Monday, January 30, 2006

Steve Kubby is Dying Because of the War on Drugs

Steve Kubby, one-time Libertarian Party candidate for Governor of California, and one of the major proponents of the successful passage of that state's Proposition 215, also known as the Compassionate Use Act, is dying in a Placer County cell. Current updates should be available from his wife.

Kn@ppster has stirred up the blogstorm that will hopefully help raise awareness about this issue. While there is still always hope that Kubby will gain some relief from this publicity of his plight, at least we can try and keep this country's insane drug policy from taking more lives of peaceful citizens. Please read Kn@ppster's post, and at least click on some of the searches to keep Kubby on top for the next few days.

M.R. Jarrell has dug up contact info to beg Arnie for clemency, or pardon.

Michelle Shinghal at Hammer of Truth does what the G-Men don't want us to do, and uses dispassionate statistical analysis on Drug War numbers.

Sheldon Richmond does the best job of concisely putting this episode into the context of the Drug War. Wish I'd written that post. He even manages to work James Frey into it.

Speaking of James Frey, and the extreme success his book has had since Oprah had him on again to rake him over the coals for making it all up, I am trying to think of a way to get Oprah mad at me so I can make money off of it. I don't care what lies I have to tell, as long as it's guaranteed that I'll get on her show, and that she'll get angry at me, and that she'll assemble a panel of folks who will go tsk-tsk while I give evasive and sheepish answers.

Peace,

Tor

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Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Idiots On Ice

Wow, not only did the snow storm yesterday shut down the schools in Maine, it also somehow brought out the idiot drivers.

First miscreant: a black pickup truck, Maine tags 4064 IJ. He pulls right out in front of my Range Rover (I swear I'm just as invisible in it as I was in my departed Honda Civic) as I'm heading west on Main St., Belfast. He is entering from Rt. 1 South, near Renys. Immediately fishtails (surprize, surprize). Would have had lots of time for a leisurely acceleration if he had waited for me to pass.

Second miscreant: a little dark-colored car, possibly with Maine tags 8511 AQ. I had to write this one down without taking my eyes off the road, so I'm not positive about that. We're heading up the hill just south of Lincolnville Beach on Rt. 1. A bright pink temporary diamond sign on the side of the road alerts, "ACCIDENT AHEAD." My reaction? Slow down. His reaction? Pass me (going uphill, remember) and accelerate! And upon seeing the second sign, and the police lights, slam on the brakes! And nearly slide into the SUV that is already in the ditch, awaiting the tow truck!

Peace,

Tor


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Shebangers Dominate the News in Maine

Well, former Shebang Street Theatre members aren't exactly dominating the news, but they're popping up more than usual today. First, Pole Star has a column decrying the proposed name for the new bridge from Prospect to Verona. (Or is it from Verona to Prospect?) It's one of the few recent columns that I've agreed with. I tried to tell him, but VillageSoup has turned comments into a subscription-only feature. Oh well.

And none other than Bull Roar himself made some noise in Sen. Collins' presence. Try not to scare the aide too much, Peter.

Peace,

Tor

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Sunday, January 22, 2006

Idiot Driver in a Black Pontiac

Here's another installment in my irregular series on Idiot Drivers. This one was spotted (and nearly became a part of my Range Rover's brush bar) on upper Main St. in Rockland, Friday afternoon. A Black Pontiac, license number 265 MY. The girl makes a left-hand turn into my lane a few feet in front of me and my lovely wife, Rowan. If she hadn't been yakking on her cell phone, I think the teenage-looking ditz who was driving the car would have noticed that she'd have had the road to herself after we passed by.

Peace,

Tor


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Saturday, January 21, 2006

Baldacci, pt 2

Here's the meat of my criticism of Gov. Baldacci's State of the State address. I know, it's a few days late, but I promise I won't rehash the stuff that you'll find elsewhere.

The big problem with Baldacci's Weltanschauung is that he sees the state as a Platonic arbiter of economic activity. He and his fellow Democratic philosopher-kings in Augusta fancy that they are better suited to judge the propriety of economic activity than the folks who are actually engaged in it. He wants to raise the minimum wage, and shut out folks from the labor market whose labor isn't worth the minimum wage. He wants to divert taxpayer money into loans and grants to attract philosopher-king approved (big) businesses, at the expense of driving out people who just want to run a small business or make a living and enjoy the environs of Maine.

He wants to use grant money to train more nurses, while Maine has a surfeit of trained nurses who have taken jobs in other areas of the economy. He wants the state to control all aspects of the health care portion of the economy, when the state has already shown, both at the state and federal levels, that it is incompetent even in the part it has already taken over.

Did you see (or hear) the righteousness with which he scolded the feds for their Medicare Part D fiasco? Well, gov, there are still many doctors here in Maine who've been waiting for their Maine Care reimbursements for months.

At this point, there's little on the Republican side of the aisle that inspires confidence, either. I can see why many don't vote, especially most of my fellow left-libertarians.

Peace,

Tor

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Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Baldacci: Open Season on Mainers' Wallets

It's hard to tell what was more pitiful tonight: Governor Baldacci's State of the State address, or Republican State Senator Paul Davis' response. Baldacci looked stiff and exuberantly evil, while Davis just looked robotic and grumpily evil.

At least Davis pronounced most of the words in his short speech correctly. Baldacci said something about educators improving "youngsters' lice" (presumably by eradicating them) and "luring health care costs down the road" (to Morocco?).

The single funniest moment was when he said "Thank you," before the applause had started.

The next episode of Lost is about to start, so a fuller analysis of the Governor's address will wait till tomorrow.

Peace,

Tor

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Sunday, January 8, 2006

Movie Theatres are Businesses

A theater megaplex in Sandy, Utah has decided not to show Brokeback Mountain. Immediately the moralists claimed victory and the gay rights activists expressed disappointment.

While the manager wouldn't comment on why the show wasn't being offered, and it may well be that the Utah Eagle Forum did some behind-the-scenes lobbying of the theater owners (which would be perfectly legal and within their rights), I'd like to propose that economic forces may have played a big part.

Look at the other films showing at the megaplex. Most of them have been pulling in a lot more money than Brokeback Mountain, and even the others have been pretty close to it. True, Brokeback's per-screen average is higher, but that doesn't guarantee that any particular theatre will get the same result.

In the slightly more than a year that I've been working as a projectionist, I've followed how films do nationally, compared with how films do at the theatre where I work. Sometimes it's pretty much the same (Harry Potter, Revenge of the Sith, The Island), sometimes it's wildly divergent (we couldn't pay people to see Ocean's Twelve). The owners of the theatre where I work also own another theatre in northern Maine, and attendance for the same film can be quite different in the two locations. Folks in The County don't really care for the sci-fi or fantasy movies that do well on the coast, but anything else that's aimed at kids will fill the house, no matter how inane.

So choosing which films to play on a theatre's screens can be sometimes akin to choosing lottery numbers. From a business standpoint, it's hard to fault the theatre owners for not showing a movie that's not really doing all that well.

But I do hope to see the movie sometime, myself. Just as I was in the middle of writing this entry, I got a phone call from my mom, and she's off to see it in Thomaston. No definitive word on whether the Colonial will get it.

Peace,

Tor

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Wednesday, January 4, 2006

Life Goes On in Dover, PA

Here's a procedural footnote in this round of the Intelligent Design debate.

I happened to be listening to a Christian radio station talk show on the way home tonight, and this was the subject du jour. One of the panelists (perhaps Paul Nelson) on the show put asserted that science as a whole "made a wrong turn in the 19th century" by coming to purely naturalistic understandings of how the universe operates. To that extent, where he was merely opining, he can't be faulted. I can state clearly that I believe he is wrong, but he can't be faulted.

The real head-scratcher came when he said that there now exists an "overwhelming, irrefutable" body of evidence that scientists need to rethink their naturalistic outlook, and that he is excited to live in a time when most scientists are poised to throw out their current naturalistic outlook in favor of a theistic one.

Sheesh, talk about living in a fantasy world. I don't think Neil de Grasse Tyson sees it that way.

Peace,

Tor

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Tuesday, January 3, 2006

Marion Barry Should Have Hired the G-Man

Marion Barry got mugged at his home Monday night. I'm not sure what the point of having someone turn themselves into the police is, if you're not going to have them charged.

This brought to mind an audio tape of a walking tour that Marion Barry and G. Gordon Liddy took through inner-city Washington, D.C. some years ago. I've been trying to search for a transcript or audio file of it. If anyone has a link, please send it over. Here follows a paraphrase, from my hazy memory:

Liddy asked what some young African-Americans were up to. They were watching the proceedings with a suspicious level of interest.

Barry said, "It's all right. You're safe, because you're with me."

Liddy said, "To the contrary, you're safe because you're with me!"

Guess Liddy was right.

Peace,

Tor

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Go, Dick, Go!

I can't believe some folks are actually grousing about Dick Clark's appearance this past New Year's Eve. I heard Howie Carr and many of his callers this afternoon saying he should not have gone on national T.V. in his post-stroke condition. I didn't see the show, but it sounds like the folks who felt uncomfortable or depressed by Clark's appearance are caught up in typical American mortality-denial. Clark has been a sort of puer aeternus in American pop culture, and seeing that his is a frail human body (as are all of ours) apparently has some folks thinking about things they'd rather ignore.

One of the great lessons I have gleaned from Buddhism is that the very transitory nature of our existence is what makes it so special. Without the ever-present risk of death or infirmity, whether it come suddenly or gradually, life would be of no intrinsic value. One reason I have problems with Christianity as a whole is its insistence that this life is just a precursor to eternity. (Of course, many Buddhists have traditionally believed in reincarnation, and a goal of Nirvana. In many ways, this leads to the same problem.)

As far as I can tell, this is it. The sooner we adjust to that fact, the happier we'll all be.

Go, Dick, go!

Peace,

Tor

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Monday, January 2, 2006

The Cat’s Dish

Roark is the second Cat of the Week at The Cat's Dish! Can't wait for the movie offers to start pouring in.

Peace,

Tor

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Begin the Debate, But Where?

I really wanted to read this editorial about Barbara Merrill, because she is "mulling over" a run for governor in Maine, and so far she's the most interesting candidate to me. I intend to read her book soon to further educate myself on her stands.

The problem is that the editorial obviously wasn't even cursorily proofread. It is impossible to tell which thought are Merrill's, and which are the editorialist's. Shame on you, Waldo Independent. If your staff is going to be on vacation, maybe you shouldn't bother to put out a paper.

Peace,

Tor

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