Joe Paterno...Penn State Football.

The PSU students set up a camp they call "Paternoville" outside Beaver Stadium...let's hope the team lives up to the challenge and beats the Buckeyes tonight.

For those who have never seen it, it may be hard to imagine the amount of items that can be sold bearing Joe Paterno's likeness. Coffee mugs shaped like his head, lifesize cardboard cutouts of him, masks, pins, shirts, etc. Even the credit card issued by MBNA can be ordered with a likeness of Joe Paterno on it.

Much like the Bear was to Alabama, so to is Paterno to Penn State.

Let's Go State!

My Idea for a Better America.

I've got it pretty much figured out, and it's an idea that came to me while I sat in disbelief at the 2004 election returns, wondering, as did many people all over the world, how 50 million plus United States citizens could be so stupid. The electoral map was quite revealing, and gave me a brilliant idea that's so obvious I'm sure others have also had this stroke of genius. Now all it will take is for us visionaries to get the message out to the grassroots and start the ball rolling. In the end I believe everyone will get what they want.

A little background: about 150 years ago this nation fought a civil war and the northern states (aka the Union) defeated the southern states (aka the Confederacy). Some people apparently think the "war of northern aggression" should have ended differently. I am proposing to let bygones be bygones and to grant the Confederacy their request to secede from the Union.

Here's how I think it'll all shake out: Every state from Virginia on down east of the Mississippi can go, and of course Texas also. Especially Texas. Let them form their own damn country, since they're always on about the "Republic of Texas" and whatnot. Northern Virginia will probably want to stay with the Union, given everyone who lives out there seems to be from Pittsburgh anyway.

Here's what we, the Union, gain:

• Immediate increase in the median income
• Immediate increase in the level of education among the general populace (note: not talking IQ here)
• Immediate decrease in federal tax drains (dollars in v. dollars out)
• Immediate decrease in out of wedlock births
• Immediate decrease in members of Congress holding (openly) racist views

And of course there are other benefits:

• Florida and Texas are no longer around to screw up our elections.
• New York will stop hemorrhaging its population to Florida, because fewer people will want to retire out of the country.
• Assholes like Grover Norquist, Paul Weyrich, and James Dobson will lose a good chunk of their following, but they may gain a country that will roll over for their experiments.
• Confused idiots who live north of the Mason Dixon line but still sport the Stars and Bars will relocate to their new-found homeland. Good fucking riddance, morons.

To the Confederacy, a few benefits will also accrue:

• The two good universities in the South, Duke and North Carolina, will make North Carolina a shining beacon of hope and draw the South's intellectuals (of which there are quite a few). Currently, that's not possible because these schools are overshadowed by the Ivy League, whose influence over the north east currently imbues that area with an aura (sometimes incorrect) of education and new ideas. Who knows, maybe Charlotte will become a real city.
• That's about all I can think of.
  

Judging from the number of Stars and Bars waving people claiming that "the South will rise again" and "Forget? Never!", I'm certain my plan will be met with enthusiasm both within the Union and the proposed New Confederacy. And hopefully, we can sort this mess out without firing a single shot.

If It Ain't Right, Kill It.

There sure has been a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth by conservatives over this whole Harriet Miers Supreme Court nomination. I suppose it's understandable, given that conservative groups couldn't confirm her membership in the KKK, Aryan Nation, Council of Concerned Citizens, or other old-line anti-American hate groups.

At some point you have to wonder what will make these ultra right-wing groups happy. They've already succeeded in gutting industry regulations -- has anyone else out there noticed the exponential increase in fees that banks, credit card companies, etc. charge for services or late fees? -- allowing for increases in all sorts of consumer fraud from Enron to environmental poisoning to predatory lending. That my friends is the free market at work.

Yet somehow these frauds whose great vision of the future is one where the "haves" live in secure gated communities and the "have-nots" either do their bidding or starve to death are integral to the Republican Party. Bush has to send his envoys to kow-tow to the likes of Paul Weyrich and Grover Norquist, two of the most loathsome crypto-fascists around. Norquist of course is famous for his position that he'd like to shrink government "down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub." How sweet. If this man were Michael Moore the people who pine for Berlin circa 1933 would be calling for his head for threatening the overthrow of the US government.

I'm trying to think of a similar scenario in which President Clinton would have run his nominations through a vetting process with the Socialist Workers Party or Greenpeace. For the most part, Democrats run scared from the Left and try not to be seen with them in public, whereas Republicans embrace their Little Government Fascists, even though most of them probably vote or are registered as Libertarian.

Bill Bennett, Trent Lott, and other racists remain prominent figures in Republican leadership; elitists like Norquist, Schlafly, and Weyrich exercise inordinate influence over Party decisions; "family values" proponents such as James Dobson and Pat "The Assassin" Robertson lend advice on everything from dismantling welfare to Supreme Court nominations.

It amazes me every day that these scumbags stay in power.

Tomorrow: my solution to much of our nation's problems.

We Don't Need No (Public) Education.

More slimy stories about sleazeball Bill Bennett, the self-appointed virtue guru, continue to bubble to the surface in the wake of his racist attempts to link Blacks to crime. Mr. Bennett, as many probably know, was Secretary of Education under Ronald Reagan. While Reagan worked to dismantle the social safety net, Bennett was key to undermining public education through neglect and hostility.

Now we find out just how unsuited Bennett, the man who wrote the so-called Book of Virtues, was for his position at the Department of Education. Reed Hundt, who was Chairman of the FCC from 1993 to 1997, recounts his encounter with Bennett over an initiative to get funding to wire schools, including the public schools:

At any rate, since Mr. Bennett had been Secretary of Education I asked him to
support the bill in the crucial stage when we needed Republican allies. He told
me he would not help, because he did not want public schools to obtain new
funding, new capability, new tools for success. He wanted them, he said, to fail
so that they could be replaced with vouchers,charter schools, religious schools,
and other forms of private education.

Ah, you have to love the Republican Party, which is not to say that the Democrats are the bringers of all wisdom either (mainly being cringing fools more intent on being safe than being correct).

I don't know how many times in the last five years I've stopped and thought to myself, man people just aren't that stupid. And in many cases, I've been proven wrong.

Public education is the backbone of this country, and if it isn't working, you fix it. You don't dismantle it in favor of scattered experiments that to date have shown no actual improvements over the public schools. The charter school movement, while it can be romantically alluring, has provided no substantive improvements while at the same time giving less accountability than traditional public schools. Education is too precious to allow the so-called "free market" to destroy it through a rush to the bottom.

Motor Vehicle Report: Evil lurks everywhere.

Quite a few extra morons were on the road this morning, making my commute rather hazardous. As usual, most of the offenders were sporting Maryland-issued tags. I'm not certain if the requirements to drive are lower in Maryland than in other places, but half-wits behind the wheel are a menace everywhere. As a society, we really owe it to ourselves to tighten the driver licensing process. Here are some suggestions:
1. Reaction test. When I took my driver's license test back in the 1980's in Pennsylvania, technology was limited. Still, I had to negotiate and ess turn, parallel park, do a three point turn, and be smart enough to stop at a stop sign. With new technology we need to prepare drivers for realistic situations: garbage trucks backing up into traffic, pedestrians using crosswalks, sharing the road with cyclists, and merging into traffic.
2. Turn signal use. Failure to use your turn signal should result in a written warning for first violation, a 25 dollar fine for second, and a 15 day suspension for all other violations.
3. Injudicious use of horn. Blowing your horn for no apparent reason (such as the split-second a light turns green) should result in a $25 dollar fine for first offense and a severe beating for all others.
4. Drivers need to be educated that just because they drive Mercedes, the rules of the road still apply to them. Traffic laws are not brand specific.
5. Drivers of BMWs, when the car isn't in the shop, need to understand that no one with an IQ above 100, unless he or she was a member of the Greek system in college, is interested in references to your "beemer."
6. Humvee drivers should be immediately pressed into the military.

With these guidelines as my platform, I hereby announce my candidacy for mayor of this great colony!

Where to start, where to start...

What a news day. First, Bush picks an extra from some David Bowie tribute band to be his next Supreme Court nominee. According to CNN, in 1996, Bush spoke glowingly of Ms. Miers:

He articulated his high regard for her more memorably during a 1996 awards
ceremony when he called her "a pit bull in size 6 shoes."

I wonder if anyone knows John Roberts's shoe size?

Then I find out August Wilson is dead. Last year I was at the Arena Stage to see Wilson's The Piano Lesson, and it was a powerful play, probably the best play Arena put on last season. His vision alone -- a ten play cycle of Black American life in the 20th century -- puts him conceptually in the same league as Eugene O'Neill, who worked the same idea with Irish Americans.

To top it off, in Sunday's Post there's this article about attitudes toward climate change, which includes this gem:

The new poll found that relatively few Americans saw the recent storms as God's work, and only a fraction of those said the storms were divine punishment.

About one in four Americans -- 23 percent -- viewed the storms as "deliberate acts of God."

Excuse me, but how do you go from "relatively few" to nearly 1/4 of the population? Furthermore, why is it that nearly 250 years since the Enlightenment as a culture we're still so superstitious? If these dark-age morons don't throw all notions of a progress narrative out the window, I don't know what will. Where's Voltaire when you need him? Or Thomas Paine. Please.

And I don't even want to start in on this story...

Happy Valley Saturday...a beautiful day.

Game time was 3:30 p.m., so about noon four of us loaded the cooler full of yuengling lager into a car and headed up to Happy Valley to see the Penn State v. Minnesota game. These are guys I went to high school -- in many cases elementary school -- and college with, and we go back quite a way with long memories of our various embarrassments and misdeeds. It was a good hour's worth of recounting as we rode to the stadium.

Cow pastures and cornfields -- that's what most of Penn State's parking lots are when not used to herd cars. We were a good ways from the stadium.

The lion led the team onto the field.

Penn State's first touchdown. It was a sweet sweet moment, because last year I attended the Iowa game, which PSU lost 6-4, and where their only scoring came on two safeties. Ugly.

I even saw the lights of the goodyear blimp and it read JoePa's a pimp.

Postgame: hanging out on College Avenue picking up undergrads. Ok that's not quite accurate. Actual Post game: looking in every clothing store on College Avenue for Penn State children's clothes.

We are now ranked, and I'm giving myself a few days of bliss before falling into the worry of what may happen next Saturday v. Ohio State and it's crew of mountain man linebackers. Coach Tressel is very determined.

Penn State will not be able to run on OSU the way they ran at will on Minnesota. Robinson didn't make any critical mistakes against Minnesota, but his passing wasn't exactly crisp. He'll need to throw the balls closer to the receivers if PSU is going to win October 8.