Category: default || By jt3y

Did you ever have one of those days when you misplace something important? Man, if it's not my car keys it's my checkbook or my hat. I've lost more umbrellas than I can count, though the one I left on the bus the other day was returned to me. (The bus driver, bless him, had it waiting on the dashboard the next time I saw him. "Is this your umbrella?" he said.)

Once I lost my wallet on a bus. I didn't even realize it was gone until I got a call from the Homestead postmaster; someone had dropped it into a mailbox. The money and credit cards were still intact. How's that for honesty? That's the Mon Valley for you.

Well, yesterday I realized that I'd lost something else. My sense of moral outrage.

I've been trying to figure out the last time I used it. I know I had it when the Vice President claimed that voting for a Democrat for President would cause a terrorist attack. I used it just the other day when a Catholic group said that voting for the Democrat was a "sin."

If it seems that my sense of moral outrage only works on Republicans, that's not true. It goes off every time the Democratic presidential candidate claims that there's going to be a draft in January if the President is re-elected, and it works every time I hear leftists compare the President to Adolf Hitler.

Anyway, last night, a major chain of TV stations that makes large campaign contributions to the Republican Party denied that it had ever planned to show a documentary knocking that Democratic presidential candidate. That, despite the fact that the very same chain of TV stations had sent out program listings to newspapers that had the documentary scheduled to run.

A reasonable person might be led to conclude that the CEO of the TV station company was shading the truth a bit. So I waited for my sense of moral outrage to kick in, and there was ... nothing.

I looked all over the place for my sense of moral outrage --- in the car, in the basement, at work, at home. Nothing. It's always in the last place you look, of course, so I'm hoping it will turn up eventually.

Or maybe there have been too many cases when my moral outrage has had to kick in. It's an interesting thing, too, because I've noticed that when my moral outrage swings to the left, it only swings a few degrees, but when it swings to the right, it goes off the scale. Maybe that's because the Democratic candidate for president seems prone to "those exaggerations," in the President's words, while the President's campaign is "pushing the factual limits," as Howard Kurtz recently wrote in The Washington Post. Maybe it's pushed the limits of my moral outrage meter, too, so that it's not as sensitive as it used to be.

So, it may be that my sense of moral outrage is just worn out, and that it's there, but I've been using it too much lately. Maybe it just needs some time to cool off, like an overheated electric motor, and that when I need it again, it will be ready.

I sure hope so. Because I have a bad feeling I'm going to need it again before Nov. 3.

...

For instance, this is the kind of thing that would normally cause my sense of moral outrage to be triggered, but there was nothing:

An ostensibly nonpartisan voter registration drive in Western Pennsylvania has triggered accusations that workers were cheated out of wages and given instructions to avoid adding anyone to the voter rolls who might support the Democratic presidential nominee.

Sproul & Associates, a consulting firm based in Chandler, Ariz., hired to conduct the drive by the Republican National Committee, employed several hundred canvassers throughout the state to register new voters. Some workers yesterday said they were told to avoid registering Democrats or anyone who indicated support for Democratic nominee John F. Kerry. ....

"If they were a Kerry voter, we were just supposed to walk away," said Michael Twilla, of Meadville, who said he has been paid for only eight of 72 hours he worked. Twilla provided the Post-Gazette with a copy of the script he said he had been given. It instructs the canvassers to hand unregistered Bush supporters a clipboard with a registration form, and to advise them the canvassers will personally deliver the forms to the local courthouse.

Moral outrage? Eh. So, this should surprise me some how?

...

Over at "Bad Influence," Kenn Lucas has some serious suggestions for the Port Authority to consider before they raise fares and cut service:

Most people I speak with agree that a fair increase is not out of the question. But more has to be done by the Port Authority to earn our support. Too many times have the commuters paid out increases only to see no return on our investment. Park-and-Ride lots continue to be littered with trash and broken glass. Cars continue to be broken into at these lots with no visible security patrol or maintenance. Buses continue to run in delapidated condition. Some buses have not been cleaned since the Pirates were contenders! It is not unusual for a bus to be full with urine and trash. Bus drivers have no concern for what takes place on the buses. People openly eat and discard their trash as well as grafitti to their hearts content. As a patron I would like to see my funding combat some of these issues.