Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter is a hero of mine. What's not to love about a smart, honest, decent human being who became the joke brunt of every lousy conservative mouthpiece who could breath in syllables? It's nice to see this kindly old gentleman stand up for himself.

Go here> Jimmy Carter

Thanksgiving Eve

Day before Thanksgiving and I've taken off work. That's a good thing for me so I don't get too stressed out. Age has brought with it a few little thing that need some attention once in a while and reducing stress is on that list of things.

Balance is hard to find. At this point in my life a "career" isn't of much interest. What I need is a way to make a living. That I can make a living doing something I like, and something that helps the world along in some way, is icing on the cake.

The problem is you're always having to compete with people who are still thinking about self-advancement and think that means doing "whatever it takes." Working hard and putting in a lot of hours is one thing, screwing people over is another.

But who knows? Most of the time people are sincere. And there isn't anyone who enjoys helping others succeed more than me. A knife to the back isn't necessary. If you're a stand-up person I can find a way to get along and probably help you along, too.

Too close

A few seconds, maybe only a heartbeat, a couple of feet difference and we'd be missing someone important in our lives. An instant or two is about all that determines life or death in most of our lives. Luck, divine intervention? Who knows?

Hopes

By now I should know better than to get my hopes up too high. Tuesday’s elections brought a pair of resolutions to our local city ballot. One called for the impeachment of Bush/Cheney with a simple yes/no. The other called for the withdrawal of American forces from Iraqi yes/no.

What I had hoped for was a resounding “yes” vote from the community on both questions. Instead, the vote was close with the impeachment question going “no” by a 251 vote margin and the withdrawal question winning a “yes” by 11 votes.

A total of 2,363 votes were tallied.

This leaves us with a divided community leaning slightly toward the idea of getting our military out of Iraqi but somewhat reluctant to go for impeachment. How 1,175 of our local voting citizen can still favor leaving our forces in Iraqi baffles me. After all the stealing, lying, and scandal 1,307 people here feel we shouldn’t impeach Bush/Cheney has to make me pause when I look at my neighbors.

The resolution wording was rather stark. It was to start impeachment investigation and to begin an immediate withdrawal. There wasn’t a lot of context there to talk about how people may feel about abandoning Iraqi and that sort of thing.

Still, it was a city ballot resolution meant only to send a message. It had no weight or power beyond its message that one little town in the middle of nowhere is fed up with the war and the people who started the war.

Am I to conclude that half our voters are good with the current state of affairs? Can half the voters really think after fours years of death and destruction we’re still going to “win” something and all be better off?

Honestly, I’m afraid to ask anyone directly.

Touched the fantasy

Your imagination will wander. Your imagination will then mingle with your expectations, till your buried aspirations, hopes, and regrets until a fantasy sprouts. You'll fertilize the fantasy with occasional indulgence.

That's my story anyway.

Many parents get to live out some long lost opportunity through their children's activities. How else can you explain parental behavior at things like youth athletics? Most parents are genuinely well adjusted and manage to enjoy the experience without losing it and I'll leave it at that since we all know (ahem) about the few that can't manage the distinction between a kid's activity and their own fantasy world.

Yet, as you sit there in the stands watching, or as you review the games in your head, or discuss what happened with other parents, you get the full range of emotional value as if you could go out on the ice, or the field, or take over the chess board yourself. Except you can't. It's best if you keep your own coaching to a minimum and let the kid dictate how s/he manages skill and play development.

There you are then, keeping thoughts to yourself and in those quiet moments before sleep or those odd times between tasks the whole imagination, expectations, fantasy complex takes over and you let it go. Not much later your kid is the one scoring the GWG that leads to that scholarship that leads to a degree and a fat contract with a team plus they'll have perfect spouses and kids of their own and they buy a nice safe place for you to live and the world is most wonderful.

Along the way you see yourself as the successful player, coach, mentor. It's your fantasy after all and it's certainly as relaxing as reading a book.

Reality, of course, is closer to a rolling train wreak. It's a rare moment in a person's life when they get to touch the fantasy even in a fleeting, abstract way. I had my moment when the kid put together a 3-on-3 hockey team for a weekend tournament at the last minute. The phone rang at work on a Friday afternoon and I was informed I was the "coach."

My "team" consisted of my son, an experienced hockey player, one other experienced player, another kid who hadn't played hockey in two years and another kid who never played hockey. Oh, and me, their coach, who also never played hockey and has never coached anything. Our competition were teams made up of all experienced high school age players.

Game one made me mad. I didn't have a lot of expectations but I did expect the guys to try. I never planned on talking to them in the locker room later but I did anyway giving myself that Knute Rockne moment that was probably closer to begging. None the less, I made the point that they had embarrassed themselves pretty badly in front of all their friends.

Games two, three and four all ended in losses but we reduced the bleeding and even scored a goal in the final game. The guys worked their butts off and I had a blast trying to keep a good rotation going and providing positive encouragement.

Coaching isn't something I want to do routinely. I'm not qualified to mention one thing. Still, I had my moment to coach a hockey team. The event was no fantasy but I got that faintest of touches. It's something I'll think about in those moments before sleep, you know?

On the Horns of the Omnivore’s Dilemma

Frozen beer battered fish, frozen French fries dumped on cookie pans and slid into the oven at 425. A bag of frozen vegetable mix dropped into a bowl and popped into the microwave for 10 minutes. Two California oranges pulled from a bag, peeled and placed in a bowl.

The microwave dings and dinner in America is ready. Elapsed time: 26 minutes.

The tale of “industrial food” for industrial eaters is one of four food stories documented by Michael Pollan in his book, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals.” It’s not a diet book nor a self help book but a look at finding answers for a remarkably simple question – What’s for dinner?

America, Pollen tells us, is awash in food choices all marinating in an uncultured mix of our own neurosis. There are nearly unlimited food choices available to each of us but we’re disconnected from any solid guidance about what we should choose so we’re guided by fear and powerful marketing influences.

Nutrition is one thing. Eating is another. Marketing and convenience and the need to eat all churn in our heads while we worry about what’s good, what’s better, what’s awful and how in the world to we’re going to make our way though it.

It turns out we’re eating our way through it.

Pollen’s approach is to document four food chains: the industrial food chain starting in an Iowa corn field, commodity-scale organic growers in California, a pastoral grass-based farm producing for local markets in Virginia, and finally hunting and foraging from the forest all followed through to dinner at the end.

For anyone interested in where dinner comes from and taking a good look at how it ends up on your table, or more likely in your car, Pollen’s journeys from the field to the fork spins out a yarn of post WWII America that first learned to dry and salt, then can and freeze, and now to manufacture and package its dinner.

The book is reasonably non-judgmental. The most pointed barbs do stick in the industrial food chain but concedes the other food chains aren’t much more realistic. Our dependence on industrial food requires an industrial eater and the shear volume of food needed to sustain large urban and suburban populations with no access to food production of their own literally demands that the flow of calories and proteins continue.

You’ll pick up some well documented facts reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma and you’ll get to spend time having a new look at dinner.

Check out the book at Amazon.com!

Omnivore's Dilemma

Wishing off the grid

Sometimes I’d love to just drop off. Quit the rat race. I don’t mean sitting around doing nothing, not at all. What I mean is taking care of my family and myself on my own. Self sufficiency. Complete and total self sufficiency is what I’m saying here.

Solar electric panels, windmills, methane gas generators all linked, joined and producing the juice for every possible gadget such as satellite uplink/downlink access to media and the internet. Heat emitting power storage walls and flooring, recycled fiber insulation, bamboo or natural wood floors, with real wool throw rugs.

Outside, the yard becomes a fruit and vegetable producing and processing center. Rabbits and chickens humanely caged and managed for eating up food waste and leftovers while the birds eat up insects. Freezers, refrigeration, and dry storage enough to hold 18 months worth of the home grown and preserved foods.

A still, too. The main goal of the still is to have a source of fuel alcohol to use in the golf cart car we’d use to move around town when we couldn’t walk or ride a bike. Oh, maybe I’d take a nip once in a while but probably not as the beer and home fermented wine would taste much better.

Each day would be spent tending to food production or processing with nothing going to waste anywhere. When I wasn’t busy growing and processing I’d be cooking. Fresh beans and fresh carrots right from the ground to the table. There’d be a little patch of wheat in the yard too, useful for rotation with the other growing things and for the wheat seeds needed to mill into flour for the freshest bread in the world. There’s be some sheep to rotate around as well and to provide wool so we could make our own cloths

The best part would be not buying electric power and gas. Yup, clean off the grid. Would I ever get weary of such a pastoral life? Without any bills to pay, no job to race off to I could just look after my little patch of earth and fool around with my family.

Imagine having all the time in the world.

Borrowed wireless

While it's possible to blog from a Palm on a borrowed wireless connection at a cafe, you have to work fast.
After a few minutes, the connection drop. That's okay. Probably prevents me from writing anything really stupid.

Same old New Year

Greetings. Nothing like a new year to get a fresh start. Right? Probably so but '07 had a stinker of a start around here. On the positive side, though, new energy and decisions on the health side of the ledger should yield well with time. Here's hoping anyway.

I'm not going to try to explain the stinky part in any detail in such a public place. Suffice to say there are sick fucks in the world willing to ruin anybody for some cheap, quick thrill. Hopefully, there'll be a successful battle. It's just made more sickening because there was no need for a fight in the first place.

The sickness we see in Washington D.C. is seeping into the soul of the country. People, especially those with a thimbleful of power, are increasingly abusive. Public good? Screw that man, we need our way right now and we're going to get it.

Sigh. Bad things for the blood pressure all the way around.

How was your Christmas?

When I'm asked, "How was your Christmas?" in the days following the holiday, my impulse is to reply with an honest answer. I was relieved when the RN taking my blood pressure sensed my hesitation and filled in the blank with, "Busy? Like everybody?"

"Yeah. Busy," I said in agreement.

The reality was much different than busy. Sure, there was busyness so I wasn't lying but there also was a weirdness to the Christmas season that was dark and unsettling. Nothing grave actually happened directly to the family, thankfully. Still...

A 20-year-old friend of my daughter dropped dead in her shower at the start of exam week. A blood clot hit her heart and she was dead before EMS could get her to a hospital. Another local teenager was killed in a car crash that seriously injured her three passengers and someone in the other car. A friend's wife died Christmas Eve morning. This morning, we learned of the car crash death of another acquaintance.

To go along with the list, we have to include our aging process and some new medical realities there and the same process working on those around us.

The cell wall of the family remains intact but there's someone out there with a micropipette probing and bruising that fragile membrane all the time.

Food and risks

Humans go to great lengths to protect their food supplies. Killing wolves to prevent the wolves from killing sheep seems crude and unnecessary in our current setting. In a primitive, subsistence culture where the sheep represent your means of survival, getting rid of the wolves is a logical conclusion.

Insects have a historical pattern of eating food away from people. Plant diseases are no less devastating than insect infestations. One of the most well documented examples of a plant disease changing human fortunes is the Irish potato famine beginning in 1845. Africa is a continuos story of drought, insects, plant disease, and social upheaval much of it orbiting around food production and distribution failures.

Crop failures in Central America and Mexico increase the movement of people from rural areas into cities and contributes to the pressure on our own borders for people to move here for a better life. In most simple terms, a sustainable and dependable supply of food is the foundation of all cultural enrichment.

In spite of news stories of bacterial contamination in the food chain for time to time, the food production and distribution system we enjoy in the United States and share with the world is a daily miracle. Never have so many lived so well and so confidently as what we're living with today. Threats from insects, diseases, bacteria, fungus, and to some extent the weather, are held at bay by technology.

Our abundance does comes at a cost. The application technology in food production is increasingly under fire for contributing to environmental degradation and creating public health hazards. As we address those issues, it's good to keep in mind there are reasons for the use of the materials and the farming practices we have today.

Nurturing a close-at-hand supply of food is a worthwhile pursuit. Commodity production is global. Wheat, rice, corn and soybeans grown here feed people all over the world. That takes energy and resources. By supporting locally grown food with our money and time, we help in a small way to reduce the costs and risks of associated with commercial agriculture.

Community supported agriculture (CSA) is one means for you to support, nurture and develop local sources of fresh food production. The Stoughton area has several. In a nut shell, CSA involves you in the process. To learn more and to find local CSAs, you can refer to The Madison Area Community Supported Agriculture Coalition

And may none of us ever have to worry what the wolves are doing tonight.

Rant

Negative breathless prose regarding food production is neither very useful or instructive. That modern food production, processing and distribution is energy intensive is hardly a news flash. Unattributed claims, highly selective examples describing aspects of the process in support of an assumptive point of view are counter productive and provide nothing by way of solutions.

It'd be far more beneficial to use newsletter space to provide names, addresses and phone numbers of local food producers, the hours and locations of local produce outlets and producer markets, and tips for acquiring, preparing, processing, and storing those goods.

Thousands of people go to work each day hoping to make a difference. We need all the help we can muster. Having had the opportunity to work first hand with subsistence farming, the notion of returning to some "good old days" of food production pre 1940 is absurd.

Should we work to reduce the use of energy in the food chain? Absolutely.

Is buying locally produced food a good way to reduce energy use in the food chain? You bet.

Is buying a bottle of ketchup a sin? Not so much.

If you've ever had to depend entirely on the food you grow yourself, you know it's not an energy-free activity. It takes all of your time and likely all the time of your entire family and it goes on from the time you get up until the time you fall asleep. Then you get up the next day and the next day and the next day and keep working to produce enough to eat.

When someone decides to attack modern agriculture, I wish they'd find a way that wouldn't belittle those of us who have spent our entire lives trying to find solutions to the pressing needs of the world's population.

Commodity organics

Given the chance to use a product or a substance or a practice that'll reduce or eliminate the risks crop face from weather, insects, weeds and fertility conditions, most people will grab for the product. I've seen this phenomenon in suburban back yards where the gardener starts out with good intentions of never using an insecticide and then suddenly along comes some insect bent on eating its fill of the crop and ka-pow, out comes the insecticide.

I worked with subsistence agriculture in south and central America. Subsistence agriculture means you're scratching every day all day to nurse food out of the ground. Improving and assuring that the crops bear enough fruit to feed the family is constant work. The work is hard. In fact, we're talking about stoop labor; work where you're bent over all day sweating, or freezing depending, and you're dirty.

Somehow, in my head, I have organic production connected to subsistence agriculture. The connection sticks in my head in spite of what I've seen of organic agriculture in North America. I've seen what looks like highly productive agriculture.

Knowledgeable people, in whom I trust, tell me it's possible to ramp up organic farming to meet a mass market challenge. They add that they think such a ramp up is most likely in the arid, irrigated west of the United States (or other similar places).

The humid Midwest, south and east probably aren't well suited to produce organically grown food in a mass scale. There are simply too many challenges to the crops to consistently provide enough organic food to meet mass market demands.

People in the organic business aren't entirely sure they care about a mass market anyway. A recent article in the Chicago Tribune (registration required) quoted representatives talking about Wal-Mart marketing as a violation of the "spirit" of organic farming. A big retailer such as Wal-Mart will work to drive down prices paid to producers and has the weight to go anywhere in the world to find supplies.

A goal for many producers of organic food is to maintain small-scale production. So now if it's possible to mass produce food without the use of various fertilizers, insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, then shouldn't we go full bore in that direction?

I'm so confused. It just seems hard to have it both ways.

Sheer volume

Two things quickly come to mind when people visit with me about the many virtues of organic food production; can organic production supply the kind of sheer volume required in the world each day; and what is the carbon footprint of food transportation if you have to haul organic food long distances to get it to market?

I've been poking around for some data on the carbon footprint question and maybe I'll find some I can visit about. But when it comes to supplying the kind of food volume needed in the world every day, I'm thinking a wholesale shift to organic practices would create a wreck.

You can research and apply many best management practices to organic production to increase yields and produce quality. Fighting weeds in organic schemes, for example, uses such tools as crop rotation and tillage to reduce weed pressure. You may also go out and pull weeds by hand.

But when you're out there hoeing and pulling are you gardening or farming? On a small plot of land intensively lorded over, the hoe and hand weed process are fine. Scale up such production and you scale up your labor needs. I'm all for hiring people but I'd like to hire people at a living wage and not have my business depend on exploitation to gain a profit.

Somewhere I read that a rotation of commodity crops such as corn, beans, wheat, alfalfa, and so forth keeps the weeds and other pests common to each from gaining a foothold and thus pressure from weeds and pests is reduced.

Makes some sense. But I think you're going to get a yield drop compared to crops grown with what we're now calling conventional means. The application of fertilizer, insecticides, and herbicides are risk reduction tools as well as labor reduction tools. Imperfect as these tools are, their use reduces risks from the pests threatening crops.

Practices that reduce and eliminate the use of pesticides are great by me. But I'm not very interested in sending the whole world back to subsistence farming. Rejecting science and technology in food production is a risky notion.

Meat eaters

A response to this: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/6/28/142312/018

It’s been a long time since I’ve lopped the head off a chicken, been involved in slitting a pig’s throat or peeled the hide back on a steer carcass. Those things were done so the family could have food in storage and to keep hard earned cash at home to meet other needs.

When I was involved in killing an animal for food, I always wished someone else would do it. There was no moral objection; we took good care of our animals and there always was a sense of respect and reverence for the whole process.

Yet it wasn’t something I looked forward to. Yes, the eating later was necessary and also done after a prayer and a thought about the animals providing for our sustenance. Still, butchering was something I’d sooner not have to do.

When we found someone who’d come to the farm and do the butchering for us, we went that route. Later, we’d take the animals to a small plant outside of town and have the butchering done there coming back in a few days to pick up the wrapped and frozen meat.

That was the progression. There were people around better at raising hogs than us, too. And chickens. Pretty soon the hogs and chickens disappeared from the farm. We were good at dairy cows so we got more cows.

Neighbors who didn’t have cows would stop by and pick up milk, fresh raw milk right out of our cooler. This was a long time ago and I don’t know if our practice was legal or not. I grew up drinking raw milk. Thought little about it at the time.

Hassles came about. The taste of the milk would change with a change of feed or pasture and our neighbor customers would note and complain. Once the meat that came back from the butcher couldn’t have come from the animal we hauled over there. Then it happened again.

People were changing. In the increasing hubbub it was harder to stop by and pick up milk when you could get it at a store and be on your way home. Then there was a story about a bunch of people getting sick at a church picnic from drinking fresh, raw milk provided by a farmer from the congregation.

We started pasteurizing the milk we used at home. What a chore and it didn’t last long so we assumed the risk of raw milk and went on. But we weren’t going to sell any out of the tank any more even if asked.

As time passed, our acres of corn and soybeans increased. The old barn was maxed out for cow capacity. The family was getting older and us kids were getting to the stage when we might start adding kids of our own. For the farm to support dad and his two sons we’d need more cows. My calculations said we’d need 50 cows for each family. In other words we needed facilities for 150 cows instead of the 40 we had.

Dad had had enough. He was getting old and wanted out and didn’t have much interest in taking on the debt it’d require to build such facilities. He didn’t want us to become farmers because he figured there were better ways to make a living and all he had to do was point to the increasing commuter traffic going by the place morning and afternoon.

It’s funny now to see people squealing about regulations preventing them from selling raw milk. I marvel at a story about someone’s fight to slaughter cattle at home and market the meat. The outrage about USDA and state bureaucrats being involved in agriculture for the sole benefit of corporate masters amazes me.

My entire life I’ve encouraged people to buy food locally. All along I’ve cheered for producers willing to take the risk and do the work to direct market. I like it when people can have a say in how their food is produced. It’s thrilling to see local food systems growing and maturing all over the country.

But let’s not promote assumptions as facts. We are where we are today not as the result of some nasty conspiracy. We’re where we are today because as a social system, we’ve advanced away from subsistence agriculture.

Most of us would sooner someone else would lop the head off the chicken.

Acknowledgements

It’s a rare human endeavor that meets success based on the sole ambitions of an individual. Most accomplishments are incremental building on earlier enterprise and achieved by the shared hands of many people laboring together.

Many people helped and contributed to the favorable outcome of the paper here and the resulting degree (MS-LSC). Some are about to be singled out in the following words. To all the people who pushed me along I owe a huge gratitude. When you stop to think about all those helping hands their numbers add up astonishingly.

Absolutely nothing would have happened without the ceaseless support of my spouse, Jan. There were some tense moments along the way, moments when I felt like I couldn’t keep doing this. Jan always found, not only the resolve, but a way to write a check to cover tuition one more semester.

A part of that resolve came from the sacrifice of our children Cory and Tara. There were some things that perhaps we didn’t cover as well for them as we could have because of the extra resources devoted to my education. Tara, also a university student, and I shared stories about our classes, professors, fellow students, quizzes, tests, papers, exams and our fears, our hopes. It was a lot easier for me to have such a shoulder to learn on.

Cory kept tabs on progress, listened. Of all the people in the family, Cory was the most stoic about my folly and provided the best perspectives. Bless his sense of humor and being able to bring me back to earth by arguing about such things as hockey games and getting me out of the house to see those games after a drive through the Wisconsin winterscape.

Thanks also to Arlin Brannstrom, Keith Hazelton, and Larry Meiller. Arlin never let me take the whole thing too seriously and he usually piped up at those moments when I figured everything was at its most serious point. Keith wrote a nice letter of reference that helped get me into grad school and then he stuck with my progress and showed up on the Terrace at the end. Larry is the best student advisor ever. Just do it the way Larry explains it and everything is going to turn out fine.

My brother Ralph thinks the whole thing is cool as does my sister Cathy and I figure my sister Vivian along with nephews Vincent and Craig feel the same. All of them asked and listened and it’s great to have such outlets. Grandma Lacy is especially proud and it’s wonderfully supportive and encouraging to have someone like that around.

Mention, I must, Mike Maroney who was always good for a free lunch when a free lunch was the biggest treat. Pam Ruegg decided to give the online education route a try and enabled me to watch.
I mention here the major players by name. But nearly everyone who has had any contact with me for the last several years needs a big "thanks" for putting up with it and for being interested and supportive.

Firing squads?

Channel surfing as I ate my supper tonight and passed by Fox News just in time to see some guy yelling about firing squads. So I paused. Somehow or another word got out that the United States is tracking financial transactions in its (our?) effort to find terrorists.

The guy doing the yelling was saying the people who released the information about the financial tracking should be put before a firing squad and shot.He repeated it a couple of times during my short pause in channel surfing.

Firing squads. Firing squads in the United States. A guy on a national news program yelling for firing squads. Firing squads in the United States being advocated by some guy on a national news broadcast.

Firing squads. You know, something to go with the concentration camps and the torture. Firing squads and some guy yelling for them on Fox News. I don't know who the hell that guy was but someone decided to give him a nation-wide broadcast venue so he could go on yelling about firing squads.

Time

All of a sudden it's June. The last two weeks were nuts. Got done with the masters of science project and will have a fresh new dust collector for the wall one day soon. Have now moved to 60% with the new job reducing to 40% the obligation to the former job. In July it's 100% new job.

Yes!

Kid number one is home from college but about to leave to take a summer job this weekend. Kid number two struggles with the final days of high school. Remember how that felt? Nice spring weather and you're still being herded inside a stuffy building to grind out essay tests on Romeo and Juliet? No wonder kids hate anything connected to *learning.*

One thing I've noticed is that the world stage hasn't seemed to improve itself much. I went through some news and blog sites this morning just to refresh my anger. I wish it was harder to do. Refresh my anger that is. There was some crap about "the angry left" on one of the sites. Well, I don't know how "left" I am really but I sure as hell am angry.

Waaaay past time to fire up the bilge pumps and clean up the slime infesting our political ship of state. Waaay past time.

No tommy

The good news over the weekend was the announcement by that sick old bird Tommy Thompson that he wasn't going to run for governor. It is good news. The other GOP candidate is suitably corrupt in his own right.

Wisconsin needs actual public servants for a while, not just more republicans fighting over the trough.

Tommy

The only good thing that happened as a result of GWB getting the presidency is that it got Tommy Thompson the hell out of Wisconsin. His appointment to HHS pretty much confirmed his corruption bona fides and I bet he greased those skills even more during his association with the Washington criminal mob.

As the governor who single handedly crushed public education in this state, my disgust at the statement made to the press that, "If I run, I win," was rather harsh. Hence this blog post. Thompson happened to land in the governor's mansion at a time of sustained economic and social optimism. He managed that situation to his benefit rather well slicking through anti-education tax measures and legislation.

We've had deal with the results of his corruption ever since.

And, in grand old party tradition, Thompson took care of his own. Popular, yes. He ruled for 14 years. Smart, oh yeah. Too smart to stick with bushco past the first term. Now the sick old bird is talking another run at the governor's post. Not because he really wants to be governor. No. But because he wants to beat the current governor.

Run for office 'cause you're mean, nasty and sick. Good public policy bound to result from that, right? Thompson, you've hurt enough people. Stay the hell away