Quote of the Day
The wisest mind has something yet to learn.
George Santayana
Romney Wins Puerto Rico
With 20% of the vote in, Romney has been projected to win the Puerto Rico primary with 83% of the vote. If Romney finishes the night over 50%, he wins all 20 delegates up for grab. Both the WSJ and The New York Times showed Romney starting today at 501 votes. This means that Romney will be 46% of the way towards clinching the nomination. Keep in mind that Romney has lapped the field, i.e., he has more than 50% of delegates awarded to date.
The bad news for Santorum was that I wrongly predicted after last Tuesday that Santorum would get a boost from his narrow Mississippi and Alabama wins. In fact, Santorum basically drifted back a bit to roughly an 8-point deficit, which has been replicated in other polls. Romney has marginally increased his margin over Santorum for Tuesday's Illinois primary to roughly 6 to 8 points. Romney took off early from Puerto Rico to head back to Illinois, which is a good sign. All the Illinois polls I've seen have Romney with a small but significant lead. As I mentioned in past posts, Illinois has a tendency to elect mainstream GOP candidates, very much like Romney. But Romney has found himself unexpectedly nipped at the wire by Santorum in Iowa, Colorado, and Alabama with moves not showing in the polls. An Illinois win could boost Romney going into Louisiana, where Santorum has a modest lead. So far Santorum has a double-digit edge next month in his home state and Wisconsin, but I suspect we will now see an air of inevitability about the Romney campaign. Santorum is beginning to run out of real estate.
ObamaCare Abortion Surcharge Mandate? Unconstitutional
Ask me how I feel about the federal government ordering me to pay towards the expense of murdering preborn babies. This is different from, for example, being required to pay for a common defense; war is usually accompanied by the loss of life, especially tragic collateral damage. But war objectives can be achieved without deliberate loss of life.
I understand people will have differences of opinion on abortion. But putting aside the polemical nature of the abortion dispute, the fact is that this violates the spirit and intent Bart Stupak deal with the White House enabling ObamaCare to pass in the House. I'm also growing quite testy about the disingenuous double speak by progressives that a mandate is different from tax-and-spend. No, it's not! It's logically the same as the federal government taxing the source and transferring the proceeds to the target. Money is fungible, and the fact that the federal government doesn't directly touch the money is incidental, not substantive.
Abortion is not the proper subject of insurance. Insurance is supposed to cover low-probability, high-expense items. Given the fact that some surveys show nearly 40 years after Roe v Wade, a strong plurality if not majority of Americans do not approve of abortion, it's absolutely unconscionable that people are being told they have to pay for something they consider murder of another human being.
Cross-Industry Crony Capitalism? Thumbs DOWN!
One of my pet peeves in watching crime dramas on television are the inevitable scenes where investigators whom wear the suspect down to the point that he confesses to murdering his own mother (because she died in childbirth). Along the way the investigators will promise to stop bullying the suspect if he'll only say the magic words they want to hear. And, of course, these investigators give each other high-fives for getting their man.
Or suppose, for instance, a feuding, troublemaking neighbor makes a frivolous but serious accusation to authorities. The police come to interrogate you and reassure you if you're not guilty of any wrongdoing, what do you have to lose by cooperating with them? Why wouldn't you want to clear your name and everything will go away. But--and this is the rub of it--they shouldn't be questioning you at all: they should be questioning the troublemaker over making a false report to police.
I mentioned this incident in a past post, but I'm rewriting it for the benefit of readers whom haven't read all of my posts. When I moved to Houston from San Antonio, I lived in a southwest Houston apartment--by myself. I would visit my family's lower middle class home, then in the San Antonio suburbs, for holidays and certain events; I think the oldest of my sisters was finishing up her nursing degree in the north Dallas suburbs, and my other 3 sisters were still in K-12. So this one Sunday evening, I had just arrived from my 180-mile drive back to Houston no more than 10 minutes when I got this knock at my door; there were two Houston cops, one male and the other female, at my door. (I don't think it was a hoax.) It was one of the strangest conversations I've ever had. They had one simple question: "Sir, is your sister alright?" "Officers, I just got back from San Antonio, and I live by myself. Are you sure that you have the right apartment?" The officers gave my correct address and repeated, "Sir, is your sister alright?" What's also confusing during all this is that they don't even ask to see my phantom sister nor do they ever mention the alleged sister's given name: they simply repeated their question: "Sir, is your sister alright?" They refused to address my counterpoints: there is no sister; nobody has been in my apartment all weekend; I just got home; I never called the police; what is this all about. They won't tell you why they're there--all I can infer is that my phantom sister must have been reported to be in some sort of unspecified danger... It was like talking to a brick wall: you either respond to their insane question with the response they want to hear, or they won't go away and leave you alone.
Finally I gave in and said, "Yes. My [phantom] sister is fine." Satisfied, they turned and walked away without any further comment. I'm not exactly sure why my saying that seemed to pacify them. They must have thought I had placed a nonexistent call to them about my phantom sister. I went down the next day to the apartment management office and complained that the police had stopped by and whether she knew what it was all about. She snapped back that she knew about it, and she didn't want to talk about it; by her nonverbal behavior she seemed personally upset at me for some unknown reason--she refused to look me in the eye, but to this day, I still don't know what it was all about. I don't even recall describing my family with anyone in the complex.
Don't get me wrong: I was happy that the Houston police were responsive to the apparent need of my phantom sister. But the conversation was one-sided; they didn't think I had a right or need to know why they were interrupting me and invading my privacy.
So what point am I trying to get across? A de facto presumption of guilt; false positives; an invasion of privacy. There are some truly Orwellian things being discussed that reduce the spirit and intent of the Bill of Rights to paper, just paper (all with the blank check, no doubt, of the War on Terror)--discussions of things like TV sets integrated with technology allowing clandestine observations of you--within your very home. Your email, the calls to your doctor, etc.: anything that you think has a reasonable expectation of privacy can be recorded, accessed or abused by a contemporary version of J. Edgar Hoover (and you thought Jack Kennedy or Martin Luther King's alleged extramarital affairs didn't come under government scrutiny...) or corruptly leaked to unauthorized, possibly even criminal elements (think of other Private Brad Mannings and/or less-restrained Wikileaks).
I'm not predicting these things will happen, but what disturbs me is how many people are willing to sacrifice even their own dignity if Uncle Sam says the magic words "war on terror"; not only do they accept it "whatever it takes" but they'll try to put pressure on other Americans to do the same, as if pro-liberty Americans are aiding and abetting the enemy!
The fact is over 99% of the traveling public poses no real threat to aircraft safety: we have more to fear from airlines possibly scrimping on aircraft maintenance or the impaired judgment of flight officers. And yet the flying public generally resigned to accept whatever arbitrary rules or regulations by some unelected, unaccountable authority. To me, the TSA image scanner is of more symbolic relevance. It is highly predictable that many people from conservative religious backgrounds would object to others seeing their nude body. It was not difficult to provide a masking technology for nude images; the fact that government bureaucrats arrogantly approved use of the technology without modification, traveler knowledge or consent represents Big Brother run amuck.
What does this have to do with the recently announced agreement between RIAA and the Big ISP's to begin surveillance for illegal distribution of copyrighted music material by July 1?
Let me point out, first of all, I have one of the largest album/CD collections of anyone I know (except for possibly one brother-in-law). My musical interlude segment has been a recurring daily feature for hundreds of posts now. I have promoted licensing tracks, charity CD's, etc. I have never used file sharing services. This shouldn't affect me. So why does this bother me, over and beyond possible false positives of the ISP's stealth monitoring technology?
For one thing, it bothers me that my ISP will be tracking what I'm doing to the point it can detect downloads. It leads to other concerns: what else is it tracking (e.g., email)? For how long? Accessible by whom? I don't have a problem with my carrier trying to optimize data throughput from a black box perspective, to identify and manage resource hogs (including, yes, file-sharing), to contain malware risks or to eliminate email spammers; in fact, I oppose net neutrality legislation for those reasons. On the other hand, I do have a problem with my carrier whiteboxing and/or maintaining copies of my data without due process and probable cause--no fishing expeditions, which is blatantly unconstitutional.
I'm not sure RIAA will get much from this arrangement; my intuition tell me most of the music-sharing crowd is younger with more limited budgets. But what chills me was a suggestion that the FCC pronounce their blessing over the agreement. Cross-industry Big Business arm-in-arm with Big Nanny? Not good.
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
The Cars, "Drive"
