H&I* Fires, 26 JAN 2007

> A Spanish court has issued arrest warrants for three soldiers THIS is why I tend to stick to whatzis for comments. This just flat pisses me off in ways I can even begin to be coherant about... Cowards? I think Crittenden was being nice. Two months.. Then I get to spend all my time writing about what I want to write about... (*&%(T*(&Y)* Spaniards! The new French but not as good at anything. Franco must have dictatored the spine and the decency right out of them--their judges and lawyers anyway. Feh!

I saw the demonstration of the ray gun on the news this morning. They fired it at a group of "volunteers", who felt like they were on fire after getting hit with the weapon. It was weird.. like that scene in Talladega Nights when Ricky Bobby flails around on the track yelling "I'M ON FIRE! I'M ON FIRE!" but it's obvious that he wasn't. VERY weird technology.

I am, unfortunately, of two minds on this one Chief. It's not cool to shaft the Reserve and Guardsmen, but at the same time if I'm the employer I don't want to a) have to pay for two people and b) have the gov't tell me what I can do with my business(it's my property after all). I don't rightly know what I think is best or fair on this question. I was just wondering if someone would take up the issue and rally the troops to Help The Troops. Apparently they've let it go. I suspect their hunger to Help The Troops lasts only as long as it 'get the war profiteering white men.'

3) Mitt Romney (43) 2) Rudy Giuliani (45) 1) Newt Gingrich (52) That list works for me... I have been aggravated at McCain since he took my money (only pol I've ever donated to directly) and then quit without a fight. He should have returned the $ or donated it to some charity, given his campaign financing fixation. I don't want McCain in The white house any more than I want to see Hagle there (well maybe a little more).

Unless I am missing something,reading the article about Rev. Popov, it mentions that he is attached to the 2/27 "The Wolfhounds" not the 3/25.

Ry, it IS that simple because it's the LAW, and there is nothing else that really matters. She's only been there since 2002, but been a reservist for lots longer. Not her fault, the org should have factored that into things when it hired her. Moreoever, there is zero difference between her going to war and her having a baby and getting materinty leave--as often as she wants to make a new one. This is like the 2nd Amendment. There is no debate, there is no qualifier, it cannot be gotten around, people are allowed to keep AND bear arms. Period. Nothing can be done to change that without a change to the constituion. And I wouldn't care if the person was a gas pumper or the owner of a small business, as many National Guardsmen tend to be, that's just the way it is. And the law is designed to protect the individual not the business, which can probably write off any expenses incurred by having to hire new people. One of my wife's cousins is a reserve AF nurse, he has spent LOTS of time doing Air Evac in the past 5 years, to Germany and Japan. His wife is an officer in the Reserves (was also, BTW, at the Pentagon on 9/11 & had moved from an office near the srike point to a new office just a month or so earlier). She is now full time. They both left civilian jobs because of the war, but they didn't have to, and they shouldn't have been asked to. And who cares about unions. Again, it's the law, and it was made a law for a good reason (do YOU remember the draft). Even discussing this as if the business is somehow being wronged gives validity to the enemies of people who are willing to serve their country when called. Yeah, life ain't easy for people who have to make do with one of the other 299,000,000 people in the U.S., but it isn't anything more than a whiner's peeve. It is nothing but the sign of a weak dishonorable character that forces people to make the choice that scumsucker was trying to get her to make. I hope he loses his job over this, and that it ruins his career. It is not a matter of discussion. He has no options. He should have just tried to be better than himself. And BTW, if you hire a replacement and don't tell that person the job is temporary, you are the dirtbag liable for the lawsuit, not the person who was called up. I've hired temps and been in offices that had folks (IMPORTANT/SENIOR FOLKS) go off to war for 6 months to a year. Tough for us. We hired temps when we could (and I don't mean CAD-types, either, but high-end SMEs and policy gurus advising people at the highest levels of DoD) or we made do without until the person came back. That's what decent, honorable grownups do. It really is just that simple.

Before I go off I'm going to ask. Are you calling me an 'dishonorable whiner' or not? It's obvious that you're calling the lady's boss a scumbag, but I'm wondering if you're subtely saying the same about me. Look. I agree with the law, up to a point. I can see legal reasons, 'competing good' reasons, to have problems with such a binary law and binary application of it. That's a bit different that screwing someone over or calling for the repeal, ain't it? What I meant by unions was that I know of cases where the Guardman went off on his summer 2 weeks and when he came back the union wouldn't let the company release his replacement. Now they were bound, in both cases by law(according to the union), to hold both. Now, I'm not asking if it's legal, I'm asking if that's fair? Is it good when it drives these companies closer to shutting down(it was a small chip factory in Irvine)? But that's right. It's simple. It's binary. Good is easy to see in this situation and it can only flow from one direction. I am not of The Brotherhood. I don't carry the reflexive need to protect It at all times. I can see how both sides are wronged or potentially wronged here. I see at as no slight on my honor to admitt that there is a wrong being done to the employer(for good purpose this wrong is being done.). If that bothers you then I'm sorry, but not appologizing for exploring it. It's simply the problem of letting an academic come to the party. Please don't call me names and impugn my honor for being intellectually curious and open minded. Particularly when I don't deserve it(i.e. I'll fark up around here sometime and you'll be totally correct in kicking my head in; but this isn't such a time).

I think my comment got eaten by the Moat Monster. Ry, I don't think Sanger is saying anything more than it doesn't really matter if you like it or not, it's the LAW. Period. Reservists and Guardsmen who get called up for active duty cannot be fired from their civilian job. Their position must be held for them, pending their return. As for your union example, I don't know. It sounds weird to me, like the union steward is forcing the hand of the employer.

Lessee, do a little work and things go south here. Sanger, Ry - play nice. Ry, the way to duel this issue with Sanger is to perhaps bring up the issue of the draft (which he abhors) and juxtapose that to what you see as the property taking aspect of holding a job for the deployed RC warrior. The discussion need not hinge on life and limb, many draftees just did two years and went home, with no real exposure to the hazards of combat. Keep it in that realm and remember to attack the point, not the pointy-headed person making the point. Oops. Broke my own rule - except I wasn't talking about you guys. Alan - like it or not, things may be at the stage where going ugly is needful. One wonders - if the Weimar Republic had been able to deal with the private army of the Nazi Party, how things in Europe might have been different last century? Democracy as we understand it exists in the political spectrum, kind of like perhaps the Earth does in the "Zone of Life" around the sun - in a fairly narrow band. And when the political situation gets too far out of whack one way or another, perhaps it might take an otherwise unacceptable healthy whack on the head - or, "chemo" to reduce the unhealthy cells, so to speak? I know it's a marshy surface from which to argue - but shall we?

Ry, I could be nicer about this, but I'm not in the mood to be. If you don't like the answer that follows, oh well. And I don't care if you "go off or not," though there's no reason to that I can see. 1) I wasn't talking about you, or even thinking about you. You are the person who got me thinking about the subject, you aren't the one who did the deed. If you want to take it personally, not my problem. You have always seemed to be a fair, and fair-minded person, if a tad bit insecure (which I can appreciate). just relax, alright. As John has told me a few times, you'll know when I mean you. And you should know by now I don't try to find subtle ways to insult people. That's just no fun. 2) Unless you have ever fired a person who was expecting to come back to a job after going off to serve (see, John, not to war), then what I wrote does not apply to you. If you have, then you are the kind of person I was talking about, though I didn't know it at the time. I suspect you're not. 3) Your notions of the law are great for debates, but if I've learned nothing this year, it's that some things are just not worth debating. More important, for some topics, even discussing alternative viewpoints in a rational way may be cool for coffeehouse chat, but sometimes that stuff causes whole nations to waste time, treasure, and lives, or it simply ruins individual lives. I am not really talking about moral relativism here, I am talking about people just shutting their mouths, doing the right thing, and then discussing it later instead of trying to figure a way out of it or around it in the first place. And No, I am NOT talking about you here. For example, there should have been no debate about whether to hang Hussein. No debate about whether to go after the Al Qaeda, no debate about whether or not it's ok for a mother to kill her unborn children. Oh yeah, that last one is debatable, and reasonable people have somehow been convinced that the death penalty is inhumane and wrong, but abortion is not. See, _that's_ what happens when people are willing to concede that every argument has merit, that every disagreement has value or must be considered. That's the problem with multiculturalism, people insist that everyone has the right to exist, even if some of those people don't agree that you do, and are willing to kill you to get what they want. ... This is too big to do here, and I don't want to conflate too many issues, but I want to make the point that sometimes, there is no debate worth having. Not every belief has two equally valid sides . Some issues are not binary, they are unitary--for all intents and purposes, there _is_ only one side. 4) Listen, if Americans insist on one inalienable "right" above all else, it's the right to break the law. I know that, you know that, we all know it. It doesn't mean we all plan to or will, or even want; we just want the options if we need it; which is one reason people are adamantly opposed to a national ID card, personal GPS markers, etc. We don't trust the government and we don't want to give it an edge if we don't have to. But this is not THAT kind of issue. It is not about rights or freedom or government intervention or any of that. It's about a business being made to think more about a person than about the bottom line--and not every person, just the ones who are willing to sacrifice life and limb to work for the government that protects and enables that businessman in the first place. 5) This has jack to do with any damn brotherhood (that was kind of silly actually), and everything to do with the fact that sometimes you just gotta suck it up and do your duty, in this case taking care of a person who is giving up a lot on your behalf. I equate this to paying taxes. Do you hate paying taxes? Does it infuriate you to give away your pay to the government. It doesn't bother me a bit and I have zero sympathy for people who don't like it. Why? Well, for about 10 of the past 19 years, I drove on interstates and US highways every day to get back and forth to work. For about half of that I drove more than 30 miles each way, every day.. The taxes I paid each year that I did that would not have paid for 20 feet of that highway, if that, let alone 30 miles. To my way of thinking, I more than got my money's worth. What else? Well, there's an army fighting a war for me. My annual taxes wouldn’t pay for one second of that war, probably not even a tenth of a second. But it would pay for a missile part, maybe half a thermal seeker. Or maybe there is one soldier out there who is fully equipped because of me (though I probably couldn't get him or her all the really good stuff). Or if war ain't your thing, then how about the space program whose technology spinoffs alone have benefited Americans in so many ways they cannot be counted. All the taxes I've ever paid wouldn't pay for what I've got out of that program, even if I only counted the awe and wonder of the pictures sent back by the Hubble or the Mars landers...or for the thrill I got when I met and got to spend a few hours with Fred Haise. or how I felt when Armstrong stepped on to the moon. So what's my point? Only that I have reached the point in my life and the current political and social environment where my tolerance for BS has evaporated. What that gal's boss did was reprehensible and inexcusable, AND illegal to boot. And THAT makes it not worth the debate to me especially since I know good and well the Hospital could get another person, and could write off the expense of doing it. 6) I don't know about that union deal. Sounds like crap to me, and that the union doesn’t have leg to stand on. Depends on how the company went about hiring the replacement. Especially for a two weeker. That doesn't even sound right. And it does not at all sound legal for the union to do that either. As for fair, that doesn't matter either. The law is clear about the reserve/national guard issue. It is less so about union demands. I'd say there's money to be made by some lawyer in this, and fair has nothing to do with it. Details matter here. 7) I used to have more sympathy for small business owners until I ran one for a couple years in a small Indiana town. I don't any more. None. I have less sympathy for large business owners. Been there too. And none for Universities, hospitals, or any other for profit-organization. Why? Because everyone is in it to make money, and the system is weighted to help them do just that. There are catches and loopholes in almost everything, and even though there is a great deal of government intervention in business, I'd say it's most likely all deserved. I have worked for people or know people who tried every possible way to squeeze an extra penny out of employees, the government, customers and even their partners. And I am not talking about cheating or stealing here, just regular day to day business. Anyone who isn't in it for success shouldn't bother. I was even a victim of extortion by the local Chamber of Commerce, which we paid dues to. The chamber wanted free internet access. I wanted them to pay (they charged me for CoC services, after all). They took their business to a competitor who gave it to them for free and then they advertised on the CoC website the competitor's services. You know what makes this better, the competitor was not a member of the CoC. And this was the friendly group of folks. See, EVERYONE wants their vigorish, and there are no purely altruistic+wildly successful business people. 8) And as for the draft, to give John a nod here, to me that's simple too: I wouldn't give the Government my gun, my home, my freedom, or my money without a fight, especially if everyone else wasn't doing the same. Why then, would I be willing to let it take my son? Is my child less valuable then my property? Or a gun? The problem is that not one of the founders ever likely thought it would come to the Government taking Americans' children from them against their will. I suspect if conscription had ever been seen as a possibility--if the taking of freedom from some men would be done against their will at the behest of other men--a prohibition against conscription would have been the third amendment. In fact, that is a goal I intend to pursue when I am done with my current time-consumer. I believe no American should ever again have to worry about being enslaved by the Government against his or her will and sent off to kill or be killed. If the government can't convince free people that a cause is worth fighting for, then maybe it isn't. And if is, then maybe the people need a new government... [or the government needs new people] And that's it for tonight.

I have to agree with Sanger on this. Mostly because I've been on the losing end of the job versus military stick before. In other news: Hey Sanger, can I quote you on that above rant? :) I think you just wrapped up everything I've wanted to put in to a post for the last 2 months in 30 seconds.....

Bloodspite, you can quote whatever you want, just please keep it in context. And thanks.

XOXO Sanger. Nothing speaks of respect so much as one fella telling another to "f*ck right off!!!" And yes, John, I have been absent but I have been doing another duty as a newly renewed foster Dad with another two wee babies in the house eating into my ability to be wrong all the time on your blog. Lord I'm sleepy, Alan

I'll take off the northern leftie communalist glasses right along you taking off the southern rightie libertarian ones. Just put them on the table and walk away slowly. Keep your hands in view...

At least, it wasn't me, this time.

Sanger, what you might want to think about is that one of the consequences of that law is that no one will hire Guard / Reserve in the first place. The situation is exactly analogous to what's been happening with ADA: if no one with disabilities gets hired, then it's much harder to get sued.

Bill - are you playing the house, or are you taking a side on this bet?

SDN: I was wrong about the small business numbers. It is actually this: "The title I employment provisions apply to private employers, State and local governments, employment agencies, and labor unions. Employers with 25 or more employees were covered as of July 26, 1992. Employers with 15 or more employees were covered two years later, beginning July 26, 1994." As for the ADA, well, anyone who can read will see it's a reasonable act... http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/ada/q%26aeng02.htm And this FAQ is pretty good too. www.usdoj.gov/crt/ada/pubs/mythfct.txt V/R