Off Topic: Get Ready for the 2008 Bud Bowl!

I am in a complete snit today thinking about how the corporate owned media is going to manipulate the public day in and day out for the next 5 months. The media giants are looking forward to record profits with every reason to expect that we will all be glued to our televisions while we try to get a sense of who is ahead in the race for the Whitehouse. There will be this opinion poll and that opinion poll, and the endless bantering and bickering among pundits. Presently it is all about whether Hillary is damaging the party by not endorsing Barack; as if this is a real concern that will prevail into November. The truth is, it will blow over. Those very few that are so disheartened about Hillary's defeat, and so much so that they say they are unwilling to vote for Barack (who, by the way, never said anything unfair toward Hillary in spite of being invited to do so repeatedly by the media), will either get over themselves, or they won't. Even if the media keeps fanning the flames of this so-called "issue", it won't make a difference in the outcome of the election. Yes, 18 million votes were cast for Hillary in the primaries. However, it is a complete fiction that those 18 million voters are not willing to vote for Barack unless Hillary "green-lights" it. Some of those people have already abandoned Hillary; and, in fact, they all should now that Barack is the presumptive nominee, regardless of what Hillary thinks. That's politics and it's nothing new. There are winners and losers, and Hillary is the loser; plain and simple. Hillary must accept that, much the way Al Gore did once the Supreme Court had spoken on whether the recount should continue in Florida. When it is clearly over, it is time to concede. That is called being a gracious loser, and Hillary is coming dangerously close to being a sore loser, if she hasn't already crossed that line.

If it is really about policy over personality, and what direction the country should head post-W, then any Hillary supporter would have to vote for Obama. Otherwise we could legitimately question their motives in voting for Hillary in the first place. After all, the major policy positions of Hillary and Barack have always been identical.

But, regardless, there will be a perceived neck and neck horse race (i.e., Obama's up, McCain is down and vice versa), and it's a big lie. Why? Because of one simple point:

If you don't already know who you would vote for come November (Obama or McCain), you are an imbecile. Sorry, but that's just true.

If you say you are undecided, and are not an imbecile, you are an attention-grabbing liar, who wants to be catered to and courted by the media and the two campaigns. They will sit down with you at the "kitchen table", interview you, invite you to participate in focus groups and bake you cookies, while you continue to fake that you are not an imbecile and/or undecided. Let's face it, the two candidates could not be more different on any scale you choose. This is not in fact the "bud bowl" as the candidates are way more different from each other than are any two bottles of beer. However, the analogy still works because the corporate owned media will prove that the public can be manipulated into believing that there really is a "decision" to be made that hasn't been made already. Oh, and just be sure to stay tuned through the commercials.

Less DUI law is more.

Drinking and driving is not necessarily a crime in the U.S. In California, if you are at least 21, you may not drive with a blood alcohol concentration of .08 percent or greater nor may you drive under the influence of alcohol (and/or other intoxicants). It is well known that Sweden has one of the toughest, if not the toughest, drinking and driving laws in the world. In Sweden, to drive with .02 percent or greater of alcohol in your blood is a crime. Even there, it is lawful to have at least some alcohol in your blood. However, .01 or even .019 percent (which is roughly the level a 180 lb. man would reach if he had the alcohol content of one beer immediately shot into his bloodstream with a syringe) is highly unlikely, according to the current body of scientific research on this subject to, by itself, cause impairment of one's ability to safely drive a motor vehicle. But could as little as one beer be an associated factor with unsafe driving? After all, doesn't drinking one beer cause, or at least contribute to, sleepiness (a highly dangerous state to be in while driving)? The answer is yes.

So, why is it that we (and even the Swedish!) are so tolerant of drinking and driving? Is it that alcohol is "a long-standing part of our [and Swedish] culture, and most adults who drink are able to enjoy it responsibly as part of a healthy lifestyle"? Perhaps. However, before one mindlessly signs on to this oft heard rationale, consider its source. The above quote is actually taken directly from the Century Council which calls themselves, "a national not-for-profit organization dedicated to fighting drunk driving and underage drinking formed by America's leading distillers". The leading distillers, with plenty of money to spend getting their message out, are bent on preserving the acceptance of alcohol as part of a "healthy adult lifestyle". Even if we accept that alcohol is a net positive influence on society such that it should remain lawful to consume (unlike a great many other intoxicating substances which have been declared unlawful), do we still have tolerate drinking and driving? No, actually, we don't.

As I wrote in a previous post, the law which states that you may not drive at .08 percent or greater of alcohol in your blood does not amount to official permission to drive between .05 and .07 (or even at .01 for that matter). The numeric "limit", as it were, is almost meaningless in a case which involves bad driving (or an accident, if you can actually separate the two concepts). Consequently, those who set out to drink the maximum number of drinks that their body weight and the DMV chart suggests they may drink without reaching .08 percent are missing a very important legal reality. They are, without realizing it, making an ill-considered bet that they will not be involved in a traffic accident on their way home. But, in a sense, they are being encouraged to make this bet. This, for obvious reasons, puts us all at greater risk of an accident, and them at risk of being arrested for DUI. There is no safe number of drinks to drink before driving. Even one drink, as it contributes to sleepiness, is unsafe. The worst of it is, that by condoning through laws and charts the act of drinking one, two, and even three drinks, as a part of "healthy adult lifestyle", people who might otherwise reflect on whether drinking even one drink is a safe course of conduct to begin with, may just fall back on (or hide behind) the government's standard of what safe drinking behavior is and, in effect, put themselves at risk of alcoholism and everyone at a much greater risk of alcohol related traffic accidents. To many who drink, two or three drinks causes them to approach, if not achieve, a euphoric feeling of invincibility. So, how difficult is it to stop at two (or three)? Too difficult, apparently. This is likely because two or three is just about enough to make most people (excepting those with a very high tolerance for alcohol) stop caring about the threat of arrest, much less the threat of a traffic accident. It doesn't take a scientist to realize that two drinks leads to three (or more).

In writing this post, I do not advocate for prohibition of alcohol in general. I think what people ingest which causes neither them nor anyone else any real harm should not be made illegal. I do, however, challenge the prevailing myth that drinking and driving is consistent with a "healthy adult lifestyle". Drinking in moderation is fine. Driving in moderation is fine. Together, in any amount, they are dangerous. However, even MADD, which is primarily supported by the auto and insurance industries, doesn't strongly advocate for an absolute end to drinking and driving. Their official position is against "operating under the influence", not against drinking and driving itself. So, how did I end up to the right of MADD on this subject? Easily. I don't like the hypocrisy involved in the current system which I am exposed to on a daily basis. The government, and MADD, ask people to get angry at the DUI offender (and in some cases their lawyers) without considering their own contribution to this problem. At best, the government condones drinking and driving and, at worst, it encourages it. MADD, and other anti-DUI advocacy groups, constantly ply the lawmakers with arguments, and other encouragement, to toughen the laws without addressing the hypocrisy. They, in turn, enact these new laws with zeal to convince their constituents that they are "getting tough" on crime. Consequently, we end up with incrementally tougher but ever more confusing laws which, we shouldn't wonder why, are not doing enough to reduce traffic accidents. I believe that we should skip all of the intermediate steps and simply prohibit the dangerous course of conduct with a clear bright line rule. Thousands of hair-splitting hours at the roadside, in the station, in court and in the legislature could be saved. I think we should simply ban drinking and driving and put more money into rail and other transportation alternatives. But that just makes too much sense and just happens to be too unsettling to the automobile, distilling, and insurance industries.