Saturday, February 14, 2004

Senator Frank Shurden Attacks Citizen's Rights

Shurden, the same fellow that has tried every trick in the book to keep cockfighting legal in Oklahoma for several years is at it again. Shurden, dissatisfied with the citizen's overwhelming vote to ban cockfighting a couple of years ago has introduced yet another bill to change the rules after the vote.

He has introduced SB829 which re-writes the rules for statewide elections and undermines the constitutional right of citizens to make laws by statewide initiative. S.B. 829 repeals SQ 687 (the state referendum against cockfighting) by suspending the voter-approved initiative in 57 counties and it allows any county to overturn the statewide cockfighting ban. The concept behind this legislation, if applied broadly, would not only subvert the statewide initiative process, but also the state legislative process or process of electing statewide oficials. We would cease to be the state of Oklahoma and be balkanized into largely autonomous counties that would set all of the rules.

This is a fancy way of saying that Shurden wants to retroactively change the law so that state questions brought to the public for a vote will only count in those counties where it is passed. This is so cockfighting can continue in those rural counties where the ban did not win. If this rule is applied then our state will become an unmanagable jigsaw puzzle of laws. To extend this illogic a bit further - Brad Henry would govern part of Oklahoma and Steve Largent would be the Governor of Tulsa and Oklahoma counties.

Thank goodness Shurden is termed out this year. He's hurt Oklahoma enough.

Friday, February 13, 2004

Take a Wizz!

I have a new vacation destination. I've got to get to Katowice, Poland so I can take the new European airline - Wizz! Air. This Budapest-based airline will start service in May and already has three times as many airplanes as Tulsa-based Great Plains Airlines. I just want to be able to say I took a Wizz and have a ticket stub to prove it. I also want to pick up a Wizz! Bag for motion sickness - I could sell these on e-bay.

Ailing Great Plains could take a cue from Wizz and relaunch itself with a name change. Send in your suggestions to Okiepundit at freethinker@keromail.com and we'll post the good ones.
Veggieville?

As CamEdwards reports, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has asked Slaughterville, Oklahoma to change the town name - and suggested Veggieville as an alternative. PETA says a new name would be more compassionate. Only problem is, Slaughterville is named not after a slaughterhouse, but after James Slaughter, a founder of the town. Here again, PETA has done the humane cause no favors. With just a teeny little bit of research PETA could have found out the meaning of the town's name and avoided making fools out of themselves. The really sorry aspect of PETA's publicity-seeking antics is the ridicule they bring on the vast majority of humanitarians who are sane.

I still think PETA must be funded by the NRA. What better way to marginalize the humane movement?

Tuesday, February 10, 2004

Tyranny of the Political Extremes

I keep making the same mistake over and over again - I get hopeful that someone interesting, independent and intelligent will actually be nominated by either major party. It is not to be. From John Anderson to John McCain to Wes Clark - a long string of dashed hopes for politics as not usual. It's the tyranny of the political party system as we know it. To be nominated by either party one must appeal to extremes - the party faithful - in order to win the party nomination. Then the nominees suddenly move toward the center for the general election. Moderates or independents that rock the party boats don't stand a chance. So we end up with pretenders to the center who move back to their extremes after winning the presidency.

Now that Clark is out I'll be returning to my independent status on the voting rolls.

Sunday, February 08, 2004

O' Really?

As stated in this blog previously I no longer watch Bill O'Rielly on his "No Spin Zone" on Fox. I just don't like his bullying tactics toward his guests. I refuse to reward those who lower the level of discussion to an uncivilized level of rudeness. At least it qualifies as rudeness in this part of the country. But I was suckered in a couple of days ago - I was zipping through channels when his pre-show promo got my attention. "Reaction to Janet Jackson shows Secularism rebuked" - or something along those lines. What does Jackson's boob have to do with secularism I thought? I wanted to find out.

According to Bill O'Rielly the negative public reaction to Janet Jackson exposing her boob during the Super Bowl illustrates that "the secularists agenda of moral debasement" is overwhelmingly denounced by the American people. The secularists' agenda of moral debasement? I consider myself to be sort of a secularist myself - at least if you define secularist as being in favor of the separation of church and state - but I had apparently been out of the loop on our agenda. I didn't know we were supposed to be in favor of moral debasement. I immediately went to my secularist sources on the web - such places as the UK's National Secularists Society. Nothing there about being pro-moral debasement or even pro-exposed boob. A little more research and I had to come to the reluctant conclusion that Bill O'Reilly either didn't know what the heck he's talking about or he was trying to spin a very unpopular action into a controversy to benefit his biases on an entirely different matter. Could it be?

Just for the record O'Reilly this is one secularist that was outraged at Jackson's disrespect for people. I'm outraged that broadcast television has become base and degenerate. I don't want nudity and cursing being thrust on me and my family through the public airwaves. I want to be able to watch broadcast TV without constantly monitoring its content for my young daughter. I loathe the profits-at-all-costs nature of the TV industry. Where can we go now to watch good, quality TV news and entertainment that is both civilized and neutral on religious matters? Hard to find these days.

But I'm also upset with TV personalities like O'Rielly spinning events to suit their need to draw an outraged audience and line the pockets of TV executives. Reality gets further and further distorted by these self-serving performers that masquerade as arbiters of social commentary. I doubt if O'Reilly and his colleagues in business believe half the viewpoints they take in their effort to appeal to extreme idealogues. If they do, they're nuts.