Epitome of stupidity = WI Governor Doyle and WI legislature.

Back in March 2009, I blogged about Wisconsin raising cigarette taxes and its efforts to ban smoking within indoor facilities. Since then, the Wisconsin legislature has passed the smoking ban, which will take effect on July 5 of this year.

But will it? According to the April 29 edition of The Shepherd Express, Milwaukee's alternative newspaper, there might be a slight loophole - actually two loopholes. One loophole was fixed last week but one apparently still remains.

After the correction (according to the bill), The Shepherd Express states:

...if there are two or more walls with windows that cover more than one quarter of the wall's surface, and those windows are open, then smokers are free to light up.
Thanks, Wisconsin legislature. I still think the bill is bullshit. I don't understand how the government can tell the owner of any establishment how to run his or her business. If non-smokers don't like the smoke, go somewhere else. There are probably plenty of non-smoking business owners who have smoke-free establishments. If employees are bothered by the smoke, work someplace else. Can I come into your home and tell you what to do?

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"Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus."

"Is There a Santa Claus?" was the title of an editorial appearing in the September 21, 1897 edition of the New York Sun. The editorial, which included the famous reply "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus", is seen below.

VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! How dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest man that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank GOD! He lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

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