According to the National Association of Health Education Centers, children’s stress levels have increased 45 percent over the past 30 years.
Youngsters are most frequently worried about parents, peers and grades, the organization said.
Sherri Mincher, a licensed massage therapist in Westminster, wants to help. Thinking about her son and the anxiety he suffers, she started Stress Busters Camp.
The camp lasts for five weeks, and teaches children breathing, stretching and relaxation techniques.
Mincher also encourages children to share their stressful experiences with the group, so that they all can work on developing coping skills.
[. . .]
The camp offers one 45-minute session weekly. The cost ranges from $90 to $113 for five weeks.
Mincher said she intends to limit each session to five children between the ages of 5 and 13.
“What I’ve found is a lot of these kids have social issues,” she said.
Lord knows we can’t have a bunch of 5-to-13-year-olds running around with “social issues,” so something must be done. Personally, I’d recommend a summer job delivering papers or mowing laws, but a “licensed marriage therapist” probably knows a lot more about modern stress than I do. I’d be willing to bet that a very high percentage of these delicate angels, every ounce of stress delicately brushed away from their precious shoulders, will end up being serial killers.
The Tea Parties aren’t always about the federal government’s spending habits, as the one in South Bend this week illustrates:
Ron Hosinski was among the crowd, holding his sign high as tension spread and tempers flared.
“You don’t spend more than you take in,” said Hosinki. “I don’t care if you are a family, a government, a mayor, a governor or president. You don’t spend more than you make.”
Hosinski and the mass of activists are concerned about issues nationally, but also government spending and taxes at the local level, including the proposed local option income tax (LOIT).
“The problem that we see with the St. Joseph County Council is when they run out of money, they add another tax to the people of St. Joseph County,” said J. Kata, spokesperson for the Tea Party.
Local governments are complaining now about all the budget shortfalls they’re having to endure, blamed on the recession and/or state policies. Nobody believes they will ever learn the right lesson after the crisis has passed: Scale back, do less.
The invasion has begun, and we’re all going to die! No, quit looking at the sky, dummy! It’s from the other direction:
Argentine ants living in vast numbers across Europe, the US and Japan belong to the same inter-related colony, and will refuse to fight one another.
The colony may be the largest of its type ever known for any insect species, and could rival humans in the scale of its world domination.
What’s more, people are unwittingly helping the mega-colony stick together.
Argentine ants (Linepithema humile) were once native to South America. But people have unintentionally introduced the ants to all continents except Antarctica.
These introduced Argentine ants are renowned for forming large colonies, and for becoming a significant pest, attacking native animals and crops.
[. . .]
While ants are usually highly territorial, those living within each super-colony are tolerant of one another, even if they live tens or hundreds of kilometres apart. Each super-colony, however, was thought to be quite distinct.
But it now appears that billions of Argentine ants around the world all actually belong to one single global mega-colony.
George Bush, I am sure, would have just commited this nation to attacking the ants without consulting anybody. As a result, the ants would just hate us even more, and we’d be friendless in the world. But at least he would have done something. We haven’t heard a peep from Barack Obama yet.
Delusion seems to have taken permanent hold in Gary:
No matter where they originate, the masses continue to descend on the small northwestern corner of Indiana to honor the King of Pop.
As a result, the mayor of Gary, Indiana, Rudy Clay, has big plans for Jackson’s childhood stomping grounds.
Clay is planning to turn the old Jackson homestead into a museum - all part of a grander scheme to use the fame of the late superstar to give Gary its very own Graceland equivalent.
“If it’s good enough for Elvis Presley, it’s good enough for Michael Jackson,” declared Clay.
Well, I don’t want to be accused of judgmentalism, so you decide:
Members of the Indiana General Assembly stopped playing chicken in time to pass a new budget just before the special-session deadline of midnight arrived, so the state government won’t have to shut down. Crisis averted.
And now that the compromise is in place — a two-year budget instead of a one-year one, slightly more education funding, no new taxes, $1 billion held in reserve — it seems so obvious that we’re left to wonder why it couldn’t have been achieved during the regular session. But that overlooks the real passion — to put it politely — that attended legislative sessions this term. I’ve been watching the General Assembly for more than 30 years, and this was the first time I actually thought they might not get a budget done in time.
And if this was, as many suggest, a battle of titans (short titans, admittedly) Mitch Daniels and Pat Bauer, it’s pretty clear House Speaker Bauer won many of the battles but Gov. Daniels won the war:
Daniels, a Republican, sees each legislative session as a chance to push big — and at times controversial — policy ideas. He’s a man in a hurry; a politician who grows frustrated with roadblocks that stand in his way; a man who has trouble tolerating a legislative culture that so often rewards inaction and political back-slapping. Bauer, meanwhile, is a creature and master of the methodical legislative world. The Democratic speaker is more than willing to serve as a one-man roadblock against the governor’s policy proposals, and he did so again and again this year.
[. . .]
This year, Bauer was able to kill a series of proposals offered by Daniels — including those aimed at restructuring local government and putting property tax caps in the state Constitution. During the regular legislative session, Bauer clearly came out the victor.
But everything was different in the special budget session that ended Tuesday. Daniels united Senate and House Republicans in recent weeks and effectively tarnished the Democratic message during a series of public appearances. In the end, Republicans celebrated, and Bauer saw a budget become law despite overwhelming Democratic opposition.
I’m much closer to Daniels than Bauer philosophically, and the speaker too often comes across as a buffoon. But he’s a very powerful buffoon as long as Democrats control the House, and that’s not always a bad thing. As we’ve seen in Washington, it can be dangerous for taxpayers when one party controls both the executive and legislative branches, even when it’s the supposedly more conservative party. As long as Bauer is throwing up his roadblocks, Daniels has to work a little harder to get his agenda approved; since many of his plans are so sweeping, a little more time to think about them doesn’t hurt, as impatient as the governor might be. It works the other way, too. Bauer’s unfortunate inclination to spend everything in sight can be checked by the governor and Senate Republicans.
Indiana has a part-time legislature and a divided government. In an era of such explosive growth in the public sector, that’s probably about as good as we can hope for.
So, even the “plain people” can be seduced away from tradition and lured to the Good Life:
The great increase in discretionary income spawned a “keeping-up-with-the-Joneses mentality,” says Mervin Lehman, 39, an Amish father of four who says he was making more than $50-an-hour and working up to 60 hours a week as an RV plant supervisor before he was laid off in November.
Some Amish bishops in Indiana weakened restrictions on the use of telephones. Fax machines became commonplace in Amish-owned businesses. Web sites marketing Amish furniture began to crop up. Although the sites were run by non-Amish third parties, they nevertheless intensified a feeling of competition, says Casper Hochstetler, a 70-year-old Amish bishop who lives in Shipshewana.
“People wanted bigger weddings, newer carriages,” Mr. Lehman says. “They were buying things they didn’t need.” Mr. Lehman spent several hundred dollars on a model-train and truck hobby, and about $4,000 on annual family vacations, he says. This year, there will be no vacation.
It became common practice for families to leave their carriages home and take taxis on shopping trips and to dinners out.
Some Amish families had bought second homes on the west coast of Florida and expensive Dutch Harness Horses, with their distinctive, prancing gait. Others lined their carriages in dark velvet and illuminated them with battery-powered LED lighting.
I’d never want to live like the Amish, and even they have found ways to cheat a little and occasionally experience the mainstream culture they otherwise disdain, so I don’t know why I find this story so depressing. Maybe because they at least have tried to go their own way and keep something of their traditions and then found money just as tempting as everybody else does.
At least some of them seem to have learned from the experience and have something to fall back on:
In Indiana, a back-to-basics movement appears to be taking root. More patches of produce have sprouted behind Amish homes this summer. Restaurants are entertaining fewer Amish customers. Mr. Lehman says neighbors “are more considerate of each other now.”
Wow, the Amish going back to the basics, even growing their own food. I’m not depressed anymore — that may be the funniest thing I’ve read all week.
Most of the stuff I’ve read about “Public Enemies” makes it sound either like another Hollywood romanticization of criminal thugs or a boring biopic without much character or depth. But Roger Ebert liked it a lot more than most of the other critics seemed to:
Here is a film that shrugs off the way we depend on myth to sentimentalize our outlaws. There is no interest here about John Dillinger’s childhood, his psychology, his sexuality, his famous charm, his Robin Hood legend. He liked sex, but not as much as robbing banks. “He robbed the bankers but let the customers keep their own money.” But whose money was in the banks? He kids around with reporters and lawmen, but that was business. He doesn’t kid around with the members of his gang. He might have made a very good military leader.
Johnny Depp and Michael Mann show us that we didn’t know all about Dillinger. We only thought we did. Here is an efficient, disciplined, bold, violent man, driven by compulsions the film wisely declines to explain. His gang members loved the money they were making. Dillinger loved planning the next job. He had no exit strategy or retirement plans.
Now it sounds interesting enough for me to give it a look. That’s what a good critic — or even one you’re just used to reading — can do. He can make you reconsider a work and look at it from a different perspective. I might end up not liking the movie any more than I first thought I would, but at least Ebert makes me think I won’t be bored by the experience.
Can somebody please shut this guy up so I don’t have to take a few days off work, get in the car, drive to South Carolina, hunt him down and kick him where he deserves to be kicked?
“I don’t want to blow up my time in politics,” he told the AP. “I don’t want to blow up future earning power, I don’t want to blow up the kids’ lives. I don’t want to blow up 20 years that we’ve invested. But if I’m completely honest, there are still feelings in the way. If we keep pushing it this way, we get those to die off, but they’re still there and they’re still real.”
He has trouble, he said, shutting down the love he feels for Maria Belen Chapur, the Argentine woman he first met in 2001.
Sanford also said he’s “crossed the lines” with a handful of other women during 20 years of marriage, but not as far as he did with Chapur and not since the two met.
[. . .]
He insists he can fall back in love with his wife, Jenny, even as he witnesses his “own political funeral.”
So, he can’t forget the love of his life, but he’s ready to “fall back in love” with his wife. Uh, huh; bet his wife really liked hearing that. Sorry, pal, that’s as over as your political career unless your wife is much more of a jellyfish than she’s seemed so far. In the words of “SCTV,” you blowed that up real good.
Without making any judgments about either cause, we can say that here in this letter to the editor we have a “pot calling the kettle black” situation:
PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) recently made the news again by suggest-ing that the president have compassion on a fly that was bothering him.
[. . .]
Had any of these same people ever taken one step toward protecting other life — human life?
PETA is a group that will brazenly use the flimsiest of news pegs on which to hang one of its pro-animal rights polemics. Anti-abortion activists likewise use any excuse to get the message out. They can probably teach each other a lot about how to get media attention, although I do hope the insect lovers don’t start using Holocaust comparisons.
He says, “We’ve been doing this show for 19 years now and I’m really sorry for that. No one had any idea that it would last all these years.”
And Springer can’t help but cringe when he watches back his very first episode: “That was pretty pathetic but it’s not as if it’s got any better, it’s still awful.”
Maybe he should go back into politics, where “awful” is even less remarkable than on TV.
Michael Jackson’s death lures one of the Big Boys from the Los Angeles Times, who otherwise would probably never consider getting within 100 miles of Gary:
Michael Jackson fans are convening all over the world to mourn a superstar. But to residents who gathered this afternoon near his childhood home in Gary, Ind., Jackson was a once-beloved neighbor.
A man walked down Jackson Street sobbing uncontrollably to someone on his cellphone. A woman carrying a bouquet of flowers wore sunglasses to mask the tears. Stuffed animals and signs commemorating the music star were placed near the door to the home.
[. . .]
Paul Warner, a freelance photographer whose shots are featured by Getty Images and the Associated Press, lived nearby the Jackson home in the humble neighborhood. (Describing it as humble is, in fact, a serious understatement.)
Yeech. That’s even more gag-inducing than the drivel sent back and forth between Mark Sanford and his Argentinian honey. A “once-beloved neighbor”? Neighborhood kids are not beloved, even ones who later become “troubled geniuses.” They are pains in the ass, at best. And all those people “sobbing uncontrollably” into cell phones and wearing sunglasses “to mask the tears” — I think I’d dread running into them more than I would the sorts of people who ordinarily inhabit such a “humble” neighborood (the kind, as one person told the Times writer, of which it is said, “You don’t want to be here at night”). You know, where the streets are probably “mean.”
I dunno. The Jackson house looks very much like the one my parents had near Anthony and McKinney on the southeast side, and I think “humble” overstates the case. A “humble” neighborhood would be like, “Oh, I’m not worthy, thank you SOOO much for choosing to live here.” I think “modest” neighborhood would be more like it: “I know I’m not flashy, but I think we’ll get along.” And the streets aren’t mean so much as surly. “Hey, slow down, you jerk, or I’ll snag you with a pothole.”
It is noted in the piece that “Gary isn’t normally a place where big dreams are made.” Finally, at least, one thing that rings true.
Worry about what you serve your kids in your own home, not about what they might get at the new McDonald’s that just opened up, say IUPUI researchers in Indianapolis:
It was found that the addition of fast food restaurants to neighborhoods did not have a significant impact in children’s obesity rates. Restaurants located within one tenth of a mile from home were associated with slight elevations in obesity rates within certain high school ages.
After a shopping excursion Sunday, we had lunch at a Steak & Shake, which was wonderful as always, but it just reminded me that the only fast-food place I have within walking distance is the Wendy’s at Oakdale and Broadway. It’s a fine place — I stop there on occasion — but a little boring in the long run. It seems to get a lot of traffic both from downtown and from people coming across the Bluffton Road Bridge.
So the corner across Oakdale from Wendy’s would be just perfect for another restaurant, the only slight drawback being that the space is now occupied by a dentist’s office. But I bet the office barely gets 20 or 30 visitors a day rather than the hundreds a restaurant would get. Therefore, I would like it if city planners would please condemn the dentist’s office through eminent-domain proceedings and arrange for a Steak & Shake to go in there. It would be a logical economic-development move, and it would keep me happy.
It wouldn’t even add to the obesity of neighborhood children, so there is no excuse for the city not to act, as far as I can see.
Could they please hype the downtown hotel a little more? This was almost too subtle for me:
The long-delayed construction of the Courtyard by Marriott hotel at Harrison Square officially began Monday with a groundbreaking overlooking the construction site.
Representatives of Fort Wayne city government, local lenders, civic leaders and White Lodging, the company building the hotel, gathered for the groundbreaking and expressed their enthusiasm for the project.
Deno Yiankes, president and CEO of the Investments and Development Division of White Lodging, didn’t settle for mere enthusiasm. He gushed about the prospects for the hotel and Harrison Square.
“It’s a great day in downtown Fort Wayne,” he said. He praised local officials and leaders in the effort to advance Harrison Square.
It is a pretty good day in one way: A new hotel downtown is much better than an embarrassing hole in the ground. And I do hope it works out. Trying to lure more out-of-town visitors seems like a better economic-development idea than just moving sports fans from one part of town to another.
But I’m skeptical. I go back a long way with that particular corner. I worked at McDonald’s while I was in high school. I also worked briefly at the Jefferson Theater, just up the block one way, and spent a lot of time at the pool hall just down the block the other way on Jefferson. The lunch counter at the Greyhound station across the street was another of my haunts. The area was bustling back then, if starting to turn a little seedy around the edges. It had, above all, character, the kind that comes with the accumulated comings and goings of businesses and patrons. It had a history you could sense and appreciate.
The new corner will be something all new, sprung from the imaginations of earnest planners. It will have no accumulated character, no history. Whether it works or not will depend entirely on whether the amusements there can briefly entice people more than the amusements they can find elsewhere. They’ll spend their money, and some of it will stay in Fort Wayne. I guess that’s progress of some kind, but “great”? Don’t think so.
Good grief. In an MSNBC/Elkhart Truth tearjerker, we read in the first four paragraphs about how hard the recession is on Angel Rodriguez. Finally, in the fifth paragraph, they get around to telling us what we’d already begun to suspect:
“Us illegals, we don’t have unemployment,” said Rodriguez, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico City. “If I had unemployment, I wouldn’t have had to give up the trailer.”
The story notes that those “undocumented immigrants” are “particularly vulnerable” because, without “proper documentation.” they can’t access “government benefits.” Some of them are even considering the unthinkable, going back to Mexico. But, get this:
But there’s a catch to consider. With tightening border security and the increasing difficulty of making a clandestine crossing from Mexico into the United States, a return south of the border may not be easy to reverse should things improve.
How many more sob stories like this are we going to have to endure in the run-up to President Obama’s plan for amnesty comprehensive immigration reform, which will be 3,000 pages long and introduced at 2 p.m. on the day he says it has to be done by 5 p.m. to avert a catastrophe of unimaginable magnitude?
If Hoosiers had voted for Jill Long Thompson for governor instead of Mitch Daniels, this man would have been our lieutenant governor:
Dennie Oxley Jr., a former state legislator and last year’s Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor, avoided arrest on alcohol-related charges early Friday by telling police he was serving in the General Assembly, according an Indianapolis Police report.
Oxley, 38, of Taswell, appeared intoxicated with “extremely slurred” speech, balance problems and bloodshot eyes when police found him walking away from a woman lying in the parking lot of a downtown Indianapolis gas station, the report said.
Apparently, authorities are looking into charging Oxley now that his deception has come to light, and the incident might also complicate the ease with which he gets out from under a dui and traffice accident in February. Plenty of news stories about all this, and a lot of action in the blogosphere. Hoosier Access calls it “Int-Oxley-Cated II, the Sequel,” and Advance Indiana says “Oxley Meltdown Continues.” Some of the stories and blog posts refer to the constitutional provision providing immunity for legislators in session, but only the Blue Indiana blog (as far as I can tell) questions it by saying it needs to looked at because it “creates a class of citizens above the law.”
I think that’s the interesting angle. Article IV Secion 8 of the Indiana Constitution: “Senators and representatives, in all cases except treason, felony and breach of the peace, shall be privileged from arrest during the session of the General Assembly, and in going to and returning from same.” So getting falling-down drunk or driving under the influence aren’t breaches of the peace? How about killing someone while driving under the influence?
I’m not sure this immunity is as extensive as people seem to think it is. “Breach of the peace” can cover a lot of ground, as the Wisconsin Court of Appeals has held. That state has the same exemption provision we do and even has the “except treason, felony and breach of the peace” wording. The term “breach of peace,” the court held in 2002, refers to all misdemeanors. Our courts might see it the same way.
The opening Wednesday of “Public Enemy,” the new movie with Johnny Depp as John Dillinger, seems to be renewing Hoosiers’ fascination with the romanticism of Depression-era gansgters. This AP story captures the flavor:
The grave of Depression-era gangster John Dillinger is seeing a surge of visitors at its Indianapolis cemetery days before the opening of a new film that stars Johnny Depp as the man considered by some tobe an American Robin Hood.
[. . .]
Dillinger had become something of a Robin Hood for some Americans who had lost their savings when banks failed during the Great Depression, and federal agents narrowly missed capturing him several times.
Americans did have an adversarial relationship with banks back then, which led some of them to cheer Dillinger on. But if I remember my myths & legends, Robin Hood robbed from the rich and gave to the poor. Dillinger robbed from institutions that held money for the rich and poor alike, and kept it so he could avoid an ordinary life and honest labor. And, oh, by the way, he killed a police officer in the process; he was a thug and a killer, and romanticizing him is sick. This Indianapolis Star article says the new movie portrays Dillinger as “a violent — yet principled and charismatic — crook.” Yes, sir, that’s certainly what makes violent crooks tolerable to me, if they’re principled and charismatic.
There are those of us who still cling to the “celebrities die in three” myth because guessing who the third might be in any given triad is an interesting way to pass the time. We were cheated out of our game last week when Ed McMahon’s death was followed so closely by Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson checking out within hours of each other.
But things are back on track this week. Gale Storm (is that a heck of a celebrity name, or what?) , the “perky” and “wholesome” star of “My Little Margie” on TV in the 1950s, succumbed at 87. That’s a tough one — for us to have a legitimate threesome game, her death had to be followed closely by the death of someone who is a also a minor celebrity. Then we can speculate on the third minor celebrity.
And now we’ve had the second, because BILLY MAYS DIED! HE WAS A TV PITCHMAN!! ONLY 50!!!
BUT, WAIT, THERE’S MORE!!!! HE HIT HIS HEAD WHEN A PLANE LANDED ROUGHLY! HE WAS SHOWN TALKING ABOUT THE LANDING!! WENT HOME AND WENT TO BED, AND HIS WIFE SAID HE “DIDN’T FEEL GOOD!!!”
Sorry. That was a long way to go for a one-joke post and in very bad taste, but I couldn’t help myself.
The administration and Congress are trying to ram through as much as they can as quickly as they can — the massive cap & trade bill and health care reform, for example, bills that will be so big and complicated that even those doing the voting won’t know what’s in them. So thank goodness for small favors:
President Obama and his top aide conceded Thursday they lack the political muscle to pass immigration reform this year on an already overcrowded legislative agenda.
“There’s not by any means consensus around the table,” Obama admitted, while hosting a bipartisan gathering of 30 lawmakers at the White House.
But “after all the demagoguery, we’ve got a responsible set of leaders who want to get things done” for a possible immigration compromise next year, Obama said. He singled out former foe John McCain (R-Ariz.) as an ally.
They won’t get near the actual word, but “immigration reform” means amnesty. Obama’s use of “demagoguery” is a big clue.
New York has become the first state to allow taxpayer-funded researchers to pay women for giving their eggs for embryonic stem cell research, a move welcomed by many scientists but condemned by critics who fear it will lead to the exploitation of vulnerable women.
The Empire State Stem Cell Board, which decides how to spend $600 million in state funding for stem cell studies, will allow researchers to compensate women up to $10,000 for the time, discomfort and expenses associated with donating eggs for experiments.
This wasn’t supposed to happen, was it? All those who argued that we were headed this way were dismissed as being part of the religious-nut crowd. Or isn’t $10,000 enough to persuade a woman to get pregnant just so she can donate the embryo? Can I order my body parts now?
Arizona school officials violated the constitutional rights of a 13-year-old girl when they strip-searched her on the suspicion she might be hiding ibuprofen in her underwear, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday. The decision put school districts on notice that such searches are “categorically distinct” from other efforts to combat illegal drugs.
In a case that had drawn attention from educators, parents and civil libertarians across the country, the court ruled 8 to 1 that such an intrusive search without the threat of a clear danger to other students violated the Constitution’s protections against unreasonable search or seizure.
Justice David H. Souter, writing perhaps his final opinion for the court, said that in the search of Savana Redding, now a 19-year-old college student, school officials overreacted to vague accusations that Redding was violating school policy by possessing the ibuprofen, equivalent to two tablets of Advil.
Souter said it would be reasonable to search the girl’s backpack and outer clothes, but it was a “quantum leap” to take the next step. Such “quantum leaps” have become commonplace in the era of zero tolerance. No distinction is made between vague reports of a student having Ibuprofen and reliable reports of one having cocaine, or between a student having a real gun or drawing one on paper, or a student having a hunting knife on his person or a table knife in the trunk of its car, or . . . pick your overreaction. The lone dissenter in the 8-1 decision was Clarence Thomas, who said the student would not have been the first person to conceal pills in her undergarments, “Nor will she be the last after today’s decision, which announces the safest place to secrete contraband in school.” That sounds like he’s deciding based on a real-world consequence instead of what the law and Constitution require, something an originalist isn’t supposed to do.
And on the empathy front, Ruth Bader Ginsburg has complained that her male colleagues’ comments at the time of oral argument made it sound like they didn’t appreciate the trauma such a search would have on a developing adolescent. “They have never been a 13-year-old girl,” she told USA Today. “It’s a very sensitive age for a girl. I didn’t think that my colleagues, some of them, quite understood.” But, as the Washington Post story notes, the opinion recognized just that. “Changing for gym is getting ready for play,” Souter wrote. “Exposing for a search is responding to an accusation reserved for suspected wrongdoers” and is so degrading that a number of states and school districts have banned strip searches.
While everyone’s been talking about health care and arguing over what President Obama should or shouldn’t say about Iran, cap & trade is sneaking up on us. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants it introduced tomorrow and passed before the Fourth of July recess. This is a bill that has grown from 900 pages to nearly 1,200 just in the last few days, and they’re still making changes. It’s doubtful many legislators will have even read the thing before they vote on it. But the broad intent of the bill is clear, and those who take comfort in recent studies, including one by the CBO, about how minimal the cost will be for Americans, should take a closer look, as The Wall Street Journal did:
The hit to GDP is the real threat in this bill. The whole point of cap and trade is to hike the price of electricity and gas so that Americans will use less. These higher prices will show up not just in electricity bills or at the gas station but in every manufactured good, from food to cars. Consumers will cut back on spending, which in turn will cut back on production, which results in fewer jobs created or higher unemployment. Some companies will instead move their operations overseas, with the same result.
[. . .]
Note also that the CBO analysis is an average for the country as a whole. It doesn’t take into account the fact that certain regions and populations will be more severely hit than others — manufacturing states more than service states; coal producing states more than states that rely on hydro or natural gas. Low-income Americans, who devote more of their disposable income to energy, have more to lose than high-income families.
“Certain regions” that are manufacturing states and rely on coal. That would be Indiana.
When I got back from overseas, I started dating a nurse here in Fort Wayne. Well, “dating” may be a bit strong, since I still had a year and a half to go in the Army and could see her only when I came home on leave. Anyway, it didn’t work out, and I remember being hurt and angry and writing a blistering letter, telling her what a wonderful guy she was stupid enough to take a pass on, and slipped it under her door. Time has dimmed the memory of exactly what I wrote (thank God for small blessings), but I certainly recall the tone — something an emotionally overwrought fifth-grader would be embarrassed to admit to. This was way before e-mail (thank God for big blessings), and if I’m lucky, she long ago burned that letter.
If I’d written something so dreadful these days and been stupid enough to send it electronically, it would be around to haunt me forever. So, take a lesson from Mark Sanford, paramours, and keep your lunatic lustfulness a little more private. We are now seeing the governor’s missives to and from his “dear friend” from Argentina, and they are such awful drivel.
You have a particular grace and calm that I adore. You have a level of sophistication that is so fitting with your beauty. I could digress and say that you have the ability to give magnificently gentle kisses, or that I love your tan lines or that I love the curves of your hips, the erotic beauty of you holding yourself (or two magnificent parts of yourself) in the faded glow of night’s light — but hey, that would be going into the sexual details we spoke of at the steakhouse at dinner — and unlike you I would never do that!
[. . .]
In all my life I have lived by a code of honor and at a variety of levels know I have crossed lines I would have never imagined. I wish I could wish it away, but this soul-mate feel I alluded too is real and in that regard I sure don’t want to be the person complicating your life.
This is a man who is supposed to be an intellectual, or at least as close as a politician can get. He went on “Hardball” a couple of weeks ago to defend his libertarian ideas and held his own with Chris Matthews. And yet he can write such juvenile tripe. It really is true that love and lust make idiots of us all, especially when we can’t keep the two sraight. Yes, I’ve written a letter or two like Sanford’s in my time, too. I don’t remember the exact wording of those, either, but “adore” sounds uncomfortably familiar. But if I’d ever written “by the faded glow of night’s light,” I trust the woman would have just taken me out and shot me.
The newspaper that unearthed this timeless prose subjected Sanford and the woman to the ultimate indignity of writing (sic) after all their mistakes, which e-mailers are prone to make. The worst one was in her P.S. in which she alluded to fact that she didn’t want to turn back the clock, no matter how complicated things had gotten — “I don’t want to put the genius back in the bottle.” Futile effort, that one, trust me.
Transpo, the South Bend public bus line, didn’t have a policy about what ads it wouldn’t take, except that it would deny space for ads deemed “controversial,” which was thought to be constitutionally challengeable on grounds of vagueness. So it felt compelled to let atheists put up a bunch of ads, which upset everybody. So now it has a new advertising policy:
Reportedly, they will deny ad space for the promotion of ”cigarettes, churches, politicians, guns or porn.”
Well, you certainly can’t say that’s not specific. Some people might object to politicians and churches being lumped in with cigarettes, guns and porn, but, hey, you can’t be too careful if you want to avoid controversy. But what happens if somebody like PETA wants to put one of its very graphic posters, which don’t have anything to do with cigarettes, churches, politicians, guns or porn? What if somebody wants to put up a poster promoting the use of medical marijuana? What about animals’ right to use marijuana, huh? Well, you can see the problem with being too specific.
