U. S. Violates Human Rights of Citizens

I will keep this short and simple. Health care in America is a fundamental, unalienable, human right, as enunciated by our forefathers in the Declaration of Independence. Any elected official in this country who continues to treat this fundamental unalienable human right as a commodity is complicit in violating the human rights of every citizen in this country.

It is time that we stop dancing to the tune that the Insurance/Pharma industry has been blasting in our ears for decades, and enact a single-payer health plan for all Americans. We should not really care what the big-business-financed Tea/GOP calls it and have our trusty remotes at hand to mute the inevitable $billion add campaign against it. Most of us already get the bottom line beneath all the layers of disinformation. We Americans are not quite as ignorant as they think we are. Not anymore.

No American should have to hear or tell heart-rending, Kafkaesque, stories about being victimized by their heartless insurance companies. We should no longer accept that millions of Americans have to choose between going to a doctor and feeding their families. We should no longer tolerate that the wealthiest country on earth has the infant mortality rate of a developing nation. No one in this country should die, because a disease or disorder went untreated. And we must meet the mega-business effort to keep us in our place with a short and simple response: Not in my country.

My question to you out there is: how much longer are we going to sit back and allow our elected officials to line their pockets with cartel money and violate our fundamental, unalienable human right to decent, affordable health care?

J. Brandeis Sperandeo

Welfare Queen Exxon Mobil Profits Up 69%

The world’s largest publicly traded company, Exxon Mobil Corporation, made $11 billion…in profit this quarter. That’s not just $11 billion, but $11 billion after costs. Take home. Really. Take home, because Exxon Mobil also pays $ZERO in taxes. This profit figure is up 69%, from last year’s first quarter profit, but missed the mark of their record third quarter profit of $14.8 billion in 2008.

Yes, while the economy was going down the toilet and the middle class was bailing out the car companies and the whole financial industry, Exxon Mobil made more profit than any other company in world history.

And the U.S. government gave then and currently gives Exxon Mobil and other major oil companies $4 billion a year in…uh…subsidies. The President's plan to remove Big Oil from the welfare rolls has been met with a fierce response from Tea/GOP (and a few alleged Democrats) inside the Washington Beltway.

I saw this on the news last night, but what caused me to write this post was that The Denver Post printed the above figures right next to an article about how middle class and poor families, already choking on the fumes of inexplicably high gas prices, will soon be forced to limit the number of diapers that Jr. can wear in any given day and will have to wipe his nose with a rag instead of a tissue.

And  Jr.'s bodily bi-products will not be the only daily functions made more expensive. The cost of ice cream, razors, soap, tooth paste, soft drinks, and snack food will also soon balloon and affect the lives of the millions of Americans whose tax dollars are currently diverted to the petty cash drawers of Big Oil.

That is my thought for the day. I would write more, but I have to go vomit up the sawdust I just ate for breakfast, clean up the mess with a tree branch, and brush my teeth with Windex.

J. Brandeis Sperandeo

The Collatox Defense

And you thought that the Twinkie Defense was creative! Wait until you hear about my brand new, high-end-client, sure-fire, fool-proof defense. I call it The Collatox Defense. I thought of it while watching TV and seeing, newlywed/professional escort, Dalia Dippolito; yet another apparently surgically enhanced bimbo being arrested for an alleged third attempted murder-for-hire against her unsuspecting husband.

As I was looking at that I-just-ran-into-a-wall mouth which, in my day, would have been not-so-kindly compared to that of the Creature From The Black Lagoon, I could not help but make the obvious connection between the overuse of collagen, implants, botulism injections, and disfiguring plastic surgeries, and the recent epidemic of  unfathomably inane, erratic, unscrupulous, and often highly illegal behavior of so many pathologically entitled, over-privileged, chronically frustrated, grossly insecure, or just intensely bored younger, middle-aged, and post middle-aged, individuals.

It would be so easy to lump the PamelaAndersonBruceJennerKimKardashian(anyKardashian)MelaniGriffithBradPaisleyGoldieHawnThierryMuglerNicoleKidmanKeithUrbanCameronDiazLexBaldwinDonatellaVersaceCarrotTopDollyPartonKennyRogersJoanRiverseMickeyRourks together with the KimRichardsDaliaDippolitoLindseyLohanandMobwivesReneeKarenCarlaDritasandatleast1/2ofhtecastofTheJerseyShore.

Most in both lists appear to have way too much money. Many are obviously grossly insecure. Some appear so bored that they simply don’t know what to do with themselves, so they incessantly bitch about a life, for which the rest of us would trade a significant body part, incessantly stare in the mirror, find alleged flaws, then repeatedly pay Hollywood Hospital to tweak their karma.

Some initially look less like the Creature From the Black Lagoon than others, but, if true to the all too common modus operandi, over time, they will eventually nip and tuck and plump and fill their way into an unforgettable fright for the little kiddies (and most adults) sans mask, at Halloween.

But some of those on the second list are part of what I believe to be utterly amoral, uber- aggressive, kleptomaniacal, or otherwise mentally ill subclass of the surgically enhanced. My newfound defense is designed for these psycho-celebs, and although it comes too late for poor Ms. Richards, I believe it could be used sparingly to help the recent spate of arrestees like Ms. Dippolito and then liberally in subsequent cases, depending upon the range of prior success.

The…uh…novelty of this ground-breaking legal maneuver will require that it first be tested  in locales such as Beverly Hills, South Florida, and selected sections of New Jersey, as an accused relying upon this defense obviously stands a better chance of acquiring a more sympathetic jury pool in these areas. 

Every troubled, disfigured celebrity/wannabe mutant deserves the best defense money can buy, and I’ll bet there are many expert physicians in Hollywood who, for a price, would be willing to testify as to the various deleterious effects of long-term internal exposure to silicone, collagen, botulism, PVC, PCP, LSD, THC,  and/or any other foreign substance.

Just think of the scenario: a bored, rich, heavily altered (Real Housewife/Mob Wife/Any Reality TV celebrity/“A,”-list, but about to be demoted to “B”-list actor) feels compelled to act out (to get richer in a hurry/cry for attention/make the next edition of People) and does act out (to the tune of a criminal mischief/theft/assault/homicide) in the usual (monumentally stupid/guaranteed to get caught/really wants to get caught) way and, after the (making all the tabloids/magazines/morning shows/Fox News) dust settles, but before he/she is thrown into (a Beverly Hills secured facility, single cell, complete with specialized individual attention, gourmet meals, with full access to all media outlets) jail, he/she hires a well-seasoned (former “hard-nosed prosecutor” and present TV commentator/short bald guy with the brains/flamboyant tall guy with a deep voice and grey at the temples) legal team, who, brings my three-tiered strategy to life and hires a slew of medical experts to say that:

1. The medical effect of long-term exposure to the toxic chemicals associated with plastic/cosmetic surgery/treatments is temporary insanity (or at least a diminished capacity to recognize and fully process the abject fear on the face of the victim he/she bludgeoned). Once afflicted by and so under the influence of said toxins, the actor must thereupon be relieved of all criminal responsibility for any bigoted, vile, heinous, violent, or otherwise illegal act(s) that may have been committed thereafter.

2. Although still a new field of psychological study (that means absolutely no empirical data to support their theory), the entertainment media has recently reported a plethora of anecdotal evidence, citing nut-job after nut-job, doing very nut-jobby things (especially on reality TV shows), who also happened to have, maybe not-so-coincidentally, really fat upper-lips, gargoyle-like facial features, comic-book musculature, and/or several fluid-filled, plastic/titanium parts inside their foreheads, breasts, calves, and or cheeks at both ends.

3. Because so many original body parts have been altered, enlarged, damaged, or replaced, the accused, as named in the complaint, no longer sufficiently resembles the defendant sitting in orange at the defense table. Therefore, an acquittal must be rendered, based on the lack of proper identification.

Okay, I guess I haven’t fleshed out all of the details yet, but I can’t say more, because I have to go patent or copyright or intellectually propertize my great new defense before Gloria Alred steals my idea!

J. Brandeis Sperandeo

P. S. Some of the unusually aggressive changelings mentioned above (I will not name them again for fear of sleeping with the fishes) may also be suffering from severe overdoses of injected testosterone or other performance-enhancing drugs. I have been thinking about another defense called The Anabolic Steroid or The Abs Defense for use in cases involving both male and female athletes, body builders, spouse-abusers, and assorted low-life thugs (which would pretty much cover the rest of the cast of the Jersey Shore, all of the Mob Wives and half of L.A.), but that defense is still in the developmental stages. I’ll keep you defense attorneys posted.

J.B.S.

Illegal Immigrants 1,000,000 - Immigration-Bigots Zero

The newest numbers have been crunched and the new official tally is in. Illegal immigrants put in $1,000,000 more into the 2010 Colorado economy, through income taxes, sales taxes, and rent payments, than they took out in services such as education, emergency medical care, and incarceration costs.

The Denver Post placed the big news in a tiny article on the last page of the business section, just above the come-on to prospective franchisees for Schlotzsky’s fast food restaurant chain. The Bell Policy Center study reached its conclusion after a detailed analysis of the updated state statistics.

Will this new study satisfy the immigration-bigots in Colorado? Absolutely not, because bigots never let a little thing like the facts get in the way of a good festival of scapegoating or hate-mongering.

America has a long and proud tradition of pitting the last wave of immigrants against the present wave. I’ll bet America’s most famous immigration-bigot (and Colorado politician) Tom Tancredo has distant relatives who were lynched on the streets of Denver at the turn of the last century. But Italians are different than Mexicans and Asians and Africans, right, Tom? And then there is always “What part of the word ‘illegal’ don’t they understand?”

Around 1900 (+or -), my grandparents booked steerage-class tickets on big ships from Sicily to New York City. Once safely on Ellis Island, they were checked for diseases by one son of an immigrant, while another son of an immigrant “anglicized” their names (or gave them American-sounding nicknames).Then were automatically and immediately placed upon the path to citizenship. It now takes up to 17 years, tens of thousands of dollars, and an anchor in the U.S., to accomplish what my grandparents did by simply walking offadaboat.

Everybody wants to be the last one in, but making something illegal that was once legal using no better rationale than some xenophobic, jingoistic, nonsensical tripe, just won’t cut it anymore, especially now that illegal aliens represent a $1,000,000 addition to Colorado’s economic stimulus package!

But the immigration-bigot will point out that there are Americans out of work and there are illegal immigrants working; ergo, illegal immigrants must be taking jobs away from American citizens. According to the Bell Policy Center study, undocumented immigrants constitute 4.5% of the Colorado labor force, with 107,500 active employees.

In response to the “illegals are taking our jobs” argument, I say that you immigration-bigots can apply for toilet cleaning positions at any or all of the Denver motels on

East Colfax Avenue

. As a roofer, you may test your fear of heights as well as your tolerance for 120-degree heat and sun exposure. Or you could repeatedly exercise your back muscles, picking peaches in Palisade or cantaloupe in Rocky Ford. I’m sure that at least one of you knows a nice white landscape contractor, who is looking for cheap manual labor.

In addition, the sugar beet crop is way up in Colorado this year! I’ll bet the Western Sugar Cooperative is hiring. Or maybe you could cut up cows or pigs at J.B Swift or Cargill, or process chickens for Northern Colorado Poultry. All of the aforementioned jobs are just some of the many that immigrants do now, but I am sure that you could replace an immigrant worker and embark upon a long, successful career in one of those up-and-coming fields. No? None of the above?

Okay, so maybe it’s not the Mexicans and the Somalis who are taking all the good jobs. Maybe the immigration-bigot needs to look to the east, (way east) for other immigrants to blame for the lack of six-figure-income-producing opportunities.

Some of my east Asian immigrant clients used to refer to what they called the Chinese Mafia. You know, the little happenstance of fortuity that somehow puts would-be emigrants in Asia in touch with smugglers, who just happen to know immigration attorneys in the U.S., who just happen to have relatives who are hiring at restaurants and sweat shops, at or usually below the minimum wage. And in just 20-30 years or so, the smugglers, attorneys, and employers all get paid off, and citizenship for the immigrant  is virtually guaranteed, if they live that long.

The Chinese Mafia is such a great example of American Entrepreneurship. It makes millions for a few and relegates others to a life of indentured servitude. Yet, I don’t think the immigration-bigot is coveting a sweat-shop job any more than they want that toilet-cleaning job on

East Colfax Avenue

. Bad example, maybe.

What about them “IndianPackistaniIranianAsianorotherpeoplewhotalkfunnyorjustdon’tlooklikeus”? You know, those over-achievers who came up from the ghettos of their home countries and worked hard in school and put in long hours away from their families and made their kids do the same and got hired by American companies for pennies on the dollar, that the same companies would otherwise have had to pay an under-educated, lazy, self-obsessed American.

You would think that all those hours which American kids spent in front of the TV, video games, Facebook, and YouTube, would be worth something to corporate employers, but they seem to have other ideas. There has to be some insidious and sinister plot afoot by immigrants that is to blame for the numbing, dumbing and chumming of Americans, and I am sure the immigration-bigot is well aware of such a conspiracy. To find the gory details, I would have to surf “birther” websites and I just can’t bring myself to knowingly sign up for another psychotic break from reality.

So now that illegal immigrants are putting more money into the Colorado economy than they are taking out, what exactly does the immigration-bigot have left to complain about? You won’t hear them say it out loud but, in their own little circles, they are known to harbor the same complaint. “These (place your ethnic slur here) are just too damned different from us regular folks!”

The immigration-bigots are really just the next generation of the racial bigots from our not-so-distant past. Just like their immigrant (or Confederate) forbearers, they equate white with “clean” and brown with “unclean.” They only like names that they can pronounce easily and on the first try. They have no more than a rudimentary understanding of the English language, yet they insist that everybody in America speak American. They expect the most from, but give the least back, to their own country. Their sense of entitlement is only exceeded by their penchant for blaming others for their own abysmal personal failures.

Back in 2006, when the Bell Policy Institute reported that illegal immigrants in Colorado cost the state $31 million more than they put in, the immigration-bigots were quick to point out this study as a justification for scrapping the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and arresting people for being brown. No doubt, this new study by the same Bell Policy Institute will be vigorously challenged. But for now, the score in Colorado is illegal immigrants, 1,000,000; immigration-bigots, zero!

J. Brandeis Sperandeo

My Own Skewed View

It is really still so,

that the ocean’s still blue

and the currents still run

and the mountain streams flow.

I’m but a curmudgeon, who’s spoiling your fun.

We can count on the sun, for all that we know,

for a billion more years, before it is through.

So don’t pay attention, to my own skewed view.

The world’s not in trouble.

The end is not near.

It just needs some tweaking,

to allay our fears.

But don’t look to me

for the wisdom you’re seeking.

You next generation can just start anew,

if you don’t pay attention, to my own skewed view.

The biting and scratching,

Washingtonians acting.

The fear and the smear and the overreacting

are just some of the tricks they are playing on you;

That is, if you listen to my own skewed view.

You can laugh at the hair

and the mind-numbing notions;

The vacancy stares

and the power devotion.

They might shut the down the government, all on a dare!

Talking points,

brothel joints,

pedophile priests anoint

faithless patricians who say that they care,

but they don’t, and you know it.

It’s time that you showed it,

by yanking those charlatans out of their chairs

and sending them packing.

Elect someone new!...

Then you don’t have to listen to my own skewed view.

J. Brandeis Sperandeo

The Bear Essentials

On page two of today’s Denver Post, we can read about hero/politician Rep. J. Paul Brown, R., Ignacio, who is introducing a bill in the House which would expand bear hunting into the springtime. Rep. J. Paul Brown, R., Ignacio is a hero, because he is attempting to personally push through his own law, despite the 70% of Coloradoans, who, in 1992, voted in a state-wide referendum to ban most bear hunting. Rep. J. Paul Brown, R., Ignacio is also a hero because he wants to address “the health and safety issue” created by the “more and more human-bear conflicts.” I did not know about this epidemic and began to feel unsafe, so I decided to look into it.

The Post forgot to tell you that State of Colorado already allows bear hunting from September to November, just not in springtime, when mothers are trying to nurse and protect their cubs. Extending bear hunting into the spring makes Rep. J. Paul Brown, R., Ignacio especially heroic, because you know how protective mothers can be if you threaten their young! There must be a recent rash of dangerous momma-bear-driven attacks against which we must desperately need protecting.

The Post did report that, in general, the Colorado State Division of Wildlife has shot 1,000 of the pesky bruins last year, as opposed to the mere 700 they killed back in 1992, when 70% of the electorate opposed the ban on expanded bear hunting. The bear population was around 8,000 in 1992, and it has ballooned to around 12,000 to date.

Those bears-in-spring must be just out of control, I was thinking, and therefore in need of “management,” which is the politically correct way of saying that so-called “sportsmen” get to hunt them down and shoot them to death. It is still not clear whether it will still be illegal for momma or cubs to be shot, but it will be the protective momma-bears that will most easily draw the fire of the frightened hunter with an expensive license in his pocket. I guess I am supposed to think, if a few cubs starve to death, because some camo-clad dumbasses accidentally shot their moms, it is a small price to pay to ensure my safety down here in Denver. I had no idea we had a bear problem in the flatlands! And isn't the aim of hero/politician Rep. j. Paul Brown R., Ignacio, to kill more bears? Springtime "management" allows hero-"sportemen" to wipe out whole families to stem the flow of bear-on-human carnage, right? What a great plan.

Just think about it. Bears are just coming out of their dens in springtime. Male bears are hungry and so will travel bigger distances to look for food. Momma-bears will be starving, from the long winter and from nursing their cubs. They will be sticking close to their young, that will be playing and whatnot and so the families will be more visible for hero-"sportsman-managers" to murder. What better time to wipe out bears when they are in their most vulnerable state?

The Post also reported that the human population in Colorado had increased from a mere 3.5 million to a staggering 5 million from 1992 to present. With 1.5 million more people in Colorado, I would have expected many more than 300 additional bears to have been euthanized. And then I got to thinking about that number 300. Hero/politician, Rep. J. Paul Brown, R. Ignacio wants to kill more bears in the springtime because more bears are being killed anyway?

Are more being killed in the springtime? Should they be? Are there more bear attacks on humans in the springtime? How many bears were killed as a result of violent encounters, and how many because they presented a continuing nuisance? And what are the locations of the increasing human populations that are actually encountering bears in springtime, or bears at any time of year? The Post forgot to ask these bear essential questions. I had to look elsewhere for answers.

So I called the Colorado Division of Wildlife. They were happy to provide the information I was lacking. I spoke with Jennifer Churchill, the Public Information Officer for the Northeast Region of the Colorado Division of Wildlife. Jennifer was quick to point out two things that I promised to pass along to you. First, the data that she provided me on bear attacks on humans since 1960 was regarding only the reported cases. Jennifer also wanted me (and you) to know that the Colorado Division of Wildlife takes no official position on the proposed legislation of hero/politician J. Paul Brown, R. Ignacio. Jennifer just gave me the data, as reported by the citizens of Colorado.

Since 1960, there were 47 reported human/bear encounters. Out of those 47, there were three reported human fatalities. In 1971, an old diseased bear with rotten teeth and a plastic bucket lodged in its stomach, attacked and killed an outdoor camper in the mountains of Grand County. In August of 1993, a camper in the mountains of Freemont County near Buena Vista decided to scare off a bear by…uh… shooting it. The bear had only been searching for food but got upset at being shot and you can guess the rest. In August of 2009, a 74-year- old woman decided to both feed the bears from the porch of her mountain home in La Plata County and to simultaneously try to help out a smaller bear, who was injured from a fight against a much larger bear. At least one of the bears took exception to her interspecial, officious intermeddling.

None of the three fatal attacks, out of the 47 encounters since 1960, happened in hero/politician, Rep. J. Paul Brown R. Ignacio’s home town of Ignacio. None of the three happened in springtime and none involved a momma-bear or her cubs.

Of those 47 encounters since 1960, exactly two (2) had been reported from somewhere around hero/politician, Rep J. Paul Brown’s district. In July of 2010, in a mountain area of La Plata County, a man was bitten slightly (skin not broken) by a bear who was attracted to all the food and trash lying around on that transient campground site. In July of 2010, in Montezuma County, in a residential neighborhood of Cortez, a boy was bitten (skin broken) and his sister at least bruised by the same bear. The bear was scared off, never to be heard from again.

The fact that this second incident happened in a residential neighborhood did cause me some concern until I realized that the Town of Cortez is literally surrounded by the San Juan National Forest, Mesa Verde National Park, and nothing but wilderness for 382 miles east, all the way to the Utah border. And neither encounter happened in springtime or otherwise involved a momma-bear or her cubs.

The rest of the bear encounters reported to the Colorado Division or Wildlife since 1960, read like a Who’s Who of Stupid Humans and Their Stupid Human Tricks. The scares, brushes, home invasions, and some injuries virtually all accompanied open trash containers, human efforts to feed the bears, open doors, dog food left outside, human food kept in ground-level in tents, open food bins, and other assorted inane antics of  idiot-humans, who wanted to get back to nature by camping out or building their second or third homes in bear country.

With the exception of the one encounter in the Town of Cortez, in 2010, every single incident was smack dab on land where the bears lived there first and this fact was well-known beforehand by the subsequently encountered humans. The bears were grandfathered in and these people simply had to have known (or at least their realtors knew) that bears ran with the land.

Does hero/politician Rep. J. Paul Brown, R., Ignacio really want a law which will cause the death of momma-bears and their cubs in the springtime, because one family in his district encountered a bear in an area surrounded by hundreds of miles of wilderness? Or does he have a bundle tied up in real estate? The Post never got to this question because they phoned-in only half of the story. Inquiring minds want to know.

By the way, out of the 47 reported human/bear encounters in the whole State of Colorado since 1960, only four (4) encounters were arguably related to momma-bears protecting their cubs against stupid humans. That’s four out of 47, in over 50 years and again, none of those four encounters resulted in human fatalities. Those 47 reported encounters did result in at least 27 bear fatalities. That leaves another question open: if 27 bears were killed because of encounters, why were all of the other bears killed?

Hero, politician Rep. J. Paul Brown, R., Ignacio is right about one thing. Reported encounters are on the increase, and, as they have in the past, are coming almost exclusively from the new mountain developments just west of the of the burbs, all along the Rocky Mountain divide. As more and more vacation/mountain homes are built in bear territory, I believe that you can expect the numbers of reported human/bear encounters to increase as well.

I am encouraged that some people are becoming educated in bear-encounter etiquette and, as a result, relatively fewer are experiencing much more than an involuntary evacuation of bodily fluids. But the last ten years of encounters still show that humans have much more to learn about bears than bears do about humans. Instead of “managing” momma-bears and their cubs in retaliation for being bears in bear country, perhaps prosecuting stupid humans who do stupid things in bear country would be a better idea.

J. Brandeis Sperandeo
 

This post is dedicated to my momma-bear. She would have been 84-years-old today.

The Colorado Division of Wildlife has a whole site devoted to teach humans how to more successfully coexist with bears. Notice, there is no section that talks about expanding the bear-hunting season. The DOW has official position on this issue: 

Living with Bears

       Living with Bears

       Bear-proofing Your Home

       Deterrents Can Teach Bears to Stay Away flyer. Tips on how to deter bears from thinking that your home is an attractive place to visit and an easy source of food.

       Make your own bear "unwelcome" mat; discourage bears from entering your home.

       Keep Bears Wild Pledge and Home Checklist (You will need to copy—or print two copies—so you will have one to mail in after you have reviewed and completed the form. The directions on the form refer to a carbonless version used in the field.)

       Attracting Birds, Not Bears

       Bearproofing Your Trash

       Updated for 2010! Bear-resistant Trash Containers (Commercially available trash containers.)

       New! Building a Secure Beehive Enclosure brochure.

Outdoors in Bear Country

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       Camping & Hiking in Bear Country (Web page) and

       Backcountry Camping in Black Bear Country (information sheet; PDF)

       Bear Encounters

For Kids

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       Black Bear Profile

       Black Bear Challenge (An interactive game.)

       Bears (The "Bears" issue of Colorado's Wildlife Company.)

       Be Bear Aware in Colorado Bear Country—an activity booklet 

       Images of Bears (To search the database, type "bear" in the 'description' field.) 

       Black bear activities for kid's in the primary through middle school grades.

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Lies, Damned Lies & Opinions

Whenever I read someone’s opinion, I first look to see who is paying them to opine. Rarely do I read the opinion of some idiot like me who does it for grins. Usually somebody with money is footing the bill, whether the opinion comes from the left or the right.

We all know the adage: “There are lies, damned lies, and then there are statistics.” Most of us believe that Samuel Clemens coined that phrase, but as it turns out an Englishman by the name of Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke came up with it first. Since there is even some disagreement about who wrote it the adage, you can guess where the rest of this is going.

Anybody can say just about anything, for any reason and claim to have God herself to back up the claim, and it is then up to the rest of us to figure out that it ain’t necessarily so. Now that we have the internet, we can surf scores of diametrically opposed views on every subject from the wisdom of childhood vaccinations, or not, to why birds are descended from pterodactyls, or not.

And so, it becomes deceptively easy to espouse or to support an opinion, based on some crap that made it onto The Google. My ramblings are a case in point. I get a lot of my data from the internet and, truth be told, I filter out the whackadoo stuff I don’t want to read.

Thus, I do not spend a great deal of time surfing sites that claim President Obama was secretly born on Neptune, or watching You Tube videos of the latest extraterrestrial (again, Obama!) visitor. I do dwell on cute-doggie videos, because I am currently dog-less and I never pass up a chance to remind my lovely wife of that fact. When I seek a factual basis for my opinion, I lean liberal, but mainstream. And sometimes I learn that my heartfelt opinion in grounded more in visceral reaction than in actual empirical fact. And that sucks for me, because I hate to be wrong, even in my viscerals.

I look to back upon my life-experience for perspective, and then do research enough to see if I am on target, sort of kind of correct, or full of hot air. I consider my life experience invaluable, because I did spend a few of those 19 years in school actually paying attention and maintained the necessary “jack-of-all-trades” degree, to defend over 5,000 indigent folks who were accused of every crime you can imagine under the sun.

And so I actually know something about illegal immigrants, because I defended hundreds and hundreds of them. I owe my partial fluency in Spanglish to these folks. From my undocumented clients I also gained a better understanding of their value as individual human beings and individual reasons why they left their families and traveled and worked and hid and screwed up in a hostile foreign land. And so, when I spout off about the abysmal way Americans are treating the latest wave of immigrants, it is not just from a position as an Italian-American who was mistreated as a child, but as someone who has also walked a more recent mile or two with my brown brothers from the South.

I don’t have a lot of respect for those who proudly display disparaging opinions of “those people,” when their only experiences with “those people” comes from hotels, restaurants, and “those people” putting a new roof on their house. I call these opinions “armchair opinions,” because they are usually based almost entirely upon prior ingrained bigotry, and supported only by the occasional anecdote which involves no more than fleeting cursory contact with the subjects in question. Actual facts are quite often optional for these opiners.

I am not saying that you have to be an expert on a subject, in order to have an opinion. Heck, The Google would be out of business, if we required that. I am allegedly an expert in one specific sub-field of Colorado law and I can say with full authority, that I have probably forgotten more of that law than I have retained.

It is that knowledge that keeps me humble and reticent to offer my individual opinion on any subject, unless I have lived it, researched it, or both. And, in light of “lies, damned lies, etc.,” I could still be wrong. I don’t write a disclaimer before any of my posts, but perhaps I should. And, even when I am double-damn sure that I am correct on an issue, I have to concede that I may hurt someone’s feelings with my clumsy, inartful prose.

But, what about when we trust someone who holds himself out as “expert” and therefore “in the know” on a subject, but then we find out later that he just made up facts not in evidence because it made a better case for his side? If one of us legal types does that, we could lose our license to practice law. It is not just unfair to the other party. It goes against everything lawyers are supposed to stand for.

People trust (and judges demand) us to advocate for a position on one side or another, but within a firm framework of the truth. Them’s the rules. Lying demeans our relationship with our clients, with the Court, and our profession. A lawyer who lies can create actual real-life dire consequences, like when a prosecutor lies in a capital murder case and some poor slob gets the three-shot-cocktail when he didn’t do it. The lying lawyer deserves to be disbarred and I am fine with that.  

United States Senator Jon Kyl, GOP, Arizona, has been a lawyer since 1966. Phi Beta Kappa. He currently chairs the United States Senate Subcommittee on Healthcare. He doesn’t like abortion. And Planned Parenthood does perform a small number of abortions. Jon Kyl knows this. They are not allowed to use federal dollars to perform abortions, and Jon Kyl knows this too. But they do receive federal dollars, so that they can provide low/no cost breast cancer and cervical cancer screenings, and contraception and a host of other health services for millions of women, who otherwise would have to go without. And Jon Kyl knows this as well. But Jon Kyl believes that the money the government gives to Planned Parenthood for non-abortion-related health services allows them to subsidize abortions, even though this is against the law, and Jon Kyl knows that too.

Jon Kyl knows all of the above, because we pay the Senator to know it and because he is not stupid, and because he chairs the committee that deals with it and because we trust him to know all that stuff.. But a few days ago, he stood on the floor of the United States Senate and told the American people that everybody knows that “well over 90% of what Planned Parenthood does is perform abortions.” His ostensible reason for saying this was to support his case for de-funding Planned Parenthood. But there had to have been other reasons.

Jon Kyl is a good public speaker and lots of like-minded folks were really impressed at his speech. A few were not so impressed because they believed that Jon Kyl was lying. The damage had been done in front of millions of Americans who looked to Jon Kyl for the truth and he just lied…because it sounded better. Millions of unsuspecting people didn’t know he was lying because it just sounded better than the truth and went to bed that night thinking that over 90% of what their local Planned Parenthood did was perform abortions. It was not until somebody did a quick check of the actual facts that we learned only 3% of what Planned Parenthood does is abortion-related. Not over 90%...3%.

Considering all of the psychotic nut-jobs out there, and especially the psychotic nut-jobs in Jon Kyl’s home state of Arizona, you would think that Senator Kyl might not want to deliberately incite one of those nut-jobs to shoot another abortion doctor or maybe a nurse, or file clerk, or janitor, or property manager, or gardener, all the while thinking that there was over a 90% chance of taking out someone who helped with an abortion.

When the media tried to contact Senator Kyl to find out why he lied in front of millions of Americans, his office replied that “it was not intended to be a factual statement.” Oh, I get it. It was only an opinion! And the Phi Beta Kappa, attorney, senator, Chair of the United States Senate Subcommittee on Healthcare, didn’t even have the balls to respond in person. Jon Kyl is not only a mendacious piece of trash--he is a man who wants blood on his hands. Nobody with his pedigree would act with such reckless disregard for the truth just to suck up to some Tea-politicians. He knew that he was lying, and he had to have known the effect it would have on the radical fringe of his cheering section.

In America, no one has the right to make any statement, even in the form of an opinion, which is designed to cause imminent physical harm to another. Yelling “fire!” in a crowded theater is just one example of prohibited speech that we learned about in law school. I am happy with that proscription. No one has the right to use speech to incite others toward violence against an individual or particular group of people. This is called “hate” speech. Jon Kyl not only lied, he used “hate” speech, which was specifically designed to give a green light to the radical anti-abortionists. For this, Jon Kyl should be disbarred; for this, Jon Kyl should be impeached by the House and tried by the Senate. And when one of those nut-jobs uses that lie told by Jon Kyl as a justification for murder, Jon Kyl ought to be prosecuted as a complicitor. That is my opinion.

J. Brandeis Sperandeo