Rally Day

Today in Salt Lake City, President Bush had come out to be the keynote speaker at the national American Legion convention. Yesterday V.P. Cheney and Secretary Rice came out and spoke. Condolezza Rice is just a cool woman on all counts in my book. I'd agree to have her three-headed love child, if my wife would let me.

With all large scale public figures comes large scale controversy. I'm cool with that. People should be able to express themselves in public forums. It's a basic tenet of the Constitution. But when it comes to self-expression, we also need to be careful how we do it. Rocky Anderson, Salt Lake City's bone-headed mayor, hasn't figured that out yet.

Here we have the President of the United States, his V.P. and the Secretary of State all coming to Utah to speak. This isn't something that happens every day. It's a very cool thing, no matter who is in office. They've been invited as guests, by our guests - the American Legion. Needless to say, the Legion has paid large sums of money into the Salt Lake City coffers, so far, in the form of hotel and convention space rentals, not to mention the restaurants. Instead of welcoming these people, as Salt Lake City's mayor, a representative of the citizens of Utah's capital city, Rocky has chosen to actively organize a protest against President Bush. He somehow feels that he can step aside as the mayor for the day, neglecting his mayoral responsibilities, and act as a "regular citizen."

Because of his actions, a lot of other groups have taken notice and are coming out. Some of them are coming out of the closet. There are rallies everywhere today. Some are in defense of the President, some as a show of support for our troops. There's even going to be a rock concert called "Rock Against Rumsfeld" tonight. As much as I like live music, I think I'm going to give this one a "miss." I can't stand guitar-driven pontification.

There's one group that has just got my goat, though. It's a Baptist group that's threatened to fly in from one of the southern states (I forget which) to appear at the funeral of a Salt Lake City Marine, Adam Galvez. He died while serving in Iraq, struck down by an IED. It turns out that he may also have been gay. This group is coming down to protest gays in the military, at the funeral, saying that "God struck him down."

I don't care what your feelings are about homosexuals and their inclusion in the military. This kind of behavior is vile. This Marine's poor family doesn't need you to hoist your crap over their private (and sacred) service honoring their lost son. Shame on you, you hypocritical twits. How dare you disturb this family in this way. How dare you call yourselves Christians, all the while proclaiming that God is a terrorist. You want blasphemy? Look in the mirror. I have no patience for such filth. UPDATE: This group was a no show, thank goodness. Maybe they read my blog. . . nah.

(Okay, John. Take a few deep breathes.)

Other than that, I have no strong feelings about it.

Okay. I'm going to go take a walk and calm down now.

Why I Hate the FDA

This morning I was reminded exactly why I hate the FDA. It's broken. It has been for years. There is a faction within the FDA that would like to make vitamins and other diet supplements available only by prescription, and yet they've decided it's alright to make Plan B the so-called “morning after” pill has hit the shelves as an over-the-counter drug. Only women who are 18 years old, or older, can buy it, but they can do it without a prescription.

This is an absolutely insane cave-in to the far left and has nothing to do with public health.. The FDA says that it's safe, and yet lower doses of the same medications are only available by prescription.

Yes, you read that right. The morning after pill is essentially a very high does of estrogen. Estrogen, used in lower doses (some very low when compared with “Plan B”) can only be gotten through prescription. This is the exact opposite of what's happening with most drugs.

Let's look at this. Low level doses of ibuprofen are available over the counter. In order to get higher doses you have to have a prescription. Same story with hydrogen pump blockers to control stomach acid, such as Prilosec. Low doses available over the counter, higher doses only by prescription.

And yet Plan B is just the opposite.

The level of lies and deception that I'm seeing in the popular media is just as insane. Watching television this morning I came across a woman who was touting the safety and efficacy of this drug. Huh? If it's so darn safe, why are lower doses, which would be presumably safer, but unavailable over the counter?

This is nothing but the FDA caving in to lobbyists and political support. They've thrown the idea of protecting the public health out the window.

More Good than Evil

Guess what? From the Basement seems to be more “good” than “evil.” Not much more, though. Maybe I need to repent more.

Power Grubbing in the Utah Senate

Yet again Utah Senator Chris Buttars, in his on-going quest for local political power, is trying to bypass the Utah State Constitution. Last session he championed the dubious topic of teaching divine intervention in schools. This time around he wants the state senate to be able to fire judges they don’t like.

Get a load of this:

"That is the only way to make the public aware of some of these terrible decisions. ... I don't know where some of these decisions are coming from. Some judges just go in there and wing it," Buttars said.

Oh, that’s just brilliant. NOT!

Scott Daniels, former president of the Utah Bar Association, had this to say:

"If you did something that displeased the power brokers (in the Senate), you would be out of office, without a practice, without clients. You'd have to start your practicing career all over again. Who would risk that?"

He’s right. This move simply destroys the independence of the Utah Judiciary.

"We have the cream of the crop in judges in this state," said Buttars, but every year, one or two judges "make a decision that makes no sense" and they need to be held accountable for those.

Nice pandering, but I just gotta ask, “Who gets to decide if the decision made sense not?” Buttars wants the state senate to do it, even though the state constitution clearly provides a way for the judiciary to police itself already.

In the long run, this is just another power grab by a silly local politician who is trying to service his career by pandering to a group of disgruntled right-wing zealots. Don’t get me wrong. I’m part of the “right-wing” conservative group myself. But if you start getting too far to the right, you start looking like a fascist, not a conservative.

GITMO Guards Have it Bad, Too

Here’s something you don’t see every day. The mass media is actually reporting on how badly the guards are being treated by the detainees at GITMO. Usually they ignore this part and just try to paint these accused war criminals as poor victims of our military.