Easy Answers

Easy Answers

©2013  Ross Williams

Two things in the news within a few weeks of each other – and a few miles, as well.  First, a nutjob kills a few dozen children and teachers in Connecticut.  Second, some other nutjob kills three [thus far] and injures over 100 at the Boston Marathon.

In response to the first incident, the feeble-minded in our nation took it as all the excuse they needed to strike up the call to ban guns.  Again.  Even though doing so is prohibited.  Only a few people in this country own guns anymore – it used to be a requirement of survival, it’s now mostly a recreational activity – and the majority who don’t own guns have invented an endless supply of excuses why those who do cannot.  At least why they should not.  And it’s all perfectly reasonable to that majority.

Since they are, in fact, a majority and since we are, after all, a democracy … majority rules.  Right?  If the majority want something done a certain way, they are entitled to have it happen.

Right?

Wrong.  We are not a democracy; we are a constitutional democratic republic – with the emphasis on constitutional.  The majority can want anything they want, but unless the government is allowed by the limitations placed on it by the Constitution, the government cannot give the majority what they want.  There was a time when the majority wanted to vote blacks to the back of the bus – or worse.  And it was certain parts of the federal government which said that doing so would violate our rules.  That time is still remembered fairly keenly by those of a certain age.

There was a time when the majority wanted to vote gays back into the closet – or worse.  And we are being told by the courts as we speak that this is also not allowed by our rules.  Anyone older than 5 years of age, and who pays attention to what goes on around him, can remember that time.

Well, banning guns violates the same rules.  Those rules put a limit on what our government can do to us, or make us do for it.  We are allowed to own guns, period, and that right – to quote – “shall not be infringed”.

As it stands, anyone wishing to ban guns is taking the easy way out.  Don’t bother looking for reasons why someone would want to mow down a school room; that requires thinking.  Thinking is too much like work, and it makes our heads hurt besides.  Ban guns – **I** don’t need a gun, so therefore you don’t either. 

Anything you can do with a gun can be done countless other ways.  You don’t need to hunt for your meat; go to the grocery store like everyone else.  Home security? buy an alarm and put 9-1-1 on speed-dial.  That’s what the cops are for, in case you forgot.  Problem solved.

But reality is pesky.  For every shooting in this country, there are three knifings … if statistics are anything to go on.  Where is the call to ban knives?  We don’t need knives in this day and age.  Everything you can do with a knife, from the butter knife in your flatware set, to the various knives in your tool chest or on your keychain, are unnecessary.

Wanna spread butter?  we have spray butter.  Peanut butter? it now comes pre-sandwiched.

Wanna cut that steak?  you’re a snob; buy hamburger.

Need to cut a string?  fingernail clippers.  Paper? fold it, zip it, tear it.

There is no specific need for a knife, ever, anywhere.  Yet we all have knives, and every single one of us trusts ourselves – more or less – with the knives we have.  So even though knifings outnumber shootings by three-to-one, we will never hear a call to ban knives.  It would … it would … affect ME!!  Laws are meant for other people to obey.  Not me.  Never me.

Anyone who’s read [and understood] what I’ve written knows my feelings on these types of things.  Freedom is messy and our definition of government guarantees us freedom.

Therefore, we are guaranteed a mess.  Thanks a lot, Founding Fathers.  Mostly a political mess, but often a public mess as well.  Newtown Connecticut, Aurora Colorado and Boston Massachusetts were all a public mess ending in political mess.  Arncha glad you’re free?

Those who don’t want freedom for others – and therefore themselves, ultimately – are demanding a limit upon others’ guaranteed freedoms … because taking away freedom has always made things better.  And the best part is, no one needs to use their brains about it.

So here’s the solution to the bombing at the Boston Marathon.  Few people run unless they’re being chased, so we’ve already got the majority vote here.  To eliminate the impulse to plant bombs at the finish lines of marathons … outlaw marathons.  I can predict, with zero chance of being wrong, that there will never, ever, ever be another bombing at another marathon.  Problem solved.

See how easy that was?

My brain was tied behind my back.  I feel so … liberal.

Just Like Bogey and Bacall

We Have It All

©2013  Ross Williams

I spend some amount of time online discussing pleasure cruises with those who have gone, or will go, on a pleasure cruise.  I’ve been on a dozen or so cruises myself, I tend to pay attention to a lot of what goes on around me, and I’m able to explain quite a lot of what a novice cruiser will encounter so that the young padawan can stop fretting. 

Many people about to embark on their first cruise panic when they suddenly realize that they are going to leave the country.  They need to be talked in off the ledge when they realize that they’ll not only be leaving their country, but they’ll be in a foreign country on top of it.  Why didn’t anyone tell us that?!?

I wish I had a dime for every novice cruiser I helped talk down from the ledge only to have him [or, typically, her] come back to the discussion forum dispensing the voluminous wisdom the one cruise imparted upon them.  They open up discussions they title “Back from my first cruise, I’ll answer all your questions”.   I usually ask them if the Dolphins are ever going to get a decent quarterback.

I recently had the … um … pleasure of encountering one such one-time cruiser who attempted to inform all and sundry of the dangers of porting in Roatan Honduras.  Roatan is an island off the coast of Honduras which caters nearly exclusively to the pampering of its tourists – which primarily come from cruises.  Two years ago when they had issues with the electric company that resulted in nationwide riots, protests and blockades, the island of Roatan was very careful to schedule their spontaneous brick and bottle throwing contests to days when cruise ships were not in port.  When a cruise ship was in town, they all had better things to do … like hoover rich American wallets.

But this young woman declared that Honduras – including Roatan – was very dangerous, and every novice cruiser needed to take it from her: be extra, extra, extra careful when you’re there.  Um, okay, so what are the particular dangers on Roatan, again…?  She elaborated in a generic description appropriate to any large American city – such as Chicago.  And I told her so.  I also told her that she was doing no one any favors by being an alarmist, and a dishonest one at that, who fails to understand that every sin she was trying her best to foist onto a foreign country was equally valid to apply to anywhere in the US with a population of more than a thousand.

She accused me of “attacking” her, and called me a hypocrite for asking her a question simply so I could jump all over her answer.  No, sweetie, that’s not hypocrisy; that’s baiting a trap.

Apart from those who want to paint Honduras with the crime-and-political-corruption brush while dismissing Chicago, and DC, and Los Angeles, and Boston [etc], I encounter many Americans who don’t mind leaving home and being in a foreign country so long as that foreign country is just like home.  When they get to ports like Belize City, and Progreso in Mexico’s Yucatan, and find that they are not indistinguishable from a strip mall in Roanoke Virginia they become highly indignant and spend far too much energy demonstrating why so many from other countries despise Americans in the first place.

Since the majority of my career has been spent working for the people who have to deal with foreign countries which act on their despising of Americans – by attacking us for our greedy, corrupt ways and our sneering snobbishness – I am particularly keen on not having those attitudes proliferate on my watch: I am unkind, in somewhat of an extreme, to those who cannot go to a foreign port in a foreign country for as many as eight hours and not be congenial about what they find there.  Yes, you’re right, they often don’t have air conditioning or even flushing toilets; deal with it.  Buy your trinkets, drink a beer, smile, and pretend you’re a decent human being.

The United States has so much more than most other places have; besides plumbing and climate controls, we have dentistry, refrigerators in even the poorest of neighborhoods, paved roads everywhere, the world’s highest [to the point of being obscene] wages at every skill level, and – I am reminded of this as I open up a package of “gluten-free” ibuprofen – a whole hospital’s worth of diseases, syndromes and disorders that the rest of the world could only dream of having. … if they particularly like nightmares.

…which brings me to a discussion I had with another young woman who was trying to navigate the dining room dress code on board.  She has a child who is autistic – which is one of those many medical issues found only in the United States in any significant amount – and he’d have a meltdown if he had to wear anything other than the flip-flops that are not allowed in the ship’s dining room.

Autism, as of late 2012, is no longer recognized as a legitimate diagnosis by the American Psychiatric Association; it has been replaced by “autism spectrum disorder” for the purpose of incorporating the giggle-inspiring “Asperger’s Syndrome” which, under the new classification, is considered “autism-lite”.   Yes, this is mainly a semantic reclassification.  The symptomology for all variants within the spectrum includes attachment security, the inability to adopt social norms, impulse control issues, and delayed motor-skill development.

In other terms, autistic people are introverted, nonconformist act-outers who wet the bed until the age of 7.  Or in my case, they are introverted, nonconformist act-outers who didn’t learn to talk until his younger brother blazed the trail.  I could very, very easily create a “disability” for myself – without an ounce of exaggeration – by having my mother and other family members tell a shrink what I was like as a toddler; I’d be post-diagnosed with Asperger’s.

…or, in modern terminology: “autism spectrum disorder”.  Or, in current pseudo-medical shorthand: autism.

The “developing world” doesn’t see autism – their rate of diagnosis is one in a thousand.  Literally: 0.1%.  The rate of diagnosis of autism in the US is twenty in a thousand – 2%; one-in-fifty.  One order of magnitude – doubled – greater.

There are two explanations for this wide disparity.

1] they don’t look for autism in the third world; or

2] the occurrence of autism above the baseline rate of 1::1000 is due to the environmental conditions found in the United States and other first world countries.

There is no evidence that doctors in the “developing world” don’t look for autism; there is, however, a great deal of evidence that environmental factors unique to the industrial world – such as the United States – play a crucial role in the creation of excessive rates of otherwise rare medical conditions.

Crohn’s Disease, and other inflammatory bowel disorders, is virtually unheard of in the third world … where they often don’t have clean water or working toilets; it was exceptionally rare even in the United States until the early 20^th century when we implemented widespread water treatment.  The explanation for this is the hyper-sanitation found in the industrialized world and the subsequent idleness of our immune system in dealing with the nasty critters we’d drink.

Without anything to do, our immune system invents things to do … such as attacking the linings of our intestines, making them inflamed, raw, and painful, and giving Dr Crohn a place in the diagnostician’s Hall of Fame.  Crohn’s disease is currently being [experimentally] treated with a slurry of parasitic flatworms – “helminthic” treatment it’s called, from the genus “platyhelminthes”, or flatworm.  Complete remission is common after a single glassful.  Recurrence is treated by another glassful of worms.

Peanut allergies are exceedingly rare in the third world but far too common in the first – to the point where schools and airlines are “peanut-free” …  just in case.  And it is certainly not for lack of looking.  Peanut allergies result in severe anaphylaxis – your throat, tongue and lips swell up, you stop breathing, and you die.  It’s very difficult to mistake this for anything – or nothing – else.

Allergies in general are a severe overreaction of the immune system to non-threatening compounds.  … again with the immune system.  An immune system with nothing to do will invent things to do, even if it is to irrationally pick on the poor ol’ goober pea.

Along the same lines, asthma is another first-world condition, as is the “seasonal allergies” that so many of us suffer from.  American doctors have known for almost a generation that these allergies, as well as asthma, are significantly more rare among Americans who have pets – particularly dogs.  Pets are dirty, unsanitary creatures, and dogs – and you can trust me on this since I have both ends of the equation – think nothing of chowing down on a lump of horseshit and then display their gratitude to you for supplying them a horse … by licking you from chin to eyebrow.   Yummm…

Dogs also seem to think chicken shit is tasty.

So … many diseases, conditions and syndromes are environmentally inspired by our living conditions: we are clean.  To the point of being too clean.  A little dirt is good.  It keeps our immune systems occupied.

Other medical conditions are seen only in the first world because we choose to see them; in the third world they’re invisible.  I am thinking primarily, here, of ADD and ADHD.  These designer pathologies are more a result of our society’s thoroughly unnatural social order than anything else.  Some people simply need to burn off energy and sitting with hands folded on a school desk while absorbing a tired sermon on the political indoctrination du jour doesn’t cut it.

We did this to ourselves because we chose to.  A schoolboy in China who doesn’t want to listen to the taped messages from Chairman Mao on the evils of capitalism? there’s a perfectly good job in the shoe factory waiting for you; some people simply don’t do well in scholastics – they need to be active.  In the US, that child is drugged into a stupor and forced to listen to the evils of capitalism anyway.

And somewhere in between both these, probably, is autism.  Autism is certainly real, especially in its more pronounced versions; it’s basic mental retardation.  What we used to call – when I was a kid – “slow”.  “Slow” people grew up to be well-suited to a variety of meaningful and remunerative activities.  When I was a kid, the notion of exempting them from reality was unheard of.  Sure, their parents can shield them now, but what happens when parents die or become too feeble to do the shielding?  The “slow” kid is going to be in a world of hurt.  

In its less pronounced versions, though, autism is little more than an explanation for why Johnny doesn’t make friends easily, plays by himself in his room, delights in defying convention, yells at the TV [or the computer mouse], and was slow to potty train.  …which I find interesting in our society that thrives on diversity and individualism; all these are what make us unique.

We are browbeaten on a constant basis to embrace such diversity without prejudice or judgment, yet any time a child is shown to be “different”, which is a code-word for “less than average”, in socialization or motor-skill development, we mustMustMUST find an excuse for it.  We cannot tolerate “he’s simply less than average”.  That is the same as “failure”.  And we throw diversity under the bus.

Autism – in its less pronounced forms – is that excuse.  

“My child screams when he doesn’t get his way – he’s autistic.”

“My child still wets the bed – he’s autistic.”

“My child is painfully shy – he’s autistic.”

“My child stays in his room constantly – he’s autistic.”

Autism is, in large part, an excuse to be exempted from the same rules that everyone else has to comply with.  “My child will have a meltdown if he cannot wear flip-flops in the dining room … he’s autistic,” was the theme of the discussion.  Okay … and others will have meltdowns if people show up in flip-flops making the disgusting “pssshLOIK pssshLOIK pssshLOIK” sound of cows pulling their feet out of ten inches of mud and cowshit.  So what?  Why does one excuse for a meltdown outweigh another?

The autism is either severe enough to be considered legitimate mental retardation in which case taking that child into public is most stressful on the child and thus grossly inappropriate for the child’s parents to do, or it is simply being used as an excuse by those who are tired of dealing with a child who is shy, iconoclastic and self-involved.  Mild degrees of autism can be outgrown, or dealt with, as long as it’s not being infinitely babied.

And the way to prove me wrong is to keep the severely autistic child out of the public where his severe autism will not be the center of controversy, or to not use mild autism as an excuse to get away with defying the rules everyone else has to comply with.

Fox to the … Um … “Rescue”?

Fox to the … Um … “Rescue”?

©2013  Ross Williams

The only redeeming quality possessed by Fox News is that they are not MSNBC.  They are no more “fair and balanced” than any of the other political hacks posing as upstanding – let alone objective – journalistic media outlets [and I’m looking at you NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, and the aforementioned MSNBC]; it’s only that when you add Fox to this litany of socialism apologists – and for all practical purposes in terms of popularity as measured by ratings, Fox weighs about what these others do when they’re added together, and BOY! does that gall these others [and apparently Jim Carey as well] – what you end up with is roughly balanced.  I won’t get into whether that balance is fair to the news-needing public; I prefer honesty without editorial, myself, and have yet to find a place that delivers it.  I can editorialize quite well on my own and need no assistance from anyone.

But Fox in and of itself?  Their writers are credulous, their editors are illiterate, their online format is ponderous.

Still, I wander through from time to time to see what they have.  This morning what they had was a credulous piece [go figure] by some dimbulb named Doug McKelway about recent news on the anthropogenic [i.e., “manmade”] Global Warming front.  The basic gist is that there is no news and hasn’t been for a decade.

Only – and this is what bugs me so much about the media – this seems to be news only to the people who report news.  It isn’t news, and hasn’t been for a decade, to those who pay attention.  We have known for nine years out of the past decade that no, indeedy, “Global Warming” is no longer occurring.  All the scientific discussion in that time has been centered on “How can you call it ‘Global Warming’ when it is no longer warming?” and “Oh, I see that you’ve renamed it to ‘Climate Change’ because even you have to admit now that it’s no longer warming!”

But Fox – clever as those of its namesake who starved for lack of a hen – is right on the ball, if only ten years late.  They must work on geologic time at Newscorp.

In any event, this formulaic article quoted a Global Warming skeptic who claimed that Global Warming supporters could no longer claim rising CO₂ levels as the cause for the increase in temperature, and then quoted a Global Warming supporter who claimed that the decade “lull” essentially means nothing.  Following formula, the article goes on to cite others with no [known] vested interest.  And then, because they are Fox, they ended with a final swipe by the Global Warming skeptic; if it had been written by any of the other media giants [not that they would voluntarily acknowledge that their pet alarmism is running aground] it would have ended with a final swipe being made by the Global Warming supporter.  This is the journalistic formula that must never be deviated from.

The sad thing about the whole article is that those who are cited here are allowing Fox News to treat this anti-revelation as if it’s current and print-worthy; it’s not.  And several of those cited only end up looking like blithering idiots to those who’ve paid attention for the last decade.

For example: James Hansen, ex-director of NASA’s Goddard Institute [he recently resigned to devote his energies to joining Daryl Hannah at rallies protesting any technology beyond pointy sticks] has “acknowledged the ten-year lull” in temperature increases.  What those of us who paid attention already understand is that Hansen has HAD to acknowledge it, because he’s been caught several dozen times trying to falsify NASA climate data to create a temperature increase that didn’t exist.  He was caught, in large part, by junior NASA scientists who were ordered to do the falsification of the data for him – and who refused – and who were sometimes fired for their refusal to falsify data.  Several of them got together and made it their life’s mission to follow James Hansen around double- and triple-checking every ounce of math the boy did.

…to the point that Hansen stopped doing math altogether, and instead resigned to chain himself to the idiot Daryl Hannah.

Next: Marc Morano of ClimateDepot.com [the Global Warming skeptic in the article] says, “The idea that CO₂ is the tail that wags the dog is no longer scientifically tenable.”  Here’s the thing, big-guy: IT NEVER WAS.

Every bit of geological data amassed by the Global Warmers – not some, not a lot, not even most; EVERY bit of data – shows that CO₂, despite having the chemical property of a thermal insulator, is a lagging indicator of the planet’s temperature.  The planet warms up first, and then the CO₂ arrives.  Every. Single. Time. 

Including this time, in fact.  The Little Ice Age ended – depending on who you ask – between 120 and 160 years ago, and it had been warming up for centuries getting to that point.  Our notorious CO₂ increase is just over 50 years old.

Do you know what it’s called when the “cause” portion of the Cause-Effect dichotomy occurs after the “effect”?  That’s right: a non-cause.

But when the anthropogenic skeptics – and I am very carefully making the point here that the skepticism is not that the planet has not warmed up and may not warm up again, but that it is only warming due to mankind’s efforts, because most Global Warmers are certified idiots who do not understand this distinction – … when the anthropogenic skeptics have pointed out that the Global Warmers’ data shows that CO₂ is a lagging indicator of the effect, and not the cause, the Global Warmers have always declared, “well, this time it’s different… this time we have mankind in the mix, and that changes everything.”

Yet, the Global Warmers always get quite offended when *I* point out that their arrogance of biblical proportion – literally, read about the Tower of Babel, sometime – to assert that a planet which can survive a few billion years of KT events and other massive cosmic bombardment can come completely unraveled by two centuries of Industrial Revolution, is astoundingly stupid.  The auto-delusional masturbatory self-involvement needed to come up with this rationalization takes your breath away.

The cited skeptic claims that the climate-prediction equation is far more complex than the Global Warmers ever realized when they were over-simplifying the problem to my SUV … or my neighbor’s farting cows.

In response to this, the Global Warming supporter – some dingbat named Elgie Holstein [to complete the farting cow image], now of the Environmental Defense Fund, and formerly of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – advertises that apparently a working knowledge of science is not needed to be in charge of a scientific organization, whether private or government.  She claims that no increase in temperature only means that it’s increasing more slowly than it was before.

No, sweetie; no increase in temperature means, instead, that it’s not increasing AT ALL.  Fast or slow is out of the equation when the temperature graph flatlines.  There is no slope.  Y=mX+b, and when m=0 then Y=b … you get a flat line.   X is taken out of the picture; the rules of multiplication require it.  This is mathematics; stop pretending you’re James Hansen.

For the last decade, m has equaled zero.  Get it through your head.  Your benighted and arrogant self-righteousness as seen in this article pretty much explains why I stopped donating to EDF.

On the plus-side, she does acknowledge that the climate equation is highly complex.  At least that’s progress over a decade ago.  But she still believes that science boils down to how many scientists are on each “team”, and that her team has more scientists.  The scientists on her team, “literally thousands … around the country”, still say that it’s getting warmer – so therefore it is – and the fact that it’s not is beside the point.

Science does not need to be bound by reality.  Who knew?

One of the “independent” analysts cited – in this case, The Economist, in an editorial – suggested that perhaps the role of CO₂ in the climate equation is something that climatologists didn’t really understand as well as they thought.

Ya think?

The UN’s Global Warming bandwagon – IPCC, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – has admitted, openly, that they are not interested in any other climate research apart from CO₂; they’ve hitched their integrity wagon to CO₂ acting as the cause of atmospheric temperature increase despite the absolute and undeniable reality that it has always shown up after the fact, and now that CO₂ is proving itself to be functionally irrelevant to the equation as the Global Warmers framed it, … yeah, I’d say they didn’t understand CO₂ as well as they claimed.  Spot on, there, guys.

The Global Warming skeptic, to finish up the formula, is finally quoted citing a recent National Academy of Science report – NAS is a noted Global Warming supporter, being once headed by the idiot Stephen Schneider who finally had the courtesy to die – which blames the slopeless temperature increase on the increased use of coal by China during their roughly decade-old economic boom.  Coal – a hydrocarbon fuel which creates abundant CO₂ when burned efficiently and soot when it isn’t – has apparently offset the global warming caused by the rest of the world [i.e., the US, primarily] which uses coal … and oil … and natural gas … all three efficiently … making all that CO₂ that’s warming up the planet.

I get tired of being right all the time and having people not pay attention.

Let’s see if saying the same damned thing I’ve been saying now for, oh, gosh, roughly a decade, will finally sink in.

The concept of “Global Warming” was born – for all practical purposes – in 1980.  The decade of the 70s was devoted, from a climatologic perspective, to fretting about The New Ice Age.  1980 rolled in and almost literally overnight the narcissists in science dropped their Ice Age claims and bought Maggie Thatcher’s coal miners’ union-killing rhetoric and declared Global Warming – with its CO₂ cause – to be the true problem.  …despite them knowing that CO₂ always, always, always shows up after the climate warms up.

Other things were going on at the same time: the 60s American environmentalists had been nagging and pestering Congress for so long that Congress created the EPA [don’t get me started] and the Clean Air/Water Acts, which required “clean-burning” fuel.

What is “clean-burning” fuel?  For the purposes of US federal law and EPA regulation, it is any hydrocarbon fuel which, when burned to get the energy out of it, does not create soot.  Soot is an aerosol which stays wafting around in the atmosphere for days, weeks or months until it finally gets inhaled by some doofus who starts coughing.  Soot is, scientifically, incompletely burned long-chain hydrocarbon fuel.  There’s still unrealized energy in soot; soot means inefficient combustion.

The United States – the single largest industrial force on the planet in 1980, despite jimmy Carter’s best efforts, and even when adding every other nation industry together – went very rapidly from being a soot-making nation when it burned coal and oil and methane, to being a clean-burning nation.  “Clean-burning” turns the long-chain hydrocarbon completely into its component CO₂, H₂O, and NOx [plus a few other] simple compounds.

The more soot you generate, the less CO₂ you generate.  And also, the more people cough.  And vice versa.  The US suddenly stopped producing as much soot, and just as suddenly started producing more CO₂.  Right around 1980.

Bingo: there you have it. CO₂: a US problem that the US imperialistically imposed on the rest of the planet – a serendipitous discovery for America-haters.

The rest of the world generates soot without a second thought.  Particularly China.  Environmentalists tend to be shot on sight in China, regardless of how many movies they were naked in; overkill [ha!] I will admit, but it’s an option that should possibly not be dismissed so lightly.

Here’s the thing about soot and other aerosols: until they get inhaled and make people cough, they get up into the atmosphere and reflect sunlight away from the planet.  The less sunlight, the less warmth.  That’s all there is to it.  Yes, there’s a valid point in the NAS report.  Just as there was a valid point to Stephen Schneider’s caterwauling when he was a New Ice Ageist carping about these aerosols making winter longer, colder and snowier in the 70s … before he found religion and became a Global Warmer willing to whore himself to his new goddess Gaia.

We, as a species, are going to continue our industrial society, period.  Industrial society needs energy and lots of it.  Industrial society is going to get that energy in one of two ways:

1] by using fuels that are cost-effective; or
2] by using fuels that will break our banks.

If we use fuels that are cost-effective, we will do it one of two ways:
1] cleanly, making CO2 in massive abundance and the neo-luddite hair-shirters that go with it; or
2] inefficiently, making soot, making sunlight reflect back into space, and making people cough.

If we use fuels that will break our banks, we will end up with one of two conditions:
1] an eventual loss of our industrial society which runs on the money we just squandered on inefficient energy, and we’ll end up squatting naked in the mud with Daryl Hannah and her pointy stick stabbing at bugs for dinner; or

2] … no, that’s about it.

The choice, as always, is ours, and while the thought of being next to a naked Daryl Hannah in the mud might be a selling point to males of my age [and possibly some females] who fondly remember Splash! [you’re a real fan only if you remember her in Summer Lovers], she’s not getting any younger, and frankly, bugs for dinner loses its appeal rather rapidly.  Not even a naked Daryl Hannah can compensate for long.

Choose well.

Cal Thomas Doesn't Own the Constitution

A Response to Cal Thomas’s Editorial Curiosity About Why the Constitution is Also to Be Enjoyed by Homosexuals

©2013  Ross Williams

Cal, normally I find you irrelevant and I don't pay much attention to you.  I'm a dyed-in-the-wool libertarian – no, not the anarchist/pacifist/isolationist that passes for "libertarian" in so many places.  A real by-god libertarian.  Your commentary and analysis of so much that you write on indicates that you only like – just like every idiot liberal under the sun – certain parts of our Constitution.  Hence I have never paid much attention to you.  Plus, you're just a little too self-righteously religious for my tastes.

But you asked a question, it seems you asked it in earnest, and so I will answer you.  I trust you can figure out the difference between your statements from the editorial and my responses to them.  So please enjoy this email with my compliments.

What advocates for same-sex marriage should be asked is whether they consider any other human relationship worthy of similar constitutional protection and based on what standard?

Without having a clear notion of what range of "relationship" you're willing to go to for this exercise, I'll have to say "probably", and based on the only standard allowed in our nation: the Constitutional limitation on the power of the government to interfere with free people doing what they want under most circumstances.

The Constitution doesn't guarantee the right to marry

This is patently false.

The 9thAM says that not all our rights were written down, but we still have them.  Please read it if you don't believe me.

The 10thAM says that what was not given to the US government to interfere with [most notably in A I § 8] is retained by the people.  The states may also address it if they wish.

Since there is no authority for the feds to define family, or regulate marriage, they don't have the power to do it AT ALL and DOMA must fall based on that fact alone.  Because the 14thAM transfers all federal rights to citizens of all states based on them being dual citizens of the state and nation, the right to marry exists in all 50 states, territories, protectorates, etc.  And because there is Equal Protection, there cannot be artificial constraints placed upon some people in order to exercise the same right the schmuck down the street just exercised.

I will concede right now that the thought of two men all oiled up and grunting is nauseatingly repulsive to some ... possibly even many.  I would guess you are among them.  And, well, I can legitimately sympathize.  But what is nauseatingly repulsive to ME is Cardinals fans who don't know the first rule of good sportsmanship: be a congenial winner.  What legitimate expectation do I have to silence or censure Cardinals fans who can't shut their goddamned mouths when they win yet another division title? And can I get the government to help me?

The answers are "none" and "no".

The same is true for you.  Freedom is, by definition, very very messy, and it requires that people put up with others doing one hell of a lot of "stuff" that gripes us or makes our skin crawl.  Even if a majority of Americans view Cardinals fans the way I do – I'm pretty well convinced that the majority of baseball fans do – the government is limited by the Constitution to a very slim set of powers, and "enacting the peevish public whim" isn't among them.

The Cardinals fans are my cross to bear; gays humping away in marital bliss [and impeccable stylishness, I'm sure] is yours.  Bear it with the grace your god expects you to display.

States, not the federal government, issue marriage licenses

Please reference the 10thAM.

I am fully aware that most people are perfectly willing to ditch the 10thAM altogether – particularly liberals – because it simply gets in the way of their quest for an all-powerful central government.  The 10thAM was even called, by some USSC justice-past, a "non-amendment" or something of equal dismissive self-superiority.  They have, however, not ditched it.

Many, similarly, refuse to acknowledge the 9thAM, particularly when they – as you did above – attempt to deny the existence of a civil right by virtue of the fact that it was not written down.  Both liberals and conservatives do this, relative to their own dirty-laundry list of things they don't want free people doing in their free country.  "I need to be free from being exposed to things I don't like!!!"  Nice try.  Doesn't work for me with Cardinals' fans, doesn't work for you.  The 9thAM is still there.

How many times do we have to hear "Driving isn't a right, it's a privilege"?  The TSA, and its brainless adherents, has modified that to "flying isn't a right".

Uh ... yes they both are.  Because there's no power to deny or regulate it.

"You don't have the right to use your 1stAM to be rude to me or my ideas!" Yes I do.

"You don't have the right to use your 2ndAM to amass an arsenal of weapons I think are excessive!"  Yes ... I do.

"You don't have the right to use your 4thAM to get onto the airplane without proving to everyone in line that you aren't a terrorist."  Yes. I. Do.

what's to stop polygamists from demanding legal protection and cultural acceptance?

Nothing; nor should there be.  Laws against polygamy are primarily justified on the premise that polygamy is conducted in secret – not simply from the state, but also from the other spouse[s].  Thus polygamy is presumptively a type of fraud.  But if it's entered with the full knowledge and consent of all persons, the fraud angle is empty, and the only thing you have to fall back on is the secondary rationalization for denying polygamy: "fairness".  It's "unfair" for one man to hog so many women to himself.  And it may be, from a biological imperative perspective, or some socialist "from each/to each" nonsense.

But our Constitution wasn't written to impose biological constraints through law, nor to render our disparate population into one-size-fits-all cogs, each of which gets – thanks to Mommy Government – the exact same one-size-fits-all set of life assets with which to enjoy pre-digested "freedom" as defined by the lowest common denominator.  The "fairness" of one spouse [at a time] does not exist in the Constitution.  Ergo, there is no Constitutional basis for requiring one spouse, or denying multiple spouses.

Besides, I have a feeling that if polygamy laws were overturned, there'd be as many women taking multiple husbands as there are the other way around.  But that's just my guess.

Other than that, your complex question is noted and denied.  The Constitution can only speak to legal protection; cultural acceptance is a completely different animal and it is well outside the scope of this discussion.  Not to mention the Constitution.

Laws, however, ... if someone is so "culturally unaccepted" that he is robbed, beaten or murdered [e.g.] ... we have laws to deal with that.  And, for the record, "hate" is presumptive and not appropriate in a legal discussion.

... if "fairness" and "equality" are the standard ...

That's a somewhat disingenuous reduction.  Who am I kidding? It is a WHOLLY disingenuous reduction.  "Fairness"? whose?  "Equality"? whose?

The only source for definition of these terms comes from the US Constitution, which STILL hasn't been amended to allow the US government to define marriage or family structure, STILL requires that all states convey US-guaranteed rights to state citizens, and STILL requires those rights be equally applied.

"Fairness" is fair only when it abides by the constraints imposed by the Constitution; ALL of them, not just the ones you prefer at the time you prefer it.  Same with "equality".

Since we are rapidly discarding the rules for living and social order set down in a book found in most motel room drawers ...

...this is where you skip the tracks, completely.  Our "rules for living", as can be imposed by the government, does not come from "a book found in most motel room drawers" ... unless the Gideons have started dispensing pocket Constitutions recently.

They come ONLY from the Constitution, period, end of story.  Stick with the program.

Your private mileage may vary, but that's up to you.  You have no legitimate expectation of imposing your rules for living and social order on anyone, regardless of how many like-minded people you can find to support you, and thereupon getting the government to do your dirty work for you.

We are FREE, remember?  All of us are, not just you.

Besides, if you get the government to do your dirty work regarding DOMA, then how in the hell can you complain about idiot liberals getting the government to do their dirty work on Obamacare?  Hypocrisy is all the rage among the standard left/right political wankers, but I still think it's tasteless.

...what is to replace it?

NOTHING is replacing it.  The only thing that matters is the Constitution and its fairly strict limitation on the power of government to boss people around.

Many things may seem "unfair," but not all can, or should, be addressed by courts

This, of course, is unvarnished truth.  ...mostly.  The courts' role in these matters of "unfairness" is limited to asserting and reasserting and re-reasserting [etc, as needed] the limitation of the power of government to remediate what people want to whine about.  “Unfair” doesn’t often mean a Constitutional damn.

It's "unfair" that some people can afford health insurance and others can't.

Probably, but it's not the government's place to do anything about it.

It's unfair that I'm a Cubs fan who lives 25 miles from St Lose and I have to listen to asshole Cardinals fans being assholes.

I'm sure it is ... so move.

It's unfair that other people get to do things I think are disgusting and violate my religious beliefs.

No doubt.  Ignore them.

"'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'..."

That's very ironic for you to mention.  "Ironic" is my euphemism for "hypocritical".  As mentioned above, I'm a strict libertarian.  And I've noted BOTH liberals and conservatives play this little rhetorical parlor trick whenever it suits their fancy.

You did it here: "The Constitution doesn't guarantee the right to marry".

That's because you willfully refuse to see it in the 9thAM.  I see it there, as does everyone else who is not desperately trivializing, as Mr Dumpty would do, the relevance of the 9thAM.  I also see in the 9thAM the right to be stupid ... and not wear seat belts; the right to be stupid and irresponsible ... and not buckle up my children; the right to be tasteless and crude ... and repeat the ethnic jokes I heard constantly when I was a kid in the 60s.  Additionally, the right to drive, the right to fly, the right to drink a beer in public, the right to not have health insurance ... and if you give me some time I can make quite a long list of things I have the right to do simply because the Constitution does not give the government any authority to stop me.

Including reading bible verses on street corners, and a few dozen other things that I have essayed upon in the last few years that are among the items that the idiot left refuses to see in the 9thAM themselves which – I would guess – you could see quite clearly.

Justice Anthony Kennedy lamented that the Supreme Court is asked to settle too many politically charged issues.

Frankly, I believe they wouldn't "lament" the task if they handled it the right way in the first damned place.  They attempt to decide politically-charged issues by regurgitating politically-based screed.  Most such "political" issues are Constitutionally fairly simple, and do not, in fact, require words to mean "so many different things" as Alice inquired after; it is politics which makes one word mean 15 different things – based upon who uses it.  It is politics which has given us the "reasonable search" that is separated from the writ which describes the "reason" for it: the warrant.  It is cowardly political expedience which has given us the "terrorism exemption" to the 4thAM, the "drunk driving exemption" to both the 4th and 5thAM [and 14th], the "public buildings exemption", the "drug test exemption", etc...

How difficult is it, really, to tell whiny, pissing and moaning litigants, and their [usually] equally whiny loyyers that freedom is messy, and they simply have to put up with others doing things they may find repulsive? or dangerous? or tasteless? or stupid? ...because the government has no Constitutional authority to stop them?

I've done it countless times already, here, in several different ways, and I have a feeling I'll do it a few more before I send this email off.  Trust me: it's a piece o' cake to say this; you simply have to possess the ability to stop being a [traditional] political toady.

...we have to show ourselves first -- that democracy works because we can reach agreement on a principle basis

While I would agree with Kennedy in theory, the "principle basis" that our nation was created under was the principle that the power of the government was to be strictly LIMITED, and among the necessary components of a limited government is that it is NOT allowed to be hefted as a cudgel by some people to compel the rest to conform to a private idea of right and wrong, moral and immoral, fair and unfair, good and bad, et cetera.

I'll match up your opposition's Obamacare to your own DOMA for private-agenda cudgel-wielding.  You are BOTH my opposition, and both of these are onerous extensions of government power into areas it was never defined to belong.

The fact that no one seems to be able to "reach agreement on a principle basis" is due to the very fact that no one, for the last [roughly] century, who has the authority and obligation to enforce this basis has done so.  It IS the USSC's duty to make distinctions between political issues and Constitutional ones.  If the government is allowed to do something ... okay, now it's political; use the political process to figure out how best to accomplish it.  If the government is NOT allowed to do it [as forcing health insurance or preventing certain types of marriage] ... sorry, it's Constitutional.  And the Constitution says you gotta put up with gay marriage, and not having someone else pay for your health insurance.  It doesn't say you gotta like it; doesn't say you have to remain silent in your dislike; doesn't even say you can't be offensive in your non-silence, either.  But you gotta put up with it.

Freedom consists mostly of other people rubbing you the wrong way and you being unable to do much about it.  Ain’t it grand?

And I'd wager that the lion's share of these Constitutionally simple "politically-charged issues" Kennedy laments in the first place were improperly defined as a Constitutional power by a USSC granting the other branches of government the power to do something they were not, in fact, given the power to do.  Prime examples would be [apart from the several 4thAM "exemptions" which do not exist]:

1] Social Security – Congress has no authority to create an old age pension ... but if they create a TAX – which they're allowed to do ... they can create an old-age pension with the money it collects ...  Right?  Wrong, because they aren’t allowed to create an old-age pension.   How dumb are you?

2] "welfare" – "general welfare" does not mean "poverty amelioration"; it means "the benefit of everybody".  Welfare is not "everybody".

3] EPA – no mention of environmental watchdogging; it may be a good idea – if you can get the super-majority needed to add it in … do it.

4] DEA – TSA – DHS – USDA [etc] and the rest of the alphabet soup of regulatory agencies whose authority to regulate appears nowhere in the Constitution, and Congress's authority to grant this regulatory power does not exist either.

The High Nine have refused this portion of their obligation for damnear a century, and to now whine about the ramifications of them serially refusing to do their job over decades ... I'm unmoved.  It's their own bed they shit in.  No one did that for them.

The states, or Congress, should be allowed to sort out how they wish to define and license marriage, not the Supreme Court

Congress doesn't have the authority; states cannot prevent it even as they draw up the rules by which it must be properly attained.  The USSC sometimes [as now] needs to remind everyone of that, and if the High Nine doesn't wish to be accused of playing politics with it when they issue their ruling on DOMA, then they need to abandon politics in their decision, and quote the Constitution instead.

They may use me as a source for how this can be done if they wish.  It seems to be a difficult task, though I'm not sure why.  Perhaps it's because of the massive unfamiliarity with the Constitution suffered by so many in our government, not least by those who claim to have the credentials to teach it at the college level.

You made a few quotes in your op-ed; here's mine:

"I hate to hear people say this Judge will vote so and so, because he is a Democrat – and this one so and so because he is a Republican. It is shameful. The Judges have the Constitution for their guidance; they have no right to any politics save the politics of rigid right and justice when they are sitting in judgment upon the great matters that come before them."

- M Twain

Anyway, there you are: the answer[s] you asked for.  Hope it helps.