Was just playing Frank Sinatra for Mojo. After a few minutes he started singing along:

I've got poo
Under my chin

Don't you hate it when people do that to songs?

Ah, there's no better place to hear people express the values of the modern day doucheoisie than on public radio. And when that public radio program is telecast on public television, well that's just a tsunami of idiocy.

I was adjusting my antenna and testing reception when I stopped at an Ohio-based talk show that seemed to be focusing on the sorry state of the local economy. Things are terrible they said: no one is lending, no one is investing, and real estate is overbuilt. The two guests didn't exactly say"OMG, what're we gonna do now?" but nor did they provide any serious insights as to filling all that empty retail and industrial space.

In fact, when a woman called up to say she was ready, willing and able to set up a business if only the local zoning commissars would give her a variance, all they had for her was "gee that sucks."

Then they moved on to a story about a local company that's leaving for greener pastures -- and all they could talk about is the intense political and union pressure being put on the company to not pull the plug.

So they make it hard to open your business. And they make it hard to close your business. But for the life of them they can't figure out why no one wants to make a business investment here. Amazing. But hardly a fresh insight: I especially like the part in this video where the local hack politician brags about how easy it is for a business to build in Cleveland. Why, with his guidance he helped a constituent get all the paperwork done in about 18 months!

Hey, maybe if the politicians turn the screws a little tighter on investors and entrepreneurs -- maybe then we'll have that economic recovery everyone wants. That'll restore my lost property values. Asshats.

Utterly fascinating article appears in today's WSJ. It's got all the stuff of intense docudrama: mass violence, innocent victims, caring neighbors, perverse tax policy, actual poverty, and a greed that you know is there but are reluctant to call out. It's the dirty-details real-life stuff -- not the paint-by-numbers morality plays they show in pop culture news shows.

So as I drove to Home Depot today to buy dirt (there's an economics lesson somehwere in that statement) I was thinking about what they call the Tragedy of the Commons: how assets held for the "public good" are always gamed and wasted and ultimate do no good to anyone, let alone the public.

Which made me think of communism. Not in the normal sense of my taxes going up. Again. Like they do every year. Despite the nonsense I hear on television. But communism as a system of control over a unit of society. I decided that I was aware of only one well-functioning communist totalitarianism, and that would be my own household. All assets are held for the benefit of all, with all wealth ruthlessly redistributed, and everyone compelled to contribute in their own way.

Okay, we still have our power struggles. Like Alane walking into my man-cave to look over my shoulder while I type this -- as party leader I get more private space than the nomenklatura. (While our simian prole offspring duke it out in general population.)

And just like the real life commies we also have our dialectic paradoxes. So for instance, when I tell the boys, "your behavior is inappropriate," it will not suffice for them to reply, "I will not be repressed by your normative absolutes." No, son, you will be repressed. Because without repression communism cannot operate.

It's a harsh regime, but I see my neighbors run their house pretty much the same way. We respect each other for that -- but I don't think it has ever occurred to us to pool resources and try to run the two households (much less the whole neighborhood) in that collective model. (Here I'm picturing us barging into the home down the street and announcing that due to the relative size of their large-screen television, their household will also now be made part of our collective.)

Which thoughts swung my flightful mind back to the tragedy of the commons and the onerous tax bills that sap the funds from Cookie and Mojo's college funds. Meh, maybe by then I will have come up with a get-rich scam that swindles the masses and makes me wealthy enough to not care whether a working stiff can make it on his own.

But back to the WSJ article. It's all about the victim relief fund set up after a horrible shooting -- and the contentious fight that ensued over the size of the share distributed to each victim. Human nature and group dynamics being what they are, this stuff is inevitable. And as any thoughtful lawyer knows, the messiness of it all can almost never be resolved with a straightforward appeal to bright-line rules. But without bright-line rules the process will bend, as it must, to popular sentiments making outcomes variable (to put it nicely).

Is that justice? Is it even charity when it's done this way? Or does it not matter because the only reason we make donations is to make ourselves feel better -- tell ourselves we improved the plight of far-off victims, even though all we did was cast crumbs before them. Inviting a competition for a finite resource. Empowering a special master whose work will require a thick skin, an aversion to temptation, and superhuman wisdom.

Which makes me think again of taxes and all the crazy schemes aspiring to the ill-defined concept of "social justice." It's bad enough to consider all those competing for the scarce proceeds; worse to see all those grabby climbers asserting roles as special masters; worst is thinking through the cost to non-subjective justice.

Meh, at least people feel better.

The people who perpetrated the original Boston Tea Party were certainly an unruly mob -- and they knew it themselves, disguising themselves to cover, barely, evidence of their manifestly criminal activity.

And no one could have thought at the time it had been a step in the right direction. The Brits just tightened the screws on the local government, holding out for repayment on the ruined tea, making their control seen and felt. Did anyone really think dumping the tea would work? Did disapproving Tories condemn the lawless rampage? Sure, Sam Adams defended it -- said it was a necessary protest against illegitimate governance. But wouldn't the Tories just declare him a kook? A violent kook.

Today, they'd label him racist.

When I was in school, American history always seemed so boring. These days, it's captivating -- records of a log-ago past that read directly into the future.

I'm not much a fan of Google but I do appreciate their defiance of the censorship laws imposed by that powerful statist regime (the one in Asia). I especially liked the government apparatchik's denunciation of Google's move: he said the nation's leaders are "opposed to the politicization of commercial issues."

Get it? When you defend your right to convey thoughts and information you're politicizing the issue. Restricting the right is not political at all -- that's all done in the general interest. That sounds familiar.

Yep, that's the same rhetoric used by statists around the world to clamp down on individual liberties -- rights to speech, religion, association, and property. Yeah, there is a right to property but you'd never know it from reading the popular newspapers. Or listening to elected "leaders." Or watching Google's lobbyists perform their black arts. The busybodies want to tell you how to manage your own earnings, evaluate your investments, and run your businesses; attempting to maintain a zone of self-determination is condemned as rank politics. The busybodies themselves? They style themselves more as Plato's philosopher kings -- no politics there!

Just a brief observation on the state of the statists, as I sit here sipping my coffee and reading my WSJ, pining for a restoration of First Principles, happy to see a glimmer here or there, saddened to see them swamped by the corruption inherent to our fallen state.

WHEREAS an act was passed in the last session of parliament, intituled, An act for granting and applying certain stamp duties, and other duties, in the British colonies and plantations in America, towards further defraying the expences of defending, protecting, and securing the same; and for amending such parts of the several acts of parliament relating to the trade and revenues of the said colonies and plantations, as direct the manner of determining and recovering the penalties and forfeitures therein mentioned: and whereas the continuance of the said act would be attended with many inconveniences, and may be productive of consequences greatly detrimental to the commercial interests of these kingdoms; may it therefore please your most excellent Majesty, that it may be enacted; and be it enacted by the King's most excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the lords spiritual and temporal, and commons, in this present parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, that from and after the first day of May, one thousand seven hundred and sixty six, the above-mentioned act, and the several matters and things therein contained, shall be, and is and are hereby repealed and made void to all intents and purposes whatsoever.

Yeah, here they are comrades: the gangster-mobile and the slug-sled. We didn't do so well in the competition, as we expected. And the proceedings were lengthy indeed. So now we're back at Berea-Rose cooling out while Cookie does his homework, Alane watches XU play ball, and Mojo rolls around on the living room carpet.

Trying to avoid the news sites this evening, as I find all this advancing statism to be so friggin depressing. Infuriating, actually.

Later today we go to Mass, after which the Cub Scouts hold their Pinewood Derby races. Da Chimpz have crafted a pair of wacky racers using the crude tools in our basement -- that POS plastic miter box and saw cost me about $9 at Home Depot several years ago and even brand new it barely worked. Ah well, we did our best -- we're not exactly going into these races with any spirit of competition.

"Mojo, the wheels on your car kind of point in all different directions. I don't think you're going to win any races. Is that OK?"

"Yeah."

I also asked hi if I could paint his car brown and give it yellow spots. Then I had to talk him out of that.

Gotta give credit where it's due: if I wake up at 4 a.m. in a NYC hotel room, it's very unlikely that I'll be able to find an open newsstand anymore. And the few bodegas that run 24-hours -- I don't want to drink their yecho coffee anyway.

So it's nice to know that here at Berea-Rose the WSJ hits my driveway before 5 a.m. -- today I was all set up in my back room with hot coffee and a crisp newspaper by 4:30. That's living.

The weather is finally breaking around here, with temps going into the 40s yesterday. We broke out the Nerf and hit the street to toss it around. Then I got Da Chimps' bicycles into fighting shape and they rolled around a little while longer. Might even make it to 50 degrees later this week. In the Cleveland area, that's as good as August.

Mojo told me this morning that he wanted to make a poop so large that it would poke out of someone else's toilet.

I found this quite ambitious on its own -- even without his added goal that someone be sitting on that toilet when this happened.

I told this to my co-worker and his only response was, "And this is after you cut off the cable TV?"

Makes me think I should turn the service back on -- this kid's brain is a little too active.

Right now I'm blasting some old (it's old already!) Leftfield on the stereo downstairs and for some reason it's making me think of Thanksgiving 2006 when Merle and Ree joined me in the kitchen of Berea-Rose and we suddenly fell into a spontaneous symphony of celebratory food-prep -- as if we'd been making the sausage stuffings and squash soups as a team our whole lives. Reemus and Marlo: you are the coolest cousins.

And Mojo is one messed up kid.