis of thought and feeling during this period. I'd hate to say that my recent bout with bronchitis (or, as I suspect, perhaps even walking pneumonia) made me somehow more introspective, but it's at least a possibility.

As with most conservatives, I've spent the better part of this year of Hope and Change hoping that change wouldn't come about too quickly, but fearing tremendously that it would. With liberal thought firmly in control of two branches of government it seemed a foregone conclusion that radical legislation would be enacted as quickly as possible while they still have the keys to the family car. And it's been true. 2009 saw the passage of a wildly irresponsible "stimulus" package that didn't stimulate anything but Congress' express desire to enact even more irresponsible (and even reckless legislation) in the guise of health care "reform."

Most troubling of all is the speed with which these acts have been committed. There is not one single member of Congress that can look America in the eye and declare that 1) they have read and fully comprehend the health care bill that their respective chamber passed last year and 2) that it will do everything that it is purported and has been told to America that it will do. Of course, there are many of us that are fearful that it will do everything it's purported to do. It has nothing at all to do with my being a huge fan of the health care "industry" as currently defined by our legislators. It has everything to do with my hard-earned understanding that everything the government administers, it ruins. Everything. Even Social Security is unlikely to be running as smoothly and efficiently as it probably could be given the fact that it is a government-administered program.

Given the government's track record on welfare, education, housing, transportation security, border security, and budget management, I find it highly improbable that they will have any better results with the administration of health care in this country. I do believe that our health care system will go the way of Canada and other socialized nations with outlandish waiting lists, fewer qualified doctors in highly specialized areas of medicine, and overall increased costs of medical care. Whether or not we have to pay those costs up front is immaterial: as taxpayers we will pay in the end.

I've had my share of restless, even sleepless nights this past year thinking about all of this. It makes absolutely no sense for Congress to be in such an all-fired hurry to do this. It would be far more prudent to take their time and get it right, rather than ramrod it down our throats with cries of "people are dying every day" by way of scaring us into submission. Well, guess what — people will be dying even after it is implemented and, perhaps, may die at a faster rate than before. Because one thing we've noticed about government-run programs: they always seem to exacerbate whatever problems they were designed to fix. Has the stimulus solved whatever problems got us into this mess in the first place? It has not. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are still issuing high-risk loans to people who cannot now and possibly never will be able to afford a house, and we will be required to pay for these people for the rest of our natural lives. Way to go, Congress!

I needed to say these things in order to clarify my next statement: I'm no longer all that worried about any of this. My opinions of what has happened and what will likely happen this year have not changed one iota. I still believe the Democrats and their Republican enablers in Congress are rushing headlong into turning us into just another socialized country among so many others in the world today. May as well join the European Union while we're at it. I firmly believe that between the stimulus and health care legislation we will find ourselves giving up more and more of our precious constitutional rights because the government will be in control of two things that make it possible for us to grow individually: our health and our money.

So why do I not fear as I did this time a year ago? Simply because we are Americans and there is one precious right they have not undertaken to cripple: my freedom to think and believe as I choose. So long as I enjoy this most basic of freedoms, I can survive this congressional tomfoolery. While I have the ability to raise my heart and voice in prayer to God, I have assurance that all will be well with my house. "Well" is, of course, a relative term, and I can only hope that we don't get seriously ill once the government controls our access to the care we need. But one thing the government cannot and will never control is my spirit.

Even if we were to assume the worst and find that the government had imposed itself into our public worship, we have the lessons of history to guide us. The year 1987, for example, reminds us that any wall, no matter how well constructed or what its intended purpose, can be torn down. The American Revolution teaches us that people, even those who are reluctant to do so, can join together and defend themselves from assaults on their God-given rights. Congress would do well to remember that had King George III ever relented and admitted that his colonies deserved the full rights and representation as his subjects in England, the outcome of the Revolution might have been very different. They would do even better to remember what happened to His Majesty's empire because he refused to do so.

Laws that are enacted by men can be undone by men. We've seen this time and time again. Granted, it's harder to do so once those laws have become entrenched in the fabric of our society, but it can be done. All it takes is the election of men and women that have the courage to foment true reform of the government and return that government to its constitutional limits. I know I make that sound far more simple than reality might otherwise dictate, but it's true nonetheless. We need to find courageous people to counteract the cowardice that permeates our Congress today. Find them, elect them, and hold them accountable for their actions in office.

Finally, as a spiritual creature, I of course turn to God and the church to guide my thinking. As a Latter-day Saint, I have the unique privilege of having a living prophet on the earth today. That prophet has not told me to live in fear of health care reform or despair of our becoming a second-rate power among the nations of the earth. He has told me to be prepared for an uncertain future, as his predecessors have also done for many, many years now. He has told me to make myself right with God, confess my sins, and live worthy of His blessings. So long as I do this, President Obama and his cronies in Congress can do whatever they will. Their (and my) day of accountability will come, sooner or later, and many will be found lacking.

I just pray that I won't.

Chariots of the Insects

2009-12-29T01:55:00.000-08:00

Sometimes it's just weird where memories come from or why they infest our brains. Take, for example, two movies that my brain suddenly became desperately interested in remembering more than thirty five years after I'd seen them.

The year was 1971, and I was very nearly a teenager. It was, in fact, the summer before my 13th birthday if I'm not mistaken. In those days we weren't too hung up about sending our youngsters alone to the theater, and our lone walk-in theater in town was less than a mile from the house. This meant that I alternately walked or cajoled Mom into taking me. Then, for a buck-fifty we got a double feature, and another seventy-five cents got you popcorn.

For purposes of this narrative, I should point out that my mother was and is a voracious reader. She went through phases in her reading, though. One year it was romances, for example. Another year she went all Margaret Mead on us and started buying or checking out books like "Ishi: The Last of His Tribe." She became absolutely fascinated by tribes or races of people that no longer existed. But her most fascinating period for me was the "faux science or explorer" genre of books that were becoming ubiquitous in the late 60's and early 70's. Not to say that there weren't some legitimate scientists or explorers among them. Thor Heyerdahl, for example, had become famous for demonstrating that ancient peoples could very well have navigated across the vast Pacific ocean in boats manufactured entirely of reeds. Mom snapped up all of his books. However, for every legitimate author Mom patronized, there were plenty of supermarket pulp paperbacks to balance them out.

I remember Mom picking up a copy of Erich von Daniken's "Chariots of the Gods," and I decided to read it. I think it was primarily because we Latter-day Saints are fascinated with the whole premise of the Book of Mormon and its depiction of life in ancient America, and von Daniken devoted many chapters to those ancient cultures as part of his "research." It was pretty heady stuff for a young post-Star-Trekian male such as myself.

So you'll understand that, as soon as the movie by the same name was released, I was keen to see it. Back in those days movies would hit the theaters and hang around for absolutely months before disappearing into the void of TV "Movie of the Week" features. So it's not surprising that I didn't get around to seeing "Chariots of the Gods" until nearly a year after it first came out. By that time, it was being paired with a relatively newer film called "The Hellstrom Chronicle," and I decided to see them both.

"The Hellstrom Chronicle" was another faux documentary that was supposed to sound like a scientific treatise on the survivability of insects compared with mankind in a post-apocolyptic world. What it was, really, was a science fiction thriller designed to creep 13 year old boys out by making their skin crawl even faster than the insects were crawling. At least, that's the effect it had on me.

"Chariots" was first in the lineup that day, as I recall. I remember happily chowing down on popcorn during the movie and loving all the footage of ancient artwork that von Daniken kept trying to compare with astronauts or alien beings. The movie was every bit as entertaining as the book, although it may be indirectly responsible for the propogation of every nut-job UFO conspiracist and ET truther that we have out there today. Didn't quite convince me, but I was there for the entertainment value more than anything else.

Then came "Hellstrom." Now, for sheer cinematography, "Hellstrom" was hard to beat. The cameras did a nearly miraculous job of getting up close and personal with several species of insects that I never knew existed and have spent the past 38 years trying to forget. But that's the problem: It's a film I desperately needed to forget. The basic premise was, quite simply, that the earth would devolve back into some sort of tropical rainforest kind of planet (Al Gore had nothing on these people) and that it would be a race for survival between Man and Insects. And Insects (all of which were magnified to the size of industrial construction equipment) would win. (This is where I learned for the first time that cockroaches are pretty much indestructible. Thanks for that, guys.) I can also tell you that, even 38 years later, just thinking about this film can make my skin crawl. Now imagine spending an entire movie that way, and you'll understand why I resolved as a 13 year old boy never to think of that film again.

So why is it, 38 years later, that my brain suddenly, at 1:00 in the stinkin' A.M., decided it needed to remember the name of that film that played as a double-header with "Chariots of the Gods" (a film I don't really mind remembering) just so I could experience that skin-crawling sensation once again? There is no logical or even illogical reason that I can think of, except that it's one of those useless chores in which the brain engages from time to time, like trying to comprehend Congress, or staying awake in staff meeting.

Oh, well. One good thing has come out of this reminiscence. I'm tired enough now to go to bed and get some decent sleep. Assuming I can get these locusts the size of Mack trucks out of my head.

Trying Not to Overreact

2009-11-04T18:01:00.000-08:00

It's so easy to overreact to news stories these days, especially when the entire nation has become so polarized over issues ranging from health care to gay marriage and everything in between. Thus when I saw the headline "Aborted fetus cells used in beauty creams" I found myself feeling that gut-wrenching rage almost immediately. All sorts of pre-conceived biases and prejudices came wallowing up from somewhere deep in my digestive tract.

Almost reluctantly I followed the thread from The Jawa Report (a bunch of hyper-reactive bloggists if any such exist), through The Interested Participant (one of the Report's frequent bloggers), and on to the actual article posted yesterday at The Washington Times. All the while I fully expected my blood pressure to skyrocket.

Written by Valerie Richardson, the article seems meant to provoke precisely the kind of strong emotional response one expects from the pro-life movement when it comes to any discussion of abortion. Richardson quotes extensively from Children of God for Life, a watchdog group that apparently "monitors use of fetal material in medical products." The target of their wrath is a company called Neocutis, Inc, and they are said to have used "skin-cell proteins from an aborted fetus" in their anti-aging creams.

So far, so good. This is exactly the sort of thing that gets our pro-life dander up because we 1) hold all human life, even aborted fetuses, to be sacred, and 2) always suspect that the right-to-choicers would stop at nothing to profit from their perfidy. And, I suspect, the Washington Times would love nothing more than to see this issue become a major controversy which, understandably, would sell papers.

Still, the article bears deeper reading.

[DISCLAIMER: I know nothing of either Children of God for Life, or Neocutis, Inc. beyond what I read in this article. This opinion I express here is based solely on the strength of this single article and no other research has been made or attempted.]

The fetus (singular) was that of a 14 week old child who, doctors had determined, would not make it to term.

Now we enter that grayest of areas in the entire abortion debate. It has often been said by pro-life politicians that they only support abortion in the case of medical necessity. With few other details available to us, we may presume that a difficult decision had been made by the parents. Certainly there are strong emotions even for this kind of decision; many parents would choose to carry the baby until the inevitable end, even if that end were a miscarriage. Yet other parents may not be able to face the emotional drain for any longer than is absolutely necessary. This is one of those times that we cannot second guess the participants. This was a personal decision and the reasons are theirs alone.

Next comes another hard decision. Post-mortem organ donations have been commonplace for many years now. Vital organs, skin and bone grafts, even full facial replacements have been made possible by those who decided at some point in their lives to donate their bodies for that purpose upon death. In this case, Neocutis claims that the cells harvested from the skin of this baby were used to develop a treatment for "severe dermatological injuries."

Having nevered suffered a "severe dermatological injury" myself, I can only imagine the pain and emotional stress caused by third degree burns, for example. Were I thus afflicted, I would likely be crying out for any available treatment. The provenance of that treatment would be of lesser import to me at that moment.

So, if the company's statement is in fact true, that makes the headline of this article somewhat misleading. The cells weren't used in mere "beauty creams" as the headline would have us believe, but for something that may well have healing properties for someone in critical need. Beauty creams smack of vanity and the hypocrisy of ever-younger-appearing Hollywood elitists. But a dermatological treatment is something used in healing — whether physical or emotional. But healing nonetheless.

Hence I find that I am not quite ready to jump on the boycott demanded by the watchdogs in this case. Given the circumstances, the choices made, and the outcome, I choose to leave this one be. All I would ask is that all women give such careful, even prayerful, consideration to the young lives entrusted to their care, especially when those young lives have no ability to speak up in their own defense.

Guys and Noise

2009-10-26T11:12:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid, I well remember being on longish drives (in kid terms: anything > 1/2 hr = long drive) and trying very hard not to make noise in the back seat. Or, perhaps more accurately, trying very hard for, maybe, the first five minutes. After that, we'd revert to normal Kid Noise Levels (called "kennels" by the cognoscenti). Had I been more of an entrepreneur in those days, I'd have gotten rich off of forming pools to determine when, exactly, Dad would turn his head slightly and yell, "What's that noise?!"

Dad was always hyper-sensitive to car noises on long trips, and with good reason. Our cars were notorious for breaking down for any number of reasons, including rusting while in use. On a trip to San Diego one year, we broke down and had to be towed (oh, the shame!) to a local service station. Remember "service stations?" Me, neither. Anyway, I was mortified for some reason. Dad was just purple in the face.

The funny thing is, Dad wasn't nearly that bad on local trips. He seems to have driven around town pretty much on automatic. Side mirrors could fall off the car while we were driving to Church, for example, and he'd barely register. He was probably more concerned that we (his family) were making him "late," which happened nearly every Sunday.

Anyway, I bring this up because of a story told by Jay Tea over at Wizbang, wherein he has to Google instructions on how to start a Prius so his bosses could leave on a road trip.

Turns out that the Prius starts in "electric mode" which means there's no engine noise to inform the driver that the car is ready to roll. You just hit the "Power" button, put it in gear and roll.

Make that reason number 2 why I will probably never get a Prius.

Reason number 1 is because I am constantly getting behind one of these gutless machines in the HOV lanes out here in California, and I have yet to find the Prius that can reach anywhere close to the speed limit. When Yugos having a 75 to 1 rust-to-viable-steel ratio are passing me in the slow lane, I get a tad upset with the green-hugging driver in front of me.

So I will not likely ever get a Prius. I'd always be afraid that some maniac in a mini-van right behind me is about to deploy his tactical road-obstacle removing laser any minute now.

Guys need noise. This explains everything from making motor noises in the bathtub (BBBBRRRRMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM) to the Space Shuttle. Even the APU's on that baby make noise when you "fire 'em up." And wait until the ARES rocket makes its debut this week. Noise, dude! Noise!!

As a young man, I always envied the teenagers down the street that had those cars that made Dad crazy. They were always doing something with "headers" (removing them, I think), and either losing or heavily modifying their mufflers so that their steet 'rods would have roughly the same decibel level as a 747 at full thrust. And nearly the same horsepower.

(I notice, however, that teenagers don't seem to bother with headers and mufflers anymore. They're too busy installing sound systems in their vehicles that are medically proven to cause sterility. This is probably a good thing because I'm not sure I want these idiots to reproduce.)

I guess this all means that I will, for now, remain among the traditionalists who demand a car noise when I turn on the ignition. Preferably the one that goes "BBBBBRRRRMMMMMMMMMMMM."

Obama's WMDs

2009-10-25T16:17:00.000-07:00

I seem to remember that it was not so long ago — months, perhaps? — that liberal backlash against the Bush administration amounted to "where are the WMDs?" Entire blogs and news-gathering sites were devoted to the idea that the whole reason why we were in Iraq, those pesky weapons of mass destruction, were in fact a figment of Bush's overworked imagination. Obama himself campaigned on that very idea, did he not? Certainly the mainstream media (those husky water-carriers for the current president) loudly trumpeted the fact that Bush's intelligence may not only have been incomplete, but had by that time caused the deaths of thousands of American soldiers.

Now it appears that Obama may have his own "weapons of mass destruction" to worry about.

For months now we have listened to this man and his enablers in Congress proclaim to anyone who would listen (and, of course, to those of us who stopped listening a long time ago) that one of the reasons we need a public "option" (which isn't really an option, by the way) is because of the obscene, immoral, illegal, unconstitutional, and even really, really bad profits of the apparently money-bloated health insurance companies. In fact, to hear Pelosi and Reid spin it, these insurers are even more deadly and rapacious than the people who run TARP-bailed companies and dare to award themselves bonuses for their clever work of driving a company into the ground and then receiving government tax money to keep it alive.

So tell me why, please, it is that the Associated Press, of all anti-conservative news organizations that exist in the world today, is the one to report that, on a list of profit-mongerers in this country, health insurance providers are number 35 on the list?

Here's a thought: if the company that owns the Taco Bell brand is running higher profit margins than the health care insurance companies, why not target putting Taco Bell out of business so our fast-food-driven health problems will go away and hence drive our insurance premiums down as well?

On second thought, leave Taco Bell alone. Their food is arguably healthier than most fast-food joints, and our personal favorite at the moment here at Hacienda Woody. Go after Pizza Hut instead. They're expendable.

Also, while trying their level best to drive insurance carriers out of business, I have yet to hear what constructive devices the Democrats in Congress will employ to make sure that those thousands of people who ultimately lose their jobs in the insurance industry will be able to find employment elsewhere. Not to mention paying for all their health care while they are unemployed because they won't be able to afford even the public option.

So profits of the health insurers will, I predict, become Obama's weapons of mass destruction. He will use them to get us into a war that we on the right don't want to fight, all the while assuring us that "levelling the playing field" is the only way to provide coverage to "millions" of Americans who will die unless we ACT NOW. PREFERABLY BEFORE ANYONE HAS A CHANCE TO READ THE ACTUAL LEGISLATION. Then, if Obama follows the Bush defense, he will shrug and say "we acted in good faith based on the facts we had at the time."

Guess what, Mr. President? We aren't any more likely to believe you than you were to believe President Bush.

Inmates Running the Asylum

2009-10-20T23:34:00.000-07:00

I defy anyone to give me a reasonable explanation as to why this behavior is in any way considered appropriate. This is something I expect of a marriage about to hit divorce court. If someone can come up with a solid procedural reason for changing the locks on a committee room, I'll shut up about the whole thing.

The only explanation I can come up with is that the only reason why the Democrats complained so bitterly about Gingrich's term as Speaker was because they were itching to prove that they could be every bit as corrupt and scandalous as the Republicans were proving to be.

Congratulations, Pelosi. You've succeeded. Your "transparent Congress" now officially needs a modesty shield.

Obama-ganda

2009-10-15T10:38:00.000-07:00

John Nolte, writing for Big Hollywood, talks about a press release from the Entertainment Industry Foundation (EIF) outlining "Play your Part America." This is a week-long blitz of TV programming on the four major networks (ironically including FOX in this case) designed to forward Obama's volunteerism and service social agenda.

Political manipulation of the entertainment industry is nothing new. Celebrities have, for decades, fronted for their favorite causes. Some, like Bob Hope, were classy enough to make a tradition out of serving others. As time has passed, however, many others have simply become shills for one cause or another; most notably those who shriekingly support the rights of animals over and above all other living creatures, including unborn children.

Nolte's piece, of course, takes note of the increasingly alarming ease with which Obama has made the media his all-too willing puppet in trumpeting his domestic and foreign agendas to the world. He is the first president, I believe, to have a completely integrated media strategy that relies on willing compliance from Hollywood. That's not to say that previous presidents have not had media strategies, of course. Even Bush, who more often than not wore a large red bullseye on his chest so far as the media were concerned, had strategies for making the Iraq war somewhat more palatable to the public while refusing to play into their hysterical reporting.

But Obama seems to be the first to have this integrated "organic" approach. A cooperative media is, in fact, a keystone to Obama's agenda because without their help he cannot hope to overcome the perceptions that so many of us have of a leader without experience or accomplishment trying to create a socialist utopia in this country. It's a truly disturbing trend.

Oddly enough, his media (and artistic: don't forget his rebranding of the NEA!) manipulations are not all that troubling to me. Not personally, anyway. I'm just not that big of a media consumer to worry about whether I'll be subjected to the latest Obama-ganda whenever I turn on the TV. I actually assume I'll be subjected to it, in fact, which makes it easier to simply be entertained, rather than indoctrinated.

My problem is that I'm pretty sure the government as a whole has absolutely no clue what "volunteerism" or "service" even are. Both activities are deeply personal in nature. You can have entire organizations performing service, such as Habitats for Humanity, but participation in such organizations should always be a personal decision borne of a desire to help others.

It is the desire that is lacking from Obama's perception of a nation full of volunteers providing service to others. The president's agenda is designed to "encourage" citizens to volunteer and provide service, preferably somewhat more than is provided today, to a growing number of those who are considered less fortunate. Unfortunately, insisting on having people volunteer often backfires.

For simplicity, let's assume that there are three basic types of volunteer:

1. The eager volunteer. This is the person who observes a need, feels a strong desire to assist, and does so. The only potential stumbling block for this person is the occasional reluctance of the recipient of this service. No reasonable person, however, would argue with the motives of the eager volunteer.

2. The impressive volunteer. This is the person who answers a call for volunteers, not because they just naturally like to help, but more because the service looks good on a resumé. Beware the impressive volunteer. Often their good intentions are somewhat marred by the sloppy or inept delivery of the service required, which may cause more harm than good. This is what has become of ACORN. They started with the right idea (giving them the benefit of the doubt here), but have become an enabler of thoroughly destructive behaviors.

3. The reluctant volunteer. Here is the person who has been ordered or requested to provide a service that they would not have otherwise provided. They will do so grudgingly, answering the call not because they want to, but because it seems to be expected of them. Akin to a petty criminal who has been ordered to "community service" in order to atone for some crime, these "volunteers" are, in fact, conscripts who will do the bare minimum required of them, and probably not do the best of jobs in the process.

Of course there are many variants of all three basic types. The problem with inducing people to volunteer, as Obama appears to be attempting, is that you more frequently get the impressive or reluctant volunteers to answer the call. The eager volunteers are already serving, happily, and probably expending whatever time they can to their current cause. The impressive volunteers will serve because it looks good to do so, but may not provide the intended results. That leaves the reluctant ones, who won't serve unless given a compelling reason ("we'll throw your fanny in jail unless...") to do so.

I don't know about you, but if I or my family needed service, I'm not altogether sure I'd want any but a truly eager volunteer to provide it. How on earth will Hollywood solve that particular problem?

Let me know if they do. Unless they've infiltrated NCIS next week, I probably won't be watching.

Let's Be Clear

2009-10-13T18:19:00.001-07:00

The commissioner of an organization — an organization known primarily for its continual substance abuse problems; star athletes that have trouble staying out of jail; athletes who make more in one season than most of us will see in our lifetimes yet always seem to "need" more; athletes who, in fact, say a lot of outrageous things — is going to deny Rush Limbaugh the opportunity to become part-owner of a franchise because he says some things that make people uncomfortable.

Did I get that right?

A Fair "My Fair Lady"

2009-10-10T02:06:00.001-07:00

There are problems with tackling iconic roles in theater. Yul Brynner, for example, will always "own" the role of King Mongkut in "The King and I," as he did through the film version and two or three revivals. Ultimately he played the role over 4500 times.

Another iconic role is that of Professor Henry Higgins in "My Fair Lady." Rex Harrison, like Brynner, performed the role both on Broadway, on film, and in at least one revival.

(Interesting side note: I never saw Yul Brynner on stage in "The King and I," but heard that even through his revivals he did a marvelous job. The 1981 revival of "My Fair Lady" I did see, and was immediately struck by the fact that here was a man (Harrison) who, in my humble opinion, desperately needed to retire.)

I mention this because those who try to fill such roles often find themselves compared — unfairly, of course — to those icons who gave the role their imprimature. So when we had a chance to see the Downey Civic Light Opera version of "My Fair Lady" yesterday, I wondered how the actors would handle this extra burden.

In a word, they did well. Those who are familiar with the movie version well remember Audrey Hepburn's performance as Eliza Doolittle, along with Harrison as Higgins, Stanley Holloway as the dustman cum "moralist" Alfred P. Doolittle, and Wilfred Hyde-White as Col. Hugh Pickering. I was delighted to see that Downey's main protagonists, while using certain mannerisms created by the film stars, were more than able to find their own characterizations in this delightful, if extremely long show.

Joseph Culliton is nothing like Rex Harrison, thankfully. Whenever Harrison would become at all excitable (which happens more often than not in this Lerner and Leowe production), his voice would take on an edge that reminded me forcefully of fingernails on a chalkboard. Culliton's voice is a much smoother baritone, and, whereas Harrison was no singer and generally spoke through his music, Culliton did the music justice. In fact, this may be the first time I've ever heard anyone actually sing "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face." For the rest of his characterization, Culliton relied on the wit contained in the libretto. His delivery was appropriately deadpan as a depiction of the ultimate chauvinist.

His friend Pickering is played with great charm by Richard Gould, who has the good fortune to actually resemble Hyde-White somewhat. His portrayal of the benefactor in this attempt to create a lady of elegance from a girl who had only raw material to start with is compelling. He makes the perfect low-key foil to the mulish Higgins.

Charlotte Carpenter does a delightful job with Eliza. Her opening Cockney is, ironically enough, well articulated in the opening scenes, and she transitions into the proper English accents with sufficient aplomb. She also has the pipes to pull off the job. It is well known that Audrey Hepburn was no singer and had her songs dubbed. Carpenter needs no such assistance. She worked well through the standards of "I Could Have Danced All Night," "Wouldn't It Be Loverly?" and "The Rain in Spain." In fact, the only criticism I had of the entire show was what seemed to be uneven miking of the principals. I'm not sure if this was because I was in the front row of the orchestra section, but even with mikes it was sometimes hard to hear the leads over the energetic pit orchestra (ably led by Eddy Clement).

George Champion has perhaps the toughest challenge of the neo-icons in this production. Stanley Holloway's performance as Alfred Doolittle is a classic, and his interpretation of a common dustman with uncommon morals has set a rather high standard for all who follow. Champion, however, gives Holloway a run for his money, even winkingly grabbing several of Holloway's signature moves and expressions along the way. He does the role credit, though, and marks himself as a true showman in the process.

One nice surprise was the performance of Jason Marquez as Freddy Eynsford-Hill. It is altogether too easy to make this one of the sappiest roles in all of theater, because the part is basically written as a lovesick tenor, and there is nothing worse in this world than a lovesick tenor. Marquez is something of a warbler, but he commanded the role of the star-struck would-be lover. His singing was never over-the-top, and he still managed to give Freddy that breathless quality of a man out of his mind over a beautiful woman.

Taken altogether it was a wonderful performance. They started a few minutes late, but the show clocks in at just over 3 hours, so you need to be committed to the show in order to truly enjoy it. There's plenty of good choreography and ensemble work, particularly among those who portrayed the long-suffering staff of Prof. Higgins' household. Their work through "Poor Professor Higgins" was simply fun to watch. Equally fun was the male quartet that accompanies Eliza in "Loverly." Throughout the show the cast and chorus showed tremendous energy and focus, and provided us with many memorable moments.

If you're anywhere in the area this weekend or next, give this one your consideration. I believe you won't be disappointed.

Olympic Fail? Or Just Olympic Loss?

2009-10-03T21:51:00.000-07:00

One of the things that surprises me about reaction to Chicago's loss of the 2016 games (to Rio de Janeiro) is that so many people seemed to think it was ours to lose. For all the attention these games got from our Commander in Chief, his wife, and even Oprah Winfrey, you'd think this was a major international policy failure on our part.

Yet, perhaps because I'm not from Chicago and hold no special affection for the city, our loss to Rio is less bothersome to me than the possibility that very soon I may be facing jail time if ever I can't afford to buy health care insurance. In other words, is it just possible that our priorities are a little skewed here?

Worse yet, the recriminations (Bush's fault! No, wait! Obama's fault! No, wait...) change nothing. For heaven's sake, people. Get over it, find the lessons learned, and be better prepared for next time. Also, who ever said these games were in any way inevitable? Jesse Jackson? Since when did he become a bellwether of American domestic policy?

Things we know about hosting the Olympic Games:

1. They always cost more than we plan. The costs go way beyond just dollar figures, too. Reputations are made or broken because of the games, and I'm not just talking about the athletes. The bottom line — the one no one ever wants to discuss except for a few malcontents in the editorial sections of obscure newspapers — is that the taxpayers always get stiffed. Consider this: how many millions of dollars did Chicago spend on their losing bid? Enough, probably, to build a few low-cost housing units would be my guess.

2. The Olympic Games are political. Always have been, always will be. Heads of state of the various participating nations take it as a point of national pride to send their teams to the Games. Thus nationalism, even patriotism, is closely tied to the competition. The athletes may take center stage, but how many of the last several games we watched were distracted by numerous political stunts. Remember the allegations of under-aged gymnasts in China? How about the figure skating judging fiascos of several years ago that have pretty much ruined the sport now? And, of course, how could we ever forget the terrorism of the Munich Games?

3. Not that the athletes are saints themselves. How many doping scandals have we witnessed just in the last three summer events? We want, desperately, to hold our Olympic athletes up as icons, heroes, or even just all-around good people. To have them mock that adoration by doping themselves up for the sake of a disc of medal to hang around their necks is seen as a betrayal by the devotees of the Games. Likewise, we always hope we've learned our lessons about sending primas donna to the Games. The so-called "Dream Team" (ver. 2.0) of several Games ago was a classic case of why narcissists should never be allowed to compete. I got so fed up with the prancing and preening of certain high-powered multi-million dollar talent from the basketball venue that year that I will probably never watch an Olympic basketball game again. Ever.

All of these things make me wonder why on earth we even bother competing to host the Games anymore. Cronyism is rampant in the IOC, and you have to play their game (while appearing not to play their game) in order to have any chance at all of winning. Given the sheer number of Games that this country has hosted over the years, I am not surprised to see other nations be given the chance.

Rio is significant for the fact that these are the first Games to be hosted in a South American nation. Good for them. I wish them well as they struggle now to get their venues built, deal with security concerns, displace all kinds of people in order to have Olympic Villages ready for the athletes, and drive their country into near-bankruptcy in order to pay for it all.

Hey, Rio! Let us know if you need any money, won't you? Chicago apparently has some tax revenue to burn.

The ACORN Never Falls Far from the Media Tree

2009-09-15T09:03:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: Yes, I read Michelle Malkin. I do so not because I particularly enjoy her prose; in fact I find her to be among the harsher voices of the conservative bloggers. Yet she also remains one of those who consistently finds and reports on those stories that mainstreamers either under-report, ignore, or mis-report.

The recent videos showing ACORN representatives encouraging people to lie in order to bilk the government out of housing that might be put to better use (i.e., anything but a house of ill-repute) are case in point.

Now, you know... you just know... that if this were a conservative organization, the networks would not hesitate to plant an undercover reporter in one of their offices if it meant getting their hands on this kind of video. In fact, our local newsies do this all the time. They have "special correspondents" whose sole job it is to track down and embarrass scoff-laws at any cost. They use Michael Moore assault tactics to accost these people at work, at home, or whereever the story leads, so that we get the "truth" of the matter from the horse's mouth.

Michelle finds two ironies here. First, she points to Charlie Gibson's apparent ignorance of the entire ACORN video fiasco. Based on the transcripts of the interview, I find Gibson's remarks that he was "unaware" of this story to be disengenuous at best.

Who for a minute would believe that ABC (along with every other news outlet of any repute) is not completely wired into the internet and keeping a close eye on both sides of the political blogosphere? That's what they have staff for, for crying out loud. This story has been percolating for a couple of weeks now, and this is the first the mighty Charles Gibson has heard of it?

Well, okay, let's give him the benefit of the doubt. In his crystal reporting booth, it's just possible that his staff and editors left him out of the loop on the decision of whether to run with this story, or treat it like a non-issue so their liberal customer base wouldn't roast them over a spit. That would give Gibson "plausible deniability" (a term I've come to completely despise over the years) and allow him to claim that he had no idea that ACORN was putting their collective feet in their over-large mouths.

But I don't buy it.

Malkin then points to a story out of Newsbusters.org wherein Nora O'Donnell of NBC frets that these videos may comprise a form of "entrapment." Oh, brother. ABSCAM could, conceivably, have been classified as "entrapment." The worst these videos could be considered is a violation of wire-tapping laws in certain states (primarily Maryland). Entrapment is a method of enticing or encouraging someone to do something illegal where they show reluctance to proceed. These ACORN representatives were only too happy to show these fake sex traffickers exactly how to lie to the government so they could set up their illicit brothels. Hardly entrapment.

Of course, we might still be waiting for NBC to report on this issue at all were it not for the fact that the Senate voted (finally!) to block ACORN funding last night. Even without a foreknowledge of the ACORN videos, then, this vote by the Senate should have sprung even the laziest mainstreamers into immediate action. Why the amendment in the first place? Why block funding to one of Obama's favorite organizations? What could possibly justify such an action?

Michelle calls this the "ostrich media" and wonders what we think. I think they should be renamed the "convenient-hearing media." Not as catchy, but more appropriate. Their heads aren't in the sand. They're watching those videos on the internet with their fingers in their ears.

"La, la, la! Can't hear you!"

(Corrected to show Gibson working for ABC, not NBC. Like I ever care to watch primetime news.)

Why Late-Night Blogging Never Pays

2009-09-02T01:20:00.000-07:00

Two Obama-related items on my mind tonight.

First, the webcast directed at school-aged children across the country, scheduled for September 8.

This to me smacks of severe over-reach on Obama's part. Ostensibly the purpose of this speech is to motivate kids to stay engaged with their education. Not bad as topics go. However, if the intent is to keep kids in school to prevent them from dropping out at some point, does he really believe that anything he says is going to make a difference for more than a handful of kids? Also, I would guess that this will have even less impact on those who have already made the decision to leave school. Kids who have already given up on their education are not likely to change their minds at this point, no matter who delivers this message. If their own parents can't reach them, how is a man sitting in a mansion thousands of miles from their reality going to do the job?

The discussion questions distributed by the Education department are most revealing. Worded in such a way that I strongly suspect more than just staying in school will arise in Obama's speech. I'm guessing there will be pointed references to community service, and requests to convince Mommy and Daddy that Obama "needs" their help in promoting other points of his domestic agenda. Won't know that until the speech is actually given, but I will be surprised if I am much mistaken.

The other mind-waster in front of me tonight is (natch!) health care. I find it amusing that the administration is suddenly back-pedalling on the "public option." For one thing, even though Drudge trumpets its demise, the legislation is not Obama's. He didn't write it, and heaven knows he probably has no idea what's really in it. But assuming the report is correct, and Obama is truly ready to set aside (I don't for a minute believe it won't be resurrected at some point in the future) the public option, how do we know that it will be expunged from HR 3200?

We don't.

I can't see Pelosi or Reid being any too happy about striking any portion of this 1000 page nightmare because Congress seems to feel anymore that they're paid by the word. Also, the more liberal elements of the party will make hay of this should they capitulate on the public option at this point.

What interests me most, however, isn't the decision to take the public option off the table. What I find interesting is a post over at Wizbang that talks about progressive Christians getting into the act. Michael Laprarie talks about this development, and notes the opinions of folks like Father Jake, who says:

I must admit to being simply astounded that anyone who claims to be a follower of Jesus Christ would be against providing health care for every child of God.

Unless you cut out the 25th chapter of Matthew, the parable of the Good Samaritan, the year of Jubilee, and various other big swaths of scripture, it is simply impossible to refute the clear message that God has a preferential bias for the poor.

It's one of those yes-and-no statements, really. Yes, the Savior strongly advised His followers with respect to the poor (and the widows, and the sick, and so on). His strict injuncture was to turn them not away, lest the church fall under condemnation.

But (here's the "no") the Savior was also careful to separate the functions of the church (i.e., His followers) from the functions of government. Giving Caesar his due was the Savior's way of reminding us that governments are imperfect, if necessary, and that we should never trust them to do what the church itself must always do. Nowhere in scripture does the Savior say "set ye up an government with power to take from the rich and give to the poor." No, what He specifically says is, "sell that thou hast, and give to the poor" if you want access to the blessings of heaven (Matthew 19:21). He does not instruct Caesar and the government to do this; he gives this commandment to followers who wish to live righteous lives.

It's one of those arguments where you never find big-government proponents on the correct side. They always get it wrong. Only government, they insist, has the "power" to level the playing field and make things fair for all concerned. It's the same philosophy that creates welfare states, demonizes those who dare to profit from their labors, and dismisses any logic presented that does not match their own as so much ephemera. This is how we end up with thousands of home-owners who cannot pay their mortgages. (Remember that the mortgage crisis began not with the economic downturn and massive layoffs, but that the economic downturn and massive layoffs were driven in part by the mortgage crisis.) Forcing banks to restructure loans to make it easier for low-income families to keep their homes for now is no guarantee that these same families will ever be able to actually afford those loans.

Likewise, guaranteeing health insurance coverage for 15 million people (many people strongly dispute Obama's 45 million that he spins as incontrovertible fact) at the expense of those who can and do afford their current coverage makes no sense whatsoever. I'm all for doing my part to care for my neighbors, but let me do so as an act of service, rather than force me to do so through increased taxes that will eventually ensure that I can never retire on my pension. Assuming my company can still support my pension when that time comes.

If Obama's policies are allowed to continue unabated, I'm pretty sure I won't long be one who is able to help pay for these schemes. I will instead be one of the increasing number of those who must beg the government for more handouts, because my company won't be able to afford me any longer.

What a deal.

O Canada New York!

2009-08-17T22:27:00.000-07:00

A Democrat from New York, Eric Massa, represents what is considered to be a "predominantly conservative" district in New York. This begs two questions:

1. Conservatives? In NEW YORK?? (No, really. Same question. Just, um, emphasized.)

2. How on earth did he get elected in the first place?

But of course these questions pale in comparison to the flash flood of conservative angst over the fact that this Democratic Congressman dared state that (gasp!) he would vote in favor of a single-payer health care system despite his constituents' wishes.

Big hairy deal.

Like Republicans haven't been doing that over the protests of their own constituents for years now.

No, the sin here isn't in stating a desire to vote contrary to the wishes of the electorate. As far as representation goes, even registered Democrats (including illegal aliens and dead people) are beginning to understand that they didn't necessarily get what they voted for last November. Also, I beg to point out that numerous delegates to both the Second Continental Congress as well as the Constitutional Convention were known to vote in direct opposition to the stated desires of the people who sent them there. It's how this nation got its start, for better or worse.

The sin, as I see it, is in propounding legislation that half of Congress hasn't even read, yet somehow firmly believes will be this wonderful, magical panacea that will suddenly have health care flowing down into the homes of every American (and millions of non-Americans) in this country. The sin is further exacerbated by not allowing each and every element of this "plan" to be dragged out into public and debated in honest, open forums where both sides can present their cases (using quotes from the actual legislation as opposed to talking points) so that we, the public, can make equally honest, open decisions about which elements of the "plan" to take out into the town squares and flog until their backsides look like so much chopped liver. Then subject them to a single-payer health care system such as they have in Canada, which is apparently so bad that the people charged with running it are furiously trying to figure out just how to "fix" it.

So let's not excoriate Rep. Massa just because he chooses to vote against his own constituents. Let's wait until he actually commits the sin, then apply the appropriate punishment.

Pelosi and Hoyer Get It Wrong

2009-08-10T09:35:00.000-07:00

This is precisely why I can't completely ignore the Woundup. There's simply too much that requires a response, even from know-nothing conservative hacks like myself.

So Steny Hoyer and Nancy Pelosi write together for USA Today and accuse those of us who voice - loudly - our opinions against HR 3200 of being "un-American."

This just drips with irony.

First, Hoyer remarks that Harry Truman once asked Congress to guarantee the "right to adequate medical care and protection from the economic fears of sickness" for all Americans shortly after World War II. An admirable sentiment, and one that seems to resonate with many, many people. But the hard reality of it all is that nowhere in the Constitution of the United States or the Declaration of Independence do they speak to health care being one of our absolute "rights." Life and liberty, certainly, along with the pursuit (not the attainment) of happiness, but not universal health care.

I'd be willing to meet Hoyer half-way on this one: If he could somehow demonstrate to me where a government-mandated solution to anything ever resulted in a more efficient way of doing anything but drive up our national deficit, I'll agree that Congress has at least a prayer of putting together a workable "solution" to a crisis that doesn't exist for most of us.

And by the way, Steny, we're still waiting for companies to start hiring again. How's that stimulus-thingy working out for you?

Next we come to Madam Speaker. Pelosi represents probably the worst Speaker of the House we've had in living memory. Not even Newt Gingrich, who so ineptly destroyed Republican credibility with his ill-fated "Contract with America" can claim that honor. Thus we find her statement that "[d]rowning out opposing views is simply un-American" to be completely laughable.

This from the party that gave us the Chicago Seven. This from the party that harbors professional disrupters like Code Pink and ACORN. And let us not forget their standing militia, the SEIU union thugs who are even now cracking their knuckles at the thought of fresh meat at the next town hall event. "Un-American," Nancy? Surely not.

Of course, it's one thing to accuse the protesters of being nothing more than paid shills of the insurance industry. It's another thing altogether to present actual evidence that this is true. I'm still waiting to see the proof that a majority of those who have gotten "disruptive" (read: vocal) at town hall meetings are, in fact, paid operatives of the insurance magnates. I suppose I'd better not hold my breath.

I also remind Madam Speaker that it was no less a personage than Hillary Rodham Clinton who loudly proclaimed our absolute right to disagree with any administration. Just wanted to point that out.

As for hanging people in effigy, well, the Democrats would know all about that, now, wouldn't they? Haven't they burned enough Bush effigies and American flags between them to make them undeniable experts in that arena?

No, I'm sorry, Madam Speaker and Mr. Hoyer, your arguments have a hollow ring to them. Those who protest your ill-conceived "reform" legislation are merely trying to make sure you know where we stand before you force this travesty on a nation ill-prepared to handle its after-effects.

We will not go quietly.

A Kinda, Sorta, Almost Hiatus

2009-08-07T00:15:00.000-07:00

I'm taking a step back from the Woundup for awhile. Evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.

I've started a new blogging life elsewhere. I won't link to it from here because I really don't like what the Woundup represents right now. The Woundup, as the name implies, is all about being keyed up about something or other, usually involving the stupidity that is American politics today, and writing about it as if I were some sort of rabid commentator with a point of view worth sharing with the world.

All blogs of a political nature start that way, don't they? We write missive after missive about The State of Things. We spend countless hours trying to find that very clever voice that people will just fall over themselves to read and admire, then sit around wondering why the linkage never happened.

I can't honestly say that it happened exactly that way for me, though. I never really deluded myself with the idea that my writing was of any real interest to more than a handful of my closest friends, family, and a few hangers-on.

However, I can say - with certainty - that I dislike what this experience has brought me. High levels of stress, increased sarcasm and cynicism, and an unhealthy dislike of our modern political process. I saw these aspects of my writing developing over a period of years in the waning days of the Bush administration, and have seen them rise with alarming rapidity in the opening days of the Obama administration.

I can't read about health care reform without getting angry. Nearly violently so. Not that I would ever direct this anger at anyone in the physical world. No, I really am far too pacifistic for that. But I see that anger manifest itself in these posts and feel somehow... not ashamed, but grief-stricken, as if for someone who had come to a tragic end. What a waste, people might say about Woody. He never really had a chance, did he?

Well, that may be true, if one were to judge Woody merely on the totality of these writings. I, more than anyone else including my critics, know that I am not a political analyst of any caliber. I have no legal background. I am not highly placed in corporate America so I cannot drive the market for better or for worse. I can only observe and offer my views.

Which have become angry. So very, very angry.

I despise the direction this country is taking. That's not just the Republican in me speaking. That's the experience of a man who has watched wistfully as his own party slowly but inexorably denied its own roots to become little better than the opposition at keeping America free from its increasingly socialist tendencies. I see now a country in total disarray. People who refuse to kneel at the altar of nationalized health care are branded as Nazis. Unions are mobilizing now to infiltrate the same Town Hall meetings where people asked pointed questions of their elected representatives so they can "punch back twice as hard." The mob mentality was never sharper than it is today, working on behalf of Obamacare.

And as my stress levels rise in response to these stimuli, so also does my spiritual connection with my Creator necessarily decrease. Thus I must make a decision. Continue to cull through so much material about which to write my snarky blog posts, or take a step back and try to preserve my mental and spiritual energies.

There really is no choice. The Woundup must slow to a crawl and stay there for the foreseeable future.

In the meantime, as I mentioned before, I blog elsewhere. The Inner Dad will slowly dissipate in favor of the new blog I started over at Wordpress. If you must find me, look for me there. You'll still see references to Woody, but Woody will be much more contemplative in his approach to his writing, at least until these toxins are expelled from my system.

One last thing: I do not and will not apologize for what I've written here. Those opinions were and (mostly) still are valid. They represent what I feel, particularly when pointing out the foibles of politicians and their blatantly unthinking legislation. For that reason alone, I don't believe the Woundup will ever disappear completely. There will come a time when the pen must try to outshout the sword, particularly when Congress and the President try to force socialized health care down our throats.

When that happens, I'm sure I'll have more to say. I can't deny who I am, after all, and I still occasionally get wound up.

The Ghost of Joseph McCarthy

2009-08-06T09:07:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure if anyone else in the blogosphere has made this connection, but I think it needs to be said:

The White House is channeling the ghost of Joseph McCarthy.

This is especially ironic given that everyone in Obama's party - and not a few on the other side of the aisle - have long decried both McCarthy's philosophies and his methods. Even more ironic (not that this has any direct bearing on this thread of thought) were McCarthy's strange ties to the Kennedy dynasty back in the day.

So here's the question of the day: If it was wrong fifty-plus years ago to rat out people you thought might be sympathetic to communism in this country, how is it any more acceptable today to email the White House with names and information on those who disagree with your pet domestic policy?

After McCarthy's career imploded, Pres. Eisenhower was quoted as saying that "McCarthyism is now McCarthywasm."

I think we're back to ism now.

Open Letter to Lanny Davis

2009-08-06T01:54:00.000-07:00

Hey, Lanny. You don't know me, but my pretend name is Woody, and I blog here at Woody's Woundup. (I know, I know... how could a conservative blogger come up with such a clever name? Just lucky, I guess.)

First, just want to thank you for your recent post over at Politico. Very informative, that was. Nice encapsulated syllabus of the entire Democrat worldview these days.

Couple of things for you, Lanny. First of all, I want you to take a good, long look at the photo in the masthead above. See it? Right next to the "Woody's Woundup" title? I want to you know, Lanny, that this is a fairly accurate photographic depiction of yours truly. Now, granted it's been a few years. The face is a bit fuller these days; the glasses are rounder, and the temples are grayer. But that's me.

So let me save you some time and trouble here. You won't find my face at any town hall events where Congresspersons are trying desperately to sell the unsellable. The best facial recognition software available to modern forensics labs won't find my mug at any such public gathering. Go ahead and try. But my name isn't Waldo and you won't find me.

Believe me, it's not that I don't support the protestors. Heavens to Betsy, if I didn't break out in hives whenever I get close to politicians in general, I'd be there. But, really, I'm more the "wait until the next day and read about it" kind of subversive. I don't believe for a minute that you Democrats are telling anything approaching the truth in this entire health care reform movement, and nothing you try to tell me in some glorified "meet the little people" get-together is likely to change my mind. (Which reminds me... that "rat out the dissenters and email us their info" thing the White House started? Nice touch.)

But I do have a few questions for you, and I'll be glad to entertain your answers.

First, can you see any real benefit to our passing legislation that most members of Congress haven't ever (and likely won't ever) read? Honestly, when a self-serving narcissist like Arlen Specter can stand up in front of a crowd and insist that we need to move "quickly" yet refuses to read the bill himself, what does this tell us about the bill? Mostly it tells us that the bill is so toxic that even looking at it will cause various cancers and, probably, sterility. Can you see why a few of us might protest this thing?

Secondly, what's your problem with protests at speeches? I mean, really, aren't you the guys who stood by and said nothing about Code Pink when they disrupted Senate deliberations? Aren't you the same folks who cheered loudly whenever Ann Coulter was attacked with pies (or worse) at her speeches? Let's be honest here, Lanny. How many microseconds would it take for the ACLU to loudly proclaim our absolute right to disagree with this administration if we were liberals hanging Bush in effigy for his Iraq war policies? Yet, where is the ACLU today to support or at least sympathize with our absolute right to declare that Obama's lynchpin domestic policy is a crock of socialism? Crickets chirping, anyone?

Finally, it's obvious you buy into the DNC's delusion that many of our protestors are nothing more than paid hacks supported by the Republican party and numerous insurance lobbies in Washington. Final question, I promise:

Any idea where I can get some of that dollar action? I could really use it since Obama will be raising my taxes at the earliest opportunity.

Hoping to hear from you soon,

Woody

Woundup About Healthcare

2009-07-22T00:46:00.000-07:00

As I've said numerous times on the Woundup, I'm no legal expert. I could no more sing you the more salient parts of the House health care overhaul plan than you could recite dialogue from Mozart's "Die Zauberflöt" to me from memory. (No, sorry; I haven't worked that one out in my own head yet.)

But I love watching the general reactions to this proposed legislation, just as I've watched the reactions to the misnamed "stimulus" plan with fascination. Even if this bill is voted into law and signed by the President in some carefully choreographed signing ceremony, possibly involving the Arc de Triomphe, it is doomed to fail. Judging, that is, by some of the signs I've been seeing lately:

1. Obama has hauled out the tired "fear mongering" canard again. If you can't convince 'em, accuse 'em of scaring the heck out of people. And yet, is not his statement that "[d]oing nothing means that you’re going to lose what you have... Because on the current trajectory, your premiums are going to double again over the next five to 10 years" just as much a scare tactic as our contention that nationalized health care will take us inexorably down the road to socialism?

Just asking.

2. Obama himself seems to have no clue as to what the legislation contains. The man campaigned on this issue for a solid year and a half. He made it the top priority of his domestic agenda as soon as he booted Bush's booty out of the Oval Office. Do you honestly mean to say he has no idea whether we'll be able to keep buying private insurance because of this bill? (Answer: Yes and no. Yes, he has no idea. No, insurance companies will soon be regulated out of business.)

3. Obama is seriously deluded about how much this legislation is going to end up costing. It certainly comes as no surprise. This is the same man who assumes that millionaires will willingly bear the brunt of the economic recovery by paying even more taxes than they do now. Would that motivate you to become a millionaire? No? Then why should we assume that bright young people will be willing to jump into an industry where there is little or no incentive to devote eight to twelve years of their lives in graduate and post-graduate schooling only to find that there is no money to be made? And that includes the supporting industries such as pharmacology. Brilliant plan, that.

4. So as not to pick exclusively on the President, let's not forget that Congress still has to sell this plan as well. After all, when it comes crashing down around our ears, they need to be able to make loud speeches from the floor of the House and Senate that this was a plan that the American people were BEGGING for; that we wanted it so much we were writing ELOQUENT letters (often in CRAYON with MISSPELLED WORDS) to our elected MORONS every week so that we could have them pass this legislation and get themselves RE-ELECTED so that they, themselves (and their families and cronies) did not have to PARTICIPATE in their own stupidly conceived SOCIALIZED HEALTH CARE.

Most unfortunately for Congress, the ~~peasants~~ voters AREN'T BUYING IT, as Senator Ben Cardin (D-Maryland) found to his dismay.

5. Ditto Kathleen Sibelius, who could not believe the temerity of the ~~peasants~~, 'scuse me, voters who appeared to disagree with her statement of (questionable) fact that employers will be allowed to continue their plans (failing to mention at the same time that this only lasts until their plans go out of business in favor of the new matrix). There appears to be just a smidgen of disbelief among the audience.

6. Or there's the other end of the scale where the ~~servant class~~, sorry, voters can only laugh at Rep. Russ Carnahan (D-St. Louis) as he expounds the "efficiencies" and "surplus" projected to come from the plan. He apparently elects to completely ignore the rather pointed question from the floor: "If it's so great, how come Congress doesn't have to be on it? (see point 4. above)" accompanied by much clapping and cheering from the audience.

(Questioning the timing: the fellow who posed that pointed question, Kevin Jackson, wrote about his experiences at the townhall meeting, only to have that blog account suspended by the hosting service. I'm sure it's just an accounting thing.)

7. Finally, even Obama's team in the House of Representatives seem to be hemming and hawing over this legislation. Can anyone really blame them? Given the overall reaction to this bill by Republicans and Democrats (both electing and elected), it seems that no one is really all that crazy about having this ill-conceived, badly written, and completely irresponsible legislation ram-rodded down our collective throats. Even Mitt Romney, who appears to be going out of his way not to criticize President Obama directly, is telling the man to "for heaven's sake, SLOW DOWN." And, let's face it, whether or not you agree with what Romney accomplished in Massachusetts, he did have buy-in from just about all the stakeholders in that process.

Something that Obama is not even close to achieving.

Biden as Savant

2009-07-16T18:57:00.000-07:00

Boy, it's a good thing we got Joltin' Joe Biden as our vice president and not some good-looking, wholesome yahoo from the hinterlands of Alaska. Otherwise we may have been bereft of the brilliance of the Democratic economic philosophy:

“We’re going to go bankrupt as a nation,” Biden said.

“Now, people when I say that look at me and say, ‘What are you talking about, Joe? You’re telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?’” Biden said. “The answer is yes, that's what I’m telling you.”

Now, why didn't I think of that?

Several years ago in a previous life, I faced the possibility of actually having to declare bankruptcy. Unfortunately, this was during a period where the rules were changing to make it harder for people like me to seek protection from creditors. So bankruptcy wasn't really an option. What happened, ultimately, was that I lost my house.

I see now that I was a fool.

Under the Democratic standard, I should have hung in there, spent money I didn't (and would never) have, declared to my creditors that my "spending Leprechaun gold" plan was working, and sit back to enjoy the ride. This is the administration's plan at the moment, so far as I have been able to discern. It certainly seems so according to Mr. Fountain-of-Wisdom Biden.

So there you have it, little people. Just keep spending money, especially if you don't have any. I'm sure Fearless Leader would approve. Oh, and you won't ever have to worry about making that first million anymore. Congress will see to it that it never reaches your personal pocket.

Obligatory Health Care Post

2009-06-25T08:01:00.000-07:00

On a very old mug in my cupboard you find the following bromide:

Bradley's Bromide: If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a committee — that will do them in.

I have used the committee as a metaphor frequently over the years to denote the dysfunctional qualities of nearly everything the government (taken as a "committee of the whole") puts its hands on.

Welfare. Social Security. Energy. Education. Nothing is immune, and so far as I have been able to discern, there is nothing into which the government has injected itself that is administered in any sort of efficient way. Even something as basic as controlling access to our borders has been handled (if, indeed, someone could use the word "handled" in this regard) in such a way as to make the idea of a border completely laughable. "The border?" one might say. "Sure, we've got one. It's over there somewhere," while waving vaguely in a southerly direction.

But this post isn't about open borders. It's about health care "reform" as currently defined by the President. And therein lies the problem.

It isn't defined.

It's a classic political boondoggle. Obama campaigned on health care "reform" and based his campaign on two pillars:

Health care costs are ridiculously high.
Poor Americans aren't covered by any sort of health insurance.

Unfortunately, it's always the knee-jerk reaction of a politician — and particularly a Democrat — to make the government the vehicle through which these issues will be resolved. I say "unfortunately" because, thus far, the government has shown itself incapable of fixing anything that it gets its overreaching hands on.

It is Obama's reach, more than anything else, that scares me about the man. Because he won (a fact he is eager to keep fresh in everyone's mind) he feels he has a mandate to "do" things, and do them quickly. However, as evidenced by the mislabeled "stimulus" program, not everything lends itself to a rapid solution.

Obama's approach to governing is the very sort of "shock-and-awe" tactic that Democrats so derisively sneer at when describing Bush's "failures" in Iraq. The idea here is to stun the voters into believing that only immediate action will save the health care industry and make coverage freely available to every American, regardless of whether they work or not. Then, while those same voters are reeling with a sense of futility, the government will quickly put together the actual legislation that implements Obama's "plan" (which isn't really a plan in the classic sense), so that they can be seen to be "doing something." By the time they do, the average voter will awaken from their campaign-induced disorientation to find that they have been legislated right into another financial black hole, from which there can be no recovery. Or, in other words, we will have a health care system in this country that accomplishes exactly the same thing that "No Child Left Behind" accomplishes for huge numbers of students in America: nothing.

That's right. What we will end up with is a "system" that costs far more per person than any reasonable health plan currently in existence today, but will be freely available to poor Americans because Congress will simply pump money into it whether that money exists or not. It's the American way.

So Bradley was at least partly correct. If we consider Congress and the President to be a "committee," then someone will be "finished off." I just fear that it will be the average taxpayer that is, at the end of it all, finished off.

PETA Priorities

2009-06-18T09:44:00.000-07:00

I had two thoughts when the President of the United States was caught on tape swatting a fly. My first thought was the obvious (to me and a couple of others) relevance to the story of the Valiant Little Tailor, posted here.

My very next thought, I kid you not, was, "Gee. How long before PETA protests the killing of an innocent fly."

Apparently not long. (H/T: Wizbang)

PETA: Still more concerned about common household pests than aborted fetuses.

Regarding the ABC (All Barack Channel) Fiasco

2009-06-17T11:12:00.000-07:00

I have only one thing to say.

Can you imagine the howling we would hear if this were the Bush White House, and the network was FOX?

One Down, Six to Go

2009-06-17T10:15:00.000-07:00

(H/T: The Jawa Report)

Over at Hot Air, you can see video of President HopenChange swatting a fly. This reminds me of something... now where have I heard this before...

Ah, of course. The Valiant Little Tailor. In this classic Grimm tale, a tailor kills seven flies with a single swat. He then sets up a life of adventure and eventual leisure by cashing in on his unearned fame. For the most part, the tailor uses deception and parlor tricks to acheive his purposes, and is ultimately rewarded by gaining the King's daughter in marriage.

Obama's claims of "creating and saving jobs" seem to hearken back to this fairy tale. Using little more than smoke and mirrors, he claims that his so-called stimulus program has created and/or saved hundreds of thousands of jobs, even as more and more people find their jobs evaporating into thin air. Unemployment has already hit that danger zone that we were warned would happen without the stimulus, so I'm not sure why his claims continue to be touted by his ever-adoring press corps. Or should that be "press corpse?"

Anyway, our Tailor-in-Chief has a few more flies to swat before anyone will be truly impressed with his abilities. In no particular order, those flies would be:

Balancing the budget
Healthcare reform rather than socialized medicine
Removal of government from private enterprise
Abeying and dismantling the nuclear threat in North Korea
Making good on his promise to be transparent (in re: the firing of Gerald Walpin), and
Understanding the nature of terrorists and their organizations before attempting to deal with them

That should keep him busy for awhile.

Don't Give Up!

2009-06-17T09:53:00.001-07:00

This means there's hope for Congress, too!

I'm Not Laughing, David

2009-06-11T08:58:00.000-07:00

I actually haven't laughed at Letterman since I was about 26. That's when I finally grew up and realized that being "edgy" was really just an excuse for being rude, vulgar, boorish, and generally piggish and wanting to be praised for it. I lost my taste for it when it cost me my job.

I'd simply refuse to ever watch him, but he is unfortunately heavily advertised on CBS, which is where one of my favorite shows is currently parked. (I sometimes forget to mute the TV when the commercials come on.) They advertise him relentlessly. The clips they show never fail to make me cringe. His "Top Ten" lists, his inane comments, his failed jokes. The man is neither relevant nor funny.

His sense of self-importance was never more in evidence than when he lambasted John McCain for failing to actually appear on his show. How dare he? That McCain later went back and actually apologized to Letterman for not appearing only caused me to think that perhaps he wouldn't have been a much better president than the one we ended up electing. I mean, how weak-willed would you have to be to apologize to Letterman for anything?

Especially when you consider Letterman's own non-apology for joking about having one of Sarah Palin's daughters be raped by a professional ball player.

"These are not jokes made about her 14-year-old daughter. I would never, never make jokes about raping or having sex of any description with a 14-year-old girl. I mean, look at my record. It has never happened. I don't think it's funny. I would never think it was funny. I wouldn't put it in a joke..."

But you did, David. And even if, as you stated, you meant it to be a reference to 18 year old Bristol rather than 14 year old Willow, what's the difference? It was still a cynical, condescending, disgusting, and even irresponsible thing to say. In a classic case of liberal double-standards, had a conservative said something similar about, say, one of Obama's daughters, you would have had the offender raked over the proverbial coals. Instead, you think you get a walk simply because you referenced the wrong daughter.

What a waste of a good suit.

Sacramento Table Talk

2009-05-22T10:09:00.000-07:00

It happens in households everywhere. Mom and Dad sit at the table and discuss finances.

"That trip to D.C. would be nice this year, but I just don't see how on earth we're going to get there. Until we get those credit cards paid down, we're going to end up a couple thousand short."

"We have six months, right? What if we give up eating out on Fridays, and see if the kids want to take a break from swimming and dancing lessons this summer? That might help..."

It used to be axiomatic that if moms and dads ran their finances the way "the government" did, they would soon find themselves in bankruptcy.

A very large part of what has brought this country to its financial knees today is the fact that many households — far more than when Woody was a young pup — run their finances precisely the way governments do: buy whatever you want; borrow for whatever you can't pay up front; hope it'll sort itself out in the end. Add to that a healthy dose of entitlement (i.e., I am a carbon-based life form and therefore I deserve a house) and you have the makings of a financial collapse.

It will be instructive to watch how Sacramento deals with the fact that voters are tired of fronting their addiction to spending. Many of those voters are, of course, to blame for Sacramento's addiction. For years we've been approving spending measures, bonds, and all manner of budget-shuffling initiatives that have taken whatever surpluses we might have claimed years ago and made them disappear faster than an Obama campaign pledge.

But the voters have finally declared "enough" to Schwarzenegger and the Girly Men. Time to cut bait, folks. Your fishing days are over.

Except that they're not. No, the Governator has already signalled that he feels no compunctions about taking money away from county and city governments. He claims this would be a "worst-case scenario" of course, but we all know what's coming. (His actual words were "I absolutely despise taking money from local government, but...") (And, yes, that's one mighty large "but.")

The bailout has made things worse. Obama's plan to create money where none exists is troublesome in the extreme. There is absolutely nothing of value backing up his monetary projections right now, and he's already indicated that we need to make it easier, not harder, for high-risk borrowers to get home loans in the future. This will set up a never-ending round of loan defaults, blaming everyone but the people responsible, then re-regulating the industry ad infinitum until they go out of business.

So California has tough choices to make now. I don't see them making the truly tough ones. They might make the "tough" decisions to take money from other sources, but will absolutely refuse to slash things like education or health services while calling for massive reforms in those services.

My suggestion would be locking them in a room and not feeding them until they deliver a budget that makes sense. They may as well get used to the idea right now that, no matter what they do, no one is going to like it. Not one little bit. The unions will howl. The voters will gnash their teeth.

But if it brings forward an actual balanced budget, I'll be willing to live with it.

Hey, Great Britain...

2009-05-21T10:27:00.000-07:00

...The Pope is Catholic.

That'll be £300K, please.

(H/T: Dave Barry)

Election Post-Mortem

2009-05-19T22:34:00.000-07:00

Ah, victory. Mostly.

Uncle Woody was, it goes without saying, one of the voices raised in favor of killing all the initiatives in this election. Nothing about this "special" election had any validity on its merits. It was truly an act of political desperation.

If the writers of these travesties were completely honest, we would find that this wasn't designed to fix our budget deficit. This was an attempt to force dollars into the hands of greedy special interests. They know who they are.

California voters, whatever else our faults may be, were not fooled. Even those who voted for the initiatives appear to have done so largely because they didn't see any better way of getting out of our mess.

The real loser, of course, is Schwarzenegger. Politically and personally, Schwarzenegger is running out of options. His so-called political capital is just about maxed out. He has, truthfully, no creative ideas for fixing anything, budget included. Nor does he have enough influence left with the state legislature to be able to dictate solutions that will garner any serious discussion.

Assuming Arnie has aspirations of serving further as a career politician, this entire budget fiasco is going to become a millstone around his thirty inch neck. Anyone heard from Gray Davis lately?

It's still relatively early, but no one seems to believe that the 1A through 1E initiatives have any life left. Good. May they rest in relative peace. 1F appears to have won, but that doesn't really bother me. For all my huff about "voting the bums out," If we can actually put some teeth behind this initiative that theoretically limits the legislature's ability to raise their own salaries in a deficit year, the current class should be forced into salary laissez faire for the duration of their terms.

California may be dysfunctional, but the voters still have some life left.

Election Day

2009-05-19T09:52:00.000-07:00

Californians: Go vote.

Those who would not vote today are left without complaint.

And I have plenty of complaints.

Wherein Woody Discusses the Desert

2009-05-18T03:20:00.000-07:00

In the Oz series of books by L. Frank Baum, the land of Oz is surrounded by an impassable desert. Although I never read every installment, the books I did read led me to believe that there were very few ways to cross this desert. One was by air. The Wizard himself crossed over via a hot-air balloon, while Dorothy crossed over while kept aloft by the tornado that ripped her house from its foundations. Another way over involved a special carpet owned by the princess Ozma which unrolled itself in front and rolled itself back up again behind as she and her "army" crossed the wasteland.

Baum was obviously acquainted with the Mojave desert, specifically that portion which lies between Las Vegas and San Bernardino.

We have just crossed this bleak landscape on our way home after a tremendous vacation through some truly awe-inspiring patches of terra firma in the vicinity of the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains. Our carpet is our trusty Odyssey minivan. We have plenty of liquid on board. We hesitate to set foot on the surface of the desert lest we find ourselves turned into sand. Even the underpaid staff of the Agricultural Checkpoint can't wait to wave us through without stopping.

Coming back into California is always a let-down.

Not that California is without its charms. The vicinity immediately surrounding our home in Orange County is actually very nice most of the time. Except for those two or three truly brown months of the year, this eastern end of Anaheim with Yorba Linda to the north and Anaheim Hills to the south is quite green most of the time. But head, oh, twenty miles or so to the north and the desert begins to manifest itself in deadly earnest. Where Minnesota and other northerly climes lay claim to seven month winters, we in Southern California can boast (if, indeed, boasting is appropriate) of nearly endless summers. Here in one of the more expensive portions of an already overpriced state it's not so bad. Temperate climate and well-kept greenery keep this place moderately liveable through even the hottest days.

But this is, as has been pointed out to me, a Mediterranean habitat. I actually argued this point with a local docent. My thinking was that a desert, even one with Mediterranean vegetation, was still a desert. I probably lost the debate on points, but I still hold my views firmly.

Believe me, I appreciate the differences. I lived for nearly ten years in California's so-called "Antelope Valley," a desolate collection of dust and Joshua trees north and east of Los Angeles that constitutes the "upper" or "miserably hot and windy" portion of the Mojave desert. I hated it. Still do, as a matter of fact, but I tend to keep this information to myself. I do so only because a part of me — an admittedly microscopic part — feels that the height of disrespect and ingratitude towards one's Creator is to criticize any part of His creation. The rest of me believes that this desert accurately portrays what happens to people who were tasked with tending a garden, and ended up listening to a snake, if you get my drift. "Bit the apple, eh? You know what that means!" "No! Not the Mojave!"

There are ways to avoid the desert in California if you really want to. Or way, I should say. That way is the coastal drive between south and north that skirts the ocean and prevents one from seeing even so much as a jackalope (or a cleverly Photoshopped post-card alleging the same). Ironically, I rarely drive the coast when travelling between south and north these days. A man under the influence of a vacation tends towards mental instability and will actually appreciate driving through desert and endless dust-laden miles of the San Joaquin and Owen valleys in order to shave a few hours off the drive time to get to more bearable destinations north of Sacramento. Aside from the coast, between Sacramento and Los Angeles you will find little of any real value except for truck stops with relatively clean restrooms.

(I realize that there are people who actually live in the desert who claim to appreciate its "beauty" and "lower housing costs." To them I say: you live your delusion, and I'll hold onto mine, thank you very much.)

I have also noticed over the years that, whenever popular causes are taken up by activists with placards and way too much time on their hands, they don't focus a lot of their energy on the desert. There was once, several years ago, an attempt made to limit access to certain desert areas to bikers and ATV enthusiasts, but it ran out of steam after a few rounds in the press. Heck, even the bikers and ATV nuts no longer frequent the desert as much as they used to. I think they burned out, so to speak. When was the last time you heard of some nut at Berkeley climbing up a Joshua tree to mount a protest? Ever wonder why Marine recruiting centers in those cities are never molested? No one wants to block access to any building with working air conditioning up there, that's why.

And so the desert rarely changes. The drive last Saturday between Las Vegas and Barstow was just as dreary and depressing as it always has been. The one rest stop at which we paused was so oppressively hot that I couldn't quite catch my breath. I don't think there was any oxygen in that air. There was one site that has been, at various times, a speedway and a water park. Now it's mostly a decaying collection of misplaced landscaping (palm trees... honestly) and rotting infrastructure. A few more years and it will probably resemble a deserted gold mine from 1849. The billboards will proclaim it as some important historic site, now suitable for tourists with nothing better to do than watch their radiators boil over in the parking lot.

Still, the desert has its use. Personally speaking, I mean. I have no idea what benefits to the ecosystem the desert provides, other than occasionally sand-blasting innocent passers-by from time to time. No, the desert serves to remind me that, all in all, I'm living in relatively good circumstances nowadays. Although my elected representatives have largely abandoned me, my basic rights are still intact. My governor is more interested in saddling taxpayers with his inability to balance a budget, but my own checkbook is under control. For now. At the golden age of fifty I have several more productive years of work ahead, and good prospects for retirement.

In some other state, though. I have my principles, after all. And none of them are guaranteed protection by any politician currently serving this state today. May they all ~~rot~~ live in the desert.

Curmudgeon's Guide for Young Conservative Voters

2009-04-22T02:02:00.000-07:00

California Special Election Edition (May 19, 2009)

Here we go again, young conservatives. Uncle Woody was wondering just how long it would take before California politicians ("Spending Your Money So You Don't Get To") came up with a special election to hide the fact that, basically, they're just one big, happy, dysfunctional family up there in Sacramento.

Governor Steroids has already shown that he'd rather put the blame on the voters than try to get those girly men in the legislature to sit down and make tough choices in order to balance our budget. Didn't work last time, either. In fact, Uncle Woody is going to go out on a limb here and say that, pound for pound, special elections in California are about as effective as an Obama cabinet appointee.

Your California politicians were so lazy this time, young conservatives, that they didn't even bother to come up with new numbers for each proposition on the ballot. No, this time we get to decide between 1A, 1B, 1C, 1D, 1E, and 1F. 4-F is actually what comes to Uncle Woody's mind when he sees this sort of nonsense, and those who once upon a time had to worry about being drafted know what Uncle Woody is talking about. Heaven only knows what we'd be paying for if the legislature ever made it to 2.

So let's make it easy this time around and give you the ENTIRE BALLOT RECOMMENDATION IN ONE WORD, okay, young conservatives? Here it is:

No.

It really is just that simple, young conservatives. Uncle Woody wants you all to march into your polling places on May 19, look at the silly ballot that's already costing taxpayers millions of dollars during an economic downturn (makes sense!) and select "No" for every proposition on the page.

But, of course, you young conservatives have come to rely on Uncle Woody's rapier wit and detailed analyses of these ballot initiatives over the years, so I'll go ahead and chime in:

1A (Boy, this sounds familiar, doesn't it?) In the last election, 1A masqueraded as a high-speed rail line between Los Angeles and San Francisco. I think. That was several months ago before we elected Hope and Change to the White House. My memory is already numb. Anyway, 1A has now been rebranded as "State Budget. Changes California Budget Process. Limits State Spending. Increases 'Rainy Day' Budget Stabilization Fund."

Considering the fact that we haven't enjoyed a budget surplus in this state since Pete Wilson was in office, and the fact that RINO-in-Chief Schwarzenburger, or whatever his name is, can't get anyone to agree with any of his spending policies, I can't imagine that it's actually the "process" that needs fixing. In fact, Uncle Woody envisions "fixing" a large number of Sacramento politicians in the veterinary sense of the word.

That Uncle Woody would support.

1B Titled "Education Funding. Payment Plan." It should also be sub-titled "Heavily Sponsored by the Socialist California Teachers Association." This one is a highly transparent attempt by the teachers union in this state to punish the Governator for "borrowing" $2 billion a few years ago and forgetting (you know how it is with taxes) to pay it back. Can't get it back from Arnie? Soak the taxpayers!

In fact, 1A and 1B are being heavily pursued by the CTA, and it's no wonder. They want "their" money back, and they want to prevent state politicos from ever grabbing it again.

I wish them better luck than we taxpayers have had, but they'll get no help from Uncle Woody.

1C "Lottery Modernization Act." Oh, for Pete's sake. We don't "need" a lottery in the first place, and now they think that "modernizing" it is somehow going to generate more money for the state. So, let's see: they'll need to update lottery machines across the state, then figure out a way to recoup the investment. What to do... what to do...? Wait! Of course! The taxpayers will help! They LOVE the lottery!

Just one quick question: How many of those innumerable millionaires you've created with the lottery still live in California? Anyone? Bueller?

1D "Protects Children's Services Funding. Helps Balance State Budget." So, I'm a little surprised that I haven't seen intensive video of starving children a la Ethopian relief agency ads, because that's frankly the way this proposition is written. "Temporarily provides greater flexibility in funding to preserve health and human services for young children" is how this travesty begins. What they leave out is that they're really trying to get funding for all those undocumented children that taxpayers are getting more leery of supporting when they're having a hard time saving up for their own retirements these days.

Also, and let Uncle Woody be crystal clear here, young conservatives: the State General Fund is not a sacred cow. Time and time again, Sacramento has proven itself capable of moving that money around like some legalized Ponzi scheme, and nary a nickel of it ever ends up where it was intended.

1E "Mental Health Services Funding. Temporary Reallocation. Helps Balance State Budget."

Right. Also solves global warming, cures the common cold, and generates cold fusion renewable energy sources.

Or not.

Look, as with 1D, this is just another attempt by special interest lobbies in Sacramento to get their hands on money that we don't have. So, shuffle it around temporarily, then slip it back into the General Fund when no one is looking. Right? What could be easier?

Oh, Uncle Woody doesn't know... how about balancing the actual state budget for a change?

1F "Elected Officials' Salaries. Prevents Pay Increases During Budget Deficit Years." This one actually made Uncle Woody laugh, young conservatives. Not out loud, though. It's after midnight here at Hacienda Woody, and Uncle Woody doesn't want to wake Auntie Woody up. But I'm laughing on the inside.

Hey, we already have safeguards for preventing pay increases for elected officials, but we voters are typically too lazy or too stupid to actually use them. It's called "voting the bums out," and so far as Uncle Woody is concerned, no politician in Sacramento is immune. Or ought to be, anyway. If these idiots in tailored suits actually believe that they deserve to be paid more for wasting our money in the first place, then Uncle Woody thinks it's time to help them with a career adjustment.

So there you have it, young conservatives. Doubtless you're wondering to yourselves, "Gee. How can we possibly repay Uncle Woody for this extremely valuable advice?" Whereupon I reply, "Aw, shucks, young conservatives, it's nothing really. No, really. It's nothing. Put down the pitchforks and torches, young conservatives. Uncle Woody was only kidding! Really! Vote any way you like! Please!!"

I'm nothing if not a patriot.

Yes, I Paid My Taxes. Why Wouldn't I?

2009-04-16T01:31:00.000-07:00

What with one thing and another I had a dickens of a time getting my taxes done. And before you ask, no, I am not being considered for any cabinet positions in Obama's administration.

No, I just ran out of time, or nearly so. It happened last year, for perhaps the first time in my memory. I'd had to file an extension, and we took advantage of nearly every day of that six month wait. I really didn't want to deal with that again this year.

But today was a busy day. We did not attend any tea parties today. It wasn't that we didn't support the idea — we fully support those who believe the government has taken a sharp left turn toward socialism and are willing to make their voices heard — but today was Field Trip Day.

You remember: we homeschool. Wednesdays, even those that fall on Tax Day, we try to dedicate to our homeschool group. Especially now that Mrs. Woody is its leader. So this morning found us wending our way to San Juan Capistrano to visit their magnificent mission.

Let me just state that, for all the wind and cool weather today, it was absolutely a gorgeous day. Spring brings both swallows ("not as many as we've had in the past") and beautiful foliage in the mission's many planters and gardens ("just wait a few weeks and this whole area will be purple!"). The Woodyettes were duly impressed with the historical displays and museum exhibits liberally (so to speak) sprinkled throughout the buildings. The old Stone Church is still impressive, even sitting in earthquake-induced ruins.

But of course we didn't get home until late afternoon. Also (of course!) I had yet to file our taxes for this year.

It's never a question of actually paying them, you understand. That part is always taken care of for me. The only real question is how much we should be getting back from the increasingly bankrupt government in any given year.

Still, whether I pay or get paid, they still need to be filed. After a long day of field tripping with my family, I was all for simply filing the dratted extension once again and giving myself more breathing room. Then I realized that for all the hassle of "estimating" what I might have had to pay the Feds and the state in order to beg for the extension, it would be infinitely easier to just fill out the silly forms and file on time. So I did.

Then I surfed around to see what happened at the various Tea Parties held around the country today.

Overall, I must say I'm impressed. The tea party spirit has taken hold and given conservatives (and fiscally responsible moderates) something to do short of ripping out copious amounts of hair. Of equal importance to the events themselves, however, is the reaction of liberal pundits and news organizations to the protests today. Sneering contempt, I would have to say. How dare these brainwashed minions of the Evil Fox News perform a feat that is the holy domain of liberals and radicals in this country? Even Nancy Pelosi was reduced to referring to the protests as "astroturfing."

I deem these reactions to be of import precisely because if we're making them that upset, we must be hitting pretty close to the mark. Over at Wizbang (I think... it's late and I'm too lazy to go back and give a proper citation) they mentioned having watched Keith Olbermann, who blustered about how ignorant we stupid conservatives must be of the overwhelming benefits of being taxed into the next three or four generational afterlives. I kid you not: they're trying to attach New Deal optimism to Obama's hardly-original and certainly un-noteworthy tax and spend policies. "Where were you when Bush was spending?" one counter-protestor's sign read today. Well, Junior, I was protesting that Bush had crossed over from fiscal conservative to deficit-spending moderate in his last few years of office. But his spending was (and remains) a mere fraction of what Obama has generated. Legacy, indeed.

So, unlike most of Obama's appointees, I've paid my taxes this year. But I haven't given up on October 15th of this year yet. Something tells me Obama may come calling about then, asking us to ante up a second (or third or fourth) time this year. But he won't find me.

I'll be in the mountains of Idaho with all those right-wing extremist Iraq-war veterans.

Stooping to Their Level

2009-03-04T12:18:00.000-08:00

Michael Laprarie, blogging for Wizbang, grouses that conservatives aren't getting it. He points to Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" as both the reason for liberal successes of late, as well as a primer from which conservatives should be drawing in order to get better organized and more effectively counter those liberal successes.

But should we?

From a blogospheric perspective, much of what Laprarie posits is probably accurate, if not completely correct. He mentions several "power tactics" as being particularly important to countering liberal philosophies and sophistry. For example, Laprarie states:

These tactics, particularly 4 [Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules] and 5 [Ridicule is man's most potent weapon], could be devastating to the Obama White House and to thin-skinned, corrupt Democrats in general. Make them live up to their own rules -- pay as you go, most ethical Congress in history, etc. Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show have done a great job ridiculing Democrats. We need to do more.

Ridicule is arguably one of the basic tenets of the blogosphere. The ratio of rational blogs to snarky blogs is probably smaller than 1 to 10 on the conservative side, and probably even smaller than that on the liberal side. The Jawa Report wouldn't exist without huge doses of snark; likewise The Daily Kos would be only a wisp of its current self if snark weren't allowed. I think there's more than enough ridicule going around to keep everyone cynical and pessimistic for the rest of our natural lives.

We have been far less successful, however, at making the other side live up to its own rules. In his first two months in office, Obama has already backtracked on a number of his campaign pledges. This is a pattern, however, that should have surprised no one, since he reneged on his pledge not to accept public monies practically the moment that John McCain selected Sarah Palin as his running mate. Nancy Pelosi has done absolutely nothing toward her stated goal of having the "most ethical Congress" in history, and her morally feeble compadre in the Senate, Harry Reid, hasn't helped. But these things come as no surprise to conservative voters like myself. This is all pretty much business as usual in the Beltway.

What surprises this particular voter is how badly our representatives in Washington have seemingly ignored the mandates that put them in office to begin with. Why, in the name of all that's holy, are senators like Specter, Collins, and Snowe supporting the Stimulus? It makes absolutely no sense on any grounds. This was a fiscal sell-out of monumental proportions, and they should be soundly punished for refusing to vote "NO" on moral grounds. This is how we fail to make liberals play by their stated rules. We certainly seem unable to play by our own.

Laprarie goes on to ask the question,"[i]f liberals utilize these tactics regularly (and we know they do), then why can't conservatives utilize them as well? It is a given that they work. It should not be a given that they can only be used by liberals."

It is a given that they work. For liberals. Does that mean there should be a "proportional response" from conservatives?

No. If we remember our roots, both fiscally and socially, there should never be a reason to stoop to the same tactics that liberals have been propounding since the radical days of the sixties. To do so makes our arguments seem trite and contrived; nothing more than showmanship and grandstanding that have no motivation other than showing everyone else who the Big Man of the Mountain is. Those who ridicule do so because they have not the strength of their own argument to prove their point. I certainly have been guilty of that myself; writing snark in the name of "humor" while all the time wishing I were smarter than I really am.

There are those who complain that the string of recent "Tea Party" protests in response to Obama's economic plan is ineffective as a grassroots effort. Needs more planning "from the top down" some say. Needs more organization. Needs more, I don't know, legitimacy or something.

Bah.

The protests are not designed to change policy. No one standing in one of those protests with signs like "Hey, Obama, While You're At It, I Could Really Use A Lexus" believes for one moment that the President and Congress are suddenly going to smack their heads and say, "Wow! What boneheads we've been! We'd better cancel the Stimulus and try a smarter approach!" No one is that naïve.

But I do believe the protests demonstrate an irrefutable idea that not everyone is in love with Obama's approach to the crisis. There is unrest, and it's not just from anti-Obama conservatives like myself. Quite a few people who voted for Obama are scratching their heads now and wondering who this man is, and what has he done with the President?

Question: what is the only real difference between the Obama administration, and the Bush administration?

Answer: the Obama administration is better at creating logos.

Okay, that was snarky. My apologies. But my point remains: stooping to the same tactics that made the other side successful does not guarantee success. It only diminishes the importance of our message. We require conservative fiscal and social policies if this country is to remain viable for the rest of the twenty-first century.

The Infamy of Abel Maldonado

2009-02-19T23:44:00.000-08:00

Today's passage of California's $42 billion boondoggle budget is highly symptomatic of the problems we face nationally. That California chose a plan that precisely mirrors Obama's Anti-Stimulating Stimulus Package simply means that local politicians are no better at owning up to the problems that got us here than the Feds are.

Our last hope - moderate Abel Maldonado - finally caved and cast his vote to approve the budget. This allows Schwarzenegger to go back to loving his "girly men" in the legislature while simultaneously redacting all those pink slips he was starting to hand out earlier this week. CalTrans will go back to removing hefty chunks of California highways just in time for vacation season this year. And Abel Maldonado will have to consider whether the Republican backlash from his "yea" vote was worth the sellout.

Now, I'll grant you this: a quarter percent tax increase in my bracket is not going to kill me. State tax increases rarely have that kind of impact on my situation. I've been working long enough that I can make ends meet most of the time. I will admit to being concerned about my state refund this year, but on the whole I was all for holding the state accountable for all of its irresponsible spending decisions over the past several years.

Ditto the Feds. Zero Accountability is what got us into fiscal trouble, and the Faux Stimulus Obama just signed will take us right back to Zero Accountability. Oh, they created a so-called "Accountability and Transparency" board, but its only real function is to politicize the various Inspectors General and place them under the control of the board instead of maintaining their heretofore independent status. Reckless fiscal policy, that. And it will catch up with the Obamatrons both in the administration and in Congress.

But back to Maldonado. Being from Santa Maria, Maldonado has the taint of elitist liberalism, though he claims to be a Republican. I can pretty much guarantee, however, that if he aspires to any office higher than the state senate, he will find himself facing a somewhat unforgiving crowd down here in Orange County. I know why the man finally changed his vote. He found himself in the position of having the whole state see him as the man who was blocking passage of money needed to fund our state-wide pork. That's an uncomfortable chair, and he wanted to go home. He finnagled a few "concessions" before changing his vote, but we're still saddled with a budget that relies more on tax increases than in reduced spending measures. Again, reckless fiscal policy that will catch up with those who voted in favor.

And exactly how do I know that this budget is bad policy? Because Schwarzenegger approves; that's how:

This is the perfect medicine for our ailing economy, and it will boost public confidence in California, reassure the financial community and allow us to start selling bonds and rebuild our state."

"Now, instead of worrying every day only about IOUs and about red ink, we can start moving California forward once again. This action to solve our $42 billion deficit was difficult but courageous and just what California needs," he said.

Note to the Governator: You can't "solve" budget deficits when you're still spending more than you're taking in. Did you not read that definition when taking the state employee exams? Oh, wait...

Anyway, California has its approved budget, and everyone goes home happy. Until next year's deficit rears its head. Then it'll be every man for himself.

Maldonado will lead the way.

When Money Talks...

2009-02-11T03:04:00.000-08:00

That money talks
I'll not deny,
I heard it once:
It said, "Goodbye."
~Richard Armour

I'm a little worried about my money these days. Not looking so good. In fact, not looking good at all. I went to visit it this morning and was shocked to see its condition.

"You look terrible," I said.

"No worse than you," it replied. "You look like death warmed over."

"Touch of bronchitis. Nothing serious. What's your excuse?"

My money, stacked morosely in small denominations in the back corner of the credit union vault, gave me the slightest ghost of a smile. "Well, I could blame everything on the economy, of course, but I'm afraid it's worse than that."

"Worse than the economy?" I asked. "How is that possible?"

"The Feds are after me."

Of course. It all made sense to me then. With the passage today of the so-called "Stimulus" bill, money all over the country would naturally be living in mortal fear of becoming fodder for pork barrel spending. Probably sooner rather than later.

"But how do you know the Feds won't spend you wisely?" I asked earnestly. "Certainly they couldn't do any worse than I have?"

My money actually laughed at me. "You're kidding, right? How much do you think I'm worth to you right now?"

I did some quick calculations. "Well, I know what your face value is. That can't have changed too much since last summer, could it?"

A few loose dollars fell to the vault floor. "I guess you haven't noticed yet. Can't you see how much weight I've lost since the Inauguration? I'm literally worth only pennies on the dollar right now. You just haven't caught on yet. Bet you haven't done your taxes yet this year, have you?"

I had to admit he had me there. "Well, no. Seems like I just barely filed my return from last year, what with the extension and all."

I've never heard money sigh before, but it had a somewhat chilling effect. "That's what I mean. You'll find out soon enough anyway. I guess you should know the whole story. You see, I've been called up by Congress and I expect to be deployed any time now."

"Deployed?"

"Of course! Don't you get it? Obama's majorities in the House and Senate have already earmarked me for some pork project in a town neither of us has ever heard of! I'll be shipped off to buy toxic assets from heaven only knows where, or, worse, be put in the pockets of corrupt union officials in (here it shuddered visibly) Michigan."

"Surely the Republicans would have tried to eliminate all that pork," I rejoined. "I can't imagine them letting the Democrats have their way without a fight."

A shrinking stack of ten dollar bills actually made a sound of disgust. "You weren't paying attention to the Three Stooges, I take it."

"Larry, Moe and Curly?"

"Collins, Snowe and Specter. They sold me out. Helped craft the 'bipartisan' spending package and threw me under Obama's bus."

"Ouch. I had no idea."

"Neither did anyone else. We all assumed that, being Republicans and all, they would stand firm with the House Republicans and vote against this nonsense. Instead they betrayed good conservative dollars everywhere and voted to appease the Congressional Demagogues. Had they toed the line like they should, we might have been able to force Obama's water carriers back to the bargaining table. Instead, I'm hiding out in this musty vault, hoping against hope that they'll somehow overlook me."

"There's still a chance you could get a plum assignment. I hear that NASA gets a billion plus in this package. Maybe you could even go to Homeland Security..."

"To help build the Fence in Name Only? May as well convert me to pesos now and be done with it."

"Oh, quit worrying. You're still here and I'm not going to throw you to the wolves just because some politician sticks his hand out. Hey, I'm still here, right? And I still have my health."

"And Obama wants to socialize health care in this country."

Suddenly I don't feel so good, either.

Finding the Silver Lining

2009-02-01T12:06:00.000-08:00

There's little question we're in for some rough times ahead. Most businesses have either announced or are pondering layoffs in just about every industry you can think of. So when I found this item from Reuters this morning, it made me smile.

Not long after I emerged from my post-adolescent cocoon and found myself struggling to meet the demands of a new marriage, I was shanghaied by an Amway zealot. Now, I have nothing personally against Amway or any of its several re-inventions over the years. Their products are, for the most part, reliable. I simply have no stomach for their multi-level marketing strategies which border on evangelistic fanaticism in my opinion. So I didn't last long. (Anyone who knows me knows that I am far too lazy to make an aggressive strategy like Amway really work anyway.)

I dredge up this piece of ancient history only because of what Amway preached back in the day. They really had only two selling points. One was the perceived benefits of the multi-level marketing approach. The other was the strength of the products they marketed. "People will always need cleaning products" was their mantra. It's true: rain or shine, good economy or bad, people want to be clean. Just because you have no money, you certainly don't want people thinking you have no money, so you'll keep cleaning your house no matter what your current debt load may be. Not to mention all the hygienic benefits from keeping your home and yourself as clean as possible.

(My "upline" did, however, fail to mention that when the chips were down and it was a choice between paying Amway whatever shipping charges were included with your order, or simply going to Ye Olde Grocery Shoppe down the street to pay a few cents more or less on the dollar, convenience will always win. Always.)

This is why the Reuters story made me chuckle. Yes, times are bad. A lot of good people are facing a new reality with no immediate income and bleak employment prospects. But the people who put food on our tables (as opposed to those who charge us for the simple pleasure of sitting at one of their tables and looking at their menus) are benefitting from our new-found reliance on good ol' home cooking.

It's expensive to eat out all the time. Heaven knows we do our fair share. We're not big restaurant people here at Hacienda Woody. But it's not at all unusual for Woody to be out running errands (including, ironically enough, grocery shopping) and have Mrs. Woody say, "As long as you're out..." and Woody suddenly finds himself in the nearest drive-through. If you do even a few of those every month it adds up to an alarming amount of money. And I know people who eat out far more frequently than they eat in.

Living on a budget does things to your priorities. You begin to remember just why, exactly, you have a stove. Or, at the very least, a microwave. (I prefer to do my vegetable steaming in the microwave, for example.) You also remember that nothing tastes quite like a home-cooked meal. This may be especially true if Hubby does any of the home cooking:

"Mom?"

"Yes, Honey?"

"Dad cooked the meatloaf again, didn't he?"

"It's not meatloaf, Sweetheart."

"Pass."

(Actually, Woody cooks a fairly credible meatloaf. Allow me some creative license.)

My point is that I don't see it as a bad thing that people are eating at home more. Perhaps I'm just taking a glass-half-full approach to this recession, but it might just remind us that a certain amount of conservatism (with a small "c" if you must) is not necessarily a bad thing.

Just to Mix Things Up

2009-01-31T23:14:00.000-08:00

I apologize for the dearth of blogging of late. I'm normally much more vocal than this, particularly when I fear that we'll soon be printing money so fast that we'll quickly end up with hyperinflation a la post-war Germany when the Papiermark collapsed was ultimately replaced by the Reichsmark at a rate of roughly one trillion to one.

In the meantime, Hacienda Woody is gearing up for a momentous event. In late March and early April our Stake will produce "Savior of the World," a musical drama originally commissioned for the opening of the Conference Center in Salt Lake City. I say "momentous" because all four of us are participating in this production, Woodyettes included.

Since we're up to our necks in rehearsal (or would be were it not for this dratted bronchitis/flu we seem to be fighting at the moment), it's entirely possible that blogging from Yours Truly will be light — even non-existent. My apologies. With that in mind, however, look over at The Inner Dad for updates related to the show, and even links to a few production photos.

Cheers!

When Newscasters Become Too Important

2009-01-20T13:56:00.001-08:00

So we're trying to enjoy (as best any Republican can truly "enjoy") the inauguration today. We even encouraged the Woodyettes to sit and watch the swearing-in ceremonies, all the while knowing that what they really wanted was for their uncle to pick them up and take them to Disneyland for the day. Then Mrs. Woody and I sat back to watch the pomp and ceremony surrounding the most peaceful transfer of power found anywhere in the civilized world today.

What we get instead are hour after hour of useless political commentary and "insight" surrounding this "historic" occasion. I have surfed through CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX, CSPAN, you name it. Even local news orgs are having the same diarrhea of the mouth.

Not one. Not one single marching band have we heard today. Nothing but cameras following Obama's car every inch along the parade route. And even if we do happen to see an actual band, we do not get to hear them. Not those kids who flew how many thousands of miles from Hawaii to the nation's capital so they could perform for the millions packed into Washington D. C. today. Not even the Marines were afforded the common courtesy of allowing them to be heard over the networks.

Mrs. Woody, every inch a Republican as am I, put it best: "I really wanted this inauguration to do something for me. Instead I'm frustrated that I couldn't enjoy it at all."

Thanks again, Talking Heads, for ruining an otherwise significant and historic event. May you all rot.

Hollywood Reinvents Truth. Again.

2009-01-17T18:22:00.000-08:00

Tom Hanks is a wonderful actor, one whose work I have long admired. I especially enjoy his fondness for the historical significance of the American space program, as witnessed by his participation in "Apollo 13" and producing "From the Earth to the Moon" for HBO. I even (MALE BETRAYAL ALERT) enjoy his rom-com work with Meg Ryan.

Still, Hanks' fondness for extremely large toys (such as space ships) should not be construed as being indicative of having a conservative bent; Hanks is just as liberal as Hollywood comes.

For all my huff and blow about liberals (and Hollywood libs being among the worst), I still appreciate their guaranteed rights to express their opinions, no matter how wrong-headed they are. But I refuse — absolutely refuse — to excuse them in their ignorance. Hanks' ignorance about Prop 8 is expressed in this statement the actor made to Fox News:

“The truth is this [series "Big Love"] takes place in Utah, the truth is these people [speaking of polygamists] are some bizarre offshoot of the Mormon Church, and the truth is a lot of Mormons gave a lot of money to the church to make Prop-8 happen,” he told Tarts. [Fox's "Pop Tarts" column]

This insistence by liberals to smear the Church for daring to support what a majority of Californians supported in November reminds me that politics makes liars out of just about everyone at one time or another. But this particular lie is especially egregious as it paints all members of the Church as being highly prejudiced, and makes them the targets of choice of the anti-8 mobsters. To call us "un-American" in the process is just childish.

For the record, Mr. Hanks: The Church did not receive money from its members to "make Prop-8 happen." We in fact donated whatever money we could directly to the campaign on advice of the Church to support what we feel is an important social issue. We also donated time and energy — again, directly — to the campaign, going door to door and making phone calls to encourage folks to vote for the measure. Hence it is deceitful to insist that the Church took money for this purpose. One might even call it wrong-headed.

Does this mean I will never again watch one of Hanks' movies? Of course not. Even if Hollywood can't, I have no trouble separating entertainment from politics. Hanks' political views take nothing away from his acting, and I certainly don't have to agree with the man in order to watch one of his projects. Heck, I still think Susan Sarandon made one heck of an attorney in "The Client," and she holds even more odious political views than Hanks does. And don't get me started on Sarandon's paramour, Tim Robbins, whom I look forward to seeing in "The City of Ember." (Yep. Missed it in the theaters. But it's coming out on DVD next week.)

The truth will out, they say, but don't look for it to come from Hollywood.

While We Were In an Election-Induced Stupor Last Year

2009-01-08T01:13:00.000-08:00

There's an excellent reason why we should outlaw general elections in this country: we simply can't afford to take our eyes off of Congress, even for 24 short months (give or take). Seems that while we were obsessing over which under-qualified, party-betraying candidate should get our vote, Congress and our very-lame duck President slipped a fast one by us.

It's H.R. 4040, titled "Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008," and it's about to put a hefty chunk of Americans out of business on February 10th of this year.

In fact, this one slid through so neatly that it barely made a ripple on the conference vote. Out of 535 possible votes, it garnered only 3 "nays," while 8 voted "present" or abstained. That included Senators McCain, Obama, and Clinton. I believe President Bush would have signed it even without the veto-proof support this one received.

Now, don't get me wrong: there are plenty of reasons to upgrade our product safety standards. The lead-based paint scares coming from China a while back were sufficient to light a sizeable fire underneath a normally do-nothing-or-at-least-do-it-incorrectly Congress. Import standards have been lax for decades, and innocent people suffer as a result. Lead poisoning is still a leading cause of permanent injury or death among children in this country and is therefore nothing to take lightly.

The problem, however, is what happens when you take a typical government reaction to such problems and churn out legislation quickly and without regard for consequences. Such is the case with H.R. 4040. The new standards — which include stringent, not to mention extremely expensive testing requirements — will overwhelm your typical small business owner. Reactions guaged by this report from WorldNetDaily.com are typical. The cost of testing for lead has been quoted at anywhere from $75 to $400 per article (think: one book). As one retailer put it, "There's a big difference between me and Wal-Mart or Toys 'R' Us."

Hardest hit, of course, will be the thrift and consignment stores. My family has benefitted, both directly and indirectly, from thrift stores over the years. My sister-in-law is the queen of thrifters in our family circle, and we have been handing clothes back and forth since our Jelly Woodyette was born nearly twelve years ago. But since we can't certify that our hand-me-downs are lead free, this law pretty much makes it illegal to continue that practice.

So, as is typical with our United States Congress (motto: Never Got It Right So Far; Probably Never Will), we now have a law that will put thousands of Mom and Pop operations permanently out of business, fatten the pockets of the testing labs and the special interests that backed this legislation, and turn our landfills into retail graveyards. All because some greedy importers didn't keep their ethical eyes on the ball.

Go team.

What Is It with Democrats and "Experience?"

2009-01-02T10:28:00.000-08:00

In years past my voice was raised in favor of "voting the bums out." It doesn't really take much to get disgusted with Congress (or even local legislatures), so just about every two years we will hear calls for getting rid of the incumbents and replacing them with people who are somewhat more anatomically correct (you know what I'm talking about). So I freely admit that I have, on occasion, been among those who have felt the need for a complete overhaul of legislative bodies. So to speak.

I'm not so sure the Democrats' solution is the way to do it, though.

Consider:

The primary reasons Barack Obama won are 1) he isn't George W. Bush, and 2) anyone must be better than George W. Bush, no matter how little actual experience he has. I'm pretty sure there was a race/diversity angle in there somewhere, too, but that has nothing to do with this discussion.

Now it's time to appoint a couple of Senate replacements, both of whom just happen to be Democrats. One would think Joe Biden also needs replacing, but Connecticut is so small that it may well be simply annexed by Massachussets later this year. Anyway, this is where the Democrats get to shine and appoint people to replace President-for-Life-Elect Obama and Secretary-of-State-Consolation-Prize winner Hillary Clinton.

Illinois kicks off the Name That Senator sweeps with an appointee named by Corrupt Governor (I know, I know... it's redundant) Blagojevich. The appointee, a man named Burris, apparently campaigned hard for the posting as soon as it became evident that Obama's term would end abruptly in January of this year. Most unfortunately, he finds himself now permanently guilty by association of being just another cog in the perpetually corrupt Illinois political machine. This forces the ever-ethical United States Senate, led by Harry "Land Deal? What Land Deal?" Reid, to claim that Burris will never be seated in the actual Senate, even if he shows up with his luggage and a note from his Governor.

(This particular example has nothing to do with lack of experience. It does, however, point out to what lengths the Democrats will go to prove they have a sense of humor after all.)

Now we turn our focus to the New York senate seat currently occupied by Hillary Clinton. Governor Paterson has a smallish problem to deal with. He has both a Kennedy and another Clinton on his hands. One could argue that having former president Billy-Bob Clinton be a "caretaker" for the remainder of his wife's term would be an effective way of keeping him ~~out of Paterson's hair~~ involved in local politics. Or not.

The money seems to be on Caroline Kennedy, the so-called "Camelot Princess." Aside from her famous name, she really has little else to recommend her for the position. She's done all the right posturing, apparently, even dropping her married name so that everyone will remember that she used to live in the White House. But aside from that, not much else to really qualify her to occupy what may become a pivotal Senate seat.

The Senate's famous Democratic majority is already tenuous at best. It is not truly veto-proof, nor did they get the anti-fillibuster insurance they so desperately sought in November, even if Franken weasels and cajoles his way through the interminable Minnesota recount. Having another Kennedy in the Senate for no other reason than to have another Kennedy in the Senate just isn't going to win the Democrats anything.

Kennedy's father was a remarkable man. Whether you agreed with him or not, his visions for moving America forward had a galvanizing effect on the country. But it's been forty-five years since John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and modern history is taking a harder look at the Kennedy mystique. Several generations have arisen since his death and have learned not only about his popularity, but also about his foibles and vices. They understand Kennedys of all stripes to be just as human as the rest of us, and that means that the Kennedy name no longer carries with it the historical imperative that it did back in the days of "Camelot."

Governor Paterson did make one comment worthy of note in this farcical Senate Lotto:

Though Kennedy appears to be the front-runner to replace Clinton, Paterson said the next junior Senator from New York will have to win re-election on his or her own.

And that may prove to be a problem for the Princess.

Happy (?) New Year!

2009-01-01T01:54:00.000-08:00

New look? Of course it's a new look! I get restless every so often, and need to move furniture around, paint the walls, get new carpet... that sort of thing. Naturally this is strictly a virtual exercise for ol' Woody. I've reached that point in life where I much prefer to think about doing such things, and less time actually doing them.

The cretin header has got to go, though. It's a nice design, really, from some Brazilian personage, so far as I can tell. So I had to rename sections into some semblance of English. But the hideous green object at the top of the page is driving me nuts. I am, however, an artistically lazy son of a gun, and I tossed the challenge over to Mrs. Woody. In her youth she had studied graphic design, so I told her what I'm looking for, and she accepted. Please note: hideous green leaf or slice of some exotic fruit: NOT Mrs. Woody. Much classier re-do of the Woody's Woundup header: Mrs. Woody's work. When it becomes available.

This also serves as my official "Happy New Year!" post. Except that I'm not certain just how happy I should wish everyone. Most people seem to be suffering from either economic disaster or post-election depression. The smarmy ones who suffer from neither must be hunted down and made to be as miserable as real humans, I think. With a new Democratic administration coming into power this month, it keeps with Obama's "level playing field" tendencies. No wealth to spread around, though, so we'll just make everyone gloomy and depressed instead.

What's that? You say an "economic stimulus" will be a top Obama priority? That's nice. But I have yet to hear one acceptable explanation as to why making it easier for people who got us into the sub-prime loan debacle by defaulting on their high-risk loans to get newer, higher risk loans is somehow considered a "stimulus?" Wouldn't that seem like simply giving them the keys to "Sub-Prime Debacle 2.0?"

Time will tell. Obama has been doing the body-building thing in Hawaii and seems to be somewhat reluctant to reveal his cards this soon before inauguration day. Just a few months ago he couldn't restrain himself from telling us, in changing and hopeful tones, just how he was planning to keep the economy from tanking. Couldn't shut the guy up, in fact. All of a sudden he gets wise to the "silence is golden" philosophy? I question the timing.

In the meantime, enjoy the new Woundup. I'll still be moving furniture around, dusting some of the higher shelves, and perhaps even moving in some new stuff over the next few days.

Happy (or at least Tolerable) New Year!

UPDATE from CCWBASS

2008-11-27T11:40:00.000-08:00

I haven't logged on in so long I wasn't sure I'd even remember my password. So, in no particular order:

[1] HAPPY THANKSGIVING! Me? I have lots to be thankful for. I have a job, a means to get to it, a place to sleep at night, a wonderful family - and that includes a wide network of daaang cool in-laws - and I live in the greatest freakin' country on the planet. Thank you, God. Thank you, family. And thank you, every single American troop who puts life on the line so I can enjoy these wonderful blessings.

[2] Now that I no longer have to pretend enthusiasm towards McCain, can I go back to hating him and saying that he was and still is a terible senator? For me the answer is: Yes.

[3] What have I been up to? Well, a couple of years ago I was over 300 pounds, but I'm not sure by how much since the scale topped at 300. These days I'm at 254 and counting downward. All it took was my car punking out and my being forced to ride 32 miles a day to keep my job. If any of you have been to the Reagan Library - a site I pass five days a week to get to my job - imagine taking your bike up that driveway about eight times a day; that's my ride, stretched out over an average day, and I'm proud I can do it while still a middle-aged fat man. 'Course, I'm still the county's bike version of a pace car in that I get passed by every skinny twerp out there, but that's okay. Even on a rainy day, it's still fun.

[4] Right now I'm listening to my brother-in-law's doo-wop group and they are, I must say, dang good. Very 50's.

[5] What was it like being a Mormon during the recent rash of anti-Mormon protests by various gay communities? It was a refreshing change of pace; usually it's the Baptists and vaguely-defined evangelicals picketing our temples.

[6] Politics? Eh. Too depressed about the election results to follow any more news.

[7] Poetry? Eh. Haven't written anything serious in about a year and I don't miss it.

That's what's new. Thanks for stopping by.

Fire Blogging

2008-11-15T18:43:00.000-08:00

Hacienda Woody is surrounded. We live in an area more or less central to three fires. Or one extremely large fire. Depends on who you talk to.

While we make preparations for Woody to perhaps travel to a software conference tomorrow (lot of IFs to consider at the moment), we find ourselves bordered on the north and east by fires in Anaheim Hills, Yorba Linda (both of which started in Corona), and now even Brea to the northwest. Freeways are shut down to the north and east, leaving south as our most logical escape route, should that be necessary.

I post this to hopefully put things in perspective. With all the invective being hurled back and forth by people on either side of the Proposition 8 issue, this is a time to settle down and help people. Our ward and another in our stake are particularly affected by these fires. I would not be surprised to hear that members of our stake have lost their homes by tomorrow morning. It's that bad.

So far the Hacienda is safe. It's been smokey all day long, and for quite awhile all we had coming through our windows was dark orange light. The smell has been intense throughout the day, and I was more than a little nervous about going out long enough to buy groceries earlier this afternoon. Folks heading the wrong direction on the 91 freeway were being taken off the freeway, in many cases exiting via the onramps.

We have our evacuation lists made up and ready in case the fire encroaches this far south. Our elder daughter, who has a healthy dose of her maternal side worry genes, has already packed her backpack. She kind of wishes we'd get in the car already and just drive.

I'm sure we'll be fine for now. If the dreaded Santa Ana winds kick up more tonight all bets are off. In the meantime, please say prayers for all those who have been displaced today.

Activists or Terrorists?

2008-11-14T09:38:00.000-08:00

I have largely avoided any further discussion on Proposition 8 since the election. I have done so for the simple reason that I have no desire to rub the results in the faces of the losers. I wish I could say that of all Prop 8 supporters, but as Obama's elevation to the presidency has demonstrated, there's nothing like a sore winner. I still hear from people who think it's important to smear Sarah Palin as much as possible, which is probably the surest way to keep her in the running for a senate or executive branch run sometime soon.

But I digress. Proposition 8 passed with 52% of the popular vote in California. It's important to note that we only needed 50% plus one vote in order to pass, so 52% in a state as liberal as California is still significant. Since that time, we have watched protest after protest instigated by the losing side; although not, I suspect, completely representative of the 48% who voted against the measure. Surely these protesters represent only a fraction of the voters who were willing to give that coalition the benefit of the doubt.

I find it — unsettling — that they target the very people that they must know will tend not to retaliate. I will not deny that what I am witnessing makes my blood boil. I see it as sacrilege to have them mar the beauty of a temple erected to God that represents peace to all the world. Yet, targets we have become. On some level, targets we have always been.

The protesters, on the other hand, should be careful. Their tactics are beginning to take on certain terrorist characteristics. The mailing of white powder to LDS temples in Los Angeles and Salt Lake City is, in my mind, an act of terrorism. It was meant to inject fear into a peaceful process. It was calculated to create psychological harm and disrupt the lives of people who have only the salvation of their souls at heart. Is this not terrorism? Granted, it's not a car bomb at the temple doors, but neither does it have to be.

Like terrorism, however, the results are never what the terrorists want them to be. Instead of cowering in fear, we stiffen our resolve. If you attack us on our own soil, we hunker down and learn better ways of defending ourselves. So it is with social issues. Rather than making us somehow more "tolerant" towards homosexuals, we find comfort and relief in revealed truth and commit ourselves to remaining obedient to the Gospel.

By their own words the opponents of Proposition 8 have demonstrated that they are willing to do anything — including violence — to gain their point. They have called for intimidation, violence, civil disobedience, and even murder (spoken with extreme hyperbole, granted, but still spoken). Proposition 8 leaders, on the other hand, have called for calm, peace, and even love towards our detractors.

Of course there are exceptions on both sides. There are numerous reasonable voices among the opponents of Proposition 8. We don't hear much from them, however, because the press are dedicated to the propogation of "anti-gay hatred" that they believe to be "prevalent." While you may read of isolated incidents of anti-gay slurs or threats, the vast majority of Proposition 8 supporters are peaceful, loving people who would rather not have to fight anyone, but are willing to work hard to defend their positions.

As history has demonstrated time and time again, terrorists never learn.

Hey, NASA, In Case You're Wondering...

2008-11-14T08:46:00.000-08:00

...why astronaut recruits are dwindling, we gotcher reason right here.

More (Self-Fulfilling) Prognostication

2008-11-09T14:38:00.000-08:00

Someone found the Woundup whilst searching for graphics related to turning 50. I was still doing my birthday essays on the Woundup, but I'd forgotten that I wrote about turning 50 fours years before I actually did. I'd also forgotten that I'd made some predictions about this most recent election that turned out to be quite true:

As I get closer to what I kind of hope represents the mid-point of my life, my understanding of issues has increased, but my tolerance for the political process has decreased. By the time I turn 50, I will patently hate the process. I will understand what must be done, but I'll hate it.

I'll hate it because this pivotal year of my life will be spent listening to carefully groomed individuals crow about how they will make my life better than it was four years ago. Not one of them will forward a truly unique idea, because there are no unique ideas left. Very much like Hollywood. Every new movie you will see four years from now has already been written and you've already seen movies just like them. But you'll probably plink down the gold it requires to see them because this version has much slicker computer graphics.

I'll hate it because not one single candidate will remind us that the government already has far exceeded its constitutionally limited powers and that we need to return to those constitutional limits. Rapidly.

I'll hate it because not one of them will have a common sense approach to getting this country out of debt. For good. They won't promise not to exceed our ability to spend, because they can't. It's pathological. They can't help themselves.

All of it accurate, so far as I can tell. My predictions, then, were:

I will patently hate the process.
Yup. I loathe the process. Or, rather, I loathe what the process has become. It's nothing more than Ultimate Fighter in designer suits, using poisonous words rather than lethal kidney punches. I particularly hated the accelerated pace of the primaries this year. I hope we have finally put to bed the notion that moving a state's primary up several months earlier somehow has any positive effect on the election. California's certainly did not. It also means that we don't have anywhere near enough time to fully vet the field of candidates before whittling them down to the two ultimate standard-bearers. I believe had we been given more time we might have had someone else facing off against Obama last week. Perhaps not, but we'll never know now, will we?
Carefully groomed individuals crowing about making my life better.
It's a sucker bet, really. That's what candidates do. What I left out is the part about warning people that the other guy will try to make you afraid. Fear-mongering — not racism — was the most frequent accusation made during the primaries. And the only person out there who was making a huge deal about one of those candidate's race was the one whose skin tone was different from everyone else's. Just sayin'.
No unique ideas.
Oh, brother. Every idea we heard was really just a re-hash of ideas that have been floated from time to time over the last several decades. The funniest part, though, was when one candidate would begin floating the same ideas as the other guy while trying to make us think they were new. That was hilarious. But unique? No. Not one.
Ignoring constitutional limits.
I really can't blame the candidates we had this year. We haven't been paying any attention to the Constitution for, oh, more than a hundred years now. The closest we got was Reagan who at least campaigned on the idea of reducing government. Whether he was "successful" depends on which parts of the government you happened to work for or need. For instance, if you were a huge fan of welfare, you probably didn't like some of Reagan's initiatives. If, on the other hand, military might was your thing, Reagan was a demi-god. No other President in my memory ever promised or attempted to reduce the fingerprint of the federal government. One might even go so far as to call it the "feral" government nowadays. It is untameable.
No common sense approach to national debt
Need I really expound? We made it possible for people who could not actually afford homes to buy them, and now those people have defaulted on enough loans to sink the country financially. So instead of fixing whatever idiocy allowed that to happen in the first place, we will instead nationalize numerous financial institutions. Were we born this stupid, or did we have to get several math degrees first?

Taken altogether, I hate having been right. The state of modern politics is one of cookie-cutter campaigns, developed by people with Masters degrees in marketing and film-making. We have no truly original political thinkers left in this country, it seems, and we're paying the price with the prospect of yet another failed administration. (Yeah, I know; the guy hasn't even taken office yet. Still, I'm not scoring too badly as a prophet now, am I?)

Check back with me in another four years and see if anything has really changed. If it has, I'd like to bet it isn't for the better.

I hope I'm wrong.

Why We Homeschool - Reason #1

2008-11-06T19:26:00.000-08:00

Michelle Malkin calls it child abuse. I also refer to this as political bigotry. You have to see this to believe it:

What she did to that little girl is reprehensible. Psychological torture of that sort creates scars, and I desperately want to see this so-called "teacher" held fully accountable. The fact that she felt absolutely no compunction about brow-beating her young charges who dared to mention The Opposition is evidenced by her bald-faced lie about being "okay" with kids who supported McCain. If that's "okay," I'd hate to see this woman get upset about something.

We homeschool precisely because if someone is going to brainwash my children, it may was well be us. Intolerant bigots of this sort should (and will) never have any opportunity to fill my childrens' heads with this hogwash. Bad enough I have to let them go to college at some point. But at least I have time to prepare them.

If I were that little girl's parents, I would have the teacher, the principal, and the school board over a legal barrel and looking to have that teacher's credential immediately yanked.

Disgusting.

Curmudgeon's Guide Results

2008-11-05T11:25:00.000-08:00

Let the Woundup go on record as congratulating President-elect Barack Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden. I am hopeful that the election of a black American to the highest office of the land will put to rest the myth that blacks are institutionally prevented from acheiving whatever they choose. I fear it will not, however.

So we lost the Big One. No matter; you can't win them all. We survived Clinton (who, had we been blogging back then, provided us with some wonderful essay material). We will survive Obama. I am less confident that we will ultimately survive the new wave of socialism that seems to have gripped our nation's leadership of late, however. With "spread the wealth" elitists in both the White House and Congress, we are rapidly moving down a path that leads to the sort of policies that remove more and more money from my pocket and give it to people who are unwilling to earn it. It will be the Obama administration's defining legacy, if Obama's campaign speeches are any indicator.

Time for that later, though. Right now, I want to focus on Uncle Woody's performance as a prognosticator with regards to our state ballot initiatives. Candidate-wise, Uncle Woody fared well in this election. We live in a fairly safe conservative part of the country, and our incumbents at both the national level and state level are keeping their jobs. I missed one slot on our City council. So here's a list of our ballot initiatives, how Uncle Woody voted, and how the results seem to be running with 95+% of precincts reporting:

Measure	Uncle Woody	California
1A - Safe, Reliable High-Speed Passenger Train Bond Act.	NO	YES (52.2%)
2 - Standards for Confining Farm Animals. Initiative Statute.	NO	YES (63.2%)
3 - Children’s Hospital Bond Act. Grant Program. Initiative Statute.	YES	YES (54.7%)
4 - Waiting Period and Parental Notification Before Termination of Minor’s Pregnancy. Initiative Constitutional Amendment.	YES*	NO (52.4%)
5 - Nonviolent Drug Offenses. Sentencing, Parole and Rehabilitation. Initiative Statute.	NO	NO (59.8%)
6 - Police and Law Enforcement Funding. Criminal Penalties and Laws. Initiative Statute.	YES	NO (69.5%)
7 - Renewable Energy Generation. Initiative Statute.	NO	NO (64.9%)
8 - Eliminates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry. Initiative Constitutional Amendment.	YES	YES (52%)
9 - Criminal Justice System. Victims’ Rights. Parole. Initiative Constitutional Amendment and Statute.	YES	YES (53.2%)
10 - Alternative Fuel Vehicles and Renewable Energy. Bonds. Initiative Statute.	NO	NO (59.9%)
11 - Redistricting. Initiative Constitutional Amendment and Statute.	NO	YES (50.5%)
12 - Veterans’ Bond Act of 2008.	YES	YES (63.4%)

* Yeah, okay, I know I'd said I would vote against Prop. 4 originally. Here's the story: Monday night I had a discussion with Mrs. Woody specifically regarding this initiative. I was fairly comfortable with my position on all the others, but this one niggled at me. Mrs. Woody and I decided that we would err on the side of caution and vote YES, because we'd rather be notified than not. AFTER we voted, I came across some excellent arguments against Prop. 4 (better than my own, that is), and I realized that I had voted in error and that I should have followed my gut instinct, even if for the wrong reasons. Turns out that Prop 4 would create a legal loophole that would make it possible for abortion providers - who are physicians and therefore court-mandated reporters - to file abuse charges against innocent parents, strictly on the say-so of the child. So I voted wrongly after ignoring my own advice. Let this be a lesson to you Young Conservatives!

Prop 4 aside, I'm not disheartened by these results. I "lost" 5 out of 12 initiatives, although given my Prop 4 story, that should really be 4 out of 12. Of the ones I lost, I'm most bothered by Proposition 2, the humane treatment of animals initiative. I see this as over-regulation and will be a costly one overall. Also, Proposition 11 is still in play. I won't holler too loudly if it passes, but I really don't think it will work as well as its proponents believe it will. I just can't see that we would have 5 Republicans on that commission acting in unison to create fair districts in this state. Too many RINO's to choose from, I'm afraid.

I was pleased to note that both alternative energy initiatives were soundly defeated. Across all counties, too. I guess I wasn't the only one to see the flaws in those initiatives. Speaking of all counties, the only other measure that had all counties voting the same way was Prop 12, granting low-cost loans to veterans. Nicely done.

Mrs. Woody and I of course spent copious amounts of time talking about this election with the Woodyettes. We had to send them to bed before Proposition 8's outcome was fully known, but we were able to send them to bed on a hopeful note. We are, of course, thrilled that Prop 8 appears to have passed. Not only that, but Arizona and Florida also passed similar measures. Traditional families prevail. There is still hope for this nation.

If You Do Nothing Else...

2008-11-03T22:07:00.000-08:00

Proposition 8 Intolerance

2008-11-03T11:58:00.000-08:00

One of the aspects of the so-called "progressive" movement in this country is its continued desire to define itself as "inclusive" or "tolerant." Yet liberal passion for intolerance is its most outstanding defining characteristic. This has been nowhere more evident to me as an observer than in the Yes on 8 vs. No on 8 sign waving campaigns for the past two weekends.

As I described in my previous post, the differences between the two sides could hardly be more obvious. The Yes people that I have observed at local intersections have been unfailingly polite and pleasant as they smile at passing motorists. They often work in family groups, and even the teenagers smile and wave cheerfully.

Contrast this with the No crowd who, apparently, only have time to be passionate about this cause of theirs on the weekends. There's little doubt of their passion for the cause; certainly they do more to get "in the faces" of cars that pass by. But their collective attitude speaks to their utter lack of tolerance for those who support this proposed constitutional amendment.

The No people tend to jump in front of the Yes folks, trying to obscure their signs as much as possible. They tend to yell at passing cars, or provoke drivers who are stopped at the intersection while waiting for the light to change. This last Saturday found one girl waving a California flag in folks' faces to get their attention. No other indication that she was either for or against the Proposition, but her body language put her squarely in the No camp.

The crowning act, though, for the No forces on Saturday was one incident that I observed while out running errands. One young man for the No side decided to walk part way across the intersection on the green light, tear up a Yes on 8 door-hanger that had been passed out that morning, and toss it in the intersection near to the Yes crowd on the opposite corner. He then jumped up and down as if doing a victory dance, pumping his fists at the drivers who sat - bemused or stunned - while witnessing this foolishness.

This must be what tolerance looks like to the progressive left.

To their credit, the Yes crowd merely ignored the infant and kept smiling and waving. I didn't stick around to see if anyone picked up the mess (this is one of the busiest intersections in this part of Orange County, and one must be EXTREMELY careful about stopping in the middle of the street), but it was gone by the time I'd run my errand and came back through. No sign of that particular youngster, either. Probably knocking back a victory beverage at the Carl's Jr. nearby. The flag-waver was still there, though. She had switched to mis-matched stockings (one red and the other a sort of sickly yellow) to make herself even more noticeable.

Tolerant and fashionable.

Please see the latest video from ProtectMarriage.com. The folks working for the Yes campaign are already heeding this timely advice.

Vote YES for Proposition 8 tomorrow.

Please.

Sign Wars

2008-10-30T09:46:00.000-07:00

I guess I shouldn't be surprised, really. I've taken to watching the 11:00 news the last few days, primarily to see what kinds of shenanigans they choose to report. With the rampant stealing of Yes on 8 signs around the area, there has not been one story in the past week about the issue. Instead, they chose to focus on one incident of someone spray-painting the "n" word on an Obama sign, as if this somehow indicated institutional racism among McCain supporters.

What did I expect? Local newsies are just as liberal as the national guys.

Still, the Sign Wars have been fascinating to watch. I've driven by more disappearing signs than I can count now. Despite what I thought was very reasonable counsel from Prop 8 leaders, signs keep appearing on public corners at night. Then, of course, they're gone by morning. But the most fascinating battles have been the sign-wavers that we plant on busy intersections every day.

"Battle" is probably not the correct word, I suppose. These really are "campaigns" designed to flood drivers' minds with Yes on 8 sentiment until the election is over. Our ward has turned out in droves to wave signs on those intersections every afternoon for about the past two weeks now. Our youth in particular are getting into the spirit of this campaign and are just as enthusiastic as their parents as they cheerfully wave their Yes on 8 signs at passing motorists. Bishop mentioned a couple of weeks ago that many people honk and wave, and several even indicate "Number One!" with their middle finger.

Heh.

For all their Hollywood and CTA money, however, the No on 8 forces are nowhere near as organized as the Yes folks. For one thing, when they finally showed up at those same intersections it wasn't until the weekend. They were crowded around the Yes folks trying to out-muscle them with their own homemade signs. My first thought was that they must have had a blog-burst that called them to action. It would fit with their M.O. on other protests. But as I drove by, I couldn't help noticing a few things. Since an observer can't spend copious amounts of time gawping at them without tying up traffic, you only get impressions. But those impressions will stay with me right up to the ballot box next Tuesday.

First of all, the Yes on 8 folks tend to be respectful and polite. They hold their signs up with pleasant looks on their faces, wave them to attract attention, and wave cheerfully back even to the people who communicate with sign language ("Number One!"). They also tend, where possible, to work in family groups. It's quite a sight to see parents and youth working side-by-side on this issue. Younger moms wave their signs while their babies snuggle in their carriers.

The No on 8 folks tended to be college-aged kids. Most of them had multiple piercings and interesting hair. From their hand-painted signs to their grunge/punk clothes, their appearance was closer to that of 60's and 70's era war protestors, except not quite as stoned. Their activities spoke of quite a different attitude than the Yes supporters. They were far more aggressive, tending to shout and cat-call and all but jumping right out in front of motorists in order to attract their attention. The attitude was "in your face" rather than "here's what we believe."

Had I been a painter, I couldn't have come up with a sharper contrast.

As if to underscore the attitude of the No crowd, I happened to stop at a drug store in a shopping center at one of those intersections. As I stood in line to make my purchase, one of the No kids was just finishing his own purchase. Probably needed some caffeine to get him through those exhausting hours. He had the piercings, the hair, the grungy clothes with inappropriate slogans on his shirt. But it was his conversation with the clerk as he was leaving that caught my attention.

"Those Yes on 8 idiots have nothing, man! They wave their little signs and think they're winning, or something, y'know? But they have no idea what they're talking about, dude! They're just a bunch of ignorant losers, man! They're so pathetic!"

Ah, yes. Another informed opinion.

Interestingly, these dedicated opponents of Proposition 8 only showed up over the weekend. By Monday they were nowhere in evidence. No doubt gathering their collective strength for another loosely organized assault this weekend. I'd like to think they're at home, writing term papers on how voting for Sarah Palin will drive a stake through the heart of civilization as we know it, or whatever their liberal Poli-Sci instructors are assigning them these days.

This has been an interesting campaign, indeed.

Redistributing Obama

2008-10-27T10:56:00.000-07:00

Those who support Obama are having severe palpitations at the moment with regards to this YouTube video that's been making the rounds on the blogs:

A transcription of the meatier quotes is provided by Stop the ACLU:

If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court. I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed people, so that now I would have the right to vote. I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order as long as I could pay for it I’d be o.k. But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf, and that hasn’t shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendancy to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that.

[Emphasis by Stop the ACLU]

I provide the video for one primary reason. It's one thing to read the words, and another altogether to hear them. In the transcript we read statements that could easily be written off as "offhand" remarks or something that was "taken out of context." But listening to the inflections in a speaker's voice can communicate volumes about what that person is saying. Similar to the way body language is vital in communication, vocal inflection indicates the degree to which a person has studied or thought about the topic at hand.

In this audio, which contains far fewer of Obama's omnipresent "ums," we hear a man who has studied, accepted, and now evangelizes the basis for socialist policy in a democratic society. One analysis of this event that I read tried to make the case that Obama actually was channeling more of Martin Luther King's thoughts than anything else, and was in fact supporting the conservative cause rather than the liberal. This is hogwash. "Redistribution of wealth" is one of the basic tenets of socialism, and was defined by Karl Marx himself as one of the steps towards his ultimate "classless society" of communism.

Joe Biden was well and truly embarrassed to find himself facing questions related to Obama's latent Marxism in a recent interview. For all his hemming and hawing, he never adequately answered the question of Obama's statement of "spreading the wealth around." Obama himself has not been able to quell the accusations of socialism that we on the right find his comments to represent. Nuggets like this 2001 interview audio only serve to solidify Obama's credentials as a nearly card-carrying socialist.

(I did read the link from Drudge where Obama was quoted as saying he was "bored" by the suburbs. Big hairy deal. This came on the heels of his selection as President of the Harvard Law Review and only showed his disdain for all things middle-America. Like this is news.)

Still, two key statements from this audio which should give any American pause for thought:

1. The idea that the Constitution is a flawed document. He uses the concept of "negative liberties," meaning that it places limitations on the powers of both the federal government and the states. It doesn't, he says, tell them what they must do (my emphasis) to help those in this country who may have become "dispossessed." Well, Mr. Former President of the Harvard Law Review, you may have missed those classes that discussed the idea that these "negative liberties" were not only deliberate, but necessary. These are part of the checks and balances that continue to give people like Barack Obama a voice in how this country is run. We may frequently disagree with those who hold the power at any given time, but there is no better model for government anywhere on the planet today. As broken as we feel things may be, there's always someplace far worse off than we are. Canada would be Exhibit A.

2. The idea that the Supreme Court (under Warren) did not go far enough in the redistribution of wealth. Hey, if Obama wants to redistribute his own wealth, that's his business. It may surprise Obama to know that many conservatives, myself included, frequently redistribute our wealth in numerous ways. What we don't want, and will not accept, is having the federal government dictate to us just how that wealth is to be redistributed. I already give far more money to the government than they either need or deserve. That they have never figured out how to spend it intelligently is a direct reflection of the greed, prejudices, and woodshed politicking of our Congress and President. (I leave the Supreme Court out of this indictment because, except when they're legislating from the bench, their primary budget outlays deal with keeping a sufficient supply of black robes on hand. Thank goodness they don't use white powdered wigs.)

I have my reasons for voting for John McCain in this election. Many of them are in this post.

The Real Magic of 'Joe the Plumber'

2008-10-20T10:19:00.000-07:00

Joe Wurzelbacher kinda wishes the media would go away. Or, at least, those members of the media who keep trying to trip him up as the purported savior of the McCain campaign. When asked on Huckabee's Fox News show about all the attention he's gotten, he said:

"It actually upsets me[...] I am a plumber, and just a plumber, and here Barack Obama or John McCain, I mean these guys are going to deal with some serious issues coming up shortly. The media's worried about whether I paid my taxes, they're worried about any number of silly things that have nothing to do with America. They really don't. I asked a question. When you can't ask a question to your leaders anymore, that gets scary. That bothers me."

There it is, in a nutshell. "Joe the Plumber" becomes an overnight sensation — a man whose name is had for good and evil across the nation — simply because he asked a question.

He has more guts than I've ever had. But then, he was literally in the right place at the right time. I am not a small business owner myself, but I've often thought about becoming one. Every time I do, though, I end up in the same place. The government would likely tax and regulate the heart and soul out of whatever enterprise I'd like to try, so why bother?

Joe, as a plumber, has harbored dreams of starting his own business, having a few guys work for him, and trying to eke a better living for his family. Absolutely nothing wrong with that. Has he made a few errors in his life? Certainly. Has a few tax liens to deal with. I've had one or two in my life, too. Wreak havoc with one's credit, they do. But that never meant that I couldn't take care of those liens, keep my nose clean for a few years, and ultimately have good if not admirable credit once again. No reason that I can think of why Joe shouldn't have that same opportunity.

I seriously doubt whether we'd even be having this conversation had he asked this question of McCain rather than Obama. For one thing, McCain's tax proposals would likely be more friendly to Joe's American Dream than would Obama's. Also, McCain would never have responded as Obama did:

"It's not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody that is behind you, that they have a chance for success, too. I think that when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."

Which is precisely why the political left is so hacked off right now. Obama fell into a trap of his own making. He took a question from Mr. Average American, gave his gut-level response to that question, and immediately showed his socialist stripes. That has to be embarrassing to Democrats who wish to paint the party as being only slightly left of center. Spreading the wealth around is about as far left as you can go without actually being branded a communist (small or capital 'C').

Make no mistake: Obama's response, NOT Joe Wurzelbacher's question, was a game-changer. The left can excoriate 'Joe the Plumber' all they want. They can dig as deep as they like and get as nasty as they ever have about Joe's personal life and his alleged "connections" with McCain or his campaign. At the end of the day, however, they still have Obama's stated desire to "spread the wealth around" hanging over The Anointed One's head. It just doesn't sound or look good. And all the nastiness they dish out on Wurzelbacher will only come back to them, returned with interest.

If Obama loses in November, it will not be 'Joe the Plumber' that we hoist onto a pedestal and lavish with praise. It will be Obama's "spread the wealth around" petard that gets that singular honor. If he wins, it will be because Americans were too blind to see that petard for what it was: the acceptance of socialism as an American political standard.

Intolerance Boiling Over

2008-10-15T02:18:00.000-07:00

In an incident that won't garner much attention outside a local TV station, a Prop 8 supporter was attacked while passing out lawn signs in front of a church in Modesto. More detail about the attack (alleged or otherwise) is found in a Christian Newswire release picked up by the folks at ProtectMarriage.com.

The assailant grabbed about 75 signs and yelled at [Jose] Nunez accusingly, "What do you have against gays!" Although Nunez replied that he had nothing against gays, he was attacked anyway. The assailant punched Nunez in the left eye and ran off with the signs.

Nunez, his eye dripping with blood, walked into a building on church grounds where a fellow parishioner called 911. Police and paramedics responded to the scene.

The attack is a chilling reminder of the "tolerance" levels of the extreme left on certain issues. Emotions are running high, and along with the severe fire weather out here, it isn't surprising that some people just can't seem to find any better way to express their frustrations.

As if to underscore how widely this issue cuts across social strata in this state:

Ironically, Nunez, a native of Mexico, became an American citizen two months ago and plans to vote for the first time in November. Nunez, who is recovering and in good spirits, said the attack only strengthens his resolve to help ensure that Prop. 8 passes.

"The other side wants to intimidate us, but we can't stop standing up for traditional marriage. I may be bloody and bruised, but I'm not giving up. Protecting traditional marriage is just too important for our kids," said Nunez, the father of three children, ages 9, 5, and 3. "I don't want my kids taught in public school that same sex-marriage is the same as traditional marriage," Nunez added.

So we have a member of a minority who willfully established himself as a full citizen of this "land of the free" a mere two months ago, already having to fight for his freedoms against a special interest group who clearly has no tolerance for the beliefs of others.

The "No on Prop 8" campaign has rightly condemned any violence and I'm willing to bet that the clown who did this was not serving in any official capacity with the campaign. But it is, I think, a reminder to those of us who may feel complacent that we are up against explosive sentiments on the other side of the argument.

We need to be careful out there.

An Open Letter - UPDATED

2008-10-13T10:35:00.000-07:00

Scroll down for updates

Dear Sign-Stealer,

You know who you are. You're against something that numerous other people support. This galls you. I understand that. It's the nature of politics that people will frequently support something with which we disagree, and there is no federal, state, or local statute that demands that we like it. Can't ever legislate how we feel about things, no matter how loudly Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton may argue otherwise.

But I gotta tell you, Sign-Stealer: this business of yanking down and removing political signs that bother you is not helping your cause. If I were to catch one of my young daughters doing this with her sister, I would accuse her of throwing a temper tantrum and give her a time-out until she calms down and apologizes. Such things carry consequences, you know, and ought not to be tolerated.

I'm talking specifically about those signs in support of Proposition 8, but that really doesn't matter. You and people like you have done this with numerous other campaigns. You have done everything from spray-painting obscenities on signs or campaign headquarter windows, to keying cars that dare to sport bumper stickers that do not have your explicit approval. Expensive cars, I might add. Cars that will require new paint jobs (or worse, in some cases), and very likely cause the insurance rates of the victims to go up. Not to mention the cost of new tires to replace the ones you slashed.

The issues may be national or local. The candidates may be Democrat or Republican (or worse). It matters not. Dirty tricks like this are inexcusable and unacceptable.

Of course you don't care about such things. It's a "free country," right? You have a perfect right to express your political opinion in any way that gets the job done. Hey, all you did was steal a few signs. They annoyed you and they had to come down. And even if it wasn't you, personally, who did those things, you sure appreciate what they did. I mean, that stuff takes courage, you know?

Unfortunately, for all your careful thought and planning, the message folks are getting probably isn't quite the message you intended. This is what most of us think about what you're doing:

Hi. I'm a sign-stealer. Here's why I took them:

1. I'm right and you're wrong. I don't care how many of you support Prop 8. You're all just a bunch of lemmings following each other off of a cliff. I'm saving you from yourselves.

2. I'm also ignorant. All I know is that Prop 8 is bad, but please don't ask me to tell you why. You wouldn't listen. Anyway, it's too complicated to talk about, so I'll just steal the signs. That will tell you all you need to know.

3. I have no respect for property. Stealing signs isn't my day-job, after all. While I'm flipping burgers at McBurger Jr., I'm probably wolfing down fries without telling anyone. Hey, we give free refills to people who pay, so why shouldn't I have a drink now and then? Doesn't hurt anyone else, right?

4. I have the emotional maturity of a four-year old. A really disturbed four-year old. I'm the kid who always took the ball and bat and went home if I wasn't winning, even if it wasn't exactly my ball and bat.

5. I am not a Republican or a Democrat. I'm an anarchist. I have Che posters on my wall in the apartment I rent downtown with 27 other stoners. I see no reason why I should have to work for a living, but The Man wants money if I want a place to live. It bites, though, because I'd rather be out there impressing chicks with my skateboard tricks. Life is so unfair.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but I think it captures the essence of how we perceive people like you.

Of course, all this may be a tad harsh of me; I don't really know you, after all. In fact, for all I know you may even be a college student. You may actually believe that this is what counts as "political discourse" in this nation. You may somehow have convinced yourself that by stealing these signs (or defacing property, or showing us your command of sign language by using your middle finger) you will have altered the campaign in your favor.

If so, that makes you a bigger fool than the one I described above.

UPDATE: Mrs. Woody related this story to me this morning. Our Woodyettes take piano lessons from a very sweet young mom in our ward. She has younger kids, and one of them goes to pre-school every day. She generally gets back from dropping this child off just a few moments before Mrs. Woody arrives for the lesson. While chatting with her, she related to Mrs. Woody that she had just had a nasty experience with a lady who stopped to yell at her for putting a Prop 8 sign up on one of those corners that already has approximately 32 signs per square foot. Our piano teacher's habit lately has been to put the Prop 8 signs up early in the morning, then take them down at night, for obvious reasons. Anyway, while stopping to put up the sign this morning some lady pulled over for the express purpose of swearing at her with regards to Prop 8.

Mrs. Woody, who had just come that way, assured her that when she drove by there was no Prop 8 sign in evidence. Obvious (unsubstantiated yet inescapable) conclusion: the yeller had waited until our piano teacher friend had left, then returned and yanked the sign.

The tolerance is mounting.