Nov 30 commentary

"For links to the articles I read on the air, guest websites, archived shows, my commentaries, a listener's discussion forum, and the text of Mark Stanneart’s latest commentary, visit: www.rabblerousing.org."

Is it the NBA or NFL??
36 have been accused of spousal abuse
7 have been arrested for fraud
19 have been accused of writing bad checks
117 have directly or indirectly bankrupted at least 2 businesses
3 have done time for assault
71, repeat 71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit
14 have been arrested on drug-related charges
8 have been arrested for shoplifting
21 currently are defendants in lawsuits. and
84 have been arrested for drunk driving in the last year .
Can you guess which organization this is?
It's the 535 members of the United States Congress. The same group of Idiots that crank out hundreds of new laws each year designed to keep the rest of us in line.

Here is one example of one of those laws:

The following is from the aclu website: Meet Deborah Davis. She's a 50 year-old mother of four who lives and works in Denver, Colorado. Her kids are all grown-up: her middle son is a soldier fighting in Iraq. She leads an ordinary, middle class life. You probably never would have heard of Deb Davis if it weren't for her belief in the U.S. Constitution.
One morning in late September 2005, Deb was riding the public bus to work. She was minding her own business, reading a book and planning for work, when a security guard got on this public bus and demanded that every passenger show their ID. Deb, having done nothing wrong, declined. The guard called in federal cops, and she was arrested and charged with federal criminal misdemeanors after refusing to show ID on demand.
On the 9th of December 2005, Deborah Davis will be arraigned in U.S. District Court in a case that will determine whether Deb and the rest of us live in a free society, or in a country where we must show "papers" whenever a cop demands them.

Next item: its always fun when one of our local politicians gets suddenly famous. We all thought congressman john Doolittle was splendidly named as he seemed to do little but occasionally trumpet the virtues of building the auburn dam. Turns out he had his fingers in other more lucrative pies as well. According to the Associated Press, "Rep. John Doolittle, R-Calif., along with more than two dozen other members of Congress, signed a letter to Interior Secretary Gale Norton on Feb 27., 2002, that helped lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s clients. The lawmaker received about $64,500 from Abramoff, his lobbying partners and tribal clients between 2001 and 2004, including roughly $17,250 in the period around which the letter was sent. Rep. Doolittle also used Abramoff’s restaurant, Signatures, for a fund-raiser or other event, records show." [Associated Press, 11/17/05]

It gets better. It seems that by his religious convictions, he professes to be violently opposed to gambling. Grievous sin and all that. Turns out that the scheme he is embroiled in concerns certain Indian tribes utilizing the white mans favored tactic of bribery in furtherance of guess what? Casino gambling. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy

I enjoy reading a weekly forcast by an on line astrologer, and she had an interesting footnote this week. I pass it on. To most people’s minds, Y2K was an overblown media event as "Nothing Really Happened" when the clock ticked quietly into 2000. The reason nothing really happened was thousands and thousands of IT people, dollars and the companies who used computers checked and reprogrammed millions of computer modules and programs to accommodate the date change from 19-- to 20--. I flew all over America converting date functions in inventory, accounting, and asset management systems. We all worked very hard, testing, revising, eliminating and rewriting programs expending hours of our lives so an enormous problem was averted worldwide. Therefore, the question becomes "Did Y2K happen?" The answer is both yes and no. No, as no major event marked Y2K while Yes, as we all worked extremely hard to prevent "it" from happening. Interesting perspective.

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