Today, I had a hearing on a case where I’ve been trying to collect against the woman for a little over three years now. When we started, she was about twenty, brash, a little full of herself, and fairly good looking. The bloom of youth is deteriorating so rapidly, it’s amazing. Kids, sporadic unemployment, presumably stress from debt collectors such as myself, and I suspect substance abuse of some sort are taking their toll. My judgment is good for twenty years, and I don’t see this one getting paid off any time soon. It will be interesting to see if the years forge something strong or grind her to dust.

Terry Record, the former Marion County deputy prosecutor, department of health attorney, and blogger is set for trial in September on the charges that he got drunk at a strip club before crashing into Jimmy Cash and killing him. There were some charges about marijuana in his blood which will likely be dropped because of problems with the evidence.

Every so often, I recall I have something I’ve read rattling around in my head that might be of interest to others. Once such something is “War is a Racket,” written by Major General Smedley D. Butler, USMC, retired. He wrote it in the 1930s. Butler wasn’t some naive pacifist; he was one of the most decorated marines ever — including two medals of honor.

WAR is a racket. It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small “inside” group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
. . .
It would have been far cheaper (not to say safer) for the average American who pays the bills to stay out of foreign entanglements. For a very few this racket, like bootlegging and other underworld rackets, brings fancy profits, but the cost of operations is always transferred to the people – who do not profit.
. . .
The normal profits of a business concern in the United States are six, eight, ten, and sometimes twelve percent. But war-time profits – ah! that is another matter – twenty, sixty, one hundred, three hundred, and even eighteen hundred per cent – the sky is the limit. All that traffic will bear. Uncle Sam has the money. Let’s get it.

Of course, it isn’t put that crudely in war time. It is dressed into speeches about patriotism, love of country, and “we must all put our shoulders to the wheel,” but the profits jump and leap and skyrocket – and are safely pocketed.

Butler proposed taking the profit out of war by requiring that the government conscript industry one month before it conscripts any soldiers and that the bankers and industrialists be limited to the pay given to a conscripted soldier.

Want another good anti-war read: The War Prayer by Mark Twain.

“O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle – be Thou near them! With them – in spirit – we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with hurricanes of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it – for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.”

Robert Barnes & Kevin Merida of the Washington Post have an article entitled “Activists Want ‘True Liberal’ For High Court.” To me, the article underscores that true liberals are barely recognizable in public life today. It suggests Hillary Clinton as a “true liberal.” That she is considered the “far left” or anywhere near it is mildly amusing to me. In Europe, I dare say she’d be fairly comfortable in the conservative parties. Part of the problem is defining what “liberal” might mean. To me, it would probably be someone who was at least pro-labor and anti-war. The bankruptcy-bill, NAFTA, Iraq War supporting Clinton doesn’t exactly qualify.

Liberal legal activists have consistently lagged behind conservatives in convincing their partisans that the court should be a voting issue. The court remains ideologically split, but any openings presented to the next president are almost sure to come from within the court’s liberal wing. The two oldest members of the court are Justices John Paul Stevens, 88, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 75.

If Obama had the opportunity to make an appointment, it would be only the fourth nomination from a Democratic president in more than 40 years.
. . .
“It is a court with no true liberal on it, the most conservative court in 75 years,” said Geoffrey Stone, a University of Chicago law professor.

In fact, of the current membership only Justices Breyer and Ginsberg were appointed by a Democrat (both by President Clinton.) The other seven were appointed by Republicans (two by Bush the Younger (Roberts & Alito), two by Bush the Elder (Thomas & Souter), two by Reagan (Scalia & Kennedy), and one by Ford (Stevens)).

It’s fair season once again. I never went to the fair much as a kid, but once I moved to the Lafayette area, seems like I started going every year. The Tippecanoe County one is pretty good. It’s centrally located with the fairgrounds being well inside the city of Lafayette. And, as I’ve mentioned before, I’m a huge fan of booth food. I’m typically an indifferent sort of eater, but booth food is a whole different story: ribeye sandwiches, pork sandwiches, hot dogs, corn on a stick, ice cream from the dairy producers — [insert image of Homer drooling].

I’ve got a a whole lot of nothing this morning. Thunderstorms last night — in the Masson household, both our shepherd mix dog and our 2 year old girl aren’t real fond of thunder. And, as it turns out, sleep is a non-trivial component in good blogging.

In other useless news, I signed up for the Akron Mini-Marathon in September. I’ve never run 13.1 miles — about the furthest I’ve managed is 10 miles; and haven’t run anywhere close to that in about a year.

I, like many, many others, got caught up in the buzz of the release of The Dark Knight. It was a very good movie. I won’t go so far as to say it was a masterpiece of our times as some reviewers have suggested. I like my Batman dark and conflicted; so this was right up my alley. Ledger was certainly a better Joker than Nicholson.

One of the strengths of this movie, I think, was more of a conscious recognition of the elemental natures of Batman and the Joker. The Joker is an agent of chaos, not a greedy villain, not even particularly motivated by vengeance or other common emotions. In fact, we’re never allowed to know what makes him tick, exactly — he tells various conflicting tales of how he got his scars, for example. As Lucius Alfred put it, “some people just want to watch the world burn.” I’m a nerd and grew up enjoying Norse mythology, so the Joker struck me as being like Loki, without the redeeming features.

Batman has become something like grim justice. Maybe there is a better description for him. But, he no longer seems particularly motivated by vengeance. Certainly not by any real love for his fellow humans. As a two-fisted dispenser of justice, he gets in a pickle when there is no just resolution to a problem.

It occurs to me that this reads like a 10th grade book report. Oh well. The bottom line is that it’s a fine movie to enjoy with some popcorn. And that’s really the point.