Negative Railroad A Collection of Breaks in the Line

A drowning person is a danger to another who attempts a rescue.

The act of saving a drowning person is immensely complicated by the panicked struggles of the victim to stay afloat and breathing.

Imagine I am lost at sea with at least one person who can’t swim. If I can swim, but am not a trained lifesaver, to preserve my own life I must push away from the non-swimmer. The non-swimmer will likely drown.

Does that make me a murderer?

Senate lefties have passed their first major hurdle toward enacting a health bill. It is 2,733 pages, including 383 pages of last-minute payoffs amendments. There is simply no way anyone who is voting knows what the bill dictates.

So what are they voting on? Wishes and platitudes:

"Today we are closer than we've ever been to making Senator Ted Kennedy's dream of universal health insurance coverage a reality," Sen. Tom Harkin said ahead of the vote, alluding to the late Massachusetts senator who died of brain cancer in August. 

This ludicrous ruling turns our legal custom upside down:

If two Minnesotans own something together, and one of them commits a crime that causes that property to be seized, the innocent co-owner is not entitled to get it back, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled this week.

The case inolved a wife who was driving drunk. The husband argued that their vehicle should remain in his possession.

"The idea that someone who is completely, utterly innocent -- and the state never disputed that Mr. Laase was innocent -- can have their property taken away by the government is a scary thing," Karalus said.

The U.S. Constitution empowers and limits the government to protect and defend rights. The particular rights, powers, and limits depend on whether a person is a citizen or just a person.

According to Article One, only Citizens can be elected to Congress. But the 6th Amendment dictates that all persons—not just citizens—are owed a speedy trial with an impartial jury.

Betsy Newmark identifies the essential lawlessness of the health bill now before the Senate:

What amazes me is how this bill was crafted to treat some states, in perpetuity, differently from other states simply because those states had senators who were more powerful or more canny when it came to bargaining for their support. Politico has some of these details. Of course, we know about Ben Nelson's price for his vote. It is now being called the "Cornhusker kickback."

Nelson’s might be the most blatant – a deal carved out for a single state, a permanent exemption from the state share of Medicaid expansion for Nebraska, meaning federal taxpayers have to kick in an additional $45 million in the first decade.

Cobb on golf:

The game? A splendid waste of time and space, if not energy. An exercise in frustration with few rivals in any organized activity.

Actually, Cobb was writing about Tiger Woods and the small sphere of celebrity that shepherds our culture.

And thus the entire consciousness of average Americans are almost never more than a car bomb away from total destruction.

Which seems a variation the The Revolver Law. Destruction or salvation, dependent on who the car bomb eliminates.

From the center ring at the Globalistical Warmening circus in Copenhagen:

Tuvalu, a Pacific island state politically and financially close to Australia, proposed a new protocol which would have the advantage of potentially forcing deeper global emission cuts, but could lead to other developing countries - rather than rich nations - having to make those cuts.

Many developing nations cherish the legally binding commitments that Kyoto places on industrialised nations and fiercely oppose proposals that would change this.

God has a great work for you to do and if you are not doing it, it's not getting done.

Quoted from: Brian Dunbar

It ain’t stealin’ if you do it fast.

Quoted from: Moe Szyslak

In a Washington Post editorial, Sarah Palin distances herself from politics as usual:

Our representatives in Copenhagen should remember that good environmental policymaking is about weighing real-world costs and benefits -- not pursuing a political agenda.

What? Government policy has costs? All I’ve been hearing about are benefits. Who is this dimwit telling us that there ain’t no such thing as a free unicorn!

And, in the paragraph prior that outrage, Caribou Barbie seems to suggest that executives should act within the letter and spirit of the law:

The Minneapolis City Council is hashing out a 2010 budget that will include both tax increases and cuts to core services. The latest compromise includes laying off 25 cops, but keeping 27 civilian Crime Prevention Specialists (CPS):

The budget writers dipped into funding for some of [Mayor] Rybak's favored programs to keep civilian crime prevention specialists working in neighborhoods. Money was taken away from such programs as high school career centers, micro grants to encourage homegrown food, and foreclosure prevention efforts.

The headline-making unemployment figure (currently 10.0%) is only one of several measures for unemployment. What we hear is called the U3 statistic. There is also a U6 statistic:

This isn’t a third-rate tribute band, it’s the underemployment rate, and it tracks people who work part-time, and people who’ve given up looking for work altogether. This rate is currently at 17.5%.

The result of frivolous web surfing…

We all know who Bugs Bunny is. He is the definitive “Bugs” in my inherited culture. Yes, I know of Bugsy Siegel and Bugsy Malone.

If I hear of someone with a nickname of “Bugs” or “Bugsy”, I think rabbit.

Turns out, I should think of bugs. Insects:

Arthur “Bugs” Raymond: The owner of a wicked spitball, Bugs (who got his nickname from his weird windup and generally twitchy mound antics) was a manager’s nightmare.

My previous comment on employment data was back in August. In the intervening months, the unemployment rate—a favorite for headline-makers—grew to double-digits. Now the November data is out, and blowhards of every stripe are jousting over the meaning of the first drop in that measure in a couple of years.

It’s all gas.

The unemployment rate is dependent upon too many variables and subject to too much manipulation for my tastes. I look at employment, not unemployment. What we really care about is how many people are adding value to our economy. And how much.

In general, you can get help if you are doing your share but not if you are sitting on your butt expecting the Lord to push one way while you are pushing the other way.

Quoted from: Maxed Out Momma

Hopefully you’ve heard that global warming/climate change has been exposed as a colossal fraud. They made it up.

Cobb wins my award for Best Metaphor Describing the End of Globalistical Warmening:

The swastika has been blown off the Reichstag.

Enjoy your Thanksgiving. Drive the biggest, safest vehicle you can afford, and turn up the thermostat. Gaia doesn’t mind.

Before the government became our collective nanny, insurance companies were primary defenders of our health and safety.

A house built to low standards, for example, would either be uninsurable or face premium surcharges. One might still build the shoddy house, but in case of fire, the loss would fall totally on the owner. And that owner would have to finance construction out-of-pocket, as no lender would make a loan against an uninsurable building.

A discussion not worth linking to reminded me of an important point. Our courts do not declare anyone to be innocent. All a jury or judge can do is find someone to be “not guilty”.

The way our common mindset operates, being arrested taints a person’s reputation. An arrest may not lead to any formal charges, but the arrest is public record, and thanks to the internet, the taint is forever.

One who is formally charged suffers a stained reputation. Even if the court returns a verdict of not guilty, that person will not be regarded as possessing the same innocence of one who was not tried or never arrested.

A commenter on Neo-neocon’s post about granting Khalid Sheikh Mohammed a trial in Manhattan broadens the view:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.