They’re Here

The folks are here.  They just called to say that they can’t find Manny.  I suggested that he might be in the bathroom and my dad was going to send my mom up to investigate.  That won’t scar the poor man or anything.

I’m guess I’d better go save him.

Map Sales & Service

I’m trying very hard to not say anything lascivious about a certain conservative political pundent.  But, it’s hard, folks.  So hard.  I am but a single girl with barely any self-control.  But, I’m going to struggle against my baser nature and try to post about something else.

Let’s talk about this place over on Lebanon Road (For those of you not from here, that’s pronounced Leb’nen.)–Map Sales & Service.  It’s a little building right across from the cemetery and you go in and it’s just packed with maps.  All kinds of maps. 

But cooler still?  The hours for regular folks are 8 to 5:30.  For government types, it’s open any time, just call. 

Map Sales & Service

I’m trying very hard to not say anything lascivious about a certain conservative political pundent.  But, it’s hard, folks.  So hard.  I am but a single girl with barely any self-control.  But, I’m going to struggle against my baser nature and try to post about something else.

Let’s talk about this place over on Lebanon Road (For those of you not from here, that’s pronounced Leb’nen.)–Map Sales & Service.  It’s a little building right across from the cemetery and you go in and it’s just packed with maps.  All kinds of maps. 

But cooler still?  The hours for regular folks are 8 to 5:30.  For government types, it’s open any time, just call. 

Map Sales & Service

I’m trying very hard to not say anything lascivious about a certain conservative political pundent.  But, it’s hard, folks.  So hard.  I am but a single girl with barely any self-control.  But, I’m going to struggle against my baser nature and try to post about something else.

Let’s talk about this place over on Lebanon Road (For those of you not from here, that’s pronounced Leb’nen.)–Map Sales & Service.  It’s a little building right across from the cemetery and you go in and it’s just packed with maps.  All kinds of maps. 

But cooler still?  The hours for regular folks are 8 to 5:30.  For government types, it’s open any time, just call. 

Map Sales & Service

I’m trying very hard to not say anything lascivious about a certain conservative political pundent.  But, it’s hard, folks.  So hard.  I am but a single girl with barely any self-control.  But, I’m going to struggle against my baser nature and try to post about something else.

Let’s talk about this place over on Lebanon Road (For those of you not from here, that’s pronounced Leb’nen.)–Map Sales & Service.  It’s a little building right across from the cemetery and you go in and it’s just packed with maps.  All kinds of maps. 

But cooler still?  The hours for regular folks are 8 to 5:30.  For government types, it’s open any time, just call. 

Map Sales & Service

I’m trying very hard to not say anything lascivious about a certain conservative political pundent.  But, it’s hard, folks.  So hard.  I am but a single girl with barely any self-control.  But, I’m going to struggle against my baser nature and try to post about something else.

Let’s talk about this place over on Lebanon Road (For those of you not from here, that’s pronounced Leb’nen.)–Map Sales & Service.  It’s a little building right across from the cemetery and you go in and it’s just packed with maps.  All kinds of maps. 

But cooler still?  The hours for regular folks are 8 to 5:30.  For government types, it’s open any time, just call. 

Map Sales & Service

I’m trying very hard to not say anything lascivious about a certain conservative political pundent.  But, it’s hard, folks.  So hard.  I am but a single girl with barely any self-control.  But, I’m going to struggle against my baser nature and try to post about something else.

Let’s talk about this place over on Lebanon Road (For those of you not from here, that’s pronounced Leb’nen.)–Map Sales & Service.  It’s a little building right across from the cemetery and you go in and it’s just packed with maps.  All kinds of maps. 

But cooler still?  The hours for regular folks are 8 to 5:30.  For government types, it’s open any time, just call. 

Map Sales & Service

I’m trying very hard to not say anything lascivious about a certain conservative political pundent.  But, it’s hard, folks.  So hard.  I am but a single girl with barely any self-control.  But, I’m going to struggle against my baser nature and try to post about something else.

Let’s talk about this place over on Lebanon Road (For those of you not from here, that’s pronounced Leb’nen.)–Map Sales & Service.  It’s a little building right across from the cemetery and you go in and it’s just packed with maps.  All kinds of maps. 

But cooler still?  The hours for regular folks are 8 to 5:30.  For government types, it’s open any time, just call. 

Map Sales & Service

I’m trying very hard to not say anything lascivious about a certain conservative political pundent.  But, it’s hard, folks.  So hard.  I am but a single girl with barely any self-control.  But, I’m going to struggle against my baser nature and try to post about something else.

Let’s talk about this place over on Lebanon Road (For those of you not from here, that’s pronounced Leb’nen.)–Map Sales & Service.  It’s a little building right across from the cemetery and you go in and it’s just packed with maps.  All kinds of maps. 

But cooler still?  The hours for regular folks are 8 to 5:30.  For government types, it’s open any time, just call. 

Map Sales & Service

I’m trying very hard to not say anything lascivious about a certain conservative political pundent.  But, it’s hard, folks.  So hard.  I am but a single girl with barely any self-control.  But, I’m going to struggle against my baser nature and try to post about something else.

Let’s talk about this place over on Lebanon Road (For those of you not from here, that’s pronounced Leb’nen.)–Map Sales & Service.  It’s a little building right across from the cemetery and you go in and it’s just packed with maps.  All kinds of maps. 

But cooler still?  The hours for regular folks are 8 to 5:30.  For government types, it’s open any time, just call. 

Map Sales & Service

I’m trying very hard to not say anything lascivious about a certain conservative political pundent.  But, it’s hard, folks.  So hard.  I am but a single girl with barely any self-control.  But, I’m going to struggle against my baser nature and try to post about something else.

Let’s talk about this place over on Lebanon Road (For those of you not from here, that’s pronounced Leb’nen.)–Map Sales & Service.  It’s a little building right across from the cemetery and you go in and it’s just packed with maps.  All kinds of maps. 

But cooler still?  The hours for regular folks are 8 to 5:30.  For government types, it’s open any time, just call. 

Map Sales & Service

I’m trying very hard to not say anything lascivious about a certain conservative political pundent.  But, it’s hard, folks.  So hard.  I am but a single girl with barely any self-control.  But, I’m going to struggle against my baser nature and try to post about something else.

Let’s talk about this place over on Lebanon Road (For those of you not from here, that’s pronounced Leb’nen.)–Map Sales & Service.  It’s a little building right across from the cemetery and you go in and it’s just packed with maps.  All kinds of maps. 

But cooler still?  The hours for regular folks are 8 to 5:30.  For government types, it’s open any time, just call. 

The Most Important Thing I’ve Learned from the Libertarians

No, not where the coolest strip club in Atlanta is, though you can bet I’m hauling my brothers there if we’re ever all in Atlanta at the same time.

No, here’s the most important thing I’ve learned from the libertarians–the utter kick-ass nature of the ninth and tenth amendments.

Shall we look at them?

Amendment IX

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment X

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

Just linger on that word there in the ninth amendment–retained.  This is so utterly foreign to how we understand how the government works that it’s good to go back and look at it.

The government does not grant us rights.  Rights are inherent to us and we lend the government the power to constrain some of those rights so that we can function as a society–we delegate power to the government.  But the government doesn’t inherently have power, especially not the power to grant us rights.

I’ve been thinking a lot about gay marriage, I presume for the same reason Kleinheider has, because they’re going to vote on possibly amending the Constitution to expressly prohibit it on the 5th.

What has happened to conservatives, who are usually strict Constitutionalists, that they would support an amendment that is so clearly against the spirit of the Constitution?

Well, let’s ask the question more broadly, because it’s not just gay marriage, it’s the wire-tapping and the non-trial having and the expansion of the executive branch and the assaults on civil liberties and on and on.  What has happened to us that we’d just sit back and say “Go ahead, make explicit that you believe that some folks don’t have inherent rights that others of us have!”

I start to despair.  I honestly don’t believe that democracy can work, at least not on a scale as large as we’re attempting.  I just don’t think that people want to have control of their government.  I don’t think they want to have rights inherent to them.  I think they want to be told what to do and, when they get a little power, they want to tell others what to do and they want to punish people they don’t like.

None of these tendencies are healthy for a democracy. 

And yet, rather than trying to overcome these tendencies, we just go ahead and knock out the legs of our republic and replace them with supports that seem sturdier but are thoroughly rotted on the inside.

 

Fighting Fire with Fire

Since the whole family is descending on my house like a swarm of nit-picky locusts, I had to do something drastic to deflect the nit-picking from me to someone else.  The poor recalcitrant brother!

As previously mentioned, we’re going to this fundraiser on Saturday, the whole lot of them–the Butcher, Manny, and the recalcitrant brother.  And the recalcitrant brother was hemming and hawing about going, claiming that he didn’t have a dress shirt or tie.

So, of course, I called Dad.  And now he’s all convinced that, when they get here, they’ll have to be sure to get the recalcitrant brother a proper shirt.

Because is there anything more annoying than having others buy dress clothes for you?  As if you’re so uncouth you need someone with a little class to help you out?

God.  It’s just a small thing, but if they can spend even a half an hour worrying over his clothes and whether he’s going out properly attired, that’s a half an hour reprieve for me.

There was a time when I’d feel bad about pulling shit like that.  That time was before I learned that the boys were sneaking out back to smoke up during family holidays, leaving me the stone cold sober one.