putting the pensacola bay area into perspective

Americans United just don't "get it" - still

2006-06-02T09:41:00.000-05:00

Posted in response to the comments made on the article “Thou shalt drop it already” in the Washington Post on June 1, 2006:

J. Crozier on Jesus and Church/State separation: Jesus' comments were not to separate religion (church is a misapplied word) and the state.

Judaism throughout Early and Middle Judaism (Third to Fourth Century CE - depending on whom you ask, and then back in time) is a theocratic system. The king is to operate under Scriptural guidelines. The Tanakh is replete with injunctions against the king disregarding the Torah.

A Herodian (akin to today's Americans United for Separation of Church and State-types; see Mark 12:13 for the specific reference to the individual's sect) asked Jesus a question to undermine His Pharisaic doctrine (Jesus was a puritan, not a revolutionary). Jesus answered that you give back to the Roman occupiers their own coins. The answer reinforced the theocratic model by confirming the Halacha to remain separate from the ungodly by expelling their money from your possessions, while remaining true to God by continuing to make Temple sacrifices.

The people who heard the answer at the time got it; today's Americans United-types don't.
Moving on to the conversation about America and Christianity, anyone who continues to believe America up to the 19-teens and twenties is anything but a Christian-oriented nation is living in self-imposed ignorance.

It is impossible to read the writings and speeches of America's civic and business leaders and not read relentless citations of the intervention of Jesus, God's Word, Scripture, and Christianity in America's history and fate.

Perhaps most recognizable in history was the duel between positions taken to either defend or attack slavery by using the Christian Bible as the moral justification for the position taken.
In a less volatile, secularized instance (such as it is for the time-period involved), you could also include the messages sent between the mayors of New York and San Francisco with the nation's first transcontinental telegraph transmission as an example of the openness displayed by elected officials to citing Christianity as the spiritual force behind America's progress. I suggest referring to the Washington Post or the New York Times published the next day for the text.

When you read their transmissions, those things if said today would send the Americans United-types into cardiac arrest. It's unbelievable to them their rendition of American history is so far from the truth.

I could make a near endless list, so don't take the mere citation of only one or two here as the complete list available - that would merely put you into the self-imposed ignorance group.
The above referenced Americans United-types come up with a sentence or two from Jefferson, toss in the word Deist, and try to create a history of America as some secular state threatened with hijack by Christianity.

That is pure foolishness, and an insult to the intelligence of anyone who reads the actual speeches and letters written at the time. Anything said about God, even through the administration of FDR, when said today, evokes the mindless hysteria we continuously see from those types.

Their hysteria comes from their own disconnected fantasies about America's past, combined with senseless Biblical interpretations and their deluded interpretation of America's present religious convictions.

Kenneth E. Lamb

Blog index: http://www.blogger.com/profile/14444338

Web: http://www.kennethelamb.com

Refuting Stephanie Dickens

2006-05-07T17:15:00.000-05:00

The following was sent to the Pensacola News Journal:

Dear Editor:

In a Viewpoint entitled "Escorts not the only action here - April 1," I referred to my chairmanship of the Pensacola City Council's Citizens Committee on Adult Entertainment Issues in retelling my encounter with a city councilman enraged that I wanted the city to look into the proliferation of escort services.

In a Letter to the Editor entitled "Didn't come back - April 16", Stephanie Dickens wrote, "I served on that adult entertainment committee . . . At our first meeting, we decided against a chairperson."

She continued, "Mr. Lamb came to the first meeting apparently expecting to be appointed chairperson and present his own agenda on the subject of pornography. When this did not occur, he quit the committee and never returned."

Ms. Dickens closed by asking anyone who wants to know the truth, "Our committee meetings and attendance are a matter of public record."

Taking Ms. Dickens up on her suggestion to discover which of us is telling the truth, we find in the committee's minutes dated October 22, 1998: "Committee discussed appointing chairperson - Denise Daughtry moved to nominate Kenneth Lamb; Zebedee Nicholson second; vote taken and approved 4-2 with Mary Jean Miller and Stephanie Dickens opposed."

Further in that meeting's minutes, I am referred to as, "Chairperson Kenneth Lamb."

Concerning her assertion I didn't attend further meetings, in the minutes dated November 12, 1998, following a presentation from local law enforcement officers, "Chairman Kenneth Lamb thanked Captain Johnston and Lt. Enquist for appearing before the Committee. Mr. Lamb passed out material he had obtained on the Internet advertising an escort service."

Ms. Dickens attended both meetings and therefore knew that the truth is that I was elected chairman of the committee - because she lost the vote for chairman, and that I attended subsequent meetings. The minutes don't lie.

Ms. Dickens attacked my professional reputation for writing truthfully; as a bylined writer for the Pensacola News Journal and the Pensacola Business Journal, readers must be able to trust without question that anything written under my byline is the truth. Establishing that what I write can be trusted to be the truth is now "a matter of public record."

WEBY AM-1330 becoming area's "Link to Life"

2006-04-20T06:26:00.000-05:00

For Escambia residents west of Ninth Avenue in Pensacola, and north of Nine Mile Road, it's here, it's gone, and then it’s back again. What’s going on with the signal for WEBY 1330 AM, “Northwest Florida’s Talk Radio,” this week, and into the next two?

"We are field testing for our new 25,000-watt transmitter," explained station owner Mike Bates. "We will pump up the power to its full strength while we take FCC-required readings. We project final approval sometime in May. Then we will be at 25,000 watts everyday.

"But for now, we will switch between our old 5,000-watt transmitter and our new 25,000-watt transmitter for tests through the rest of April. Sometimes listeners will get the 25,000-watt signal, and sometimes not, depending on whether or not it is being tested that day, which will be most days in the week."

Once the station gets the OK from the FCC to stay at 25,000 watts, WEBY will be the most powerful AM radio station on the Gulf coast between New Orleans and Tampa. Bates reports he is already getting calls from listeners burrowed inside downtown Pensacola's steel-framed buildings, and north into Century and Brewton, Alabama. In fact, one caller told him WEBY and WRNE 980-AM are the only AM signals he can get on Perdido Key.

The total coverage area will blanket all of the Pensacola Bay Area, fully covering Santa Rosa and Escambia counties into the southern half of Alabama’s Escambia and Baldwin counties, and the western portion of Mobile County including the city of Mobile and Dauphin Island.

This coverage will make WEBY particularly valuable when tropical storms hit the area. Bates is ensuring Santa Rosa residents in particular receive EOC information. He has arranged the station’s own network of hurricane experts to explain what is going on in the Gulf.

“Radio stations forget Santa Rosa County,” Bates said. “This year, WEBY will be primarily focused on the county, with the strength to also cover residents in the rest of the Pensacola Bay Area. Our mission is to be the community’s ‘Link to Life’ with its hurricane coverage.”

Bates is asking for help from area residents in getting the station’s signal coverage tweaked.

“Listeners can help us with our hurricane coverage by calling the station whenever they pick up our 25,000-watt signal during this test period,” Bates said. “Give us your location. This will validate in real-world conditions our theoretical projections.”

The station’s phone number is 850-623-1330.
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Mr. Lamb will serve this hurricane season as one of WEBY’s hurricane experts. Be sure to set your dial to WEBY 1330 AM, “Northwest Florida’s Talk Radio,” – watch for word when the station goes to 25,000-watts and covers the entire area.

You can try to get the station now if the testing is active at the time you try to tune in WEBY. But if you don’t get it now, it will be available sometime in May. Call WEBY for details on testing and for information about when they will go to 25,000 watts of pure power.

Stay abreast this hurricane season by clicking on the following hyperlink and then bookmarking Mr. Lamb’s “Hurricanes and the North Gulf Coastline” blog – or copy and paste this URL into your browser’s address box: http://hurricanesandthenorthgulfcoastline.blogspot.com/

Click on the hyperlink to reach Mr. Lamb’s index of all of his several blogs – or copy and paste this URL into your browser’s address box: http://www.blogger.com/profile/14444338

They want to be Americans - They are just like us

2006-04-12T08:49:00.000-05:00

The biggest political rally in recent memory: More than 1,000 people showed up at the Martin Luther King Jr. Plaza Monday on the immigration issue. Just as the Civil Rights Movement caught up Pensacola then, this one catches Pensacola now.

Already people speak about what “they” want from “us.”

After Ivan, people hailed the presumed Mexicans a Godsend. Not that they were all actually Mexican nationals; if their skin was brown they got the label. Born off the beaches of Santa Rosa County, USA, or Santa Rosa, Peru, no one I know asked to see a Green Card from the people putting our lives back together.

But before long, anti-brown fever began to spread.

You know its symptoms: They walked late night in “gangs” at food stores, startling us. They spoke a language foreign to us; were they talking about us, laughing at us, plotting against us?

They were hard-working dirty, paid with big rolls of cash, and seemed too loud, or too quiet, for us.

We liked the idea they worked for cheap. We didn’t think the contractors were cheap; we thought they were legalized extortionists. But, we said to ourselves, just think what the price would be if they didn’t hire that cheap Mexican labor.

The brown-skinned profile shrank when many headed west, itinerant manual labor in Katrina’s ravaging wake.

But many stayed. Many, many more than many non-Hispanics ever imagined.

When 1,000 gathered in the plaza, it shocked many non-Hispanics. “They” were still here. And they wanted to stay here.

On the intellectualized level of theory and photographic images recalled from youth, immigration doesn’t bother white non-Hispanics. The word conjures up old daguerreotypes of huddled masses -- Italian, Russian, Irish, German, and Slavic, mixed among the other European bloodlines flooding Ellis Island.

But Monday’s rally replaced theory and nostalgia with visible reality. It brought home that these immigrants don’t look like us. They don’t speak like us.

Their real crime is that they don’t fit into the mental pictures of immigrants at Ellis Island whose progeny is us.

The Founding Fathers instructed us about becoming an American. The 1790 Naturalization Act made it crystal clear.

If you were free, white, and male, lived on this side of the border for two years – no matter how you got here, with one year lived in any particular state, territory, or district, didn’t break any laws, and told a court of record you swear allegiance to the US Constitution, you are a bona fide US citizen.

No muss, no fuss, no multi-billion dollar bureaucracies.

The dirty little secret of immigration legislation your congressman won’t confess is the law only changes when they – the immigrants who don’t look like the current us group in power, becomes too visible.

History tells the truth, even if the members of Congress don’t.

The 1798 Naturalization Act increased residency to 14 years. Why? Because the Federalists wanted to keep French and Irish immigrants from becoming citizens. They voted Democratic-Republican. America’s second revolution, the election of 1800, swept it away when Congress repealed it in 1802.

The law didn’t change significantly until 1882. Congress declared they, Chinese in America, were taking the West away from us. The Chinese Exclusion Act’s motivation is self-evident.

Congress passed The Immigration Act of 1917 to protect us from Asiatic and British Indian geographic zones -- unless the immigrant was white. They could come in; they were like us.

Eugenicist Madison Grant’s 1916 book, The Passing of the Great Race promoting northern European superiority maintained through racial hygiene, focused the next two changes.

By 1921, Grant inspired Congress to believe they who threatened us were southern and eastern Europeans. The Emergency Quota Act cut their allowable numbers by 75 percent. The 1924 Immigration Quota Act squeezed them further. If that’s your heritage, be glad your grandfolks got in, before Congress kept them out.

Since World War II, Congress has passed more immigration acts than it did in the entire prior history of America. Each new bill worsens the situation’s downward death spiral.

Dan McFaul, US Rep. Jeff Miller’s brilliant public front man, brought home the issue’s tortured convulsions of corkscrew thinking. We knew they wouldn’t take the Republic away from us because his boss, courageously, “supports legal immigration.”

So who doesn’t? It was a no-brainer embarrassment of a brain-dead position.

He could respect our intelligence enough to say that just like every other immigration fight from the moment our nation was born, this one is about the fear that they will take away our lifestyle and power from us.

There are two lessons here. First, this is the Founding Fathers’ American Dream: After two years, if you abide by our laws and then swear to support our Constitution on the record in open court, you are a bona fide American. They never passed any law making the act of being here, by itself, a crime.

The second is shorter, but incredibly more powerful: The Hispanics in the Plaza are exactly what our Founding Fathers wanted. They want to be Americans.

They are just like us.
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Kenneth E. Lamb hosts the news-interview program “Sunday Morning” broadcast on NewsTalk 1370 WCOA, produced in cooperation with the Pensacola News Journal.

Find the entire index of various blogs at his Blogger Profile (http://www.blogger.com/profile/14444338) or visit his personal site, KennethELamb.com for great portal links and his full bio.

“We are The Borg - resistance is futile."

2006-04-06T09:30:00.000-05:00

Recent headlines, particularly this one from the Washington Post’s washingtonpost.com column Fast Forward entitled “Have Your Mac and Windows XP, Too” about the Mac adopting a program routine that allows users to run their computer on the same Windows XP the rest of the world uses, prompted this exchange with a number of prominent computer journalists:

“We are The Borg - resistance is futile."

So it is that the Mac becomes just another WinTel machine.

All the fuss about the Mac has been for years just giddy chattering by elitist writers. They think that knowing what so few know - or more accurately what so many have no care whatsoever to know - about the Mac makes them "special" in the true Gnostic sense.

Rubbish.

The truth is that the Mac survives on cachet. It is style over substance, supported by fanatical users who deny anything negative about owning a machine rejected by 97 percent of the marketplace.

To them, that 97 percent rejection merely reinforces their self-anointed place as the "true holders of special knowledge" that the rest of the unwashed mass fails to grasp with their innate intelligence - being so much lower than that of the Mac fanatics' . . . so the Mac fanatics tell themselves anyway.

But reality being what it is, the collapse of the Mac myth is accelerating with irrepressible speed. First, it was the Intel chip, now the switch to Windows.

The dirty little secret is that the Mac has always been on a path separate from the rest of the computer universe; it is a path replete with quirky ideas promoted by quirky people desperate to reinforce their quirky image as quirky computer geeks. Mac fanatics lust to be known as isolated pseudo-intellectuals expressed through their quirky concept of contrarian rebellion.

It is proven true again as Mac adopts Intel at the same time the universe is now adopting the AMD chip as its processor of choice. Its uselessness would have made the Mac just another Commodore 64 but for the by-lined writers in major publications who exercise the power to promote their quirky personal tastes to an audience of readers miniscule enough to spike any other story.

They write, but nobody reads. It is self-delusion feeding the egos of journalists otherwise sensible about honestly assessing the import of a story by the depth of its readership reach. It has no reach because the Mac has so few users; ergo it is ego, not essentialism, which drives the waste of ink and paper.

Mac fanatics will still argue they are a different species because it is essential to their self-concept of being themselves a separate species than the rest of humanity, but reality trumps their delusion: The Mac is just another WinTel machine. And as such, there is no reason to own a Mac other than to delude oneself into thinking he or she is part of something intrinsically different, intrinsically superior to everyone else.

No, there is no reason to own a Mac. Nothing exists but self-delusion.

They assimilated into The Borg - resistance proved futile.

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This appears in Mr. Lamb’s blog, Staying CyberSmart! (TM) with "The CyberMeister" (R) at http://cybersmart.blogspot.com/

See all of Mr. Lamb’s blogs at http://www.blogger.com/profile/14444338

Escort services’ economic muscle trumped by one cop’s integrity

2006-03-29T03:43:00.000-06:00

I was wondering if they were ever going to bust the local escort services. On Tuesday, Sheriff Ron McNesby answered the question.

Yes.

I first saw what a growth industry escort services were when I was the chairman of the Pensacola City Council’s Citizen’s Committee on Adult Entertainment Issues.

During one report to the council committee overseeing the topic, I brought up the idea of adding escort services to the adult issues agenda. They were already proliferating wildly.

But what I thought would be a “mom and apple pie” cultural issue for a Bible Belt community, turned ugly. I’ll never forget the rage in one city council member’s eyes when I brought it up and he shouted it down. Obviously, I hit a nerve.

I’m sure he won’t remember it that way – but it was so startling I’ll never forget it.

It was a message no one could possibly miss: don’t mess with the area’s escort services.

Over the years, other things I saw reinforced the idea that this area is a thriving nexus for the national and international sex trade.

I’m in the computer repair business, and plenty of wives and girlfriends catch their husbands and boyfriends web surfing where faithful lovers don’t belong. They’ll drag the rascals into the store and let them try to explain away those endless sexual pop-ups on the computer screen.

Through these experiences in domestic conflict, I’ve learned that one of the world’s largest hard-core porn sites shoots its movies in this area. The site takes in over $6-million a month – more than $72-million a year - from subscribers, and has 250 top-of-the-line servers in Denmark.

When it makes a movie, it pays out $5,000 for the female “star” of a half-hour film; the men get $100. The site’s owners produce about 20 movies a year.

And they’re only one of several operating locally.

As for the local escort services, the going rate for customers is $150 per hour. Of course, I’m sure the customers only book the escorts so they can have a stimulating discussion about 18th century English authors.

These services cater to doctors, lawyers, students, vacationers, “Working Joes,” convention attendees, top Republican and Democratic politicians and their operatives at every level of government, business owners, civic leaders, lonely old men and inexperienced young men . . . you get the idea – people from every walk of life living as pillars of the community in public.

Many of these customers love to bash the sex trade for contributing to the decadence of our culture – but in private, they become the very people they bash. Think of them as you would Rush Limbaugh buying narcotics from his housekeeper in a dark parking lot while bellowing on his radio show about the need to lock up people who buy narcotics in dark parking lots.

One local escort service even lists in its files a mass media preacher who pays in quarters.

Pensacola’s headlines about a university football coach and an “exotic dancer” from Arety’s Angels nightclub is just one of thousands of sex worker encounters that happen regularly in the Pensacola Bay Area. He just happened to get caught.

But actually, everyone who walks into Arety’s Angels gets caught – on her security cameras. I’m waiting for the up and coming young Pensacola professional in his 30-somethings running for public office on a “family values” platform try to explain what he was doing stuffing dollar bills into the thong of a topless dancer at Arety’s Angels back in his 20-somethings.

Busted – who knows who else is on those locked-up tapes from Arety’s candid cameras?

Given the size and massive dollars the sex trade generates here – and there is no doubt in my mind there are some very big local fish swimming in those waters – I thought no one in law enforcement would have the integrity to bust the game wide open.

It felt good to read about Sheriff Ron McNesby proving me wrong.
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Jeff Miller: Prisoner of His Own Success

2006-03-23T09:17:00.000-06:00

I’ve posted an item on the Pensacola News Journal’s Community Forum entitled, “Jeff Miller: Prisoner of His Own Success.” It posts a letter I wrote to him two years ago predicting exactly what we see in Iraq today.

I will post several other letters to Jeff written from about the time of the invasion forward, all dealing with predictions that came true.

In order to save space, I will post the hyperlink to the forum in my blogs. I hope you will read them, and comment here and on the forum. You can always replicate the post on either and put it on the other.

Here goes: I wrote this letter on May 4, 2005. If only Jeff weren’t a prisoner of his own success.

“Jeff Miller: Prisoner of His Own Success”

Remember, to see a list of all seven of my blogs, go to:

Kenneth E. Lamb’s Blogger Profile

Click here to visit my personal web site.

2006 shaping up to be a very bad hurricane season

2006-03-17T04:11:00.000-06:00

This is your jump on official hurricane forecasters: 2006 has all the makings of a very bad hurricane season.

The reason? Warmer ocean surface temperatures that fuel the giant swirls of destruction. And this year, we are seeing a very unusual lack of cold fronts carrying down into the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea to take a portion of that temperature off the water.

And for the record, this effect didn’t just start in the last year or two.

A new study published in the journal Science documents this progressive warming of the ocean’s surface. A synopsis of the study appears on the web site LiveScience.com.

In an article by Ker Than, a LiveScience staff writer, “A rise in the world's sea surface temperatures was the primary contributor to the formation of stronger hurricanes since 1970, a new study reports . . .

“In the 1970s, the average number of intense Category 4 and 5 hurricanes occurring globally was about 10 per year. Since 1990, that number has nearly doubled, averaging about 18 a year . . .

“Category 4 hurricanes have sustained winds from 131 to 155 mph. Category 5 systems, such as Hurricane Katrina at its peak, feature winds of 156 mph or more. Wilma last year set a record as the most intense hurricane on record with winds of 175 mph.

“While some scientists believe this trend is just part of natural ocean and atmospheric cycles, others argue that rising sea surface temperatures as a side effect of global warming is the primary culprit.”

How does this play out for us in 2006?

Robert Roy Britt, managing editor of LiveScience, reviewed this year’s predictions by Dr. Bill Gray, long known as a guru of hurricane forecasting.

Britt wrote that the prediction calls for:

17 named tropical storms; an average season has 9.6.
9 hurricanes compared to the average of 5.9.
5 major hurricanes with winds exceeding 110 mph; average is 2.3.

He continued that, “The current series of busy seasons is part of a long-term cycle that climatologists had predicted years ago. The Atlantic is in its 11th year of heightened activity. It is expected to ‘continue for the next decade or perhaps longer,’ said officials with the National Weather Service last week.”

According to LiveScience, “In 2005, nature dished out more storms than anyone expected, and new records were set for the most storms, the most intense one ever, and the most destructive.”

Last year, we saw 3 of the top 6 most intense hurricanes occur. Wilma was so powerful, it nearly broke through the mathematical ceiling for a Category 5 hurricane, raising questions in scientists’ minds about the need or a new Category 6 level.

In the past, the theoretical wind speed limit to an Atlantic Ocean hurricane was 175 mph. But this year, with the new numbers coming in from the ocean surface temperature studies, 190 mph is the new theoretical limit.

Does it really matter? Is there a point at which the destruction is the same at either wind speed?

In an interview published in National Weather Log, put out by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, one of the two men credited with creating the Saffir-Simpson Scale of measuring hurricanes, former National Hurricane Center director Robert Simpson, gave it this perspective: "If that extreme wind sustains itself for as much as six seconds on a building it's going to cause rupturing damages that are serious no matter how well it's engineered. So I think that it's immaterial what will happen with winds stronger than 156 miles per hour."

Let’s hope that nobody along America’s coastlines has to find out if that is true in 2006.
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Glat Kosher - why Hecht's Bookstore is always your first call!

2006-03-16T10:42:00.000-06:00

I don’t usually plug a business, but this time I’m going to make an exception. I’m going to order two mezuzahs for my home and office, two hamsas for the same, and some other items along those lines.

Stay with me for a minute, and you’ll see where this is heading. Whether you are Jewish or Gentile you need this information. I’m going to tell you where I go to get those types of things, and why you should make this business your first call whenever you are shopping for such items.

I’m an Apostolic Pentecostal. I’m not going to go into a theological discussion or explanation about it at this point; I offer that up to say that as a Gentile and student of Classical Judaism, I’m always looking for authentic Jewish resources.

Back beginning in 1993, when I started working for the Jewish Information Network, based in NYC, Cantor Beck, president of the JIN, introduced me to Rabbi Shalom Hecht, owner of Hecht’s Bookstore, and the C & S Skullcap Company, at 1265 Coney Island Avenue in Brooklyn.

As the only Gentile to work for the JIN, (it is a conserva-dox oriented organization focused on Jewish education and stopping assimilation), in addition to being a researcher and author, I was the Shabbat Goy. Call your rabbi, or a rabbi, for the details about that. At any rate, let’s just say it is fun getting to talk to the best and the brightest at The Yeshiva University, the Israeli government, at Jewish organizations, scholars, rabbis, and civic leaders – among a host of other categories and people.

Back to Hecht’s. If you want anything Judaica, anything in reference works, anything for your shul – or for your church, or whatever it is that you call your place where you worship the god of your understanding, anything in clothing, anything for gifts, items for the home or business . . . you get the drift, anything Jewish – and you want to know it is pure orthodox, glat kosher . . . you want to go to this web site: http://www.gotjudaica.com/.

Make sure you bookmark it (Firefox, Netscape, Opera - or share it to your favorites so you won’t go crazy in the future trying to remember where to find this treasure trove web site!

If you go to the customer service link, you will get their store phone number, and street address. You will talk to one of four people – the elder Rabbi Hecht who founded the business in 1961, his wife Joan, her sister Harriet, or Rabbi Hecht’s son – the younger Rabbi Shea Hecht.

OK, we’re talking family business here. We’re talking about incredible service, outrageous levels of knowledge, and again, more authentic and kosher than anywhere else on the planet.

Bottom Line: Anything you want, the Hechts can get for you. They ship worldwide. It will be 100% kosher – beyond any doubt whatsoever.

Here are two final notes for credibility’s sake:

First, NO, I don’t have any business interest in Hecht’s, or their affiliates, or anything else associated with them, and I don’t get any money for click-throughs to their site. I’m writing this 100% straight up as a journalist – using the rules a person my age imbued within, as opposed to the corrupt set of so-called ethics practiced by the glamour queens of today’s media-entertainment industry. I put all that in knowing the incredible cynicism of today’s bloggers and their readers – which is unfortunately more often than not very well justified.

Second, and much more important, when the New York City Board of Rabbis commissioned the menorah for the 9/11 site, they commissioned the younger Rabbi Hecht to design it, build it, and place it. What does that tell you about them?

OK, so use a little moxie, and schlep on over to their web site, or give them a call directly. Without any doubt whatsoever, you will be very, very pleased.
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Are maritime park supporters drunk on Groupthink?

2006-03-14T07:41:00.000-06:00

In every group, someone has to be the Anti-Groupthink advocate. In reading the near-delirious interpretations by pundits and maritime park supporters of the Local Option Sales Tax (LOST) referendum, I see it’s time to ask the partygoers to put down their champagne glasses and sober up a little.

If this is your first exposure to the concept, Groupthink is the term coined by psychologist Irving I. Janis to describe, “The psychological drive for consensus at any cost that suppresses disagreement and prevents the appraisal of alternatives in cohesive decision-making groups.”

It occurs when individuals become so obsessed with the need to be a team player, that they become afraid to ask, “Is there another interpretation of events, or possible outcome of future events, that is so repugnant to what we want to believe that we either discount those possibilities to nothingness, or worse, deny that those other possible outcomes even exist?”

It’s not hard to understand why a person doesn’t want to be the anti-groupthink advocate. You suffer ridicule, demeaning snideness that hurts and ostracizes, and in these parts, the “You’re negative!” tattoo. Insulted rather than consulted is a good summary.

So, knowing that anti-Groupthink advocacy means putting my invitation to be a member of the local power players’ Irish Politicians Club into the Social Register’s deep freeze, I’ll advocate anyway, and tearfully suffer the lost invitation in solitude.

Why did LOST win? The giddy gabbers want to believe it is because a) the so-called “negatives” are over-represented in the public’s mind vis-à-vis their true percentage of the population, and b) area residents just underwent an epiphany, defined by Webster as, “an illuminating discovery, a revealing scene, or moment.”

And what is this epiphany? That it’s smart to vote “yes” for so-called “positive” proposals whether it’s higher taxes, or the maritime park. In fact, it’s not only smart, but now residents will be lemming-like followers who drop everything to pass these proposals.

OK, reality checks time.

First, the turnout for the LOST vote was less than 20 percent. Researchers will tell you low voter turnout occurs when voters – as a whole - consider an issue as unimportant. The lopsided nature of the results doesn’t change that reality.

The real vote to watch was that 8 of 10 voters decided the issue was meaningless in their life. The message of their absence is, “Whether it passes or not, it doesn’t affect my life enough to make it worth changing my daily routine by even a few minutes to go to the polls.”

Even if you write off 40 percent of the total voters as the percentage that never vote on anything, the “it’s meaningless” absence beat the “it matters” turnout by 2-1, a landslide victory for meaningless.

Second, and infinitely more important, is that LOST was safe; safe because it is restricted to particular uses, which means distrusted politicians can’t waste it, and its burden on voters won’t result in personal financial gain for anyone.

What these realities mean to maritime park supporters is that there is no relationship between the LOST proposal and the park proposal, because people see waterfront development highly affecting their life, and subject to uncertainty in its outcome.

Park advocates see it increasing downtown property owners’ land values – and thus the city’s tax base, business owners’ revenues and employment, entrepreneurial investment opportunities, and providing a better quality of life.

But opponents see it as depriving them of open waterfront access, risk-free allocation of tax revenues, setting up certain disaster with the next big hurricane, and a naked power play for personal enrichment using public money.

I’m going to vote yes on this issue, because I want a multi-use park, know capitalism is all about rewards for taking risks, want student-level jobs so we can start building an employment pool of graduates prepared to take high paying jobs from employers recruited to the area who require advanced education or technical skills, and am not going to let fears dictate my life’s direction.

But I won’t be joining the Irish Politicians Club members at their latest political bacchanalia; I quit drinking 16 years ago, and I’m not going to approach this vote drunk on the idea it’s already a done deal.
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Don't use that debit card!

2006-03-13T11:50:00.000-06:00

Bank security experts are warning consumers who own a bank debit card issued by "Citibank, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Washington Mutual, as well as smaller banks" which issue cards to customers living in the Pensacola Bay Area to avoid using it at store checkouts.

The list of banks compromised last week by a massive international computer hack appeared in a report by TechNet, which quoted Gartner Research expert Avivah Litan.

Litan added those specific banks are "only the tip of the iceberg" and the damage will continue to spread over the coming weeks.

Law enforcement officials believe thieves broke into the system of a credit card processor interacting with the banks. They first stole the encrypting keys that unscramble the PIN (Personal Identification Number) associated with debit cards.

They then took advantage of lax security at retail chain stores that didn't clear the data from the checkout touch pads where customers input their PIN. This security failure allowed the hackers to combine the debit card number with the associated PIN.

To protect themselves, customers should always press the "Cancel" choice that appears on the touch pad when the sale is completed and the computer asks for the PIN. The store's computer will then process the sale as if the debit card were a credit card and the customer's PIN will not be available for hackers to steal.

In addition, Pensacola Bay Area residents should tell their bank or other financial institution to issue a new card to them with a new PIN. Even if the bank or institution they use is not currently listed, it is no guarantee that the institution's PIN files are still safe; it just means that in the 1 week since the hack, there are not yet any public reports of theft in the area. All cards issued using the hacked PIN code - which means all cards issued before the discovery of the hack last week - are vulnerable to theft, and should be replaced with a new card and PIN which will use the new, unhacked, PIN code.

Debit cards are pitched to banking customers as safer than regular checks. They are told that the PIN required to process the card at the checkout means that if the card is lost or stolen, the card can't be used by someone else who doesn't know the PIN.

That advice only applies to a card used at an ATM located at the issuing bank. That is because the transaction is processed directly at the bank, and never goes through a third-party processor.

But that promise of safety is not true if the card is being used at a retail checkout. If the PIN is not punched into the register's touchpad, the card is processed anyway. The card offers no more protection at the checkout than a regular check or credit card.
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How will the 2006 elimination of runoffs in the primaries affect us?

2006-01-01T16:10:00.000-06:00

Research memo

Starting with this from 01/01/2006 PNJ:

Regarding new laws that take effect - in particular this change: "Runoff elections: Eliminates the state's second primary elections when no candidate wins a majority of votes. Plurality winners will take primaries."

Maybe I didn't catch it elsewhere in the newspaper, but this is one major change that if applied to many earlier elections, would have rewritten history - and will fundamentally shift the power to be elected from those who represent the majority of thinking in a district to those who represent only a significant minority of voters who could never win a majority to their skewed ideology.

Which brings up the stories and columns I'm suggesting you consider:

For the news desk: How about a look at local elections in Escambia and Santa Rosa counties which would have found a different candidate winning the election because the candidate could get the biggest plurality, but when up against the runoff, the coalition of voters opposed to the leading plurality winner enabled another candidate to win the second runoff instead.

Of course this could be taken to a broader level by talking about statewide elections just to generate something that puts the PNJ in the lead to document the ramifications of this change at a level that would attract attention from other Gannett newspapers to pick up the story - and make the majors regret getting scooped . . .

But even if you forget that and stay local, it is still a very significant story.

Analysis? For the Opinion analysis columns and the local community columnist on 1-C: So how would this be a different area if different faces had occupied the seats of political leadership and power? And what does that portend for the area's future?

Something that is critical in the analysis of this change is that it allows more extreme candidates the opportunity to get elected when their block of support is big enough to beat other candidates fractionating the vote - but that block would be eliminated when the mainstreamers gathered around the candidate who came in second - which is a circumstance that in the past inhibited the extreme blocks from entering races. The inability to get majority votes is no longer of any concern to the extreme blocks - and therefore, no longer an inhibition. Actually, it is an enthusiastic encourager to run since the standard to get elected is so tremendously lowered.

Here's an example narrative, not local - but illustrative of the concept using George Wallace because he is so embedded in our minds: We begin in 1964 when George Wallace is running for the first time as a candidate of the Democratic Party for president. He enters three state primaries - Wisconsin, Maryland, and Indiana. He barely campaigns and still he "wins" them garnering as much as 43% of the votes cast.

The mainstream leadership of the party is brutally awakened to the possibility that LBJ isn't going to get the nomination. This doesn't play well in "Camelot," as the ideological, cultural, and social bubble encasing the Kennedy power nexus is affectingly called. The folly of plurality dictating an election - which brings even more brutal visions of losing the White House - focuses their minds with antagonizing force.

In case you're wondering, the implications of Wallace's plurality win resulting in a "winner take all" delegate allocation as a call for massive rules changes in the party wasn't lost on the Democratic Party's national leadership - as you'll see in a moment. But we must go first to the presidential election of 1968 when Wallace headlines the American Independent Party. This description comes from Racism to Redemption: The Path of George Wallace by Maggie Riechers.

"Even as his wife's health was declining, Wallace began his 1968 presidential bid, this time challenging the Republicans and Democrats with his new American Independent Party.

"The country was in turmoil on the heels of the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., riots in major cities, antiwar marches and sit-ins. The explosive atmosphere put Wallace in a prime position with his law-and-order message, his opposition to the civil rights acts passed by Congress, and the Supreme Court's decisions on school prayer, integration, and later, on abortion. By October of 1968, 22 percent of American voters supported George Wallace for president. In the general election he won five states with ten million people casting their votes for him and nearly throwing the election to the House of Representatives."

Too bad for the Democrats he didn't do better; if it had gone to the Democratic-controlled House, Hubert Humphrey would have president instead of Richard Nixon. Yes, pluralities have the power to change history.

OK, so only a 22% plurality nearly caused a rewrite of history. That is highly significant. Less than 1 person in four comes within a hair of redirecting the entire nation's course and history. What if his popularity had climbed to the levels you will see it reach when we look at the 1972 presidential election?

But first we seek an example in 1970, when Wallace runs again for governor following his wife's 1968 death after being elected as his surrogate in 1966. Now watch how the no-runoff provision would have changed history; and please don't let your political prejudices cause you to applaud this circumstance and lose sight of the concept at work here. I'm citing Wallace because he is so well known. The effect of the no runoff can just as easily cut out a candidate whose political philosophy you passionately support.

From the official Alabama State Archives write-up of the Wallace story, "In the first primary election of 1970 Albert Brewer, Lurleen's successor and former Wallace ally, out polled Wallace 421,197 votes to 414,277 votes; however, Wallace out polled Brewer in the second primary. Subsequently, Wallace won the general election of November and was inaugurated in January of the following year."

You get the idea, although it's probably hard for most people to call what would have happened had there been no runoff a "bad" consequence of the law. At any rate, focusing on the concept and not the individuals, my point is that no-runoff means history will be redirected by the ability of a plurality winning candidate to take office. In this specific case you may wish there had been no runoff; again, putting away prejudices so we can focus on this as political scientists and not as ideologists, what I'd like to suggest is that in the bigger scheme of things it makes candidates appealing to more extreme blocks able to beat candidates who represent the true majority of voters in an election. Whether you like it or not, in 1970, Wallace represented the true majority of voters in Alabama.

If the candidate getting shut out by the no runoff rule just happens to be your favorite, and the win goes to an extreme candidate instead, you might not be so happy about the way no runoff works.

Keeping with the Wallace story, it is now 1972, and Wallace drops the third-party route and decides to go again for the Democratic nomination for president.

He starts in Florida, and wins a plurality of all 67 counties in the state. Of course, the majority of Americans, and particularly nearly all liberal Americans, are shell-shocked thinking about the idea Wallace could walk off with the nomination. Remember, this is the McGovern era in the party. Can you imagine what changes would have occurred in America if it was Wallace versus Nixon instead of McGovern?

Because of Democratic Party rules changes brought about by what his race in 1968 demonstrated about a plurality candidate, the party by 1972 has eliminated "winner take all" delegate allocations in Florida. Wallace averaged 33% of the delegates up for grabs in Florida - by extrapolation, or if you want to double-check my research on his poll numbers to get the same result for yourself, we can see he is significantly more popular with a broad cross-section of Americans than he was in 1968. This time, Wallace stands a truly realistic chance to be a mainstream party's nominee for president.

As Burton S. Blumert chronicles in The US Political System in Crisis: How Sweet It Is, "Wallace’s performance in the 1972 Democrat presidential primaries stunned the established order. He won the primaries in Tennessee, North Carolina, Florida, Maryland, and Michigan and was a close second in Pennsylvania and Indiana. Wallace was no longer winning just the southern states; he was a national candidate."

Wallace is declared a national candidate, by "winning" only because his plurality was greater than anyone else's - not because he was winning with true majorities. If you look at the percentages voting for candidates in stark opposition to Wallace's social philosophy, you quickly see Wallace is a marginal candidate empowered by plurality rewards on a path taking him straight to the presidency.

But we all know how Arthur Bremer put an end to Wallace's national role.

But that sidelight distracts from my point: Using Wallace and his ideology as a "type" for this conversation, the point is that an extreme candidate appealing to a significant block large enough to give the candidate the leading plurality position can take someone who fails to be truly representative of the community and elevate that individual to elected political power. While Wallace was plurality solid, he was not majority solid. But votes in total don't decide presidential primaries, or presidential elections, as John Kerry will curse, and George Bush will give thanks to God. Lingering for a second off-track, returning the focus to 1972, leave it to say Wallace was no fool, and he was on his way to the White House.

Coming back on-track, the meaning of all this is that a plurality candidate, unrepresentative of the community majority, can beat another candidate who is representative of that majority. Frankly, that's a really scary thought.

But what is even scarier is that no one I'm aware of in the Florida print journalism community thought this through as the change in runoffs worked its way through the Legislature. (But maybe I missed it when researching this memo . . .)

For news or commentary, the question needs to be asked of every local rep or senator to get him or her on the record defending their role in bringing this change to fruition after the earthquake this would have caused in the past, and likely will cause in the future, is laid out to readers. Asking now would be premature since the documentation of the premise for the disaster will be lacking.

But think about it - these people are supporting a system that they abhor when applied to national politics. So locals get the refuse of the nationals?

Thank you for taking time to get to the end of this research memo. I hope it provides the foundational thinking to bring this before readers - especially in this election year. No runoffs is a tectonic change in electoral strategy. I hope the PNJ will present its history, and its future implications, to readers.