American Madness

From the Louisville Courier-Journal is this story about the Nobama campaign:

My personal favorite is the Nobama 2009 World Appeasement Tour. Sadly, it would appear such a tour will actually happen. Iran is definitely counting on it. (more…)

The NYC Health Department is putting its jackboot on the throat of NYC restaurant owners: post calorie counts or face a fine. According to the New York Times, the clipboard and food thermometer wielding health department Gestapo is wasting no time slapping restaurateurs with violations. “City health inspectors began issuing violation notices on Monday to restaurants that did not have calorie counts posted beside the prices on their menu boards.”

American Madness has previously expressed our disapproval of the mandate to post calorie counts on NYC restaurant menus. Chief among the initial concerns was the libertarian notion that the government should have little to no interference of what I choose to put in my body.

Another dissenting view was that calorie counts alone do little (if any) good in determining the health of a particular food item. The concern is the potential for the development of eating disorders as people seek to avoid calories at the expense of nutrition.

Third, was the Byzantine system of compliance and display which would need to be concocted in order to properly disclose “calorie counts.” One day into enforcement, and already our prognostication has been proven right as we are seeing “violations” being issued because calorie counts are improperly displayed. That is because the proper displaying of calorie counts is up to the individual health inspector. The New York Times cites one miserable bureaucratic health inspector named Corey Williams, who was citation happy in issuing calorie-count violation notices to three restaurants yesterday. One unfortunate target of Williams’ unhappiness with life was the Dunkin’ Donuts at 445 Park Avenue South. He said flat out there was no gray area, “[t]his is pass-fail,” according to the New York Times article. And guess what didn’t count as a “pass” in Williams’ book: (more…)

Mrs. WineHazard and I find ourselves in New Hampshire this weekend. Travelzoo ran a special off season rate for hotel rooms on Lake Winnipesaukee, and we decided to take advantage of the opportunity to leave the city for some Americana.

Inside of our quaint room at the inn was a copy of the local newspaper, Weirs Times. The local paper is mostly filled with pieces by the locals talking about snow and their pets, the usual fare for such an endeavor. But it also includes a letter to the editor section (Letters From the Mail Boat). One piece in particular caught my attention, and I share it with you, the loyal AmericanMadness reader.

A labor of love, I retyped the following, warts and all:

Pre-School Terror

To The Editor:

Kindergarten has nothing to do with education and everything to do with tyranny.

This is the first step in children’s rights and the otherthrow of parental authority. The state insists that the parents are not qualified to raise children, only the state is qualified.

Russia puts their children in school at the age of three. Get them when they are young and vulnerable and brainwash them.

The authorities have already promised us pre-kindergarten. Schools for two-year olds will follow pre-kindergarten it is reported.

It is also reported that for the first two years of a child’s life agents will make regular visits to the home. I assume they will come unannounced. I believe that they will always find fault in order to seize. They will be authorized to remove children for any reason or no reason. In some cases it is reported that the parents will never see the children again. It is my opinion that the liberal fascists will control our lives from cradle to the grave with terror.

In New Hampshire there is a movement to axe the (no new taxes) pledge. This is about an income tax and a sales tax. This will not lower property taxes. We are instructed that we need new taxes to pay for our new education obligations.

Campaigning in Iowa, Hilary promised to give us pre-kindergarten. Hilary must have a lot of money.

Barack Obama, in a TV speech in Iowa, informed that “Children two months old are intelligent, they can learn and I will educate them. I am not going to waste that talent.”

William Gibbons
Canaaan, NH.

So to recap. Liberal fascists (?) seek to imbed their political agenda on our children, in an initiative to raise taxes in New Hampshire. Got all of that?

Just remember, this state often decides who represents your political party in the run for U.S. President. Daniel Webster, I weep on your behalf.

After American Madness’ veer to the left yesterday, I felt a little rebalancing was in order. As the only registered Republican on the masthead (I believe), it’s nice to see how the other side is thinking. Believe it or not, when I’m not thinking about money (GREED!), and corporations, and my investments, and war, and guns and not believing in luck, and the best way to pull on my bootstraps, I like to read. I even read the New York Times sometimes, even though my vast right wing masters at Fox News say I shouldn’t. And we all know I only do what I’m told by Fox News.

Today, I read in the Financial Times that Canada is pissed off at us because a couple of Democratic gas bags believe populism and protectionism is the surest path to economic glory. Based on the loud rhetoric, trade has taken jobs from hard working Americans (read: Ohioans) and given them to not-so-hardworking foreigners. The biggest target of their wrath is the evil North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). You know, the free trade agreement signed between Mexico, the US and Canada by one head of the Billary duo.

Both Clinton and Obama have vowed to revisit and renegotiate NAFTA once the drape measuring is done and they assume their seat on the Oval Office throne. Obama has said he “would immediately call the president of Mexico and the president of Canada (hey Barack: Canada doesn’t have a president, it has a prime minister) to try and amend NAFTA, because I think that we can get labor agreements in that agreement right now.”

And to think, he is the level-headed one. “We will opt out of NAFTA unless we renegotiate it and we renegotiate on terms favorable to all Americans,” sayeth Clinton. (more…)

Well, neither of these are particularly recent stories, but I was just going through a list of things I meant to blog about last month and never got around to.

I figure posting them together with some related topic will work for now. As for the others, I figure there is a reason I didn’t write about them then, and, well, they are kind of old news now. Moving right along…

First up, let’s look at what New York has decided not to spend money on anymore: As a state we will no longer receive nearly $4 million of federal funds for abstinence-only sex ed programs.

While we are losing out on $4 million from the government, conversely we will be teaching a sex-ed program that might actually be beneficial in the real world, focusing on teaching good sexual health and about how to avoid getting pregnant (and while I am guessing abstinence will be one such suggested method, it will no longer be the only one taught).

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Social Networking has just hit a new low–or high. I guess it kind of depends how you look at it. Anyway, the U.S. Intelligence community is planning on opening a new social network this December specifically aimed, well, at members of the US Intelligence community. Supposedly the idea behind it is to facilitate the sharing of information between departments and to link-up intelligence operatives (spies) with operatives from other bureaus who might work in the same field.

Now let’s overlook a few potential problems here, like, hypothetically, someone hacking in and posing as an intelligence operative in order to gain information, and let’s us focus on the real problem this system is going to face. As we all know, no matter what the initial purpose of a social network is, it devolves into a popularity contest of folks trying to build up as many friends/contacts/buddies as they can. Spies will be spending valuable spy-time updating their profiles, customizing their pictures, and befriending other spies. No valuable information will change hands and the spy community will be brought to a standstill when the spy network goes down.

While open lines of communication are a necessity in the US Intelligence community, maybe there are better ways to get the ball rolling than online social networking, What’s next Spy-Match.com?

And yes, I am aware that Bond and Smart would not be friends as Bond is not part of the US Intelligence community.

Are you tired of Ebay? The idea of auctions intrigues you, but you prefer live interaction with people, the thrill of raising you paddle and out bidding other folks in classic auction style.

Actually being able to see and touch what you are bidding on rather then just have a cheap picture taken with some ones phone camera has its benefits now you have the chance to be a part of these types of auctions.

In fact, the US government has a bunch of these auctions on a fairly regular basis, you can attend auctions on anything from International Real Estate to Toys to Alcoholic Beverages, Airplanes to Digital Cameras to Jewelry. Te US Government has it all, and now you can find out where and when these auctions will be held with this nifty government website. Check out GovSales now for an auction near you.

Today on American Madness we are going to have a bit of a theme- the military and their new ideas for Super Soldiers (with of course some variations on the theme).

First we will start with a bit from The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). According to their site DARPA is “the central research and development organization for the Department of Defense (DoD). It manages and directs selected basic and applied research and development projects for DoD, and pursues research and technology where risk and payoff are both very high and where success may provide dramatic advances for traditional military roles and missions.”

Few can argue that it would be a bad thing to have soldiers who are stronger, faster and harder to kill (well as long as they are on your side), and that is the line of research Michael Callahan, a program manager at DARPA, proposed at their bi-annual conference. According to Wired the research would focus on studying animals that live and thrive in hostile environments or have exceptional endurance and by learning what we can from them applying it to the human model for advanced military training and development.

Callahan also hopes to focus on pathogens, currently we only have defense against “7 of 44 dangerous pathogens” he hopes to up that number by studying pathogen evolution and predicting mutations and the evolutionary cycle of the pathogens so as to develop vaccines prior to the evolved pathogen becoming a threat.

It all sounds really interesting, the idea of studying pathogen evolution actually sounds similar to the curent method for developing flu vaccines. Each year the flu virus evolves, to have vaccines ready in time for flu season, doctors research and guess how the virus will evolve, based on the most likely course of mutation and evolution they develop various vaccinations against the flu which they then incubate in poultry eggs. Once flue season is upon us the researchers can check which strain has become dominant and release the correct vaccination to the general public. Interesting concept, except there is still a bit of guess work involved. One wrong guess and you end up with a year without full strength vaccinations.

I couldn’t decide on the title, so you have the either or to choose from up there.

Apparently the Department of Defense spent close to $100,000 in 2002 on developing a bullet that, on impact, would explode, releasing laughing gas or another gas agent. The non-lethal bullets would have disarmed opposition by exploding on contact, leaving a bruise, and releasing their payload.

The other benefits to these new bullets is that they would not have required specialized guns and would have been non-lethal at all ranges (as opposed to the current bullets serving similar purposes).

I guess we should all be happy that for a project that did not get out of the first stages of development. Our governemnt only dumped $92,000 into its development.

A Washington D.C. judge is suing his dry cleaner for $54 million over a pair of lost pants. He is claiming that the cleaners misled him with posetd signs that said “Same Day Service” and “Satisfaction Guaranteed,” and he is asking for $54 million and saying that “he is acting in the interest of all city residents against poor business practices.”

So, the story goes that he brought in a pair of pants for some alterations, returned two days later to pick them up and was given a different pair of pants. Re-telling this story caused him such distress that while giving his testimony he broke down in court crying and had to ask for a recess.

I don’t know where to begin with my outrage (but I figured it out after the jump).

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