Arizona: Constitution Not Welcome Here, Either

Apologies in advance:  It's the Constitution and some history again.

Not even a little interested?

Arizona so agrees with you.

So does The Scaley Supreme Court, as it is known on this Blog.  Readers of Empty Glass Full (or Scaley's own My Glass Full Yours Just Wrong) have gained, as a result, a special insight into our Supreme Court's take on the US Constitution.

The basic logic of Scaley's definitive Originalistic Constitutional interpretaion is this:  If it wasn't there for the thinking when the Founding Fathers were originally do the thinking in 1787, it isn't covered by the Constitution, or, in the case of the famously dubbed The Top Ten Amendments of 1789.  The 14th Amendment, important in the Arizona discussion, would only apply to stuff around in 1866, 1868 at the latest.

The easy part first:  There was no Arizona in 1787 or 1789.  The United States didn't even own the property then, and didn't even know there was anything worth buying beyond the Mississippi.  Therefore, the original Constitution and The Bill of Rights can not apply directly to Arizona.

Bad as that may sound, it acutally is wonderful news, since there were only a few dozen Mexicans and Indians living thereabouts and this is all about giving them no rights at all.

So what about Arizona by 1866?  Deceptively good question.

In 1848, the US had made a friendly deal with Mexico in which the US got the norther half of Mexico and Mexico got to keep what was left of its army, its capital and a warehouse full of tequilla.  In 1853, the US bought another sliver of Mexico, including Tuscon, Yuma and half the Gila River, and referred to that little purchase as the Territory of Arizona. They picked the a name by joining two Indian words meaning "Last Little Water Before LA".

The final shape of Arizona was set when it developed multiple-personality disorder.  It became two territories during the Civil War (or the War to Promote Gray History Month, depending on your governor), one organized by the Union in 1863 without slaves and the other claimed by the Confederates beginning in 1861 with as many slaves as you could get to grow cotton in the desert.  The Confederacy gave up its claim to Arizona along with its claim to the beautiful city of Richmond, all those valuable slaves and everything else in 1865.

At the time the Fourteenth Amendment was submitted for adoption in 1866, Arizona was a mere territory, putting off statehood until three years after Barry Goldwater was born, probably unnaturally, in 1909.  This being so, the Framers of the 14th Amendment knew about Arizona, vaguely if at all, as a territory but not a real state.

Under the Scaley view, the 14th Amendment can not apply to the State of Arizona, since there was no more a State of Arizona than a Prius, an iPad or a Wonder Bra when the amendment was kicked around and put down in writing.  Don't even try to suggest that the amendment applies just because Arizona The Territory did exist in 1868.  Assuming, arguendo (as Scaley might himself write in the Latin of the cross), that were true, just try and find a Territory named Arizona today.  Go on and good luck.  There isn't one.

Thus, neither the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, nor the 14th Amendment apply to the State of Arizona.  Arizona can do what it damned will pleases.  The State of Arizona could, if it wanted to, outlaw anybody doing anything, including pastry asthmatics swinging clubs at the sand or tall black guys shooting hoops indoors, but it would like to stick to stopping, frisking and, generally, outlawing the beyond-tan walking the streets or riding to off-the-books day jobs in crowded pick-ups.

For now.

Arizona Week Continues: Lesser Arizona Fun Facts

What to call an Arizona Citizen - Arizonium Blanco

State Rock - Arizonium (highly radioactive to aliens)

State Bird - Southerly Pointed Digitum Centrum

State Song - Tomorrow Belongs to Me

State Language, Free Division - English

State Language, Detention Division - Spanish

State Greeting - Letters of Transit, amigo.  Pronto.

State Color - Pure White with Sunburn Highlights

State Jewelry - Plasticuffs

State Phrase - Finish up before you go the hell back to Hispanium.

Favorite Conservative - John McCain (April 2010 version)

Favorite Liberal - Barry Goldwater

Favorite Weather - Dry Heat

Favorite Canyon - Echo

Favorite Avocation - Neighborhood Watch Patrol

Second Favorite Avocation - Riding Shotgun

Original Name, English Division - New Mexico

Original Name, Not-English Division - Old Mejico

Greatest Fear - Right of Return

We've Got The Second Craziest Guy

You thought Pat Robertson had retired the title of Craziest Guy on Earth.  Maybe, so, but the competition has been reopened.  Bring Pat's jersey down from the rafters of God Memorial Soccer Bowl.  There's a new nut in town.

Fortunately, not your town.  This time.

As we all know, Pat Robertson has insightfully blamed practically every natural disaster since he matriculated kindergarten on gays and girls behaving badly.  Hurricanes regularly punish Orlando for Disney's parades.  Haiti's recent earthquake resulted from the Haitians contract with the devil to have voodoo and sunshine in place of Christian souls.  Thankfully, the Rev's been too busy compiling lists of punishees what with all the earthquakes God has unleashed pretty much anywhere a tectonic plate is attached to a Toyota with a mind of its own.  9/11 was brought upon us by any woman who has a mind of her own.

Well, Pat, take a back seat in that Toyota.  The BBC says you've got company.

Iranian Cleric Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi ("Hojo" to his friends on this blog) lectured his flock in Tehran on April 16th that earthquakes are generally caused by women. Young women, girls.  The ones who show their... hair on their foreheads; the ones with clothes that have actual tailoring; the ones with hemlines hiked up above their insteps.

Allah ("God", to Pat's friends on this blog) is watching these young women like they were on "Gossip Girl".  It is not known specifically what Allah thinks of Serena and Blair's headbands, but it can't be good:  There is an awful lot of beautiful hair and matching extensions showing.  It is one thing for infidels in New York to wear provocative headgear, as Allah can barely cast a disapproving eye for all the bouncing tresses, but in Tehran?  That means scarves at least the size of a Megan Fox skirt.

In Hojo's Tehran, less is more virtuous.  The less a woman shows Allah, the better Allah likes it and there is a lot for him to like in Iran these days.  Which is great, piety is next to... (back from Wiki) ... actually is godliness.

This blog has faced Iranian issues before, such as space turtle mail  and misuse of both space and worms.   It has also consistently taken up the cause of women, pointing out that women in politics need their hands securely held and should not move about the planet without that help; that women, even at the executive level, are still made to push envelopes, presumably with their unheld noses; and women, especially, young women should be treated with great respect as Uterine Holding Devices.

It is best, then, that this blog stick to Serena, Blair and Megan, while leaving the topic of Iranian women to an expert like Hojo, himself.

As to women causing earthquakes?  You know that part already.  Forget all that shifting tectonic plates stuff, an earthquake is really just the earth moving.

Arizoniums Must Avoid Alien Contact!

So says Stephen Hawking, the renowned expert on Dark Matters and Cosmetology.

Bravely, Hawking has weighed in on the debate in Arizona over that State's new Aliens Roundup Law.  Hawking, in the upcoming "Into the Universe" TV show, uses a score of Beatles songs to get across his points that that aliens may not be all that smart but are likely very dangerous:  "Do not approach them. Aliens will not understand English. And, for God's sake, do not ride with any of them in a pick-up."

Despite the Hawking revelations, many alien-lovers are imploring the President from Far Far Away to intercede and seriously  bad-mouth the Arizona law.  Neither Shrek nor Barak Obama were available for comment.

Such partisans have been dismissed by upstarts in Dark Matters, such as Glenn Beck of FOX U, who consider them leftovers from the warmly-embrace-invaders "ET" and "Close Encounters" generation.  These are the very ones, Beck says, who missed the more recent and much more accurate "War of the Worlds" and "Transformers II".

Hawking, being British, does not know Glenn Beck or the legality of the Aliens Roundup Law under the American Constitution.  The British may have their own alien problems, but they look far savvier than Americans, having written their constitution in invisible ink long before their western colonists plucked their first quill pen from an Indian Thanksgiving gift basket.  Hence, the British do not have to worry about Sean Hannity reading selected words from their constitution to resolve important issues.  (This topic, but not Sean Hannity, will be discussed in a later much less important post.)

Aliens, Hawking suggests, may be out there in large dark numbers and will attempt to cross our border in stealth vehicles too advanced to be seen by our Direct TV satellites.  They will be seeking either resources to replace their own or, maybe, gardening jobs Americans don't want.  Or both.

Worse, aliens may carry microbes that can annihilate native American Caucasoids with a deceptively chummy handshake.  It could be deadly to hand them anything under the table.  Hawking believes aliens may live in an environment with insufficient water to wash their hands thoroughly.

Do not panic, but they may even be attracted to Dry Heat.

Finally, Hawking emphasizes, it is simply too risky to even try to communicate with aliens. Leave that to the Arizona police.

Key Condition Met for Peace in Proximania(tm)

The peace talks for Proximania's messy God-Gave-Who-What-When dispute can now proceed to the next precondition.  The thorniest of them all has been resolved.

Israel will now allow both Israelis, their tourists and their Arab Proximates to buy and use iPads without warrantless detention.

Virtually everyone on Facebook hailed the announcement as "liked", right under the precious picture of the family puppy's really cute rear end in action.

The Gang of Four met secretly in Geneva, because of the good fishing pond, to discuss a tentative response to the news.  And possible sanctions against puppies.  On a related note, The Big O was so delighted that he texted a jolly invite to a celebratory afternoon tea on his very own iPad, which mistakenly routed it to "TP" on his contact list, which is why Alice Palin showed up in her pinafore instead of the expected Hillary Clinton.

iPads in hand, Israelis and their favorite Proximates can instantly know where in Jerusalem they are building houses.  This is important because...  well, because each side says so.

With iPads, all Proximates living outside of Proximania can more easily find their way back to the beautiful ranch houses and bountiful farms they left behind when Nebuchadnezzar II deported everyone to Babylon; or, much later, when the rest of were forced to move by Otto Preminger to clear the battle scenes filmed for the fabled Exodus, but with Paul Newman instead of  Moses.

iPads will change everything.

Iranian President Egad, spinning anticly atop an advanced centrifuge, had only good if garbled things to say about the breakthrough, so his remarks went unreported.

Milkaholism is a Disease of the Visa, Too

No, not your everyday Visa card.  Or the one now required just to walk Arizona streets.

The one that is solid gold and has been used to death by Lindsay One-Name (formerly Lindsay Lohan).

It has long been established that milkaholism is a disease of the mind, soul and wallet.  Cow Milk is a very expensive and addictive substance, except for skim milk which is blue.

Many become hooked before they even have a cell phone.  Parents often encourage their young children to consume this dangerous hamberger by-product a glass at a time.  It is often cut with various mousy-brown powders containing caffeine into an immediate brain-popping extra-sugary liquid high.  As if it needs help. While it is available, itself, in powdered from, that is just too yucky even for the most far gone.  In any case, neither People nor TMZ has a single iPhone photo of Ms. One-Name consuming the powder through a straw.

Clearly, Ms. One-Name has a problem.  It is widely reported that she has run up a super heavy credit card tab.  Think heftier than the number of TBO's New French-colored Benjamins that a Lobbyist can jam into a Congressman's golf bag:  $600,000, spent, largely, on Milk and Ovaltine.  Always conservative Visa and Mastercard have either cut her off altogether or dropped her credit limit to $200,000.

Ms. One-Name's own father crashed her in-pad partying with her Muslim sister, Ali, because he couldn't charge a limo on the Discover Card he gets to use as her guardian.  "This has to stop!" he is reported as saying. "You are endangering my frickin' feet!"

Despite it all, Ms. One-Name is still a fine actress.  She has acted blotto in numerous roles as clubbing diva, missing Rolex witness and missing witness period.  Her 2009 film, "Labor Pains" earned the distinction of a grand opening in Bucharest before ABC Family on Cable outbid Nuuk for its western hemisphere premier a month later.  Her next blockbuster is scheduled to open in August 2010--and perhaps Greenland will land this one--In it, she has yet another convincing turn in support of mega-star Jessica Alba and the comedy team of Cheech Marin and Chong Johnson.

But her adiction and spontaneous crying jags over broken, white-coated tumblers may have cost Ms. One-Name her first Oscar-worthy role since "Herbbie Fully Loaded" (no pun intended).

In "The Other Side of 'Lost'", Ms. One-Name was to be transported by Amex Platinum Vacations to a remote island with night clubs under every manhole cover, there to discover the essence of throbbing smoke-monsters and improbable vodka mojitos.  Unfortunately, American Express canceled her vacation and, as she was working for scale and paying her own way, the producers had to go find a comparable actress--if there is one--with a functioning credit card.

Not to mention the persistent mustache that inevitably forms over the lips of the addicted.  While some may find it sexy, just think of experiencing it through 3D glasses, several feet high and nearly in your lap.

Okay, bad example.

Ms. One-Name tearfully declaims against reports of her addiction, but the music overwhelms even her powerful, if increasingly throaty, voice (oh so perfect in the musical "Prairie Home Vaudevillian").  And paparazzi sliding off the hood a a car are always whining too loudly.  The tip-off, however, is that excessive milk consumption leads to career-threatening deposits of calcium in the hair.

Deny, deny all you want, glamorous Ms. One-Name, but something had to have turned your beautiful red hair to that limp, painfully undistinguished blond.

A Tea Party Huzzah for Health Insurers

The Heathcaristas in TBO's Socialist administration may be turning cartwheels to the point of dizzying the liberal media.  It doesn't take much to figure their misguided glee.

WellPoint.

No, not Good Point, but there's a beacon of goodness for all adherents of the Tea Party of Wonderland ("TP")

WellPoint is a big health insurance company, with 33 million insureds.  Many had though the name meant something about making people well, but, it turns out, it has everything to do with only intelligently incentivizing women who stay well.

Seems the huge, free-market health insurer borrowed some unemployed computer programer from Lehman's and cooked up an algorithm--computer-speak for a routine that figures certain things out on its own--that plucked out, from WellPoint's millions of paid-up policy holders anybody who no longer did not have breast cancer.  Having done that, algorithm raised a little pink flag next to all those names and went back looking for more.

The next step was left to tireless WellPoint staffers, TP'ers themselves perhaps, who sent pink slip-like notices out to the flagged women, stuck on a pink Post-it on those files and passed along them to magnifying-glass-wielding file-reading specialists.  Those intrepid, if strained-eyed, gallants scrutinize the pink-Post-it'ed policy applications for omissions, errors or downright misspellings to justify the previously sent cancellations.

WellPoint's CEO, Angela "Pinkie" Braly, surely gets a bonus based on such algorithms.  And she should. Wellpoint's charter does not mention justice, welfare or blessings and the corporation mission should not be diverted by such preamblings.  WellPoint's precept is singular, as is Pinkie's job:  Profit.  Pure and simple.  Women with breast cancer are bad risks for any insurance company.  They will almost certainly cost more than a woman whose worst complaint is a weekend of Viagra.

As you the critics out there, ask yourself this, and think of it as your money at risk:  Would you insure a sick person against getting sick?  They're already sick, for God's sake.  No one can expect you to insure someone who is guaranteed to require a big reserve before she pays her second premium. Taking a risk, you could live with that, but a known sure thing headed the wrong way? That's not insurance, that's a bottom-line uglier than a quart of Pepto.  It's flaming, bonus-blotting red.

So, don't you flinch, Pinkie. In the Tea Party of Wonderland's Kool-Aid pinned eyes, you are a superstar!  You are what TP was invented for.

And, Pinkie?  Don't wear a ribbon when go to get your well-deserved, if ironic, Teabagger of the Quarter Award from Alice Palin.

Bears Alert South Park

It's always something.  Especially on "South Park".

Trey Parker and Matt Stone can't draw worth a damn and do a terrible Barbara Steisand.  They ridicule everyone and everything from Mel Gibson movies to Conan O'Brian's Tonight Show Week; from Ben Rothlisberger to his personal savior and bodyguard, Jesus.

But last week's show, (April 14th) was beyond the pail.  Perhaps, the time has come for Trey and Matt to find another line of work.

We Bears are upset as all get out and, when we are done in the woods, we are going to protest.  No, not about that awful Chinese toilet paper, but that may be next.

Winney, Smokey, Yogi, Boo Boo and other genus leaders are trying to keep the bear community from going nutso.  Some Bear radicals ("Ursuists"), like the particularly humorless Ursus Actors Horribilis threaten to smear Trey and Matt with rancid honey, the way those Thai food people did in Thaistan, except with blood.  Others, the piously rabid Twirling Euarctos, want to break every window in Colorado and then sneak back into Idaho.

An Northern sect stomped their paws so hard they cracked several ice floes into snow cones and threatened to evolve from white to black... but that was about Sarah Palin.

We Bears are a peaceful, faith-based lot, worshiping certain bear-shaped constellations and quietly, if painfully, borne human's derision of our sacred stars as "Dippers".  We have never believed in Santa Claus, as you imply.  We are usually depicted as gentle and spiritual on the cartoon shows we draw ourselves.  The occasional gorey rampage is usually justified by the presence of undercooked hamburger and chicken, which humans shouldn't eat anyway.

For centuries, we bears have performed selflessly with our human cousins, live as well as on TV, often on unicycles with funny hats.  We have proven our desire to live side-by-side with humans, although we do gently suggest that humans become Bears, if only because there are too damned many unused unicycles.

Trey and Matt, we do not threaten you for your insulting transgressions against bears.  We mean you no real harm and hope you get to keep your rightlegs, assuming you can only draw with your left foot the way that Daniel Day Lewis can.  Instead, consider this a chummy warning that some bears out there are way beyond picinic-basket angry. Bear leadership is consulting with Tom Cruise on how to prevent the repeats from running until the end of Mayan civilization and all those broken ice floes in 2012.

And, on a personal note:  Don't kill Kenny.

Save Lobbyists Cash

How much does a Congressional Committee Cost?  It is a simple enough question, but Lobbyists are confounded by it.

But, now, we know.

It's $22.8 million.

The very amount financial lobbyists have rammed down the collective throat of the Senate Agriculture Committee. 

The what?

Well, technically, it can now be called the Committee on Agriculture, Financial Nutrition and Can't See the Forestry. But, yes, them.

This (or some of it) is according to the New York Times article by Ed Wyatt (Old French for "Where at") and Eric Lightblau (Old German for "KMart bargain").

If you think that odd, Ed and Eric have a better one: Those dollars are Two and a Half as much as Charlie Sheen has spent getting into rehab and a similar multiple of what the Committee members have reaped from the guys who give us soybeans and Wheaties, the guys who are supposed to buying the Committee lunches and golf clubs.

So that's the however-weird reaping part.  What about the sowing?  Shouldn't that come first?  Well, in politics, the committee member's reaping is really the lobbyist's sowing, keeping the whole harvesting metaphor lucratively intact for all.

Apparently, the Democrats' Twelve Agri Men (okay, and women) get to decide whether derivatives should (1) be allowed to grow wild, as done under the Republicans; (2) be intelligently regulated, as not done under the Democrats; or (3) simply be exiled back to Calculus where they can boggle students minds because the needed symbols are not available for texting.

Idiotic?  A word usually too hackneyed when tied to Congress, but, here, go ahead.

Once upon a time, Agriculture was more important than either Tweeting or securities fraud.  Farmed commodities were the first to be subject to futures trading, mostly in the relatively sane city of Chicago.  Regulating such made-ups things based on real things, like carloads of pork bellies or corn on the cob, fell, sort of logically, to the Agriculture Committee. 

Sometime after the cocaine was taken out of colas and put in rolled hundred dollar bills, Wall Street decided made-up things could be based on other made-up things, like a mathematician's idea of a hedge fund's bet against sub-prime mortgage nano-interests. The Agricultural Committee couldn't see anything that needed regulating, since there was nothing but air to see.  And they don't get to regulate that.

We know where that got us and some of us would like not to go there again anytime soon.

Hence, 22.8 million buys the financial lobby a committee they don't really want, but have to have, because some of us are still fussing over 2008.

Seem like a waste?

All those committee people.  All that money.  The solution is fewer and, therefore, less.  Or really fewer and a lot less.  Pay each committee member a half a mil each, even the Republicans (though that is optional).  That comes to, at most, $10.5 million.  Ship them, first class, to Idaho for a well-deserved, but unpaid vacation, generous at $100,000.  Sit a single financial lobbyist behind twenty-one cardboard cut-outs, costing $10 each, but allow $200,000. 

The lobbyist gets the draft bill via email from Wall Street as usual, prints it out, say in Icelandic to see if anyone notices, and sends it in boxes to the floor of the Senate.  And saves twelve million bucks which could be donated to Iceland's derivative-busted banks, since we used their language on the bill or could be used to compensate the blogger who came up with the idea in the first place.

Billions in lost time, productivity and sanity avoided.

Oh.  And those committee members?  They won't be coming back from Idaho.

Back Taxes Take Front

Sorry.

...And Center.

It is late to be talking taxes.  We all cut three fingers and thumbs getting our taxes ready.  Except for those of you who did that e-filing bit to get your refunds quicker.

If you e-filed and had to have money pulled from you private Swiss accounts..., well, that's just sad.

This belated alert will not piss you off nearly as much as it would have on a downtown street at 11:55 PM April 15th, mid-way through Virginia's Gray History Month.

If you borrowed on your Discover Card, do not read further.  Seriously.

Pamela Anderson, presently starring on "Bouncing With the Stars", owes California half the depth of a breast tatoo under $500,000.

Oh, such feet of high-silicone-content clay.

Perhaps, Baywatch heroes and heroines are not what they used to be.  Or, did we overestimate them unfairly?

Who among us did not look up--but mostly down--to Pam, except, maybe, Tom Cruise.  In many ways, she was the perfect, well-made female star.  She delivered her lines in "Barb Wire", made us jiggle with fear in "Scary Movie 3"; and was the Invisible Girl in "Superhero Movie".  Sure she was.  She defined 3D before Jim Cameron could even pick that perfect shade of blue.

So, Pam?  Say it ain't so.

Of all states to short on your taxes, Pam.  It's run by a movie star with a better former body than yours.  California is going to have to lay off the Sequoia trees and use the land for marijuana farming...  Okay, that's taken, but still.

This cloud's silver under-wire is that Pam must have paid her Federal taxes.  Nobody is videoizing that claim on TMZ, so she must ponied up to Uncle O, who needs the cash more than Arnold does.  And that is saying a mouthful or two of unnaturally plentiful teeth.

Hmm.  This may be a chance for some guys who just augmented their collections with "Baywatch" and "Tommy Lee Gone Wild" on BluRay to  to give Pam and California some much needed support.

On the other hand, Pam now has a new revenue source for California to tap:  Pam's own milkshake!

Oh, please.  This about tax equity.

Welcome to the New Hell

It is official.  Really official. It doesn't get any more official.

Your Tweets will remain available forever.  Eventually, everyone with an independent study in Smiley Faces or Texting in Dyslexia (actually Dyslexia in Texting) will be able to read everything you ever Tweeted and will judge the whole of your existence accordingly.  They may Tweet about it, although Tweets will probably seem awfully long to those future scholars.

Tweets?  No way.  They're, well, dumb.  Compared to erudite, well-comma'ed blogs.  No one wants to archive a passing impulse, more like gas than thought, reduced to short bursts of grammar mangling.  Right?

The Library of Congress of Congress does.

And you thought those guys still wore powdered wigs twenty-four-seven and simply kept only the quill-pen-on-parchment-or-worse-vellum stuff from getting too dusty to read.  Like something Jefferson wrote praising the Parisians' efficient, and repeated, use of the guillotine to enforce term limits.  At most, otherwise, the LoC archived maybe a Lincoln speech written on an envelope.  Or Myspace pages. 

Nope.  The LoC plans to store everything on Twitter, including... well, "everything" means everything.  It inked a deal with Twitter to gobble up everything you impulsively put in a Tweet, like your enthusiastic endorsement of something Sarah Palin said to Katy Couric; your voting for George III, twice; your agreeing with Scaley, also twice; or your quasi-linguistic slavering over of Megan Fox's... eyes, way more than twice.

All that stuff you assumed would be washed away by the daily tsunami of Tweets, it isn't going under.  It won't even be damp or smeared.  Go ahead, delete it or set fire to your laptop.  That electronic bit of drivel will still be there, even if there is only one (not bloody likely), for all who just don't get your sense of humor to read.  To coldly evaluate.  For all eternity.

It is a harrowing, but undeniable truth.  Sartre was wrong:  Hell isn't other people.

Hell, my tweeting friend, is you.

Illegals Now Really Illegal in Arizona

Finally.  A state takes the toro by the horns and makes it illegal to be illegal.

Arizona, long known hereabouts as the Virgina of the Southwest, has dared to go where no state could get the votes to go.  Its House passed a bill, one that largely matched State Senator Russ Pearce's February effort, in making it illegal as all hell to be in Arizona if you are illegally in Arizona.

It will be a serious misdemeanor to be walking down the street without your Casablanca... er ... Arizona internal Letters of Transit, stamped by Governor Strasser himself.  I mean, Brewer.  Specifically, an alien must carry these papers to prove his/her registration as an alien.

It is unclear if a real Arizonian can walk down the street without Letters of Transit.  Or a flooded-out refugee alien from, say, Rhode Island.  And TBO had better get his letters of transit, too, in case he changes planes in Phoenix on the way to receive an honorary Oscar for his stunningly realistic portrayal of the Cheshire Cat in "Alice's Tea Party 3D".

We all know that anyone stopped by the KGB had to produce some sort of papers to stay off a train headed for Siberia.  Presumably, Arizona is striving for similar effectiveness, but with the much prettier Painted Dessert.  Misdemeanor processing camps will soon be built there using old gulag blueprints from Sen. Russ' own collection.

Arizona cops, from the state police driving the desert to the assistant meter maids in Mesa can arrest any alien unable to produce the Letters of Transit and throw them in hoosegow (conveniently derived from the Spanish word "juzgado", so all illegals will understand what's in store for them).

Even real Arizonians had better be careful, as it will be illegal to drive around town with an alien not having Letters of Transit (perhaps this is where the very name comes from).  If you see some poor fellow who's Lexus SUV has flipped over, do not stop to help unless you can actually read the papers he is waving madly at you.

Arizona will have to issue regulations to provide guidelines and tips for its illegals enforcement professionals in how to ask for Letters of Transit in the first place.  Knowing what hoosegow is in Spanish will first among the shortcuts.  If Russ were to ask other real Arizonians, they could probably put together a list of guaranteed illegal indicators in five minutes.

Most real Americans would only know to start with "probably a shortstop".  After that, we're stumped. Maybe accents could count, so Antonio Banderas and Penelope Cruz should stay in Spain for now.  Any Australian would be better off on that spooky island in "Lost" than in Tombstone. And Confederate Governor Haley Barbour might want to stay in Mississippi until he gets some Letters filled out for him. 

Oh.  The Letters of Transit applications, and their twenty pages of instructions,  will be only in English and, of course, the original German.

Pitty the Foo!

So, it is not the Mr. T Party.  Mr. T would not worry about voting the Socialists and Wimps out of office.  Gold chains clanking and dialog lacking, Mr. T would just throw them directly into Boston Harbor.  Or any nearby Ave.

Don't pretend you don't feel the same way about your computer, either.

America's Fraternity of Teabaggers, which changed its name to The Tea Party Of Wonderland, is still at it.  And now, they have their own heretofore bored, 3D Alice in Sarah Palin, the Governor of Alaska who can see farther than the Who on a clear day.  The Teabaggers finally have the honest-to-God, really high-pitched squeak that might get them some serious media grease.

Especially the serious part. At the outset of their coverage, the media reported on the Teabaggers with a stage snicker and all the immediacy of a snipe hunt.  Could anyone get past the fact that the Teabaggers loved that name and had no idea how to use Google (there being no "Bing!" on your favorite TV show at that early date).  After the media-lashing about their collective face, the Teabaggers did some research on a borrowed set of Wikipedia and said, "Oh."

And the Tea Party ("TP") of Wonderland was born.

Long before Tim Burton and IMAX landed a Hatter's hat or a Red Queen's foot-pig in you lap.

The TP is all about squeaking out against taxes.  Any taxes, all taxes.  And spending.  Any spending, all spending. And government, all government.  The TP wants Americans to keep all of their money so that they may invest it wisely in new jobs and credit default swap options.

The shockingly almost-bold, near-revolutionary TP wants any politician who is in government and who casts an aye toward taxes or spending to be voted out of office. 

Yes, voted.  Not lined up against a wall and pelted with New Classic Comic Bibles.  (Even the abridged ADHD version can really hurt if thrown only a foot or two.)

Yes, voted.  Not sprayed with blood, dropped twenty feet from a Boeing 777, or sunburned with a looking glass in a soccer stadium.

Whose a whimpy Dormouse?

Some Republicans, mostly peeking out from under the checkered tablecloth when the TP is nigh, are worried that the ultra-reactionary TP will push the Republican party off the underlying table, spilling GOP candidates along with the caffeine water, by pushing the Greed Old Party farther to the Right.

Like that's possible.

And, don't tell anyone, but that Cheshire-stlyle smile you see floating above the Tea Party?  That big, toothy smile looks awfully Hawaiian, doesn't it?

All Hail Not-Winners Month!

Are we back in Serbia?  The Serbs revere June 28 or June 15th, depending on which calendar you have handy--also known as St. Vitus Day--to celebrate their greatest battle, the one in which they lost their whole country to the Turks in 1389. 

Didn't we all think that was odd when we heard about it during the whole Kosovo mess?  Usually, one goes out of one's way to avoid defeats even more than the St. Vitus Dance.

Surely, Americans are not so bereft of victories that we need to dedicate a day to losing.  Or dancing, for that matter.

Not so fast.  There is always Virginia.

Virginia, the land of Washington and Jefferson and lots of other big winners is keen on dedicating a whole month--that is thirty times as long as the Serbs--to celebrating the biggest losers in the US since America's Indians invaded it from Asia and conquered the aboriginal Bison.

April, which fittingly begins with its own special day, has been declared by Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell to be "Confederate History Month".  Haley Barbour, who is Governor of Mississippi, thinks the idea of a month swapping in the mythical tales of the Gray Coats is extra swell.

Sure, there is a bunch of slave descendants and the usual Democrats questioning the idea, but, come on, didn't the Confederacy just flat out lose the Civil War (or The Chivalrous Contest to Keep the Three-Fifths in the Constitution, depending on your accent)?  Wasn't Southern Glory one of those things gone with the wind?

What's to celebrate?  Sword Surrendering at Appomattox Court House?  Sherman's Waltz through Georgia? Assassinating Lincoln?  Gray itself?

Perhaps, the flag-waving Guvs will argue that, for a while, the Confederate States of America was a beacon of liberty and was really, really effective in the early battles.  Okay, the early battles.  Isn't that a lot like winning the first half of the Super Bowl?  Is there a trophy and a hundred beer-can-sized rings for that?

And what flag should the Guvs wave?  Surely, the one that was the original, official flag of the CSA, the "Stars and Bars", which is not what you might think and didn't last as long as the CSA did.  But what about the one voted in just before the wind blew in?  Or the one adopted in between, which was mostly the same white that the CSA's Lee ultimately waved at Grant.

Perhaps, too, the Guvs will invite all those cranky slave descendants and usual Democrats who live elsewhere to vacation in Virginia, or even Mississippi, during April.  Guv Bob will probably have vintage chains and authentic overseer whips on display for visitors to the Virginia Confederacy Theme Park.  Maybe some historic cotton picking or related auctions for extra fun for the kids.  The Set-Fire-to-Atlanta ride is always a thrill.

Back to those silly Serbs.  Remember, now, that Virginia's celebration of not-winners is thirty times longer than the Serbs' single day.  The celebrated Serb defeat ended an kingdom that lasted thirty times longer than the Confederate States of America, start to flag-furling finish.

And Guv Bob?  Next year?  Just stick to April 1st.

What's A Proton's Turning Radius?

Switzerland?  Very close.

NYT's Dennis Overbye pretty much lays it out in his April 2, 2010 article and it's big.

Generally, protons sit in the middle of a molecule and, relatively, don't go all that fast.  As most of you should know by now, going slow gives you a good chance to complete that U- or K-turn you need to make when you passed up the Starbuck's.  If you are going 60 miles an hour (in a 25 mph zone), you are not going to get that latte this morning and will be asleep at your desk by noon.

Anyway, most protons pose little turning trouble.  The protons lazing around in your bottled water are actually ripping through the universe at speeds your Lamborghini can't even imagine.  The Earth whips around the sun at 760 mph, faster than a Boeing 777, if one ever flies more than 760 feet.  Its solar system gets near to 500,000 mph just in the Milky Way.  Forget about how fast the Milky Way or its cluster are going.

Not only does the protons go that fast, so do you on your couch and your DSL's pet turtle.

All of those speed are nothing compared to select protons under Switzerland.  The Large Hadron Collider--a name leaving unresolved whether the Hadron or Collider is large--which is buried around Geneva, has been repaired from what was probably a wayward black hole and is back in action big time.  Whatever is the large part, it is seventeen miles around, like a tunneled beltway around that city by the lake. 

The point of the LHC is to accelerate protons to speeds that would make Einstein cut back on lattes.  Once the protons are up near the speed of an image of Megan Fox heading toward your amazed eyes, the protons are to hit each other head on.  The kaboom generates heat, back holes and lots of really little particles that the scientists have sitting around to record for a decade or two,  It will be like a nano-sized Big Bang.  It could start a whole new universe, but one so small you wouldn't realize it had ended up on the bottom of your sandal.

But, to the point:  If you see one of these super-fast protons coming you way, remember:  It can't suddenly turn away.  That'll be up to you.  Despite the world's biggest refrigerator-magnets tugging at it, an LHC proton has a turning radius of 2.7 miles! 

Of course, there are probably are three Starbucks within that radius, but that's worse than a Camry on crackahol.  Trust me, you don't want to collide with either one.

So, what to do?

You can't avoid the Camry; they are everywhere.  But the LHC proton will stay safely in Switzerland, just like money used to, unless, of course, it escapes into France for a couple days, after which it could go anywhere and more annoyed than when it entered.  And if it creates a black hole, it would take hours to suck in that Camry, the turtle and your couch with you on it, giving you time to pray for the first time in...

No.  "Oh Sh_t!" is not praying.  But it is quick, so you can start with that.

Care for Health or the Constitution. Pick Only One.

What's the legal difference between a rabbit and a Hare?  The rabbit goes into hiding but is not a Congressman embarrassing the whole state of Illinois.

Phil Hare is, for now, a Congressman from Illinois.  Phil doesn't care about the Constitution, which he thinks is the Declaration of Independence anyway.

To be fair (don't laugh), nobody can tell the difference between the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, except, maybe, that the latter has more catchy phrasing.  That's because Thomas Jefferson was in France applauding the guillotine during the drafting of the former.

And can anyone tell the difference between "former" and "latter"?

Phil probably can't, either, but he doesn't care.  He only health cares.  He couldn't care less about the Constitution.  He cares way more about people who die without health care than those who live without the Pursuit of Happiness (Oops!  The Declaration, again.)

Without being specific, Phil said he wants to make every person, probably including corporations, get health insurance by the end of the day.  Easter and the following Monday are really holidays, so they surely don't count.  Figure Tuesday.

Phil was baggered into making these comments by a Mr. Tea fan.  Phil did not have his Congressional Constitution For Dummies handy and who uses seven commas in a preamble these days?  Unfortunately, Phil didn't get any better when he had time to read the damn thing backwards and compare it to Jefferson's better quilled Declaration of Independence.

Everyone knows that it is the Constitutions Commerce Clause that gives the Feds the right to do pretty much whatever they want when money is involved.  And when is it not?

Under it, Article I, Section 8, Clause 3 (just look at the commas!), Congress has the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, among the States and with Indian tribes.  The latter should give Congress the right to get us in on all that gambling revenue the Indians think is all theirs (will they never learn?).  But it also has been held by the Supreme Court to give Congress the right, if not the brains, to meddle in just about anything.

Would Scaley, himself, even argue?  Much?  So, aside from him.

An example that comes first to mind:  You would think that your corner bar wouldn't involve commerce beyond the back alley which is regularly used in connection with the bar for related activities, which the bar owner has to clean up.  Historically, to, say, the 1990's, in most corner bars, you weren't welcome if you weren't "from here", which usually meant the Irish ward.  When the Constitution was written, taverns got both their corn products, beers and patrons locally.  Not now:  Patrons are encouraged by cities to come in from many places, from across State lines and from foreign countries, to get a Bud in your corner bar.  The Bud almost never comes from down the street from that corner, either, unless you are in St. Louis or Jacksonville.

In George Washington's day, health care was local, too.  Maybe, the leeches were imported, but they never traveled over state lines themselves.  Poking a hole in a malfunctioning skull or sawing off a limb with ugly freckles didn't require equipment from Germany.  Morphine hadn't been developed in--where else?--Germany by 1789.  Neither had the aspirin (Germany) or Tylenol (Germany again) that you get for $10 a pop at the hospital today.

Come on, Phil, it's the Commerce Clause.  Nothing in this country is local, not even the Mr. T fan club, whose members live to be on the very nationwide FOX Spews.  Interstate and international commerce!

What in your local hospital is made in your state. The CAT scan?  The hospital bed?  The static-free tile?  The executive jet for executive trips to satellite clinics in Italy?  Where did the very doctors come from?  Where did the nurses go, for that matter?  No self-respecting hospital uses in-state collection agencies to stress its patients into revenue-producing relapses.  Don't even mention the insurance companies.  One exception:  Blue Cross, which is franchised nationally, like McDonald's without the fries.

Okay.  Phil, you are now prepared to go out in public again.

Still, don't.

Happy Easter! Atheists!

Now, that's just wrong. 

Easter is for Christians of most stripes and bonnets, maybe animists and bunny worshipers.

Not Atheists.

Don't Atheists have pretty much have the rest of the year to celebrate whatever Atheists don't believe in?  And they have all other days of the week, which were named for various gods, by the way.  Do atheists have their own names for the days of the week or do they just love the irony of using the regular polytheist ones.

CNN.com revealed the impolite Easter plans of the American Atheists to congregate at their national convention in a Newark ballroom.  Yes, in Newark... serves them right.

Their leader, Dave Silverman, who sounds Atheist, ticked off a list of things to CNN.com's John Blake that Atheists don't do:  Sacrificing Christian babies, dancing naked, worshiping Satan, being immoral.  He did not mention anything they actually do, except the convention.  It makes you wonder why he would go to such trouble to list the don'ts.  Someone is doing all that stuff, right?  Does, perhaps, he protest too much?

Dave disingenuously claims that Easter is just a good time for not-believers to assemble and not-worship together.  Hotel ballrooms are discounted and it is a long weekend.  Nice try, but the same applies to Columbus Day in Newark.  Or Patriots' Day in Foxboro.

The Atheists got to meet with some White House staffers to complain about the lack equal treatment for America's many Atheists, some, according to Dave, still in their closets.  Presumably, then, many of Dave's Atheists are gay, too.

Which Christians always suspected, of course.

David, do you need a clue?   Atheists are probably reviled because they are lousy at PR.  One clever campaign and they could rally most Americans to their collective side.  Here's a preliminary idea:  Think waving US flags; maybe some determined if sandy soldiers directing a predator strike; Stirring if Godless music.

And the slogan, which may need work:  "America's Atheists:  Not Just Not Believing!  Not Believing Just in Allah!"

Taliban Killing US Hearts-And-Minds Strategy

Didn't we win the post-war war in Iraq by winning the hearts and minds of the Sunnis?  Yes, we had to arm them to the teeth and pay the warlords a Hedge Fund CEO-level... stipend, but they came to love America and their Shiite brothers and sisters.  Sunnis even vote now.

So, off to Afghanistan we took this strategy.  Hearts and Minds, people.  That will win Afghanistan.  Forget the occasional stray HMA Rocket or Predator Hellfire missile taking out a village or two.  Enlist the Afghans to clean up that mess of a bazaar (we had to bomb just last year) by paying them with real afghanis (a currency worth about 2 cents).  That'll make them love us in Afghanistan, too.

So we battled to take Marja, a Taliban stronghold.  Once we did that, we set about romancing (that means paying) its inhabitants.

But we have run into the unexpected.  We're paying a bunch of Talibanners, too.  Do they go out and buy bread and jam with their afghanis?  They do not.  They buy IED's and rocket propelled grenades. 

So why pay the Talibanners in the first place?

Because, for the first time ever, we can't tell a Talibanner from Afghan.  Damned if they don't look alike.  They even wear the same clothes and walk the same way.  They shake your hand like an Afghan.  Who would have guessed?

Have we ever had a war where the enemy looked like the people?  Think about it.  The enemy usually looks completely different.  Sometimes, they have uniforms that are gray or blue, like in our Civil War (Or War To Keep Our Slaves Ours, depending on your address).  Other times, they have orange horns growing out of their foreheads.  Some look just like the Kracken in "Clash of the Titans" (pick your version).  One of them, for sure, had only one eye, like the Cyclops in the pre-2000 graphic novel "The Odyssey".  But we definitely have always been able to tell an enemy at 100 plus yards, making them an easy target for our laser-approximating bombs.

The American military is stymied by this radical development.  A guy walking down the street with an AK-47 could be the local grocer or sandal vendor.  Or he could be a Talibaner.  Maybe all three.

Worse, the Talibanners, looking like the familiar foreigner-invader-loving Afghans, are killing off the foreigner-invader-loving Afghans and suggesting to others that foreigner-invader-loving is generally best done on foreign soil.  Somehow, the Talibanners can tell the differences and don't kill their own guys (and they are all guys, by the way), by mistake every fortnight or so.  How can they tell and we can't?

We all were assured that  our military had taken Marja and freed it of its Talibaner interlopers. We were well on our way to daily hugs, parliamentary elections and poppy-laced tea with the locals...

Oh.