Ditch the Bucket, Grab A Lifejacket

The Good Ship Lolly-Bron is a sinkin in Miami.

The Heat are only 9-8, Wade has sucked all year, non-hype machine roll players like Udonis Haslem and Mike Miller are hurt, Juwan Howard got himself into a fight against the horrible Wizards and LeBron is bumping into the coach all over the place while his crew let it be known how unhappy Bron-Bron is with Coach Spolestra.

Right, like the Coach had anything to do with this debacle. This abortion was orchestrated by Wade, approved by LeBron and date raped by Chris Bosh. Everyone seemed to think that the Heat would be able to outscore everybody and that their nonexistent inside game and defense wouldn't be an issue. Actually, calling any defense that features Joel Anthony in the middle is worse than nonexistent. It's actually worse than just playing with only four guys.

While everyone saw the frontline as being junior college level, nobody saw Dwayne Wade turning into a matador. He's been getting torched all year by scrubs. The only way you can cover up Joel Anthony is to keep guys from getting to the paint. So far, the Miami paint has been more crowded than the Gold Club on two-for-one night. Easier to score in too.

All of this might not be a problem except that Wade and LeBron can't play together. Everybody thinks that trading Bosh is the way to go to get things back on track but that doesn't help the Wade/Bron problem. What they need to do is see if they can turn Wade into an Anderson Varejo type player. Hell, Cleveland might even take Wade for Varejo and Williams. Wouldn't that be ironic.

Miami is going to have to do something quick because LeBron's tit bump of the Coach was just a shot across the bow of the organization. The days of the Do Anything for the Team/Organization LeBron are gone. He's gone full heel, sacrificed his reputation and historical legacy. He's not interested in being a team player. If he's going to not be winning a championship (or seven) then he's going to want to be a stat machine and own that team. Coach Spo was just the first guy to be thrown overboard the Good Ship. Next comes Wade, blaming injuries, the media and finally Riley.

Should be good times for the rest of us, especially if you live in Los Angeles, Boston or Orlando.

More Fake Outrage

Liberals are in a mighty uproar these days about the WikiLeaks document dump releasing memos that are embarrassing to Obama and his minions.

The response has been nothing short of ridiculous as many Congressmen have called for criminal charges to be brought against the website or even to have them be labeled a "Terrorist Organization". Clearly we've lost sight of what terrorism is. Good to know that the Saudi's want us to bomb Iran and that the Communist Chinese are terrified of Pelosi's economic plan. Now I agree with the Saudi royal family and the Red China Politburo. Only in Obama's America. I'm officially in a cold sweat.

One guy who isn't sweating the release is free swinging Italian leader Silvio Burlesconi. All the release did was alert the world that the 70 year old media billionaire likes to hire the upper crust of hookers to throw lavish sex parties glorifying himself. I think the Italian Constitution institutes you King for Life if the world collectively recognizes you as orgy throwing king of industry.

Anyway, liberals have no reason to be upset about this as they are the ones who paved the road for this. We all remember the Pentagon Papers, yes? That was certainly an intel leak of larger proportions. The leaks about Gitmo, CIA black cites or anything against Bush? Yes we all remember those. Attacks organized by the left, leaking sensitive intel for the sole purpose of hurting Republicans. Now you want to cry foul because your getting bit by your own snake? Tough. You made this bed, now you can lie in it.

Just make sure Burlesconi isn't around.

Peace, Love and Holy Sh*t!

Long time hippie legend and one time Dylan love receptacle Joan Baez has made her way into the news again.

It had been a while since I had heard anything from the former Blowin in the Winder and I had assumed she had mosied on up to heaven to check the environmental protection reports in Paradise. Apparently, she's still here on our glorious blue marble trying her best to get me to do a spit take on my keyboard at work.

It seems as if Mrs. Baez has spent the time since her 60's heyday and the present whipping together a masterful, wall-less treehouse, 20 plus feet above the ground somewhere on her property. Why wall-less you would ask? So she can sleep with "real birds" of course.

While I can appreciate the allure of sleeping with nature sounds (I myself enjoy a soothing wave machine) I must question the architectural and psychological decision to build something that high off the ground without walls, if it was to be slept in. Nevertheless, I'm not rich, have never done acid and don't much give a crap about communing with nature so perhaps I'm not in the right to judge how a person chooses to show their love of the great outdoors.

Sadly, nature herself chose not to reciprocate that love today.

It seems that Mrs. Baez was up in her Walden-esque hideaway, attempting to soak in the great outdoors when she somehow managed to fall from her perch where only the ground, as cold and as hard as only a callous lover can be, greeted her with a thud, causing minor injuries.

Thankfully, she seems to have made it out without any major pain. Not a bad feat for a 69 year old whose ridden some hard miles. The fact that she didn't hurt herself also takes a story from potentially tragic to absolutely hysterical. You would think that a person so committed to the environment might generate a little good will from Mother Earth. Those big ravens from Dumbo should've been around to catch her on the descent. Maybe the grass could've grown a bit plusher. Maybe the Irony Gods just wouldn't allow it.

Sadly, I'm sure the tumultuous fall gathered as much notice by the Earth as a duck feather landing on an elephant. Let not there be a lesson lost however. All you young hippies in California should take notice at this possible calamity. You can commune with squirrels as easy as you can birds. Lets build those tree forts a little closer to the ground next time or were going to have send the Agriculture Departments Rural Development squad out there to write you people up.

The Geek Shall Inherit the Earth

I hope when the baseball takes its place next to boxing and horse racing as historical national pastimes that whoever writes the obituary mentions how sabermetrics and moneyball helped speed the process along.

Felix Hernandez won the AL Cy Young Award today despite have -3 wins for a terrible Mariners team. Stat geeks crowed with pride about how the most useless of stats, wins, was finally overlooked in favor of their geek ball stats, such as xwins. They claimed that such a thing would never have happened in the 80's as the voters focused on wins and meaningful games pitched.

Before I trash sabermetrics in general, let me take on the idea of King Felix's win. He absolutely deserved it and everyone, everyone, knows it. The infuriating part is that you don't need sabermetrics to know it. All of the conventional stats show he was dominant and his run support explained the wins. And, should that fail, you could trust your own lying eyes, which made it plain as day that Felix dominated every time out while CC Sabathia was lucky to get his fat ass through 6 innings most nights and that David Price was extremely hittable. If the writers back in the 80's wouldn't have noticed that then that's a condemnation of them and their stupidity and laziness. Don't try and use the shortcoming of your journalistic forefathers to justify your love of useless statistics.

This is the basic problem with these geeks though, they need a number to tell them what anybody who knows the sport can see with their own eyes. Sometimes the numbers can also be used to try and convince themselves that what they see isn't what they see. Take this years Yankees. Once again, the stat heads like to use tons of pie charts and Venn diagrams to prove that Jeter isn't a very good defensive shortstop. Anybody who saw him moving around like a chilled corpse could've told you that. There are a number of stats that show how badly Jorge Posada is defensively and is now falling apart offensively as well. We all know that anyway since when Francisco Cervelli was behind the plate, teams magically didn't steal every base in sight and AJ Burnett was even able to locate the plate from time to time. What is A-Rod's VORP (Value Over Replacement Player)? Since the replacement player is Roberto Pena, I'm gonna say "a shitload". Want examples of advanced stats deluding the mind? Look no further than Nick Johnson and Javy Vassquez. Cashman was enamored with the idea of putting Johnsons ridiculously high OBP. Which would've been fine except everybody on earth knew that his one year of relative health was a fluke and that he'd spend 100 games on the DL. And he did. Javy Vasquez had himself a comeback of sorts by pitching in the pitcher friendly NL in the super crappy NL East. All the numbers looked like he could be a decent #3 or 4 and at least chew up innings. Luckily, the Yanks already had Javy for a few years and saw first hand that he was a mental midget and couldn't handle the pressure of playing in NY. Surely this first hand experience would deter them from such a stupid move. Nope, they loved the numbers and signed him anyway and history repeated itself. He couldn't even get any playoff innings. I guess there isn't a stat yet for being a mental case.

Basically, only two kinds of people need sabermetrics. The first one is people who don't really follow the sport, haven't played it, but are for some reason (fantasy league, journalist) need to find a way to develop an opinion. Fine, let the babies have their bottle. The second type of person is the worst though. These are the people, mostly in the media, who have been watching the sport for years, know the history, played it at some point in their life and are very familiar with every aspect of the game. These people use sabermetrics for one of two reasons. The first reason is that they are out of things to write/talk about and they use these goofy stats to try and stay relevant. Bush league. The second reason is that they're cowards. For whatever reason, they are so insecure about developing, expressing and defending an opinion about a player/team based solely on what their very capable eyes and traditional stats tell them, that have to try and invent all these convoluted stats to lend an aura of legitimacy to their opinions. They can bank on the fact that if they are in some kind of debate and start referencing VORP, PECOTA, PW/BFW or UZR, that whoever they are talking to will probably concede the point since the don't have their formula sheet and abacus handy.

The whole thing is a cop out. I know Sergio Mitre sucks because he sucks every time I turn the game on. I know A-Rod is better than Roberto Pena because he's clearly better every time I turn the game on. They only way these stats might be helpful is if you're trying to differentiate between two guys that suck. Comparing John Buck with Ronny Paulino or something like that. Is all this math really worth it for that? if that decision is vital to a team, they aren't making the playoffs anyway. It's time for all you stat geeks to grow up, grow a pair and stop trying to take the easy way out when it comes to forming an opinion. Do the hard work yourself and watch the games or don't get involved in the process at all. If people like you get any more sway, we won't even need to play the games anymore, we can just simulate them through a supercomputer in Bristol. That'll be exciting.

Focus On Next Year

It's just about time for us to initiate the mercy rule, call this game and get ready for camp next year because Al Qaeda has officially clinched this one.

The Mighty Obama Justice Department finally got a chance to flex it's muscles in court and prove once and for all that civilian trials of terrorists would ensure a satisfying justice for the American people. All summer during the KSM trial/tribunal debate we heard from Obama and his lackey Eric Holder how trials for terrorists were slam dunk affairs, Obama even opined that KSM would be executed. They call the idea of military tribunals unAmerican and provocative. Clearly the good people in Justice have been working hard on these cases since they haven't been prosecuting any illegal immigration or voting suppression cases. What could possibly go wrong when the might of the American legal system sets out to get one crummy terrorist the chair or life in prison?

Well, if your Ahmed Ghailani, you can get yourself acquitted of over 280 counts of murder and murder conspiracy and only get convicted of one count of non-murderous conspiracy. Sentence? 20 to life. Who are we kidding. This guy is going to be a non-violent offender in the American penal system. He's not serving life and we'll be lucky if he stays in the hole for 20. He'll probably get 10 years in the clink, 10 on probation/work release.

I'm sure Obama and Holder can somehow explain to the families of the 224 people killed in the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania why this terrorist sociopath has a good chance of breathing free air while he still has meaningful life to live (he's only 36). Maybe they can explain how getting embarrassed by this guy improves our national image to the world community.

Maybe after they get done consoling the shocked and devastated families why the guy who helped plan and execute a plot to blow their family to pieces is not a footnote to history they can start explaining why they themselves are to blame for this outcome. After all, the only reason this guy gets the golden ticket is because the judge disallowed some witnesses because they were held in facilities where waterboarding took place. You remember waterboarding, the non-torture torture? The tactic that is so harsh that Christopher Hitchens asked to have it done to him a second time because he was embarrassed by his poor showing the first time he was waterboarded while researching a story? Yeah, that's the reason this guy is free. Liberals tried so hard to get Bush arrested for war crimes that they made up this idea that waterboarding is torture just to undermine him, now that same rationale is going to be used to free or reduce the punishment for Al Qaeda members.

Should any of you liberals still try and remove your guilt in this matter by still holding on to the idea that waterboarding is torture, just remember ol Chris Hitchens asking for a second go around. I'm pretty sure if someone ripped out his fingernail, raped him or threw acid in his wife's face, he wouldn't ask for a second go around to try and restore some of his manly image. You don't ask for mulligans in torture, ever. Maybe then you can properly contemplate the disastrous consequences of your actions.

Blight of the Irish

After a short period of false hope, it turns out the Greeks were lying, the Irish were about to start lying and Portugal and Spain and trying to figure out what lie they can tell in the coming months.

This is of course in reference to the collapse of the European Union, the Euro and the restoration of bailout fever.

It seems as if the Irish have managed to bankrupt their country by buying up tons of troubled banks when they had no money. Turns out after you buy bad banks, they remain bad banks. This was good news for the Greeks who had to admit (for the second or third time now) that their debt projections are massively flawed and that they are in fact, even more in debt than was originally known or planned for. The Greeks did a nice job of sneaking their own incompetent accounting announcement in behind the Irish admission that they were in it up to their necks. Took some of the heat off. This was not so good news for Portugal and Spain, who now have to flip a coin to see who goes bankrupt next.

A reasonable person would see these developments as proof that the collective bailout model that the EU has been trying to force everyone into isn't a feasible course of action to take. Germany has recognized this and rather than throw all their money into a deep, dark pit, they have tried to force the deadbeat EU members to actually improve their budgets or get cut off from German money. Why should the Germans be punished for keeping a sound house, after all.

This predictably has enraged other EU nations who have accused the Germans of being selfish and focused only on saving their own economy. Gee, why would the German chancellor be more interested in saving Germans that Greeks, Irish or Spanish? Science may one day crack that mystery.

What this scenario does is once again put on display the problem with social welfare programs, which is what the EU is, no doubt about it. In any welfare arrangement you have two parties, the guys with the money and the guys without the money. The idea being that if the guy with the money helps out the guy without, eventually the guy without money will be able to get the ball rolling on some kind of path to independence. This is a lovely fairy tale but a fairy tale nonetheless because the hoped for transition is impossible the way these programs, the EU included, are constructed.

To get the welfare money, the guy without (in this case Greece or Ireland) must simply promise to alter a behavior that has led to their demise. The problem is that there is never any enforcement mechanism that is actually enforced. Sure, the EU had debt limits that were supposed to be adhered to but the Greeks lied to the EU, cooked the books and went straight into destitution. Were they punished? Nope, they were given a big stack of money and forced to make more worthless promises, which we now know were more lies. This is a good deal for the guy without money. He only has to promise to change, not actually change and he still gets all the money he was promised even in the face of flat out criminal behavior. Their is no incentive for the guy with no money to change the scenario and every reason for him to fight to maintain the status quo.

And what of the guy with money, in this case Germany (or France, or the Netherlands, etc.)? First of all, they never really have as much money as they say, just a fact of life that money flows out faster than you think and that government projections are notoriously rosy. The big problem is that from their end, welfare money isn't just wasted, it's actually becomes an exponential negative investment. In the simplest terms possible, what Germany has been doing is buying poverty. Wise investors like to buy assets that will increase in value over time. Property, cars, art, gold, stocks, etc. are all bought with the idea that when you want to sell them, they will be worth more than when you bought them. The difference between the price you paid and the price you sell is profit. Simple. If prices deflate for some reason and you can only sell for less than you paid, you either have to keep the asset or take a loss. Again, simple. So what is Germany buying in bailing out the Greeks and probably Irish? Just poverty. The best case scenario results in these countries becoming self sufficient. Even in that case, Germany will never get paid back the money they loaned. No country ever does. This makes the best case scenario a total loss for Germany.

Far more likely (and what is actually happening) is that the guy with money has to take an accelerated loss. Since the guy with no money isn't trying to become self sufficient (why should he when you pay for everything?) the guy with money's obligation to that country only increases because they have pledged financial support until the recipient becomes self sufficient. This never happens. What happens is that the country lending the money simply goes broke, then joins with the original country looking for a bailout of their own. You paying attention France? After all, if Germany goes broke trying to help Greece, don't they deserve bailouts more than anyone? The cycle never ends. Making matters worse is that no matter how many bailouts there are, there still isn't any tangible assets to be had. The guy who buys cars, stocks, etc. always has the option of keeping his assets and waiting for a brighter day. This isn't so bad, even if you can't sell them at least you have some houses or a couple Lambo's in the garage. What does Germany have to hold onto for a better day? Greek poverty? Given the rules in place, that's an investment that will never see a brighter day. Germany would be better of burning Euro's for heat than investing in bailouts. At least you would gain the warmth and then end the transaction rather than adopt a ward of the State that does nothing but ungratefully devour money.

What the EU is learning, far to slowly, is that any situation where the poor bleed the rich for nothing in return only ends with everybody being poor. It's like having a massive tapeworm in your stomach. Even if you want to help the tapeworm, have no grudge against the tapeworm and are willing to try and eat enough for both of you, eventually that tapeworm will strip you of the resources you need to survive leaving both of you helpless or dead. The only way this scenario can be corrected is to either get something tangible for the money you invest; or to simply disengage yourself from the process altogether. Germany is trying to institute option A by forcing the Greeks, etc. to stiffer rules for bailout money. If the rest of the EU balks to loudly at the one country with the money to help them, I suspect Germany will move to option B and close the bank doors. Germans will be fine but all the European tapeworms will be in a serious bind.

Miami Lukewarm's

Nine games into the NBA season and it's clear that the Miami Heat's recording breaking, seven title run is going to be a tough task. Breakdown!

Point Guard - Carlos Arroyo would be bad as your sixth/seventh man but if he's starting, I don't think you can win a title. After all Wade, Bron and Bosh need somebody to flow the offense. Otherwise it's way out of sync and hard for more than one guy to get involved. It looks like an international game when the US team never practiced together before the tournament started. In tonight's game, Bron goes off and D-Wade disappears.

Center - Joel Anthony. I hadn't heard of him until Miami signed him. He can't be playing meaningful minutes on any serious team. Sucks on offence, soft as Jell-O on defense. Serves no purpose other than to eat up space.

Chris Bosh - Had a pretty decent night tonight on offense but was awful on defense. You might be able to get away with this on certain teams (Nowitzki's Mav's, Stoudamire's Suns) but not when Joel Anthony is at C. This leaves the frontcourt nearly unguarded and completely outmanned on the glass. LeBron can be a lock down defender but he can't guard the whole baseline, especially when Arroyo is getting torched by opposing PG's off the dribble. Easy baskets abound. Bosh needs to do more than 15 and 7 to justify his matador D.

Chemistry - As of right now, LeBron and Wade can't play well together, especially without a real PG directing traffic. They can only really make shot opportunities for themselves, so when they try and get in the game, it has to come at the expense of the other. When one of them goes out, the team play gets far crisper. They should do line shifts like a hockey team.

Grit - Nobody on this team has any toughness. Maybe Udonis but he's a 6-7 PF who doesn't scare anybody. James, Wade and Bosh all lack any kind of rough edge. When you hear LeBron talking about how they need to be chippy, that's the sign that he can't do it. You never heard Laimbeer, Rambis, McHale or KG talking about the need to be "a little chippy" they just clotheslined people. I'm not sure other elite teams are afraid of or respect Miami at all right now.

Coaching - I didn't understand why Cleveland ran a slow offense when they had LeBron and I really don't get why Miami runs a slow O either. When you have skill guys like Wade and James who work best in open spaces and a guy like Bosh who only works at all in an up tempo game where he can focus on offense and not play so much half court D, you have to push it up the court every possession. Miami put themselves in this hole by signing human statute Ilgauskas, marginal Haslem, a washed up Eddie House and a PG who can't start or run the break. So far the result has been 2 losses to Boston where they trailed by 20.

I'm not sure what Miami can do to solve these problems. I don't think there's any way they can admit defeat and trade Bosh for size and rebounding and there isn't a pass oriented PG out there who can play any D. The only guards out there are Allen Iverson types who choke the life out of the ball, not what Miami needs. The Heat are still going to have a really good regular season record because James and Wade will feast on the plethora of awful teams in the NBA but come playoff time they won't be able hide these deficiencies, especially the horrendous D. Boston isn't exactly an offensive juggernaut and they dropped 112 on them tonight. On the road. Yikes. Miami reminds me of the Seattle Mariners in the late 90's. Good enough to win 90-100 games because they feasted on bad teams in the west but they always got trounded by the Yankees or Red Sox because they weren't dominant in any one area. Unless Wade or James really changes their game and become a magic-esque point guard/forward, I don't see how they get into the finals. They'll be like Orlando last year, sweep the hapless Atlanta Hawks then get outclassed by Boston.

FUN FACTS! - Here are some fun stat lines from tonights game(amazing it was even close):

Joel Anthony - 8 min, 0 pts., 0 reb., 0 ast., 1 pf. This guy was the starting C.

Carlos Arroyo - 10 min., 4 pts., 0 everything else. That includes assists. This guy started at PG.

D-Wade - 40 min.(!), 8 pts., 1 reb., 3 asts. James went off, so he couldn't.

Haslem - 33 min., 21 pts., 10 reb. Udonis can't be counted on to play 33 min at C. He's 6-8. KG, Dwight Howard, Big Baby will eat him up.

Z - 19 minutes, 6 pts., 6 rebs. There isn't a stat to quantify horrible D but if Z is in for 19 minutes and only giving you 6 & 6, you're screwed.

Eddie House - 13 pts., 0 asts. No assists for either PG. Nice. Rondo had 16.

Mario Chalmers - The supposed next Rondo played 5 min and racked up 1 whole rebound.

Brilliant

Only the New York Times could really be this dense.

They've put out a story detailing test scores compared along racial lines showing that only 12% of black boys in 4th & 8th grade could read compared to 38% & 44% for whites.

More troubling to the Times was the fact that income didn't play a large factor in the scores as poor white boys scored as well as the wealthiest black boys. The Times is then forced to come to:

SHOCKING CONCLUSION #1 - Cultural factors such as parenting tactics play a far larger role in determining academic success than economic factors do.

What a shock! You mean if parents don't care about school or academic success then their kids won't either? Who could've guessed that? Oh yeah, everybody who isn't an NEA member.

Aside from the fact that the NY Times seems blindsided about the importance of home life, they also completely miss the most relevant part of the story.

Only 44% of 8th grade whites can read and that's the high water mark for comparison? 44%! That's absolutely absurd! Yes there's a cultural divide between white and black kids in how they respond to education but having only 44% of 8th graders being able to read is despicable even if was 44% of the entire population.

What the Times fails to note is that the entire education system (Big Education) is failing everybody. Comparing the horrible scores of blacks to the horrible scores of whites is like comparing deer shit to bear shit. Sure, one's more impressive but they're both shit. Thankfully the Times has zeroed in on the biggest factor, parenting. Kids who do poorly in school generally have parents who don't care if they do well or not. Combine that with Union driven education policies designed to maintain the status quo, rampant waste of money and you've got the recipe for disaster.

All isn't bleak though, if a left-wing rag like the NY Times can look past their preconceived economic biases and see the failings of the family in education, then anything is possible.

Poppers For Everyone!

Now that the election is over we can all finally get back to our ridiculous debate over gay marriage.

Should it be legal, not, the same in every state or not, etc., etc.

It's all such a cluster F of hysteria that nobody can see the simplest answer of them all.

Should the government issue marriage licenses to gay couples? Of course not. They shouldn't be issued to any couples, gay or straight.

After all, marriage existed before government, it can manage just fine without it. Marriage was first a religious/societal institution that was mainly used to try and add some order and stability to society. It was a preexisting institution before the government latched onto it.

And why would the government latch onto marriage as it has and tried to regulate it?

REASON ONE: MONEY!
This is really a simple reason. Any activity that people get engaged in the government will try and regulate it for profit. When I got married the license cost $20. I'm sure some states are more, some less but no matter how you look at it, all those $20 licenses generate tons of money for the State. As does filing for divorce, divorce proceedings, premarriage blood tests, etc.

REASON TWO: PAPERWORK AND CONTROL
Marriage certificates are a great one stop shop for governmental information. It is the first piece in a long and convoluted paper trail that the government can use to keep track of what your up too. After all, the marriage license has your legal names and you need some sort of government issued ID to get one. Getting a marriage license funnels you into different tax categories, it puts a marker on you in every public database, it is the stepping stone for inheritance laws. If your SSN number announces to the government that the child you is now ready to be monitored and bureaucratized, then your marriage certificate announces the same for your adult self. In the olden days, it might be the only publicly documented paperwork a person would have attached to them in their adult lives. So government starting using it for their own reasons.

But why continue it? Whether we like it or not, (or unless we're illegal immigrants) the government tracks us from the day we are born. Our SSN's get issued in the first few weeks of birth, we have to use them constantly as ID at the Drs. office, public schools, etc. As we get older we use them for any kind of financial application, job application, college application, etc. What few things don't require your SSN, requires your drivers license. You have to submit ID everywhere you go except the voting booth. Combine that with electric record keeping and street cameras and the Gov. can find most of us at any given moment of any day. There is no legitimate reason to collect information from marriage certificates any longer, it's collected redundantly, all day, every day.

And what of the family, the keystone of the importance of the marriage certificate? There are a number of important laws regarding inheritance and estate law that hinge on the marital status. Luckily, the marriage certificate plays no part in that anymore either. All the information of that certificate is easily found on a birth certificate of any child of an adult union. The birth certificate creates the familial bond that the law sees as creating certain responsibilities on the parents, not the marriage certificate. As far as alimony, etc. goes, anybody who was unmarried or married with a mistressknows, the court can find you financially responsible for anothers lifestyle whether you have yourself a shiny certificate or not.

There isn't any one area where the government can claim that the issuance of marriage licenses is somehow necessary for State activities. The argument that they issue the certificates in the interest of promoting the family, any family, is highly suspect and hypocritical given the way the federal government has sought to destroy the family unit with destructive welfare and divorce laws. The Government cares about the family the same way a pimp cares about a whore, the only difference being that the pimp has to at least provide a work uniform.

Like most things the government horns itself into, their involvement in marriage is counterproductive and destructive. Let the churches handle it like they used to. People can get married in their own way and then get about judging everybody else for their "sham marriage". That's the way it is with all these things, there's always been churches that have "kooky" sacraments or ceremonies. People from other faiths just disregard it and move on. People only get hysterical when an official government body gets in the middle and proclaims on superior to another. Lets just end it and start fighting about legalizing weed again.

Stupid Is A Disease

Something resembling an unexplained missile launched occurred off the coast of California this morning giving all the loonies a chance to wax poetic about conspiracy theories. All the rest of us naturally curious types took note of the incident and waited for some explanation from those "in the know."

Still waiting patiently.

This is one of those times where the government was just trying to be stealthy and hide their own black actions. Instead, we get a whole bunch of people from the Armed Forces saying "Wasn't ours!" and "We have no idea what that was" and finally, "Not detected by radar."

That's awesome. I'd rather Obama was secretly planning to nuke Guam and this was the training exercise for it. Apparently, the America we live in today would rather announce to the world that you can launch a missile 35 miles of our coast and we will be shocked or; that our military is so incompetent that it's firing off missiles willy-nilly. How reassuring. How are those nukes coming in North Korea and Iran? Yeah, that's what I thought.

This really is a symptom of society as a whole though. It's amazing how many supposed adults are so willing to just throw up their hands and admit to the world how incompetent they are. Everywhere you turn there seems to be some jackass staring stupidly at a flat tire, jammed copier, etc. waiting for somebody to come help them. Did they try and solve their problem and fail thus requiring help? Nope, they just packed it in at the start, saving themselves all that opportunity for learning or dignity.

I don't recall this when I was growing up. Back then I assumed being an adult meant you were prepared to display some level of resiliency and self sufficiency. I was led to believe this because all the adults acted that way. If the dryer broke, somebody would try for a week to fix it. Even if it was unfixable, they at least had the dignity to blame it on crappy Japanese workmanship before they called the Maytag man. It would have shamed them to their peers to just be helpless in the world they lived in. Now the world is full of these impotent morons in important positions leading to a situation where a missile could possibly have been launched outside the country's second largest city and the official response is "No clue guys! Sorry, just us dipshits here!" Something tells me MacArthur or Patton wouldn't have accepted that response.

Hopefully the recent elections signal some kind of return to sanity regarding government and society. What we need next is a return to shame. We need to start keeping score and calling out people for being horrible, horrible failures. If the rest of society doesn't let these people know that they are embarrassments, how will they ever know? If they were smart enough to figure it out on their own, they wouldn't be such losers in the first place. Once we get these lightweights away from anything with sharp corners, then we'll know where those missiles were coming or going.

see the video here.

Election Night Running Diary

Oaklahoma and West Virginia SEN - Good for Tom Coburn, Yuck for Manchin. I guess the people of WV don't like mining coal. Glad there's such an abundance of jobs there.

Arkansas, Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina SEN - Nice job John Bozeman, Johnny Izakson, Richard Burr & Richard Shelby. I hope Blanche Lincoln fully realizes what a tool she is. I doubt it.
Deleware SEN - Bearded Marxist projected to win. 0% reported so far.

Maryland SEN - I can't imagine what Maryland is so happy with that they keep electing Barbara Mukulski. Maybe if Baltimore becomes completely unlivable they'll nominate her for President.

Florida SEN - Rubio thouroughly humiliates Crist. Awesome.

Ohio SEN - Portman Wins. Ohio is supposedly a swing state that splits the vote pretty evenly yet Portman gets the call before 1 percent of the votes are actually counted. Wave indeed.

Vermont SEN - Proving that Vermont is stickign with socialists and maple syrup no matter what the rest of us say, Pat Leahy gets reelected for his 100th Senate term.

Indiana, Kentucky and South Carolina SEN - Well that was quick. Coats, Paul and DeMint roll. I guess that Brad Ellsworth Leviathan was a myth.