BRAVE LEADERS

Recent reports indicate that Yasser Arafat may have been murdered by polonium. He was a brave and outspoken advocate for his people. I mourned him when he died and I mourn him still. I did not alway agree with him, but I admired his commitment to bettering the life of his followers.

Any outspoken leader knows that they risk being murdered by people who believe that the death of a leader will stop their followers.

Unfortunately, you often can not tell a great leader from a troublemaker until the leader is gone. A true leader will have an increasing number of admirers even after his/her death or imprisonment. No one remembers a troublemaker except for the trouble she/he caused.

The sad part of Mr. Arafat's death is that, at the time he died, I thought perhaps he was murdered by radical members of his own group.

If you are a reader of my blog, you know that I believe that VIOLENCE IS ALMOST NEVER THE ANSWER.

Every day, I see people lose friends because they will NOT TALK honestly about why they made certain decisions. On a national level, this refusal to talk means that no solution will ever be found.

I will make two suggestions for the Middle East. Hopefully these will help.

Let Israel have Jerusalem. They won it in war, they have the older religious claim, and it is stupid to divide cities, as we learned in Berlin. Be sure to ask for monetary compensation for the loss of Jerusalem so that you can get your peaceful economy up and running well.

The rebels should negotiate. NO ONE wants Syria to collapse with 100 METRIC TONS OF CHEMICAL WEAPONS stored somewhere in Syria. Russia may put pressure on Assad, but ONLY if there is a viable plan to peacefully hand over power. Such a plan can not happen unless everyone TALKS TO EACH OTHER.

VOTE TOMORROW

Off year elections are sometimes MORE IMPORTANT than our larger elections. The rapidly crazy ALWAYS vote for the rabidly crazy. If we are going to be able to make changes this coming year, those of you who have elections, NEED TO VOTE.

In order to protect the selfish rich, the rabidly crazy will object to funding:

     Food stamps,
     Highway upgrades,
     Help for farmers destroyed by huge storms,
     Head start and lowering class size,
     The arts and sports necessary to engage learning,
     Training for police officers,
     And, the list could go on forever.

If you want the crazies to be GONE, you NEED TO VOTE!

THE WORLD YOU SAVE WILL BE YOUR OWN.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

Have a safe and happy Halloween. Frankly, I miss having children to take trick or treating. But, trust me, I access my inner child A LOT.

I have had to work this October, so I missed my usual overkill celebrations for my birthday and Halloween. I guess I will just have to over celebrate for Thanksgiving, Saturnalia, Christmas and New Year's Eve. A tough job, but SOMEONE has to do it. :}

WARNING! Halloween is for fun, NOT for violence.

PLEASE HELP YOUR FRIENDS BE GOOD GHOSTS.

"LET THEM LIVE IN PAIN", SAYS THE FDA

Over 95% of patients requesting pain medication are in such real abject pain that they beg the doctor for help. In fear of the FDA, the doctor gives them a lecture on addiction, smiling in superiority as the patient cries. (Because a crying patient MUST be an addict.)

This is happening because the FDA and DEA pressure doctors to NOT give out pain medication. The FDA and DEA pressure medical schools to teach medical students that the patients asking for pain medication are ALWAYS addicts. The FDA gets away with this because the FDA controls which doctors are allowed to prescribe medication. A threat to withdraw a doctor's right to prescribe medication is VERY EFFECTIVE at getting the doctors to OBEY THE FDA.

Now the FDA wants to make it HARDER for people in real pain to get medication. The FDA is well aware that less the 5% of the people in the US are addicted to ANYTHING. But the FDA enjoys its power, and drug manufacturers prefer to have medication difficult to get as then they can overcharge desperate people.

"LET THEM LIVE IN PAIN."

MAKING NEWS ILLEGIBLE

Google news is so COOL, it is illegible to most of us. Their font is thin, blue and unchangeable. News sites where I can enlarge the type keeps down my eyestrain. Now Slate.com has decided that cool graphics are more important than older people reading their site.

The neatest thing about iPhones and iPads is the "making it bigger" option. I am told that you actually have to specify that the website works with the "make it bigger" stuff.

Two months ago, I saw that politics might heat up so I signed up for the New York Times. What I got was a website where I could not make the typeface bigger. When I complained, they told me that the articles would have bigger type if I wanted. This was not true. Like a book, the typeface only had two sizes. And naturally, the typeface was thin and hard to read. They promised me I would be able to read articles using the newspaper website which did get bigger and smaller. This was a lie, of course.

Now Slate.com is joining the "only those with good eyesight need read us".

I think there are two reasons for this insanity. One, print media people can not cope with web design. They want their cool layout to remain a cool layout. "Who cares if people can read it? We do not want old people anyway."

Two, it is possible that there is a patent on the "make it bigger" stuff, and some hardware makers are bribing web designers to NOT use the "make it bigger" as they do not want to put it on their new phone or tablet.

BTW, it is cool with me if you put an ad on before I see the article or video. However, I DO want to be able to close the ad and go to my article. If you allow advertisers to highjack your readers, you will LOSE READERS.

Luckily, there are plenty of free news sites on the web.

But I hate to see the New York Times try to keep selling buggy whips, when they could so easily make a lot of money by moving into the modern world.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT STEALS FROM LOCAL BUSINESSES

Santa Clara County is using the excuse of helping gays get married to undercut the wedding prices of local ministers. This increases county revenue while badly hurting the local wedding businesses. As usual, a seemingly good idea has multiple damaging unintended consequences.

Marrying people inexpensively and immediately damages our social fabric. For hundreds of years, the government has issued licenses, and then ministers married people. Even Las Vegas sends people from the county to local wedding chapels. THIS IS BECAUSE IT IS A GOOD IDEA TO ALLOW PEOPLE SOME TIME TO THINK ABOUT WHETHER THEY REALLY WANT TO BE MARRIED.

$40 for a quickie marriage is a small enough sum that it is very tempting for clerks to just pocket the money. (All people must buy an $80 marriage license. The county is offering to complete the job for $40 while the people stand at the counter.)

I also hear rumors that the marriage clerks offer their own marriage services to marriage license purchasers. "I will come to your back yard and marry you. Here is my card, " is what I hear that the clerks are doing.

This idea has spread to counties across the US. The internet makes it really easy to share ideas that look smart, but are actually stupid ideas.

County officials look the other way as they want to increase county revenue in as many ways as possible.

BUT DOES THE COUNTY REALLY NEED TO STEAL BUSINESS FROM OUR LOCAL MINISTERS?

HIJACKING DEMOCRACY

In order to bring you the federal shut down, the Republicans quietly voted to give the HOUSE LEADER THE RIGHT TO VETO certain LEGISLATION. This VIOLATES THE US CONSTITUTION.

Only the US President has the constitutional right to veto legislation. But House Resolution 368 states that the majority leader is the ONLY PERSON THAT CAN ALLOW a full House vote on certain legislation. 

This is like giving ONE MAN the right to filibuster certain legislation. Unlike the almost equally stupid Senate filibuster rules, there is NO WAY for the House to vote to force the majority leader to allow certain legislation to go forward.

THIS CAN NOT BE ALLOWED TO STAND. It violates the rock bottom values of our constitutional democracy. 

Our system of government was set up so that there is a BALANCE OF POWER between the Senate, the House, the President, and the US Supreme Court. House resolution 368 substantially changes this balance of power. 

DO EVERYTHING you can think of (short of violence) to force the House of Representatives to GET RID OF House Resolution 368.

THE DEMOCRACY YOU SAVE WILL BE YOUR OWN!