The Legislature showed common sense in not pushing “personhood,” but now it’s showing a distinct lack of common sense in voting to limit cities’ ability to regulate vehicle idling.

I don’t get it — the Legislature is full of lawmakers who scream and yell when the federal government makes them do something, but they want to boss cities around?

If cities want cleaner air, cities should be able to do what they want to make it so. The Legislature is certainly in no rush to do anything about it. Utah’s had some of the foulest air on the planet for decades and lawmakers are just now looking around going “Huh?”

Yeah, I know, an idling ban will hurt cops who sit and idle for hours because they need to be ready to go in an instant. So make an exception for cops.

And taxi drivers. Not sure I buy that — in the old carburated  engine days it was harder to start cars, but now electronic ignitions start in an instant — in hybrid cars the gas engine kicks on and off without a hitch. And, I’m sorry, but the argument that diesel engines are hard to start also doesn’t stand up any more. My antique Peugeot was hard to start on cold days, but that car was built in 1971 and even then it had to be really cold for the glow plugs to not work. Technology has improved.

Dirty air makes people sick, sick people need more medical care. Dirty air sends more of the poor to emergency rooms for lung problems, which increases medicaid costs, and I thought the state wanted to lower those?

How many times must I say this: Even regular care for mild asthma — mine — costs my insurance company $250 a month, give or take. Who funds my insurance company?

You guys. We have socialized medicine now — thank you, but don’t you want your premium bills lowered for a change?

Money aside, clean air is always good. Anything the Legislature does that works against cleaning it shows a total lack of common sense.

So pull your heads out, guys, and look at the mountains — while you can still see them, that is.

It is absolutely amazing. A member of the Utah Legislature has dropped a whacko distracting guaranteed-to-draw-a-lawsuit bill.

Sen. Aaron Osmond has dropped any plans to propose a “personhood” bill. The bill, as I described in my column last Sunday, would have made any abortion, and most contraception except the rythem method, illegal and even made having a miscarriage legally suspect.

So, good. But don’t think it or something equally crazy won’t be back. These guys are capable of anything.

But for now, enjoy the brief burst of common sense.

What I found intersting was this commentery (click) in the New York Times about a proposed boycott of Starbucks because it also supports same sex marriage. When you get down near the bottom you will see lawmaker who, years ago, voted against same sex marriage and now feels bad because, as it turns out, one of her kids is gay.

I guess that’s what puzzles me: There’s all this anger and biblically-based pontificating over homosexuality by the right, but when it comes to their own kids being gay a lot of that goes by the boards. Some shun the kids as evil, but the ones who have brains, or perhaps a bit of feeling, get past it and accept their kids and even support them.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney comes to mind. Say what you will about the guy – I thought comparing him to Voldemort was particularly apt – he defends his daughter, who is gay and has a lifelong partner.

I suppose you could say love is blind, I think its more a matter of, when the chips are down, the need to preach hate against gays to make political points goes by the wayside when you realize it is your own kid you are preaching against.

It takes a hard heart indeed to do that. If nothing else, you sure as heck can’t blame the kid’s parents for how they turned out.

This is epitomized by his constant nattering every time someone in the Obama administration says we’re going to leave. “Horror, he announced a deadline!” says Mitt. “We can’t do that! Our enemies are comforted!”

Horse cookies.

Mitt has no say. Mitt is a rich guy who thinks the poor don’t need any help, who thinks $370,000 in speaking fees isn’t much, and is so innured to the sufferings of the working class people he spent years firing that he really thinks it’s OK for a few hundred of America’s best and smartest and bravest to die so America leaves Afghanistan with”honor” or “victory” or some such.

Shut up Mitt. Your say your own military age sons are doing their national service by working in your campaign. If you believe so strongly in winning with honor in Afghanistan then send a few of them over in uniform, have one or two of them shipped home in boxes, killed in a war that has gone on, in fits and starts, since the British invaded more than 150 years ago.

Then talk to me about honor, or making sense, or anything else.

If you aren’t willing to do that, shut up. You have no skin in the game, and you have no right to risk the skins of other people’s sons and daughters.

It’s bad enough Obama has let that war go on this long. To criticize ending it just to play word games is beyond repugnant.

The guy is a big money Eastern elite type and, after years of hearing the Tea Party slam those types of people, I finally see one in the flesh and have to agree, he is a jerk. Fortunately for Obama, the current replacement is even a bigger jerk — what did someone say, Gingrich has the children of his first marriage criticizing the wife of his second marriage for her criticism of his third wife, and this is the family values social conservatism candidate?

Mostly, though, I am not sure any of this matters. The GOP simply doesn’t seem real hot about Romney. See this story (click) for a rundown of potential reasons. For whatever reason, they seem real reluctant to support him, and real anxious to support anyone else.

If I were him I do what Newt is doing with his marriages, put the damn dog back on top of his car and dare anyone to criticize him for it.

That will make him look feisty, and voters seem to like that.

My brother in Florida tipped me off to an ad making the rounds on TV down there at this link:

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/union-goes-up-with-anti-romney-ad-in-florida/

In which Romney is compared to the current governor of Florida, who got elected despite the fact that his company defrauded the federal government of billions of dollars. Is it just me or has tolerance of fiscal irregularities taken something of a leap these days?

The ad says Romney did the same thing while director of a company that Bain Capitol, his takeover company, was taking over and running. The story explains it all. There seems to be enough truth to make one wonder how careful Romney is running things — members of boards are generally just there to sign their names and collect paychecks, so they tend to claim deniability if something is wrong, but Mitt, as president, would actually have to run things and take resposibility for them. You’d like to hope he has had practice at that. 

I got an email that said little more than that The All Family Project was finally on UTA. Going to their web site, I find that the web site (click)  is set up to promote understanding of same-sex couples as families, which they certainly are. They wanted to advertise in Utah, were turned down hither and yon, but finally met UTA’s standards and got the go-ahead.

Not quite sure why something promoting families should be controversial, but that’s the age we live in.

So look for their ads on UTA soon.

Said it before, will say it again: This sort of federal socialistic money sharing to help people who obviously don’t know how to build their community to handle a little runoff has got to stop. Those people in Cache County need to learn to live within our means and quit stealing money from the rest of us just because a little snow fell. They’re surrounded by mountains, they must know snow falls and melts, it is their own fault if they failed to prepare for the result.

Not sure where Weber County’s fed money is for fixing up our water damage, but it better get here soon if it isn’t already. We paid for that, it’s ours, and we want it.

In other news, I have just found a great solution for that pesky Irish food shortage….

Nobody else knows any but the most basic facts either, but that hasn’t stopped hundreds from mouthing off.

People who comment on stories on web sites need to be studied by someone with expertise on demented psychology. There are 172 comments posted on just one story about the accused shooter’s attorney being appointed (click) . It’s a wide debate over whether the cops messed up, whether the accused shooter was laying in wait, whether he was innocent, and on and on and on.

As is typical on chatboards, half the commens are irrational and absolutely everyone is taking a beating. A few trolls, especially, seem to know everything and are going to make sure everyone knows it.

One guy, rather ominously, says that he’s a gun afficianado who believes in the 2nd Amendment and if anyone crashes into his home they’re going to meet gunfire coming the other way too.

OK, we know that guy is scary, but nobody knows what happened in that house.

Nobody. Not the investigators, not the chief of police, not the shooter and not the surviving members of the squad of officers who went in.

We all THINK we know because we’ve seen TV and movies, or read stories. But nobody knows and nobody may ever know. That especially includes the people involved. Memories are the most plastic substance on the planet, eyewitnesses rarely see what they think they see, and in the panic of a shooting encounter like that nobody doing the shooting is going to remember as much as they should or even think they do.

The only things I know for  certain is that one officer is dead, five others are wounded, and the one guy who lived in that house is wounded. I suppose we can say for certain that there were a lot of guns at the scene.

We also know for certain that tragedy of varying degrees has struck seven families in our community.

Beyond that, I don’t know anything, not for certain.

While I am reluctant to hinder the public discourse, if you think you do know something else  for sure about this, I suggest you hold off expressing it until the formal investigations are done. Wait and see if what they reveal, as flawed as they are guaranteed to be, is close to what you thought you knew now.

If it is, congratulations, you were right!

If not, aren’t you glad you held off?

The quote (link! Click!) is being taken out of context because everyone thinks it’s cute that the self-styled “job creator” wants to fire people, no matter what the circumstance.

I actually agree with his statement, if he had shut up after saying that much. I like to be able to fire people too, which is why I don’t hire friends or family to do work I’m paying for. If the work sucks, I want to be able to kick someone’s butt, and paid help you aren’t related to is handy that way.

However, Romney then went on to say that this theory applied to medical insurance, which is why he’s opposed to “Obamacare,” which is not, let us stress, socialized medicine that limits you to one government dictated providor.

So the basis for his statement is false to start with. Then there’s the problem that in America, today, it delusional to presume that people can easily “fire” their medical insurance even if it is provided by the so-called “free market.”

Most people get their medical care from whatever insurance company their employer provides. They can only “fire” their medical insurance if they “fire” their employer — it’s possible, I suppose, but not practical if you want to work for a living, especially in today’s job market.

When you take a job, you take the benefits the employer provides. Since labor unions have pretty well been busted , the idea of negotiating which medical insurance you get as part of your job is a quaint fantasy. Even if you did quit your job to find a better insurance company with another job, the odds are very good that the next employer will use that same insurance. In most markets, there aren’t that many providors any more.

Then there’s the fact that millions of Americans are desperate to get any medical insurance at all, so the fantasy that they can then turn around and “fire” that insurance if it doesn’t suit them is beside the point.

What they can do now, with most insurance plans, is switch doctors as long as the doctors are covered by their insurance plan. This limits their choices, but since the choice limiting is done by capitalism, which also tells those few doctors who can see you what procedures they can provide to you and still get paid (death panels?), that’s OK.

Because, God forbid government gets involved. Then our choices would be limited and we would be less free.