I didn’t hear that Orrin Hatch actually HAD had trouble over a liaison with a male intern until recently. But seven or eight years ago, I wrote that I was uncomfortable about his particularly worship of Teddy Kennedy. Joe Biden worships Teddy, but I did not get the same feeling about that.

The person who thought I knew abut this intern incident was astonished “that Bob knew” abut Hatch years before that incident came out. I didn’t.

There is a similar perversion, not the same one, but somehow creepily similar, in the worship respectable conservatives when they drool over liberals. Senator Proxmire was no object of this heavy saliva output. He was a consistent liberal, but he also sent almost his entire office budget, back to bug-eyed admiration of Wisconsin voters and respectable conservatives.

Proxmire, like some conservatives, said all they needed was a few secretaries and themselves. That is the way his constituents and conservatives put it. Actually what he was saying was that all THE STATE OF WISCONSIN needed was him and a few secretaries.

Proxmire may not have known how to use staff, but any reasonably competent person on Capitol Hill could save his own constituents millions for thousands spent on staff. In fact, Proxmire doubtless knew that, but he also knew how dumb his constituents were.

Another way Proxmire got conservative saliva pouring was his Golden Fleece Award. He would give out an award regularly to the most obvious pork projects. But in fact he would have been in real trouble with his colleagues if he had cited the REAL ones. So he would get the list of National Science Foundation Grants, a list of hundreds of small grants for basic research that comes to every congressional office on a weekly basis. He would then pick the silliest names of projects and denounce them.

Conservatives went into an orgasm every time Proxmire did this.

Now let’s forget them and talk about adults. There is no better expenditure a society can make than on basic research. Most of our basic advances are STILL the result of the basic research that had to be done for the Moon Shot. Basic research ALWAYS sounds silly. Who CARES why a bumblebee flies?

This was the kind of crap conservatives LIVE for. Proxmire would find a silly name and “expose” it while his colleagues spent BILLIONS on pork in their home districts.

Did you know that the Department of Defense actually has spent hundreds of man hours planning an invasion of ANDORRA!? Even more on Swaziland. Yu see, the Department of Defense does not exist to decide whether to go to war. It exists to react when the phone rings and the troops have to go in.

Anywhere.

I think the reason Proxmire didn’t expose this was because someone would have told him where to stick it. Real scientists have no such spokesmen.

Analog Magazine had an editorial dedicated to the tiny projects Proxmire had condemned, and found that the results of these seemingly ridiculous basic research projects had been staggering. The information gotten there saved lies, made money, and all the rest.

But the Practical Man had objected, and that is all anyone knows.

I speculate here. I have begun to realize how important it is that the Ex Oriente Lux fallacy is gone. I have begun to realize that Zoroastrianism, in which I had a vague interest, turns out to reveal a mystery no one even NOTICES: How in HELL did a religion which claims descent from the Old Testament end up worshipping absolute chastity?

In the meantime, we need to DO with what we ALREADY have. But talking about nothing BUT the Mantra and nothing else is BORING. Besides I want REPORTS I can look up and none will give them to me. Maybe someone here would USE that to back you up or remake your point.

I can’t get you to do that. You don’t have t put ALL the sites down, just a few. If you’ve done it before, do it again. You may notice that one of the lessons of this blog is that effective propaganda involves LOTS of repetition.

But back to the basic point: An adult realizes that life must consist of BOTH, doing and speculating.

So lift your eyes! Don’t prospect where the gold gave out years ago. Someone just said the Jews haven’t made a single mistake since 1914. Do I really have to spend my declining years dealing with THAT?!

If you want to do your own thing start your own blog. I’ll back you up. If you are right, all my readers will go to you. Which would save me a mint and a lot of work. If I’m doing it wrong, you can do it right.

.In the meantime don’t think ANYBODY has a more open blog than this one, but there ARE limits.

http://www.nationalsalvation.net/