Today, we take a detour from the usual silliness in order to cover a more serious subject.

In the science world, at least with regard to science and government policies, peer review is an oft-touted measure of a report’s validity. If many researchers have reviewed and found no issues with a report, then it must be a solid report–one which, perhaps, the politicians need to act on in order to save the world, or whatever.

On a bit of a tangent whose relevancy will become clearer in a bit, in recent years, the FTC has been coming up with new regulations and such to deal with the online world, especially with regard to reviews and testimonials.

For example, if you are reviewing a product on your blog, you have to disclaim your relationship to that product. Did you buy it yourself? Was it given to you for free? If someone buys it through a link on your blog, do you get a commission?

Relationships between products and services and people providing reviews and testimonials have to be disclosed.

Apparently, this appears not to be the case in the world of government-funded and agenda-driven scientific research.

Consider this article: “Global Warming Link to Drowned Polar Bears Melts Under Searing Fed Probe”

The report discussed in the article had been submitted for peer review.

However, one of those peer reviewers was the report writer’s own wife. This fact was seemingly not disclosed.

Consider someone trying to sell you a book. You look at reviews on the book. One review in particular is very positive on the book. Sounds like a good deal. Is it important to you to know whether the person writing the review is married to the person who wrote the book? Would that impact your view of the impartiality of that review?

A marketer could get in trouble for pulling a stunt like that and not disclosing that relationship.

Apparently, there may not be a comparable policy in place for “peer reviews” in some scientific research circles.

Another one of the peer reviewers on the report also received some kind of contract, which I am guessing was in some way related to the report, thus making that too a conflict of interest.

An argument could be made that this is just one report out of many. But, on just this one report, it appears that at least two reviewers had a conflict of interest and, thus, may not be completely impartial in their review of this report. With the seemingly lack of a policy in this regard, one is left to wonder how many other government-funded reports that are touted as having met critical peer review are likewise being reviewed by people who may have conflicts of interest that are never disclosed?

Marketers could get in trouble and face huge fines from the FTC for engaging in such practices. Shouldn’t scientific research, especially government-funded research whose results may result in public policy changes that could cost taxpayers and businesses millions of dollars, or more, be held to the same types of standards that marketers are?

If you want to post it on your own blog today, grab it from here.

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws of Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our People, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from Punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with Power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy of the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free People.

Nor have We been wanting in attention to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Here’s the headline (and link): “National Emergency Alert System Set To Launch In NYC”

On the face of it, it seems like a good idea.

Here are some key points:

• It is a new national alert system. It will alert people to emergencies on their cell phones.
• “Presidential and local emergency messages as well as Amber Alerts” will be sent out to cell phones. These phones must have certain software and chipsets to receive these messages, so I suspect older phones may not be eligible.
• FEMA and the FCC, the system would also be used to notify people about terrorist attacks and natural disasters. Of course, being FEMA, that may mean we hear about those things a week or two after the event.

So, sounds like a good idea.

Except, of course, if you have to pay for those text messages.

And, how do they work? Will notice of a natural disaster in, say, California, go out to everyone nationwide? Or just people in California? What if you’re from New York, but visiting California? Will you get the notice? Or, if you’re in New York but from California?

Wouldn’t it be easier to just check Twitter?

Oh, and get this: “Verizon and AT&T, the nation’s largest cell phone carriers, are already on board. Consumers would be able to opt out of all but those presidential messages.”

Yeah, you know, I might want to be notified of local emergencies or terrorist attacks, but I’m pretty sure presidential messages are pretty low on my list of things I’d like to receive. That’s the bit most people would be likely to opt-out of.

Which is probably why they are making sure you cannot.

Whatever happened to choice? If it’s my cell phone, shouldn’t I be able to decide what messages I will receive on it?

Great Britain is reviewing their policy of royal succession, and considering changing them so that the first-born, whether girl or boy, can assume the throne instead of just the first-born boy.

The Deputy Prime Minister said that the current rule “would strike most people as a little old-fashioned.”

You know what would strike most people as a little old-fashioned?

How about the fact that they still have a monarchy.

Why not get rid of that?

Story here: “Britain mulling changes to royal succession rule so first-born girl could take throne“

You know, I don’t want this to be a political blog. I never meant this as a political blog. A lot of people stray away from political blogs and I do too. Like many people, I’d just like to read blogs that aren’t about politics. Blogs where you can just have normal discussions. Okay, occasionally politics may be discussed, but, generally, you just avoid it.

But, you know, it’s frustrating right now, because things are so bad.

And, in Washington D.C., we do not have leadership and we do not have representatives.

Those politicians… They don’t lead. They also don’t represent us, which is supposed to be their job.

So many of them are clueless. How many have held real jobs outside of politics? How many of them make incomes comparable to the average American? Few, I bet.

They just go there and pursue their own agendas. They pander to us for votes and then forget about us when they get there, except when they need to rile us up for something or other to pursue their agenda.

Some people think the idea of smaller government is silly or unrealistic.

But, you know, the less power government has, the less damage it can do.

Look at the size of government now. Are we really better off by having it so large?

People like to blame big corporations, but they are not fully to blame. When you have a government that can make laws or regulations that could hurt or help your business, wouldn’t you lobby politicians to vote your way? Much easier to convince a couple hundred politicians to take your side then it is to convince hundreds of thousands of people to buy your product, right?

If you knew politicians were going to pass some regulations, wouldn’t you push for regulations that hurt your competitors more than you? Certainly, convincing a couple hundred politicians to side with you is easier than convincing hundreds of thousands of people to buy your stuff, right?

And, that’s what we have. We have big corporations battling each other not in the free marketplace but in the world of government lobbyists and politicians. And, in the middle of it, small and medium businesses often come out the losers because they typically don’t have the money to send lobbyists.

Of course, there are those that want to restrict or do away with lobbyists, but they’re not the problem. The problem is government having too much power.

Standard Oil was broken up by the government in 1911 because it was considered a monopoly. However, by the time it was broken up, it had already lost a significant amount of marketshare to competitors. So, the argument that it was stifling competition has no merit.

On the flip side, AT&T became a monopoly in part due to agreements with the government and a protected status until the government later decided it was a monopoly and had to be broken up.

So, the government can say this monopoly is good and protect that company and this monopoly is bad and break that company up. In that environment, is it any wonder that companies lobby the government for their own benefit?

When the government has that kind of power, people and businesses will push to have that power benefit them. Fairness and equality and all that get lost in the me, me, me…

But, take away that power, and those businesses have to win customers and compete in the free marketplace, rather than convince a couple hundred politicians to view things their way.

People like to blame the free marketplace and capitalism for a lot of ills, but the thing is that we haven’t really had a free marketplace and true capitalism in a long, long time. Government has its meddling fingers in every where, and what you may see as “free” likely has some level of government meddling involved. So, to say that a free marketplace doesn’t really work cannot truly be said if you haven’t had a free marketplace to begin with.

It’s an argument often argued by people opposed to deregulation in various industries. The thing is that deregulation is often a misnomer. Often, the industries aren’t being deregulated so much as they are having reduced regulations. Now, if it’s not truly deregulated, if it’s not really participating in a free and open market, how can you claim it was deregulation that didn’t work? It could very well be, and very likely is, that it was the government’s remaining intervention that made things not work out.

The American dream was that anyone, from any ethnic, religious, financial or other background, could succeed and prosper.

The American dream was never that anyone could succeed and prosper and then have a large chunk of their fortune taken away because they succeeded and prospered more than their neighbors.

I don’t think politicians want the American dream to be viable anymore. I think they would rather have a society with different classes so they can more easily manipulate one class against the other.

They do that quite successfully now. They pit the poor against the rich.

When the American dream was more attainable, there was little class warfare between the poor and the rich, because anyone that was poor could succeed and prosper and join the rich. Anyone. American history is full of people that came from poor backgrounds and succeeded and prospered.

But, if you’re a politician, if you want to incite class warfare, if you want to pit one group against the other, it really doesn’t behoove you to pursue policies that enable the American dream because doing so would undermine your own methods of getting power and control.

So, despite whatever rhetoric may come out of their mouths, most politicians are simply not interested in making the American dream achievable.

So, it’s up to us. And the first thing we can do is reject all politicians that seek to divide us, that seek to put the rich and the poor at odds against each other. Reject them, for they reject the American dream.

You know, the politicians shift things around and call them cuts.

And then, because they didn’t actually make any real cuts, they want to increase the debt so they can spend more money, as if spending tons of money on bailout after bailout has worked so far.

They try to get us into thinking that it’s Republicans versus Democrats.

But, you know what, the party not in charge blames the party in charge for everything and then, when the roles get flipped, they continue to do the same kinds of things their opposition did.

When the Republicans were not in control of the House, they opposed the Democrats raising the debt limit.

Now, that they have control, somehow they just might go along with raising the debt limit.

Republicans gained control in the House and gained seats in the Senate in the last election because they weren’t the party in control and people were fed up with the way things were and Republicans were the choice to change them.

But, now, they get back in power and they completely forget about the people that elected them.

They say they have to work alongside and get along with their peers and work for the common good and all that.

The only ones the politicians–Democrats and Republicans alike–are working for the common good of is themselves.

We don’t send them to Congress to throw little fun parties and play nice and sing “Kumbaya” at the end of the day.

We send them there to represent us.

We said, “This is what we want. Go do this.” And, then they promise they will, and then they get in Congress and they just forget all about us.

Sure, they’ll come visit us, pet us on the head and throw us an occasional bone, but, other than that, they don’t care. We don’t understand. We don’t know what it’s like. Those are the lines they’ll feed us.

When voters said they wanted government spending reduced, and voted for people who pledged to reduce government spending, I don’t think what voters really wanted was for them to increase government spending.

They’ll say, oh, but you don’t mean that you want to cut spending. You don’t want to cut this or that.

And so on.

What about stupid projects? There are a lot of those. Oh, but the politicians will argue those don’t amount to much. So what? Cut them. Seriously, if someone wants funding to study belching cows, don’t give them the money. If someone wants funding to urinate in a jar and call it art, don’t give them the money. If someone wants funding to study why the sky and the ocean look like different shades of blue, just say no.

You know, people these days are cutting every expense they can. That includes the little things. We cut that out. Even if it’s not much money, we don’t buy it because we have more important things to worry about.

Oh, but no, not Congress. No, they aren’t going to worry about the small stuff. They’ll just worry about the big stuff. Only they won’t worry too much about that either, because they’ll just vote to spend more money and let some future Congress worry about it.

Which is what they’ve done for a number of years now. They keep pushing off the big decisions.

They seem indifferent to the people they are supposed to represent. Heck, Nancy Pelosi even said she wished that elections didn’t matter so much. That just shows the mentality of those in Congress. Elections are just sort of a little speed bump in the way of their agendas.

You know, you can’t get out of debt by digging your hole even deeper. At some point, you actually have to make cuts in what you spend.

Families do this all the time. The kids may get mad when the cable or satellite TV is no more, but they’ll get over it. At least they maybe will have food on the table. Parents make those tough decisions.

Voters make those tough decisions.

Politicians want to leave those decisions for their successors.

Maybe it’s time we replace both political parties.

The way it is, it just seems both parties are just different branches of the same tax and spend party. The only thing they seem to differ on is how much.

The U.S. has a debt limit. It’s just above $14 trillion dollars.

With the latest agreement in Congress on “cutting” the budget, they need to raise the debt limit in order to be able to pay that.

And, apparently, House Republicans that once opposed raising the debt limit, may go along with raising it.

So, let’s see…

We haven’t lowered the debt.

The current “cuts” will, instead of lowering debt, actually raise it.

So, they want to raise the debt limit.

Makes sense, right? We’ve spent all this money to save the economy, which still hasn’t saved the economy, and now they want to dig us further into debt to… get… us… out… of… debt?

Um, okay.

So, if you have a credit card you cannot afford to pay off, call up your credit card company and ask them to raise your limit.

So you can spend more money.

Try to convince them that, somehow, that’s going to help you pay off your credit card debt.

See if they go along with that.

Try that on your mortgage too.

Maybe you have a car loan you haven’t been able to pay off. See if you can trade in your car for a more expensive one, and get a bigger car loan, so that, you know, you’ll be able to pay off your car loan faster.

You’ll stop spending money… someday.

Don’t know when. But, at some point in the future, yes, you’ll make some tough decisions and cut some spending.

Just not today. Or anytime soon, probably.

But, someday.

You just need more money today.

Leave the tough decisions to your future self.

Or your replacement.

Either way, today it’s time to party!

Fantasy is big right now, from the Harry Potter series to Lonewolf Diaries and Vampire Lovers and Glee and whatever fantasy shows are big on TV these days.

I think it’s all because we live in a fantasy world.

Just look at Congress.

They just agreed to make a bunch of cuts in the budget.

You know what? They have unspent money left over from the census. Since it hasn’t been spent, they are counting that amongst the so-called “cuts” they made.

Seriously.

There were other Federal monies that went unspent for various projects. They “cut” those too.

Obama had some “czars” that have been gone. Those are counted among the “cuts.”

Better watch out. Because, with that type of mentality, if you have twenty bucks in your pocket, they’ll count that as extra income because you haven’t spent it yet. So, you know, they can tax you (again) on your earnings.

In other words, you’ll get taxed when you get your paycheck, and then you’ll be taxed again if you have any unspent money left over.

Of course, these days, not so many people have money left over, so that might not be a big deal.

Oh, so they made all these so-called “cuts” and there are still those who want to raise taxes.

You know, probably because we’re all awash in unspent money.

Oh, and they want to raise the debt ceiling so they can spend more money and accumulate more debt.

So, yeah, that explains the popularity of fantasy, because if you think you can spend your way out of debt, you’re living in a fantasy world.

Maybe we need to reduce Senate terms to 3 years instead of six and limit them to two terms. That way, some of these clowns won’t spend their lifetimes in office and lose complete touch with the people they are supposed to represent as well as reality in general.

At any rate, it’s no wonder people aren’t watching the evening news on TV as much anymore.

They’d rather be reading Harry Potter.

Augmented reality is just around the corner and, in some respects, is already here.

You can, for example, look up a restaurant on your cell phone and see their menu, reviews and other information available on the Internet and decide if you want to go there.

In the not too distant future, it is expected that you’ll be able to take a photo of a building with your cell phone, and image recognition technology (perhaps combined with GPS) will be able to look up the building, and present you with all sorts of available information on it.

For example, you might spot a place that looks like maybe it’s a restaurant and snap a picture and you’ll find out what kind of restaurant it is, see its menu, read reviews and so forth, as with my opening example.

Or, maybe you’ll spot an abandoned building and have your phone look it up for you. You can find out it was once a dance hall, and see assorted videos of people dancing from when the place was still opened. And, you’ll be able to get all sorts of information on it. You can see the abandoned building as it once was and compare it to how it is at that moment.

Some people consider that augmented reality.

But, I don’t see that big a difference between that and a tour guide brochure. The only difference is that you don’t have to carry a bunch of brochures with you where ever you go. Just your phone. The difference is in the convenience and extent of information available. On a brochure, you can only list so many sites and features. With a digital device, you have access to every bit of information on the place available publicly online.

So, it’s not really a new idea. Just an idea that’s been updated with modern technology. It’s not really augmented at all in my view.

Now, let’s move on to a related topic, that will be unrelated at first, but bear with me.

Eating a hamburger won’t kill you, unless it’s tainted or you have some allergy or something. But, for the most part, consuming a properly prepared burger isn’t going to kill you. Nor will eating a pizza with pepperoni, sausage and a double helping of extra cheese or whatnot. Potato chips won’t kill you either.

Eating anything in excess may be harmful to your health, however. Water, which is often considered one of the healthiest things you can drink, can be harmful if consumed to excess. You can even die from drinking too much water!

So, too much of anything can be bad. Most foods are perfectly fine in moderation.

However, there are lots of people that would prefer eating a plate of sirloin steak to a plate full of beets.

Now, what if you could modify beets so they had the taste and texture of beef?

That would be fine with lots of people. Imagine, you wouldn’t have to kill a cow to get beef. Just toss a beet seed in the ground. Well, it’d be a little more work than that, of course. The plants would need to be tended and so forth. But, the bottom line is that you wouldn’t have to kill any animals to get beef.

That would be appealing to a lot of people. It’s not like there are droves of cow hunters out there. Who hunts cows? No one that I know of. No one goes into the woods to hunt cow. They go to the grocery store. The only people that slaughter cows are the people that sell beef to the markets.

Now, a beef beet would hurt the cattle industry, but no one else would really care. If beet beef was just like cow beef, few people would care. You may have some purists, but, even with the purists, the likelihood is that you would have smaller cattle ranches to cater to the purists, and everyone else would probably be happy with the beet beef. And, some of the beef producers could switch from raising cows to sowing beets.

Of course, some people will be fearful of genetically-modified foods. But, we’ve been genetically-modifying foods for centuries. We domesticated cattle. We picked the desirable traits in cattle that we wanted and selectively bred them for those traits. We crossed different types of plants and so on to get the desired plants we wanted. The only thing different about genetically-modified foods is that we are more able to pinpoint the genes we do and don’t want.

We do have to be careful, but we also had to be careful with breeding animals and crossing plants as well.

At any rate, the question will boil down to whether beet beef is any healthier than cow beef. Will it be? Maybe. Or maybe it will still have the same properties as beef, and excessive consumption of beet beef would be no different than that of cow beef.

So, where does that leave us? Well, let’s go back to “augmented reality.”

We’ve all seen virtual worlds in science fiction. People will “plug in” to these virtual environments, and enter a virtual world with a virtual body that is almost indistinguishable from the real world. You can touch and feel things–even taste them–but none of it’s real.

But, what if you could blend the virtual world and the real world in a selective way? I think that would properly be called “augmented reality.”

Let’s say you’re having dinner. But, you’re plugged in to this augmented reality. Well, you could have a small bowl of carrot slices in front of you. However, what you see is a plateful of potato chips, just the way you like them. They feel like potato chips and, most importantly, they taste like potato chips.

And, it’s because you’re “plugged in” to your own semi-virtual world. You see your friends and family at the table (unless, of course, you want to replace them with virtual characters of some sort) but, instead of carrot chips, you see potato chips. And you enjoy them like you would potato chips.

The main dish? A salad. But, what you see is sirloin steak. A side of tofu? Nope, you see and taste macaroni and cheese.

You have a glass of water to drink. But, instead of water, it’s Coke or red wine or beer.

And, you can eat like that every day! You can eat healthy foods but think you’re eating your favorite foods each and every day, as often as you like! You could drink a six-pack of beer every night, and go to work in the morning without a hangover because you were really drinking plain water.

Now, what if you really really crave something real, not virtual? Well, imagine that you eat your virtual junk food six days a week. Once a week, you could indulge in your favorite foods. Real foods. Not augmented at all. And, you’d still be healthy for it, because you’d still be eating those foods in moderation. You might think you had good beef six days a week and superb beef one day a week, but you really had a plate full of vegetables six days a week and real beef once. It’d be a win-win.

Now, that’s augmented reality!

In the wake of this weekend’s shootings, members of Congress are now proposing a bill that will outlaw “threatening” a politician or the ‘use language or symbols that could be perceived as inciting violence.’

If that happens, how long before saying something like “kick the clowns out of office!” might be perceived as a violent threat? Heck, you could say “remove them from office” with a wink and a nod and some people will think you’re hinting at some violent threat.

And, why? Because, according to some of these politicians (who, as we all know, are not always the sharpest crayons in the box), such words may push mentally unbalanced people toward violence.

So, when Sarah Palin says “Don’t retreat, reload!” or when Barack Obama says “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.”, then normal people may understand the metaphor and not see it as a call to violence, but someone off their rocker might.

But…

You know what propels some crazy people to violence? The fact that they’re crazy!

Anyone remember The Catcher in the Rye? Not exactly a book that incites violence, yet it apparently led Mark David Chapman to kill John Lennon.

John Hinckley, Jr. shot Ronald Reagan in an attempt to impress Jodie Foster.

Crazy people are, well, crazy. There’s no telling what’s going to set them off.

Restricting speech won’t accomplish anything outside of restricting speech. Crazy people can still read between the lines, even if what’s between the lines is blank space.