Ramblings, v.2

Congresswoman Brown:

Would you vote for a bill that creates and regulates every building code in the country and will purposefully overrule any “city, county, parish, city and county authority, or city and parish authority having local authority to enforce building codes and regulations and to collect fees for building permits”?

Would you vote for a bill that reaches into every neighborhood by eradicating “any private covenant, contract provision, lease provision, homeowners’ association rule or bylaw, or similar restriction” to force localities to accept “green technologies” whether it fits in the neighborhood or not?

Would you vote for a bill that defines “energy-efficient mortgages” (with our favorite GSEs, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, so what could possibly go wrong?) that artificially boosts the income of the borrower based upon how much “green technology” is employed? In other words, the socially engineering mortgage underwriting standards again? (This is just as the Democrats did in the nineties, which will lead to yet another financial disaster.)

Would you vote for a bill that moves billions in new expenses into programs that govern every aspect of human life including, but not limited to, farming; fertilizers; animal husbandry and animal diets; feedstock; soil; land use (forested, cleared, wetlands, etc); “manure management”; and creates gigantic new government bureaucracies (unionized, of course) to regulate, monitor and control American citizens?

YOU JUST DID. And that was only in the Waxman-Markey “Managers Amendment”!

Shame on you, Congresswoman Brown. You voted FOR a bill that will destroy this country. Did you actually READ HR2454? Or is abominable addition, delivered just 17 hours before you voted for it? If you didn’t read it, you’re nothing better than a lemming, following your Demonrat…sorry, forgot a “c”… colleagues off the cliff. The really terrible part is that you’re going to pull all of America over with you.

I will do everything in my power to see you NOT re-elected and have an intelligent, conscientious, worthy person put in your place who will actually READ the drivel put out by the current majority.

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I did email this to her and will likely snail-mail it to her as well. I thank Doug Ross’ post for a wonderful summary of everything the Manager’s Amendment – 300 pages of filth delivered just 17 hours before HR2454 was passed – contained. Those of you who did vote Democrat in this last election, PLEASE go read the post and see what your side pushed through. Read past the obvious slams on your party (there are actually few for how much text is there), and see what they think you approve of – which boils down to removing any and all personal freedoms. If you don’t approve of this, and I sincerely hope you don’t, vote appropriately in 2010 for a new congress. More importantly, send your states’ senators this letter or one just like it, as they will be voting on it in the next few months.

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Here’s my take on the right-to-lifers and, somewhat by extension, folks who rally against selecting egg/sperm pairs based on (a) genetic compatibility, (b) physical characteristics, and (c) penchant for disease.

The whole argument is that you’re denying life. Right-to-lifers say that life starts at conception. Anti-genetic filtering-ers essentially say that life starts before conception.

Ok, taking those two pieces of information and assuming them as truth for purposes of a thought experiment, riddle me this [batman]. How many counts of murder should we charge an assailant with who kills a person (man or woman)? If the victim is a man, how many sperm could be created by that man that, by Anti-genetic-filtering-ers standards, is already life? And if the victim is a woman, the same question for her eggs. Now, extend that one step further. If even a single sperm or egg matures and becomes a living, breathing, walking human, how many sperm/eggs will that human create? And so on. We quickly see that the assailant should be charged with essentially infinite counts of murder. (For those who are confused and believe that there is a finite number, look up the mathematical term “limit” in your nearest pre-calculus book.)

This is wholly ungainly. Sure, the assailant has committed murder either way, and will face the stiffest penalty of the jurisdiction.

I do agree that the view held by some segments of our population that looks at abortions like going to the dentist is horrifying, but I also see that, in certain cases (rape, terminal illness, etc.) the parent(s) should be allowed a choice – assuming they pass a proper psychological screening and such.

As for genetic filtering, I think that selecting out certain genes – cancer (if a gene can be found), crohns, huntingtons, etc. – would be beneficial not only to the child, but to the populace at large. Going so far as to selecting hair color, eye color, height, scholastic aptitude, …that’s a bit too Hitlerish for me.

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I got a fountain pen. A Pilot Plumix. It’s plastic and has a 1mm wide calligraphy-style nib. I’ve been looking for a cheap one since I got down here, and I finally found this one at Target for $6. I find that I like using it, so I may pony up for a more expensive (and less plastic) model soon. Mainly, I just want to use up the rest of this damned blue ink. I HATE blue ink. No idea why.

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Ran my first Tech Talk here at work. Thanks to Shompy-Joe (or 3-way-Joe…or has he graduated to 4- or even 5-way?) for holding Tech Talks while I was employed at Trisept. It went as well as I would have expected.

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In home theater news, my former 12-foot screen has (by space constraints) been replaced with a 20-inch screen. Dammit. The room we’re living in is only 13′x17′, and the 20″ is on my Dell computer monitor. Hate to say it, but I’d kill for a 32″ or 37″ lcd. I at least have surround sound – I bitched my analog-only Klipsch 5.1 computer speakers into being driven by my HT receiver. Man, I need a house. Man, I need to sell my house. Any takers?

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Pre-ordered the iPhone 3GS. Gonna give Melinda my 1st gen iPhone.

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I’ve switched to Safari 4 as my main Windows browser. Lightyears quicker than Firefox 3.whatever. Still using Firefox on my Mac tho – for some reason, the Google Reader keyboard shortcuts don’t work in Safari on the Mac, but they do in Windows. The only thing I wish I could find for Safari/Win is a proper ad blocking plugin. Ah well.

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