From now on, the official Snark-Infested Waters URL is http://capenews.net/blogs/snark-infested_waters/ , so please replace that in your bookmarks, since that’s where all the new posts will appear.

No, seriously. The Russkies took us down. How wild is that?

The new site is definitely a work in progress, but from what I understand, one thing folks will not see on there anytime soon, if at all, is the return of free news content. This announcement has apparently gone over like the proverbial lead ballon with some readers, who have been getting their Enterprise news strictly via the web. One letter writer, a former Falmouth resident, chastised us for being “greedy” by wanting to charge people to check us out on-line.

A quick reality check, people. First of all, where is it written that web content has to be free? Or even should be? That’s a very big assumption on your part, bubbi. The rules of the Internet are still being written and rewritten as all of us — content creators and consumers alike — discover what works and what doesn’t. And you know what doesn’t work for the newspaper industry? Giving away the milk for free so you don’t have to buy the cow.

The industry has been swirling ’round the edge of the bowl for a few years now, and it’s safe to say the Internet has played a major role in that, in large part because newspapers have been posting all of their content on-line at no charge (and then wonder why their sales figures are declining, which is rather sad. Gee, a shark bit my leg off and now I’m bleeding to death. Wonder if they’re connected? Nah!). And the papers aren’t exactly discouraging on-line readership by loading up their sites with all kinds of Net-only content, like, say, witty and thoughtful blogs from their reporters (wink nudge).

So at this stage of the game, at least for us, I don’t regard converting our on-line news content to pay-per-view as greed, but self-preservation. You want our news at all, then you need to pay for it, because advertising alone is not cutting it, particularly in this lean economy.

Besides: I could as easily accuse disgruntled readers of greed for not wanting to part with 75 cents to read the product of our efforts.

Web surfers, you might want to get used to the idea of paying for your content in certain circles, because we can’t all be like television and radio and have our product fully supported by outside advertising — and even those who are capable of such support aren’t necessarily going to continue with their generosity at not charging you something.

One of the stories I might be catching up on is the Weixler case out of Mashpee. That was a throughly unpleasant story to work on for so many reasons, including the nagging knowledge that Weixler, a former Mashpee HS student-turned-teaching assistant, can pretty much kiss his entire future good-bye…unless, of course, there is a stunning and –at this juncture — improbable revelation that the whole scenario was cooked up by the alleged victim and is a complete fiction.

I say that twist is improbable based on things Weixler’s lawyer said (before he, wisely, clammed up and stopped talking to the press). Attorney Thomas Guiney said his client claimed the jailbait girls under his charge as a soccer coach were flirting with him, and chided the schools for failing to train Weixler how to resist such advances.

“These young males going into teaching, it’s a very dangerous time for them in this day and age,” Guiney said to various media outlets. “For these young teachers, it’s probably the first time in their lives they are getting so much attention from females, and they don’t know how to handle it…These young teachers don’t recognize boundaries…Before they throw these young teachers in the classroom, they should give them some training in boundaries.”

I think the best response to this line of BS came from Chief Rodney Collins of the MPD: No training the schools could provide would compensate for a character flaw. But I digress…

I have yet to hear of Guiney claiming outright innocense on his client’s behalf; reading between the lines in the lawyer’s statements, it seems he’s trying to show there were a wealth of extenuating circumstances, perhaps to lay the foundation for his defense and an effort to get the charges reduced to something that won’t land Weixler in the pen for a decade, minimum (as a teaching assistant, his is considered a “mandatory reporter” under the law, which means he is legally obligated to report to authorities any suspicions of child abuse. Under a new law enacted last year, mandatory reporters convicted of certain sex crimes serve a 10-year mandatory minimum sentence).

As said previously, unless some major revelation emerges in the trial, Weixler gets to spend at least the next 10 years in prison, where child molesters are welcomed with open arms (read “welcomed” as “pummeled” and “open arms” with “bars of soap wrapped in a towel”). After he gets out, what then? He’ll be a registered sex offender, which limits one’s options for housing and employment, and I can’t imagine he’d be welcomed in many social circles.

And all that for what? An (alleged) tumble with a 14-year-old? It doesn’t matter what the girls were doing — if anything — to “invite” Weixler’s attention. As a grown man, Weixler should have been smart enough and strong enough to resist and refuse, and he could have done so without compromising any non-sexual relationships he had with the young women.

In the theater company I work with in my leisure time, I come into contact with many young people, boys and girls, and I have seen directly the positive impact a platonic friendship with adults can have on their lives. It can bring shy teens out of their shells and build a self-confidence they previously lacked. It can expose them to the possibilites in their lives they’ve perhaps never seen before. It can help them endure personal trials and tragedies. And if the adult is honest enough to remember what life was like for them as a teen, a friendship with an adult can provide a young person with someone who truly empathizes with their daily trials and can offer, without condescension, advice born of practical experience and tempered with the wisdom of hindsight.

Weixler could have offered that. Now, thanks to one horrible mistake, that’s never going to happen, and that’s a pity not only for him, but for the teens whose lives he could have affected for the better.

PS: Actively wishing for Obama’s attempt to fix the economy to fail, just because you don’t like the way he’s going about it, is not just unpatriotic, it’s reprehensible. The President does not fail in a vacuum; the impacts of any failure to right the nation’s economy will be felt far outside his own house (so to speak) and could mean new or continued misery for literally millions of Americans. By wishing failure on Obama, you are, by extent, wishing hardship on your family, friends, and community.

So don’t be a jackass. If I can support the troops without supporting the war, you can support Obama’s end if not his means.

If you didn’t it might have been because the turnout was lousy. Republican Party mouthpiece Barney Keller told the Associated Press the protest “went excellent” even though AP and Boston Globe reporters ticked off a whopping 25 protesters while they were there. Maybe it was a case of quality over quantity. You’d think with the unemployment rate so high, more people would have been available to take part.

Unless they were busy hunting for a job.

Or couldn’t pay for the gas to drive up to Beacon Hill.

Patrick is pitching the 19-cents-per-gallon increase, coupled with some strategic reforms, as a way to tackle our myriad transportation issues, namely long-neglected road and bridge maintenance and repair, skyrocketing tolls along the Turnpike, and the debt of the Big Dig.

From Patrick’s speech last week announcing his plan:

Reforms are vital and therefore central to our plan. But we cannot secure our economic future and the public’s safety on the roads, rails and bridges with reforms alone.  So, our Plan calls for a 19-cent increase in the gas tax. The average driver would pay the equivalent of about one large cup of coffee a week, less than $8 per month. And by restricting the gas tax to the transportation fund, taxpayers will be assured that their money is dedicated exclusively to transportation projects.

Even at the cost of a cup of coffee per week, for some a 19-cent hike in the gas tax will seem too high.  For others it will seem too low. I looked at a range of options…if we wanted to solve all of our accumulated transportation needs, to address the full cost of neglect and inaction over the last 16 or more years, it would take a 73-cent increase in the gas tax!

As you can see, Patrick is extolling the virtues of sacrificing a little now to to save a lot later, and promising that the gas tax money would go toward a very specific purpose.

There are those who support the gas tax for reasons ranging from simple fairness — why should Turnpike users foot the bil by their lonesomes? — to the pragmatism that comes from getting backed into a corner; we’ve done all we can in the way of cutting costs, we’ve got reforms on the way, but we need revenue on top of it all to make this work. Opponents are angry that the governor’s response to the crisis is to increase the financial burden on taxpayers, many of whom are already struggling to pay their day-to-day living expenses.

Regardless of the opinion, everyone is reacting very much out of a sense of self-preservation. Those who say let’s share the pain so we can get rid of the Turnpike tolls? Turnpike users who think they’ll spend less on the gas tax per year than on tolls. Those who object to an increase in the gas tax? People who drive a lot and don’t use the toll roads much.

I have to agree with those who think a gas tax hike is lazy thinking. There are still a lot of places to look before the Legislature’s gaze falls on our wallets.

Let’s start with Patrick himself. He still driving that big Cadillac? Yep. That’s not a fuel-efficient car. The traditional Ford Crown Victoria isn’t much better, but it’s better. I’d suggest following the lead of many police departments and jumping to the Dodge Charger, specifically a six-cylinder model or that neat model that can run on fewer cylinders, then kick in the others when a little extra oomph is needed.

What about our legislators? They all receive a per diem to reimburse the cost of travel to the State House, along with any food or hotel expenses. Last year the Legislature collectively filed for more than $387,000 in per diems, and these they got on top of their salaries — which, if you’ll remember, went up by $3,300 a year in January. They now collect a tidy $61k a year, plus stipends if they have a leadership or committee chair position. Sorry, people: you wanted this job ostensibly to serve the people, so take one for the team: vote to strike the per diems and pay for your gas, food, and lodging out-of-pocket.

As for that whole Bg Dig debt thing? Patrick himself said the debt was due to cost overruns arising from project mismagement…in other words, Joe Average didn’t cause the problem, so why should any of us pay the penalty for others’ inability to run a major municipal construction project properly? That’s the Turnpike Authority’s burden to bear, and I’m sure there are some exorbitant salaries that could be scaled back.

At the end of the day, the need for more revenue may be unavoidable, but before our governor starts talking about the sacrifices we should make, he needs to do some more housecleaning first. Charity starts at home, Mr. Patrick, or in this case, at the State House.

Note that these are the same people whose mantra in the second term of the Bush Administration was, “You need to give the surge time to work.”

But I guess we’d better get used to four years of bitterness from the GOP, which is largely in the same position the Democratic Party was in Bush’s first term, when they got to call all the shots and scoff whenever the Dems griped that they were being shut out of the process. The shoe is now on the other foot, and they’re finding it an uncomfortable fit, and it’s pathetic, if not outright contemptible, that their attitudes of the past eight years have done a complete 180.

In the Bush years, Republican-friendly pundits — looking your way, O’Reilly and Hannity — berated anyone who disagreed with Dubya. Questioning his (ahem) wisdom, activey wanting his administration to fail, these were the behaviors of an unpatriotic traitor (their words). Where is the rebuke for anyone expressing identical opinions about Obama and his policies? Oh, right: it’s okay now, because Bush was an unrecognized genius and Obama is practically the herald of Galactus, come to announce that it’s time to assume crash positions because the planet’s about to fry in a cosmic maelstrom. And the stimulus plan is apparently Taa II, the vehicle by which Galactus will arrive.

(C’mon, haven’t you people ever read “Fantastic Four”? It’s only the world’s greatest comic magazine. Philistines.)

I hold no illusions about the stimulus plan; I admit readily it might not work and we’re going to be saddled with paying off the debt until the 22nd century. But conversely, the Republican-backed all-tax-break plan might not have worked either. The theory is sound enough: let people hold onto more of their money and they’ll spend it on stuff at businesses, which will have to expand to meet the increasing demand for goods and services, they pay more taxes, their new employees will pay taxes and spend their money on stuff, etc., ad infinitum.

I have yet to hear anyone in the GOP explain how quickly this approach would yield results, and whether the results would come more quickly than Obama’s approach…bearing in mind that a lot of our bare necessities are now more expensive because just about every business is jacking up their prices in a desperate effort to stay afloat and avoid (unsuccessfully) cutting more jobs. I mean, a year ago I could buy a package of Purdue “Perfect Portions” chicken breasts at a supermarket for about $7. Now, I’m paying nearly $10 for a package that now has only five breasts instead of six.

No, a tax break would not instantly give me any appreciable amount of discretionary income I could fritter away on luxuries. If I did see any kind of gain, you know where that money would go? Savings, baby! I’d be socking money away like a squirrel stashing acorns before the first frost, just in case the economy were to bottom out again. I’ve been lucky in that my wife and I both still have jobs, but as someone once said to me, most times you’re in the car passing the car broken down on the side of the road, but the day will come when you’re the one broken down on the side of the road.

It’s going to be a long time before the average person is going to have enough money to throw around for non-essentials, and even longer before they feel confident enough to do so. Obama’s plan is not going to change that, nor would the GOP’s all-singing all-dancing all-tax-cutting plan. Instead of complaining that the Obama-approved plan is not going to do the job, quickly or at all, perhaps the GOP should put a little more energy into making it work.

But I guess if they did that, it would be harder for them to point their fingers at Obama and the Dems and claim blamelessness if the plan should fail.

Thanks for nothing, GOP. Really.

I’m going to assume you don’t live in a cave and have heard about the six Falmouth teens (ages 12 to 14) who got nailed passing around via their cell phones a picture of a naked 13-year-old girl — the girlfriend of one of the boys, FYI. For this foray into the growing epidemic of “sexting,” the practice of passing along X-rated images via handheld electronic devices, they’re now facing child porn charges, expulsion from school, and no small amount of public ridicule.

I’ve been perusing the comment sections of various on-line news sources, and everyone has already broken into their two factions: the people who want to see the boys nailed to a wall, perhaps literally; and those who are extolling the theory that boys will be boys and everyone is overreacting.

The child porn charges may seem extreme, but allow me to interject a little realism on this point: it is standard procedure to (to coin a phrase) over-charge a culprit at the outset. Law enforcement officers file their charges based on the evidence at hand, and they usually go for the most severe charge that fits the evidence. Were these kids in possession of a nude picture of an underage girl? If the answer is yes, that’s possession of child pornography. Did they pass it around? If so, that’s dissemination of child porn.

It is not until this case starts wending its way through the courts that the telling details and nuances will be revealed, and chances are the charges will get downgraded to something a little less severe. A child porn charge might not stick once all the circumstances are known, but a lesser charge might.

I’m less concerned with the legal aspects of the case than with the extreme opinions as to these boys’ ultimate fates, and both side are being very unreasonable. Those who are gathering sharp rocks for the public stoning are not allowing themselves to consider the fact that, at a median age of 13, people are in many respects very ignorant. As someone once remarked, it’s a teenager’s job to be stupid. They’re supposed to screw up, frequently, regularly, and sometimes spectacularly. If you’re saying to yourself right now, “I never did anything idiotic as a teenager,” then you are a lying sack…or you grew up chained to a radiator and only recently escaped your captors, which means you’re dealing with a far different set of problems.

(And I wouldn’t be too quick to dump this entirely in the parents’ laps. Having good, attentive, morally grounded parents is not a guarantee that the child will not prove a bad seed, or even goof-proof. It’s a good place to start looking for the deeper causal factors, but no one should be stunned if it’s revealed that the parents did everything right.)

Then there are the rabid defenders of youthful indescretion, those who are trying to find every possible excuse to exonerate these boys. Some are blaming the girl, and who knows? Maybe she did get this sick sad ball rolling by taking a naughty pic of herself and sending it to her boyfriend. This does not excuse that boy from passing the fun along to his mates that they might share a saucy larf, ho-ho.

Many are brushing this episode off on the basis that, as mentioned above, the kids are young and stupid and had no real grasp of what they were doing. Yes, they may lack the deeper understanding of their actions, but they can’t claim complete innocence either. They had some level of awareness.

Remember when Coca-Cola scuttled their product in favor of “New Coke,” then, after people protested the change, switched back to the original formula? The switch back was greeted with a huge spike in sales, and folks speculated the entire thing was a cunning ploy to boost lagging sales and put Coke back on top over its rival Pepsi. A Coke exec, when confronted with this theory, said, “We’re not that smart and we’re not that stupid.”

These kids aren’t smart enough to fully wrap their brains around what they did, but they’re not so oblivious that they’re all sitting at home right now saying, “What did we do? We were just goofing around!”

The people prepping their pitchforks and torches need to back off and let these boys have what will no doubt be (and should be) a very hard learning experience.  The people who want to sweep this all under the rug? Same goes for you. The kids did something wrong, maybe not with malicious intent, but it was still wrong and, yes, illegal. There must be repercussions, if not in the name of punishment, in the name of delivering a much-needed wake-up call.

The American public is wondering: in light of this woman’s life situation, why would she want more children? Why would any doctor in his right mind consent to perform this procedure? What sort of quality of life will this entire family have? Those answers may be forthcoming in tonight’s interview with Nadia Suleman on “Dateline.”

What I’m wondering is: how many people in this country are looking at Nadia Suleman and thinking, “I’m so jealous.”

Don’t laugh too hard; there are people out there thinking that, and they mean it. They want to be The Brady Bunch, Eight is Enough, and Just The 10 Of Us  in one crazy-huge lump. They turn on TLC to watch shows like Jon & Kate Plus Eight and 17 Kids And Counting with gut-wrenching envy.

In some cases these people are slaves to their reproductive impulses, in others they’re taking God’s command to go forth and be fruitful to a ridiculous extreme, but in either case they’re fully bought into a pervasive societal attitude that we are all here to breed.

I see this attitude a lot. Being a married man of three-plus years, I already hear the phrase “…when you have kids of your own” fairly regularly, and my wife and I are at that point where people are going to start asking us “When are you going to have kids?” on a daily basis. When we get that question now, our response is always, “We don’t want kids.” This is, almost without exception, met with a look of stunned disbelief or a patronizing smile, the latter of which is accompanied by, “Oh, you’ll change your mind.”

That we don’t want to pump out babies is inconceivable to most. I want to know why we’re the freaks.

There are currently an estimated 6.7 BILLION people skittering about Mother Earth right now. This is nearly quardruple the world population a mere 100 years ago. At the current rate of growth we’ll hit nearly nine billion by 2050.

Once upon a time, there was a definite need for us to pitch in and contribute (so to speak). If you grew up in ancient Greece or Rome and saw your thirtieth birthday, congratulations — time for Michael York to escort your ancient carcass to the Lastday festival. Even in the early part of the 20th century living to forty was a feat. With people dropping so easily, of course we had to rut our brains out; we spent millennia on the brink of extinction, so we were literally in a procreate-or-die situation.

Ah, but then science and medicine came along to wipe out a great number of the things that killed us off so blithely. The current world average life expectancy is a shade over 66 years old.

Unfortunately for us and our planet, our instinct to reproduce has not adjusted to the realities of our modern world. We’re running out of space (something we can’t make more of, unless you want to be the guy living on the 100th floor of a hi-rise at the South Pole), we’re running out of resources, and our very presence damages the planet every day.

But, honestly, I’m not at all thinking on such a grand scale when it comes to the subject of passing on the good family name. I’m more selfish than that. I want to be able to sleep through the night without interruption. I want to be able to go to a movie or socialize with friends without having to dig up a babysitter or, worse, pass entirely for want of said sitter. I want to hold onto my modest income and spend it on me.

On that latter note, I know damn well I’m not in a good financial position to afford a child. My wife and I are meeting our expenses now and adding a body to the household would necessitate one of us (me, most likely) getting a second job just to pay for the kid…and this assumes that my wife returns to her job, because even with two jobs I wouldn’t make enough to allow her to play stay-at-home mom. This, of course, means shuffling the kid off to daycare or hiring a nanny until the kid is old enough to go to school. If we’re lucky, we could also ship the child off to an after-school program to look after him for a few more hours, because we wouldn’t get out of our jobs until 6:30 at night…and if I’m VERY lucky, I would actually get to see the kid for a while before I zipped off to my second job. Then my wife could either spend time with the critter, which would cost her the time she needs to develop her side-business; or work on her side-business and leave the kid to entertain itself. I reckon it’d eventually get used to us not being around.

In case I didn’t sell my point clearly enough: raising a child is bloody hard. It takes time. It takes money. It takes Herculean effort. Having a child is so much more than merely popping one out and loving it and trusting that the world will spin in your direction so you can take care of it properly.

I wish, for the sake of the Suleman gang, someone had driven that point home to their mother much sooner.