OBL (Odd Bald Liberal)

Middle Class Retooling

2012-01-31T11:02:00.000-08:00

This article in the New York Times, published January 21st, talks about how Apple (and other electronics manufacturers) works to make their consumer electronics less expensive, and details the requirements of manufacturing as well as the requirements of American workers versus Chinese workers.

While I get that globalization and the like make it all the more difficult for such work to be performed by Americans (since the Chinese are willing to live in dorms and work 6 12-hour days a week in order to pay their families back home or not pay anyone but a bank account somewhere), the part that's so depressing about it is that it appears there's no end in sight.

Workers willing to work long hours for low wages is as old as history. They're always available, there will always be someone who'd prefer 12 hours a day in an air-conditioned building and a warm place to sleep versus starving to death. Well, mostly, anyway.

What will Americans do now? Foxconn hired 85,000 engineers (so-called) to oversee the 250,000 workers in the plant. These engineers don't need a BS to do their job, something the equivalent of an AA would do. While it might take 6 months for an American manufacturing firm to find this many engineers, in China it took three weeks to ramp up. Why?

Simple. Infrastructure. Which we don't invest in much anymore.

Even if you could hire this many employees to work a single building like this in the States, OSHA would disallow it on the basis of safety. Foxconn has had to hire traffic cops to guide employees coming and going from the building during shift change.

Essentially, what they're telling us is that, in order to make it in the middle class, you really need to rethink the idea of human dignity and worth. We really need to get back to the days when humans were simply interchangeable cogs in a great machine, hired for cheap when young, and discarded as soon as the part wears out or a cheaper, younger, hungrier version becomes available. Metropolis wasn't just a movie, it was the shape of things to come.

Side note: I wonder if we know what happens to former Foxconn workers? Anyone done that bit of reporting yet? We know that many of them kill themselves (or threaten to do so)...

As a consumer in a consumer society (and an Apple fanboy to boot), I know there are things that are expected of any modern person in America: you own a car, a cellphone, maybe a laptop or a pad computer - but some kind of computer and some sort of portable computing device. Many businesses are asking their employees to provide their own devices at work, and are building new wireless networks that are at once more simplified and more complex in order to both facilitate the employee bringing in their own gear, but also protecting company information. In the old days, policemen had to provide their own uniforms, their own nightsticks, even their own guns. (ammo was provided, generally) So it's good to know there's been progress in this regard.

So, as far as progress is concerned, we've managed to outsource much of our manufacturing, we're underfunding school systems, so fewer and fewer high-caliber people will be entering the workforce (and we won't need them anyway, so long as there's a China), we've built more prisons than anywhere else, and we keep building the armed forces larger and larger. We'll need people to pick crops (and the Hispanics are being scared off by our own draconian immigration laws, as well as the decline of such opportunities), serve food, wash cars, trim lawns, etc., etc.

Was this what the Founding Fathers had in mind? A great nation, wealthy beyond their wildest dreams, wherein 90% of the population will eventually (if current trends maintain) be living on the margins?

We Hate Us, and Nothing We Stand For

2012-01-11T14:08:00.000-08:00

When the GOP runs its convention in the future and they decide who they want to run the country as soon as Obama implodes and vanishes (since that's what they're trying to make happen), we will then discover that Republicans can, after all, vote for someone with a strange religion, even if he's robotic and painful to watch, has no sense of humor, and actually believes that he was (at some point) in real danger of receiving a pink slip. Where's the danger when you're a multi-millionaire, right? If I was a multi-millionaire, losing my job wouldn't really hurt me all that much...

But what really gets us libs going is the idea that Romney is actually stupid enough to think he can win. Besides his extraordinary number of doofusy misstatements, he epitomizes the old joke about the guy whose stick up his ass has a stick up its ass. Meanwhile, his version of humor is kind of creepy - when he gets close to a woman on stage, he reacts as if she just grabbed his ass, you know, "ha. ha. ha."

Now that we've lost Hermain Cain as a human comedy punching bag, and Michelle Bachmann has to go back to saying insane things to smaller groups (while still being a congresscritter), we're stuck with Mittens, Newt, Santorum, Huntsman and Paul, all of whom think they can capture the undecided, independent voter.

Republican strategists haven't forgotten one key fact in their calculations - the independent voter is actually a liberal who hates the term. Kind of like closeted gay Republicans, the "independent voter" is actually a self-loathing liberal who has been trained by years of well-publicized misinformation that liberals and liberal causes are bad for the country, and yet would vote for them if presented individually on a ballot. When asked questions like, "would you prefer a public option in the Health Care Bill", seventy percent of the nation says yes, while half of that group calls the Democrats "Socialists." When asked if taxing the super-wealthy would be a good idea, that same seventy percent says yes, and the same half of that group refers to the Occupy Wall Street protests as "Class Warfare", as if class warfare is a bad thing.

This is the problem we face, and we still haven't found a way to change their minds. It doesn't help that the only reasonably leftie news source is MSNBC, and I don't get that, since I hate network TV. Most people like network TV, and that may be why so many people are so wildly disinformed. Every time I see someone defending the Iraq war, or indefinite detention, or whatever, in a fictional TV show (like NCIS, or Law And Order: SVU, or Bones), the person with the Liberal/Leftist point of view is always, ALWAYS, portrayed as a screechy conspiracy-monger who alienates everyone around them, or a scientific-type, knowitall weenie (and nerds are invariably annoying). Fair and Balanced doesn't exist in fictional shows, let alone in the newsrooms of America. Even video games have a highly one-sided view of the current states of war and conflict. Americans are always a force for good, even if what they're doing violates Geneva or would cause an even greater rift between us and whoever it is we're supposed to be "protecting." The last time I ever saw a truly thorny political football handled with a reasonable level of balance was Steven Soderbergh's Traffic.

Unless and until we manage to figure out a way to get people to listen without first having to say "will you just LISTEN TO ME", we are going nowhere as a force for much of anything, let alone good.

The only way we're winning this year is if the economy continues its snail-like pace towards improvement. If Obama ratchets up the rhetoric, and then actually follows through (the appointment of Cordray to the CFPB was a step in the right direction, though a very, very short step), things may improve. The signing of the NDAA was a sad blip on the radar, and I do hope he does something publicly to denounce the various provisions regarding the rapidly crumbling edifice of habeus corpus. But we are voting for him, right? Probably, anyway? Because we really really don't want Romney or Paul or Sanitorium in the White House, right?

Right?

Note: Some of the reason I have gathered enough hope to my bosom in order to write again is because I'm watching the DVD collection of The Wire my wife bought me for Christmas. If the "entertainment industry" is capable of producing this, what else is America capable of?

Christians Piss Me off, While God Only Annoys

2011-12-01T09:07:00.001-08:00

We begin our sermon today with a message from Kentucky: flaunting your miscegenation will not be tolerated. A church in Pike County, Kentucky has forbidden interracial couples from participating in any church services, except for funerals. "All are welcome", goes the saying. Y'all can come in, but God forbid you do anything that other people can actually, you know, see, because God'll burn the church down if He sees a white girl playin' the piano while her black boyfriend sings of His glory.

A fellow by the name of Melvin Thompson, the former pastor of Gulnare Freewill Baptist church, told Stella Harville that her services would no longer be required if she insisted on having her black fiancee sing with her in church, because it would decrease church "unity". Stella's fiancee is a man by the name of Ticha Chikuni. He is a native of Zimbabwe. Now, lest you think this is all one's man's doing, remember I said former pastor. Last Sunday, church members voted 9-6 in favor of Thompson's ban on interracial couples performing in church services.

Miscegenation, by the way, is a made-up, purely American word, developed in the middle of the nineteenth century by a couple of Democrats (this was when the Dems were the forerunners of the Klan and the Republicans were people like Abraham Lincoln - the more things change, the more they change a whole heckuva lot) in a pamphlet that espoused the cause of race-mixing as a great thing that would unite the nation, and gave the credit to Republicans for having thought it up in the first place. This was intended as political sabotage, because, of course, everyone knows that blacks and whites shouldn't mix.

Wow. Welcome to the nineteenth century everyone, alive and kicking in good old Pike County, Kentucky.

As a man in mixed-race relationship, I have experienced first-hand the bigotry of my fellow citizens, especially the ones with the big American flags on the sides of their trailers. I have been told to move along by folks, simply for having a Pacific Island wife, while the all-white couples (with the multiple piercings, tattoos and ripped jeans) are left alone to do as they please. I know racism still exists, though it's usually a little more subtle.

But the Right-wing still wears a lot of its bigotry on its sleeve (Limbaugh referring to Michelle Obama's "uppityness" should have got him fired). No way that Herman Cain would have ever gotten a nomination, even though the "our blacks are better than your blacks" meme sounded a lot like the Right wing actually believed their own propaganda for a moment, right when Herman Cain was about to collapse in a heap under the weight of his own stupidity and immorality. Because when it comes down to it, the Right wing in this country really, really doesn't like negroes any more than they like orientals or injuns.

Unless they stay in their place, of course.

Oh, and God does have a sense of humor.

Alcohol - the Cause & Cure

2011-11-09T13:09:00.000-08:00

As the Occupy movement grows and grows, it does this old cynic's heart good to see that many progressive outcomes have been won this last voting day. (I'd call it election day, but it was mostly about initiatives and recalls, if I understand the news correctly) Off-year voting days are less than normally populated, but we apparently had a pretty good turnout, if only because a lot of dumb initiatives got shit-canned.

Here in Washington State, one of our largest retailers paid good money to be allowed to sell liquor, and they got their money's worth - you'll be able to buy booze in places other than state-run liquor stores as of June of next year. Meanwhile, the government-run shops will mostly close down (inventory's too expensive for the current franchisees to be able to buy themselves into the likker biz), and the only place you'll be able to buy booze will be in stores with a footprint larger than 10,000 square feet. This lets out the local gas stations, but it also lets out the kind of places I saw in San Francisco last time I was down there, such as the Beer & Bourbon store between Castro and Noe Valley.

Meanwhile in Republican politics, you have Herman Cain's campaign flaming out in grand style on various and sundry charges, ranging from being a deadbeat diner to sexual harassment to outright sexual assault. Of course, when the charges are being aired, he plays the race card, while simultaneously negating said card by saying he doesn't have any "hard evidence" to back it up.

Being an asshole is trans-racial.

While I abhor his behavior regarding Ms. Bialek, I think stiffing a couple of invited guests for the cost of dinner, after you order the most expensive wine on the menu, seems like the sort of behavior we need in a President right now. How are we going to erase the National Debt? Cain's solution: stiff China for the bill...

Rick Perry has now had many offers for either a new mixologist, or perhaps less effective drugs. His last speech had all the earmarks of Bad Lip Reading's work, but it wasn't them; it was really he, Rick "Goodhair" Perry, who couldn't make an English sentence work in his favor for nearly fifteen minutes. Unbelievable that someone didn't hook him off the stage after the first three.

Newt tried to up his cred by debating Cain and Cain alone the other week. Haven't really heard from him since. Not sure what they talked about.

Ron Paul has taken to calling Elizabeth Warren a Socialist, because Ms. Warren had the audacity to tell her audience that, without education, roads, bridges, cops and firemen, all this rugged individualism that Republicans espouse would have taken place in a much smaller arena. Yes, they might have succeeded on their own, but they'd be lonely. Very, very lonely.

Mitt Romney is probably going to be the front runner. Which means he still has a chance to fuck up even worse than he already has. Once he's determined the appropriate stance to take on a subject, he will then discover a better stance to take, and then a different stance to take, until finally, he decides on a final stance to take, just before he takes his stance on that subject. He will then be criticized by a tiny demographic within his larger demographic, after which he will have a new stance on the same subject with a small change in nuance designed to make that stance seem as much like his original stance as possible, while bearing no resemblance to it at all.

Here in Washington, the change in liquor laws can't come soon enough.

Slogan-y T-Shirt Arrives!

2011-09-01T12:51:00.000-07:00

So, I got the right t-shirt in yesterday's mail (that's Monday the 31st of August). And it says:

fight

back

2012

So, here's where I get a little confused, or possibly concerned - I know the package is from the DCCC (I did, at least, finally look a the packaging slip). I know what's happening in the real world of politics, and know that there are many things to fight back against. I'm just not sure anyone looking at this t-shirt would have the least clue as to what it's talking about. There are no logos, no indicators of any sort of specific point of view, again, no particular message on this t-shirt, other than fighting some nameless foe. Perhaps this is the t-shirt of Mr. Furious, who's only super-power is his boundless rage.

Perhaps others will believe I'm a fan of, say, the WWF. No, they wouldn't, because THEY WANT PEOPLE TO KNOW WHO THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT. A child of three knows more about selling a slogan than these twits. A Tea Party goon could be wearing this t-shirt and it would have as much meaning. The wrong meaning, of course, but who cares if no one gets the intended message?

Oh, and it's still scratchy as hell.

I'm only wearing this t-shirt when I'm fighting back weeds or termites. I wouldn't want to confuse the sentient. And I'm making my own t-shirt that says:

opposed

to asparagus

1997

That will convince someone of the rightness of my cause, I am certain.

...And All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt

2011-08-23T12:55:00.000-07:00

So, I sent a little money to the DNCC or the CREEP or something like that, for the promise of my name on the tablet of fame (or some webwall or other where they post the names of everyone who contributed more than three dollars to the latest Presidential Election Fiasco), and for a cool t-shirt with some sort of I Heart Politics slogan on it.

I got the t-shirt. It's white. Just a white T. Nothing indicating the affiliation of the wearer or the maker or the provider. In other words, neutral to the point of blandness. And it's scratchy. 100% Cotton with a secret ingredient: sheet rock.

These guys even had the balls to ask me (via an insert in the package, without which I'd have no idea why I was receiving a plain, white, scratchy T), that, now that I'd gotten my cool T-shirt, how about giving us some more money with NO strings or gifts attached?!?

Now, I don't contribute to politics to get "stuff" (though I'll take what I can get). It is unfortunate, however, that this event reinforced, yet again, the profound disdain I feel for the electoral system, politicians, and political functionaries of this once-great nation. Here's a simple request: "give us some money, we'll send you a t-shirt with a slogan on it, showing what a proud (or at least not totally upset) Obama supporter you are". And they can't do it. They can't make that simple a promise and follow it through to completion without screwing it up, and screwing it up in a way that says "HI, WE'RE A BIG BUNCH OF SCREW-UPS!"

Oh, yeah, and "GIVE US MORE MONEY!"

At this point, I'm more likely to support a Lolcat than give money to a political party ever again.

If you've noticed, I haven't been posting much lately, and it's due to the fact that, once again, I got tired of writing "Jesus we're a bunch of dumbasses," over and over again. It's depressing and edifies no one. So, to summarize the current crop of people running for President:

Bachmann: crazy religious zealot who believes that gay can be cured, and who's husband SOUNDS REALLY GAY. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Nice corn dog work. Possible alternate career there.

Cain: The Republican Angry Black Guy. Used to sell awful pizza. Now he has to give it away to get people to listen to him. Wouldn't hire a Muslim (well, probably not). Not electable, because Republicans don't really like black people. Oh, they SAY they do...

Gingrich: He's still in the race? What the fuck for? And why does his wife smile like that? WHY? Doesn't it hurt? Are her teeth positively charged and her lips negative? Perhaps she's similar to Voldemort - he has no nose, she has no lips? Is there a string, holding the corners of her mouth back? Since we know what Newt's sexual proclivities are, don't those massive teeth kinda hurt? Or maybe they're retractable? Or false? Gross...

Huntsman: believes in science, but otherwise no redeeming features that I'm aware of. Possibly because when a Republican says Global Warming is Real and Evolution is Real, everyone forgets to ask him how he feels about everything else.

Obama: First Black President. Must be nice to have a title like that. Or not, since the abuse he's received so far in his Presidency makes what Clinton went through seem kind of mild by comparison, and Clinton GOT a blowjob for his troubles. Passed the most watered-down health care bill anyone ever could have imagined. Closed Gitmo (DOH!). Ended combat operations in Iraq (DOH!). Ended Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Killed Bin Laden. Assisted in the overthrow of Gadhafi and Mubarak (though in the case of Mubarak, we mostly just watched - which was the right thing to do). While I am opposed to everyone else running, I'm not terribly for this guy (see the "T-Shirt incident").

Paul (the Elder): libertarian, has a few ideas I'm for (legalizing drugs, bringing our troops home from pretty much everywhere), and a few ideas that are really obviously awful (no EPA, no Dept of Ed, not much regulation of much of anything at all, because they'll all behave themselves, right?). The Right hates him for wanting to downsize the military, and the Left hates him for being ideologically wacky.

Perry: trying to out-crazy Bachmann while out-dumbing Bush. Proud of his record on executing the innocent. Proud of his ability to get more people hired because they moved to Texas and were willing take shitty jobs for shitty pay. The things this guy's proud of, other people would be ashamed of. Just wait, though, he'll go and do something really, really stupid, and then he'll be done.

Romney: "corporations are people, my friends" oooooh boy. That's done.

And out on the fringes:

Palin: again, why is anyone listening to this sorority bobblehead figure? This English-mangler? Who cares?

So, from the defeated, demoralized Left, I sit here, sniping at the crazies, working for what I consider to be a better tomorrow (I'm learning to brew beer!), and hoping someone comes along who can tell people the truth about this great nation without getting themselves shot in the process.

Until then, I'm thinking of sending the postage paid envelope back, attached to the plain white T-shirt, wrapped around a cinder block.

Eeny, Meeny, Money, MOM!!!!

2011-08-03T09:46:00.000-07:00

Back in 2008 (remember 2008 - we were looking at electing the first Black President ever, and the downturn in Wall Street meant we were just demoralized enough to actually do that, kind of a childlike state, hoping the Angry Black Guy would actually take the fight to the Rich White Assholes who'd tanked the country), anyway, back in 2008, weeks, and even days before Lehman and Bear Stears went belly-up, Moody's, Standard & Poors, and Fitch were all giving them AAA ratings, even though they were about to totally implode and disappear up their own orifices forever. So, either the ratings agencies didn't know what was coming, or they were paid to keep their damn mouths shut until it was far too late.

There were hearings after it was all over. Just so, you know, we'd know what happened. Obviously, there was never any intent to actually prosecute any of these people, otherwise they probably wouldn't have gone up in front of Congress and spoken anything even vaguely resembling the truth in the first place. To a fault, the ratings agencies' representatives all stated that their ratings were simply opinions, and no one should take them seriously. Well.... Ain't that a surprise. Here I thought this shit was supposed to actually mean something.

Fast forward to the last week or so. Now we hear that Moody's, Standard & Poor's, etc., are threatening the US Treasury bond with a downgrade to AA status, from our current solid state of being Triple-A. The world's reaction (when they aren't yawning) has been that the US Treasury Bond would no longer be the drug of choice for other countries needing to stabilize their own currency. Interest rates will skyrocket, credit will collapse, yadda yadda yadda. So now we have this debt deal that builds in a lot of "triggers" that will force Dems to do something they don't want to do, and/or force Repugnicans to things they don't want to do. All because ratings agencies have an "opinion."

So, just to follow this logical fallacy, if it's just an opinion, why does anyone give a damn? If it's more than an opinion, why aren't some of these nightmare opinionaters either in pound-me-in-the-ass prison, or at least out on the street, begging for change?

Have I missed something?

God Called - He Wants His Campaign Back!

2011-06-06T13:16:00.000-07:00

My Dad, a long time ago, had an idea for an anti-war movie, wherein everyone who wanted to work for the government sort of volunteered, and if they decided to have a war with someone, only the folks who were at the highest level of government (Congress, the President and his Cabinet) would suffer or die, and it would be a totally random event within a few minutes of the war being declared. One guy would get a fast acting poison injected and die, another would lose the use of an arm, an eye, or both legs, another would catch some horrible, non-communicative disease that would ruin his/her life forever, but no one - not one of them - would escape totally unscathed. All would end up psychologically scarred in some way, either through drugs or via some physical effect.

Unlike now.

Called, by God!

Michelle Bachmann has become the latest Repugnican to be "called by God" to run for President. So she's exploring the possibilities and praying a lot and putting up a Facebook page (God told her to put up a Facebook page?). God apparently also called Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Newt Gingrich ("Oh God, You Devil"?), and now (try not to laugh too hard), Rick Santorum. I'm wondering if God's going to be calling Sarah Palin anytime soon.

I guess my question under these circumstances: who does God actually favor? Jesus was supposedly His son, and look what happened to him...

Now we elect folks who run on a "no unnecessary wars" platform, who start unnecessary wars, and fail to end wars they pledged to end. I'm certainly not Obama's biggest fan, but I am loathe to vote for someone on the opposing ticket, no matter who they are. I do love the fact that folks are handing them Bibles and/or asking them about whether Jesus would let old people die in agony or let poor people starve to death. In some ways, I am thrilled that the GOP is putting up so many people who believe in the beyond-free-market policies of Ayn Rand. While this represents only the second-most extreme version of conservative thought (you know Hitler's in Hell, still shouting "Wir sind die Nummer eins!*"), it's just beyond the pale enough for the generally misinformed and mildly dim voting blocks in this country to sit up and take notice that maybe these wackos either aren't playing with a full deck, or they really don't care about other people.

Or both.

In the case of Michelle, there are so many quotes attributable to her, I won't waste your time listing them all. She rails against the Bush administration for their Socialist-y education program, or the Obama administration for their Socialist-y Health Care Reform law, or Planned Parenthood for ignoring human trafficking.

Wait, what?

Dunno. I've looked on her website for the link to Live Action (which is the group she says claims to have irrefutable evidence), but couldn't find it. My personal favorite thing, said about her by the guy who runs PolitiFact, is that she's the only person on their website who has had every single quote attributed to her refuted in one way or another. In other words, "How to be Wrong About Everything" will be the title of her unauthorized autobiography.

Sarah's On The Bus

In other parts of our great land, Sarah Palin is riding around in a bus festooned with an image of the flag, the Constitution, and other patriotic symbols, telling everyone that she isn't sure God wants her to run for Pres. Or giving everyone highly misguided history lectures. Faux News has now made yet another mistake by their graphics department regarding whether they can tell the difference between Sarah Palin and Tina Fey (they can't). Oh, and the Devine Sarah is in a move called (really not kidding here) "The Undefeated". Not "The Quitter", not "The Clothes Horse" - "The Undefeated". Which fits, of course.

This irony meter only goes up to eleven.

* We're Number One!

Jobs Plan As Seen From Far Away

2011-05-31T15:21:00.000-07:00

This Republican Jobs Plan, which they claim is the "detailed" version, has very little detail, other than a lot of bullets on things that may or may not create jobs.

If it passes.

Anyway, it's ten pages in large type, three-and-a-half pages of which are devoted to full-page graphics or photos of various significant things. One of the full page graphics is a guy in horn-rims reading a piece of paper between two stacks of paper. This, I believe, is meant to indicate a man beset by financial worries, or perhaps a man who is trying to fill out his taxes. This amuses me, since I suspect someone wearing horn-rims would probably use a computer. But maybe I'm just being stereotypical in my thinking.

Anyway, back the very lean meat of this "detailed", essentially six-and-a-half-page proposal.

Regulations are all Evil... EVIL... EEEEEEEEEEVIL

First up for the chopping block are regulations (like the EPA regulating greenhouse gases - JOB KILLING!). Even worse, this document claims the government is currently contemplating another 184 new regs, which could cost the economy as much as $100 million each. Or a large turnip. Their argument once again devolves to allowing Congress to look at every regulation and run a cost-benefit analysis to make sure the regulation is worth doing. If you're the local Rep for W R Grace, you'll think twice before allowing certain chemicals to fall under any regulatory agency in the government, or else Grace might send the campaign contributions they have earmarked for the year to someone else. Oh, sorry, we meant that the health benefits for regulating this particular arsenide is far outweighed by the economic benefits to Grace & Co... I mean, to the local community!!! Human beings are worth exactly x dollars. And so on...

Next - TAXES.

Corporations pay way too much in taxes, and they want to bring the top tax rate down to 25%. Fine by me as long as they pay their taxes. Tax revenues taken from businesses are lower than they have been in forty years. No business I know pays the full rate of 39% anywhere in the world, and if they do, they should fire their accountant. When you consider that Exxon and GE both managed to avoid paying any taxes on billions and billions of profits. The Repugnicans also want to allow profits made overseas (that have already been taxed overseas) to be brought back to the States and not be subject to taxes. As opposed to leaving them overseas where they will continue to remain untaxed.

So let me get this straight: Exxon - who paid no US income taxes on profits last year, and most specifically paid no US income taxes on profits that they made overseas - Exxon should be allowed to being that money back to the States and not pay taxes on it, either. If they bring it back to here, will they have to pay taxes on it overseas, still? The Rs refer to this as double taxation, but I dunno, if I make money as an American corporation while overseas, and the other country wants me to pay taxes to them, I think that's fair. I also think that (since I'm an American corporation) I should also pay taxes to the US Federal Government, since otherwise I pay no taxes to them at all, while enjoying the benefits of being a corporate citizen in the States. So they want Exxon to be able to take the money that it makes in Ireland, maybe not have to pay taxes in Ireland (because the profits are coming back to the States, after all), and then bring it home and not pay taxes here either.

Which is kinda funny, since it appears Exxon doesn't make any money in the States at all. I don't know how they achieve this, but they have some of the best tax accountants and tax lawyers in the world. Hell, Exxon even gets subsidy money from the Federal Government and the occasional tax refund (while making $billions per quarter). So I'm not sure, but it sounds as though the Repugnicans want to make us a new, extra-jumbo-size Cayman Islands, or something.

Free Trade Agreements, or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Being a Slave in my Own Country.

Those damn Democrats are holding up trade agreements between us and S Korea, us and Colombia, and us and Panama. If any of our previous Free Trade Agreements are illustrative, I'm damn glad we're not doing this without a very careful review of these agreements by Ross Perot (is he still alive and compos mentis?). NAFTA turned Mexico into UnemploymentLand, once the Maquiladora factories closed down, and the farms of the south were undercut by ADM and other American AgriMegaBusinesses. While trade agreements are a good thing, free trade agreements generally do not do a service to the more well-off nation of the trading partners, and yet somehow still manage to totally screw the less well-off nation's economy, too. It's almost as if it was designed to funnel money to those that already had it, while driving everyone else's wages into the ground. Naaaahhhh........

Patents and Torts

We're behind in our patent approval by 700,000 applications. One of these is the Pet Rock, right? Oh, we'll never catch up to the Japanese at this point, what with our litigious society and bureaucratic nightmare of a patent system. So how do we solve this? Tort Reform, of course... And there's already been a bi-partisan patent reform bill passed through the House Judiciary Committee, which might end up on the House floor one of these days - or are they waiting til they get a President they like into office before passing something that supposedly everyone already likes? Wouldn't that be a political calculation? Of course not!

More Visas for More Foreign, Skilled Workers

Whaddya mean, make higher education less expensive in the US? What are you, a commie?

The FDA Doesn't Work Well, so Turn Off the Money

After VIOXX and other delightful drugs that do things other than advertised, and hamburgers that kill (it's not the Hamburgler, it's the Hamspreekiller), the Repugnicans are saying the FDA doesn't do it's job properly. Wow, I agree. Their solution? Make the whole process more streamlined. I thought that was the problem - things move too fast through the system and allow major issues to get missed, ignored, or covered up.

Energy Policy, or, You're Not Choking on the Fumes Yet, so Keep Drilling

Surprisingly, they mention new energy sources. Not surprisingly, they don't mention what these might be. This section is illustrated by a picture of a car with a gas nozzle sticking into it. I could get all Freudian here, but energy porn isn't my forte. I think the new energy sources are probably fracking, coal out of national parks and oil out of our own version of tar sands. I guess if you can still see your hand in front of your face, it's not polluted enough yet. Again, all the obvious points, nothing new here.

Raise Taxes? What are You, a Commie?

Of course, the final nail in the coffin of the American Dream (i.e., the Repugnican Jobs Plan), is the idea that the wealthy are taxed more than enough, and your grandmother should have planned better for her retirement and her health care. God forbid we don't buy the latest bomb from Lockheed-Martin, and God forbid we actually support our elders (well, we can give them a little bit of help) as they pass into retirement age. I'm reminded of a spoof TV show on the back of Craphound #6 called "Survival of the Fittest", which was a test of the survival skills of infants and toddlers, illustrated with a picture of a baby, crying in a plastic bag. I guess they've taken that idea and applied it to Grandma and Grandpa, since, in the Repugnican budget just recently passed, folks under fifty-five years old can look forward to receiving a "voucher" for $15,000 per year to cover all medical expenses and/or insurance premiums, instead of the less-expensive and more efficient Medicare. This will, they say, cut the budget. I'm sure it will, because a lot of those eventual senior citizens will not be able to survive with that level of medical care, and our life expectancy averages will go down fast. Meanwhile, we must lower taxes on the wealthy (since they will give jobs to all those senior citizens who can't afford to live on their lousy Social Security check or retirement savings), and we must remember to never, ever cut the budget for the military, no matter what boondoggles they come up with to take our cash in ever-increasing doses, like a heroin addict who always needs a little more each time to keep from feeling "bad." The US has a monkey on its back, and its wearing a uniform...

The End is Nigh! (well..... Nigh-ish, anyway)

2011-05-25T13:28:00.000-07:00

So, with another Armageddon past us, and still no end in sight of Christians of various stripes making the rest of the religious and non-religious world feel kind of uncomfortable, we set our sights on October 21st, when the next Rupture is due to take place. Yeah, I said Rupture - whaddyagonnadoaboutit???

What this particular brand of Christianity hasn't noticed is that the real Rupture comes in 2012, in November. That's when we decide, yet again, to elect or re-elect someone who doesn't listen, doesn't care (while professing to care very, very much), and who frankly hasn't a clue of what to do, except play politics as usual with the same motley crew of weirdos and whackjobs that comprise our Congress and Supreme Court.

Was there ever a time when these people could be considered normal or caring or something resembling human?

Obviously, on the Dem side, we have Obama. I don't think there's much I can say about this fellow that hasn't been said by a lot of better writers. I have a theory, but I'm not willing to fully explore it yet. I will say that the killing of Osama bin Laden was the first time I felt that Obama was acting Presidential. Unfortunately, not in a good way.

On the Repugnican side, we have Mittens, T-Paw, the Godfather, Rand Paul's Hair's Dad, Newtered, and at least one other whom I can't remember. Flirting with the idea of jumping on the "I wanna be leader of the Free-market World" bandwagon are Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin. Known, respectively, as "I'm Stupid" and "I'm Married To Stupider". You'll know when they're running for office when Faux News stops paying them for criticizing Obama's every breath.

The folks who definitely aren't running this time include Huckleberry, who is apparently making too much money at Faux to want to quite just now, and Hailey "never met a Negro I didn't want to own" Barbour, who has apparently terminated his hobby of fire-eating. Mitch Daniels of Indiana (whom George Will thought would be "perfect" to run against Obama), appears to have finally realized that having your wife leave you, and then come back years later, is perhaps a little weird, a little too much inexplicable baggage to be carrying around when you're trying kiss every baby within a thousand-mile radius.

For the others, there are some simple issues-based, well, issues that they will not be able to explain away easily. Mitt Romney owns Massachusetts' health care system, which is very similar to Obama's Health Care (hah!) Reform Thing, which Mittens thinks is very, very bad. He's opposed to the thing he promoted and passed, but opposes. I've gone cross-eyed again. Tim Pawlenty is about as boring as a human being has any right to be and still breathe. Herman "Godfather's Pizza" Cain knows so little about foreign policy that he might actually get everyone killed. And I mean everyone. Ron Paul will never be nominated on a Republican ticket, so long as he keeps saying how much he really wants to shrink the military and how much he really, really wants to legalize every known controlled substance. I think if he ran for governor of California on the Legalize Dope Party ticket, he'd be a shoo-in.

But for true, heavyweight, impossible to maintain one's composure baggage, though, Newt Gingrich takes the prize. After divorcing two wives in the most bizarre circumstances (do I need to explain these to you people?), he is now married to a woman who appears to have been frozen in liquid nitrogen, her smile is so fixedly wide and toothy. I'd smile like that, too, if I had a half-million dollar revolving credit line at Tiffany's. Plus, Newt has become a Catholic. How does his new church reconcile his multiple divorces and philanderings? The worst part about reading about Newt, or thinking about Newt, or seeing Newt, is that I can't for a minute imagine what it's like for someone to have sex with Newt.

And then I can. And then I want to die.

At that point, I start wishing for the Rupture, because maybe, just maybe, Newt will be carried off this mortal coil to live out infinity with his former wives tormenting him with a constant stream of nagging.

Now that would be justice.

Econoterrorism

2011-05-24T09:57:00.000-07:00

So, the story goes, the United States is the richest, most prosperous country in the world, and we're doing so well because we outsource so much of our boring old hard labor work to China, India, Southeast Asia, etc. We have the money that everyone wants, because who doesn't trust the full faith and credit clause of the Constitution? Even though we went off the Gold Standard back in seventy-three.

Damn that Nixon. Again.

The debt ceiling is coming soon, and it would appear that our full faith and credit may be taxed beyond repair. Many foreign economists are saying that if we default even a little bit, the US Dollar instantly becomes a pariah in the world of money, no one will invite it over for any more birthday parties, because every gift it gives, it takes back. And if that's the way it's going to play, then no one wants to play with it. Suddenly, our money becomes less valuable. No one knows exactly how much, but since this has never happened before in our history, a lot of people are speculating in the direction of really really bad. The US Dollar will become the last thing anyone wants to invest in or with, and our country may take decades to recover. It's not like missing a payment from the Mafia and they come and break an arm or something; more like missing a payment and they come by and burn your house down, with you and your family in it.

It will be blamed on Obama (for not being flexible enough about cuts to things like Medicare, Unemployment benefits, Welfare, etc.), even though one thing that might save our collective ass could be implemented by annoying maybe 1-1/2% of the population, i.e., taxing the well-off.

"Not the JOB CREATORS!!!"

I'd like to know the last person that was really well-off who created a job because of the current tax structure. I'm not sure why anyone would believe that the wealthy want to create jobs. Donald Trump has been running a show for the last few years whose sole object is to weed out the chaff, down to one person (who will then be Trump's personal taint-licker for a year), by firing someone every week for nine months. I realize the premise is for TV drama and all, but it does illustrate one of the big issues of modern capital/labor: if we can winnow the staff down to one person and make that person work their ass to the bone, while making them feel grateful to even have a job (even better, let's call it an internship and just not pay them), that's the definition of success in the business world. Screw the thought of making the country a better place for all, or having any sense of social responsibility - what's important is that we make money for the shareholders and the CEO.

I realize that a lot of this isn't new info, but it's getting worse and worse and worse, and our current President (who is - technically - on our side) is doing nothing about it, even when he has the opportunity. I loved it when he sat Paul Ryan in the front row and essentially told him to his face what a little asshole he was being to his constituents and (by extension) the entire United States with his dumbass budget proposal. But now the President is too busy trying make peace in the middle east (noble, certainly), when we need more leadership here at home. We need someone to explain how the whole enchilada is on the verge of collapse, and we need to deal with it now, and people need to call their congresscritters and tell them to work things out, even if it means raising taxes on the majority of people.

We know that Obama is going to point to better employment numbers, but it's a shell game. Our workers have recently become more attractive to foreign employers (have you heard? the deep south is full of factories from foreign firms that like our workers better than the Chinese because we don't strike as often). Isn't that fantastic? America is building things again! And all the profits are... going.... overseas.....

Plus the workers are essentially making minimum wage, are afraid to strike, and aren't generally unionized, because they would rather have some job than no job.

What will happen when we hit the debt ceiling and the Repugnican fruit cups decide not to do anything about it? We go from America to Afterthought in a month or two. And even if we start paying our bills again, do you think anyone's going to trust us? Foreign companies will probably invest in more factories here, because our workers will be working for a pittance compared to what little they're making now. We will be making large screen HDTVs for Chinese markets. Our economy will begin to resemble some crappy third-world hellhole, and yet we will still have one of the most powerful militaries on the planet. What will we do with our military might and no money?

Obama is still operating under the misapprehension that the folks on the opposite side of the fence are rational people. They're not. And if they come to power, God help the rest of the planet, because we'll be broke, and they'll want to blame someone (not themselves, NEVER themselves), and they'll want an excuse to use our big steaming military muscles. Or we'll be having closeout sales on our nuclear weapons stockpiles.

"Never been fired! Everything (and we mean everything) must GO!"

Humanitarian Mission = Shrapnel

2011-03-28T11:24:00.000-07:00

Are we stupid? No, seriously...

I'll be the first one to admit that Moammar Qaddafi is a bad guy. Probably a really, really bad guy. But we're going to establish a "no-fly" zone over a country that hasn't fielded a reasonably decent plane in fifteen years? Who's doing most of the fighting on the ground?

ON THE FUCKING GROUND

No-fly what? A tank? A Howitzer? What are we thinking? What are we telling them not to fly in a country with no particular air force? Yeah, I know the Syrians are helping out, but I get the impression that most of the attacks on civilians have been ground attacks, low-flying helicopters and snipers.

And the ultimate aim of this little not-quite-a-bombing-run? "Humanitarian effort."

We're lobbing cruise missiles into the general area of people. That's only humanitarian if you don't consider the folks being maimed, injured or killed by the excess shrapnel to be human. Only the folks who are not getting attacked by Qaddafi are going to be missed by all this humanitarian shrapnel.

One step over the line. All Obama has to do now is start eviscerating puppies, and perhaps a lot of Democrats will finally admit that he's a Republican.

We are currently involved in two dipshit wars in the Middle East, and now we've decided to throw our hand in on a third. After going on and on about not being the world's police force, what are we trying to do with Qaddafi? Spank him? Make him want to give up power, I suppose, but you can only do that by convincing a patently insane person to do the sane thing. He's not going to; he's going to keep going on and on and on until he and his family are in front of a firing squad or a beheading squad (or whatever culturally appropriate method is used for executing people in Libya), or safely whisked away to some third-party country that doesn't mind a batshit weirdo with the Russian "nurse" and a truly splendiferous wardrobe taking up space in some of their better real estate for the rest of his life.

I welcome Middle Eastern countries trying to shed themselves of the imperialist nutjobs we've either aided covertly or installed overtly, in order to have a better or certainly a different country for their futures. I seem to remember when we were always talking about exporting democracy as if an idea could be sent to other countries and look just like our version of it. Which is nonsense on its face, because we can't even export soda without screwing up the slogan: (US English) "Coke is Life!"; (Mandarin) "Coke Brings Your Ancestors Back from the Dead!". See? Or when a certain famous software company started showing its face in Beijing on the sides of buses, and everyone started laughing at any company that would call itself "Very Small and Soft."

So the fact that Egypt is tired of its dictator makes sense, and they've de-installed him in favor of something else. Hopefully, when they finally decide on who the something is going to be, they will also abide by whatever treaties we may have signed with the previous nutjob, and not oppress their own people all over again, thus becoming the next thing the folks in Egypt have to swarm out onto the streets to protest - two years from now. Stability is usually better than instability, even if the folks running things aren't perfect.

But Libya? Libya is dealing with a guy who has no compunction about using deadly force against an unarmed foe, who doesn't entirely object to "collateral damage" and who will put people in prison without trial for the rest of their lives.

And then of course, there's Qaddafi.

Money Is Fiction

2011-03-07T15:27:00.000-08:00

There was an episode of This American Life that discussed the problem of "What is Money?" (Ira Glass referred to this as the "most stoner question we could come up with"). And one of the folks creating the show suggested the title of my rant. A relative of mine laments the loss of the gold standard and grabs as much gold as he can when the object presents itself, as a hedge against the dollar doing a tailspin beside all other foreign currencies, because, as we've all been told, gold will always hold its value.

One of the subjects of TAL was a small island in the South Pacific called Yap, which uses what are called Rai stones as money. Rai stones look like beads, except for their immense size: generally a foot and a half thick, ten feet in diameter, weighing in around four metric tons (with a hole through the middle, as if some giant was going to make a necklace out of them). Not exactly pocket change. These stones are generally used as dowry money, or ransom (after a battle, you'd want the bodies of your relatives returned, so you'd pay with a Rai stone and the body would be yours to bury or burn). And remember, there is no easy way to transport a Rai stone. So wherever they are, that's where they stay, no matter who owns them. Including the one sitting at the bottom of the sea floor that fell off its creator's canoe.

Even more interesting is the concept of Rai valuation: if no one dies making it or moving it, it's very valuable; if lots of people die making it or moving it, it's very valuable. In other words, if there's a good, juicy story to go along with your Rai, people will give it a greater value than a stone whose creation story is dull. This got further complicated when a westerner gave them steel tools with which to make more Rai - these Rai were then considered low value, because of the relative ease it took to create them - the first recorded Yap inflation. Imagine the inflationary spiral you could set off if you gave these guys a jackhammer and a forklift!

So if someone buys a house, or sells a bride using Rai, it is understood that a particular Rai now belongs to George that last week belonged to Jeff, because George's son married Jeff's daughter. Or vice versa (not sure what the dowry system is like on Yap). The stone doesn't move, only ownership does.

Then there's the wonderful novel by Cory Doctorow, For The Win, about gold-farming and organized labor (and about a hundred other topics, but that's for you to discover). I had vaguely heard about gold-farming through online information clearing-houses like bOINGbOING and so on, but this book made it quite clear what it's generally about, and why it's just damn weird, and oh, those darn kids, and other curmudgeonly noises. For those of you not nerdly enough to know, gold-farming is the act of playing a Massively Multiplayer On-Line Role-Playing Game, or MMORPG (of which World of Warcraft is probably the most famous) in order to amass gold and prestige items which one can then sell in the real world for real money to other people who don't want to do the work of actually playing the game in order to level up. Virtual gold is worth real money. There are people in China who do this for a living.

Really there are.

Anyway, these various threads had coalesced recently into an ongoing argument between my brain. What is money, how do we value it, what's it good for, and how does it change over time? The obvious question (one that people without money often ask): how do I get more of it? But the more important question is how does one make it worth more? Should one even try?

You look at stagnating wages, inflating/deflating home prices, the cost of a gallon of gas or of milk, the economy in general, saying that the country is near broke, or saying the country is the wealthiest in the world (which it technically is), and then you look at Wisconsin, where the man in charge is saying that we can't afford these exorbitant teacher's wages, but we also can't afford to raise taxes.

Again, money is fiction. It's worth what everyone agrees it's worth, just like houses, gas, milk and meat. Supply and demand. They talk of "cheap credit", but no one's loaning. They talk of artificial currency valuation as if it all isn't pretty much entirely artificial. We can buy something with a piece of paper, because we've agreed to do so. If I try to pay for something with Canadian dollars, there are very few places in my neighborhood where they might be reasonably expected to allow it. (meanwhile, Canada is highly accommodating to US dollars - as is the island of Yap)

And that whole thing about gold being some sort of standard? It's metal. It's pretty, certainly. It lasts forever, and doesn't tarnish very easily, this much is sure). And I imagine it's kind of rare. But our concept of gold as some sort of miracle metal that will always hold a certain value at a minimum is just as much a fantasy as exchanging Rai stones. It's a shared delusion. As is the idea that paper money, or any sort of electronic transaction is anything more than symbolic. Everyone worries about stuff costing more money, or some sort of economic collapse, like we're going to raid the homes of the wealthy and carry off their - what, exactly? Their net worth? Their paper liquidity?

Perhaps what is needed is a whole new agreement about money. The Brazilians came up with a simple solution to their horrifying inflationary cycle - the Real Unit of Value. Value based on how much everyone agrees something costs, and then value of labor based on what everyone agrees people should make at a minimum for whatever labor they do. It was kind of a magic trick, but everyone bought into it at once, and their economy stabilized and then flourished. There is still poverty in Brazil, but that's pretty much institutionalized at this point. On the other hand, everyone uses RUVs instead of cruzeros now. The whole country agreed that money wasn't money anymore, but that this other thing was actually money. And prices stabilized.

This rant is not about having some brilliant idea about what to do, how to make things more equitable, or any lofty goal like that. It's more a rumination about the nature of how and what we value and why. I know that money doesn't buy happiness.

Though it does increase one's choices.

It's The Wrong Economy, Stupid!

2011-02-10T10:36:00.000-08:00

"What is finished... is the idea that this great country is dedicated to the freedom and flourishing of every individual in it. It's the individual that's finished. It's the single, solitary human being that's finished. It's every single one of you out there that's finished, because this is no longer a nation of independent individuals. It's a nation of some 200-odd million transistorized, deodorized, whiter-that-white, steel-belted bodies, totally unnecessary as human beings, and as replaceable as piston rods... " -- Howard Beale, Network, 1976

We knew this back in the seventies. We knew it. We had all the information at our fingertips, because even if we didn't read books or newspapers much, we watched people like Walter Cronkite (who only occasionally lied to us), who was willing to spend an hour on a single news story, and that was all the national news you got that day. Now, we spend less than five minutes on news stories, opinions are undifferentiated from news, and of course the more sensational, the better. Even with multiple 24-hour news channels, I would bet that The Daily Show spends more time on individual news stories than CNN does. We knew there was something wrong, and we kept right on going.

Large-scale satire is either dead, or overplayed. War, Inc. was meant to be a broadside against the whole Neo-Con, PNAC, guts-passing-for-brains political shithole that was our last administration, and, even with millions of dollars, John Cusack and Dan Aykroyd, they still missed the target. In The Loop, on the other hand, did more damage with a few simple, well-placed swear words than the expensive digital fakery of War, Inc's Rockettes prosthetic-leg kick-line.

There is certainly public rage these days. Just ask Gabrielle Giffords. What's wrong with the public rage of today is that it is entirely misinformed. Even better, it's proudly misinformed. Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, Coulter, Malkin, on and on and on, these bastards spew hate-filled bullshit out over cable TV and the radio and even in print, and entire genomes genuflect themselves into an orgasmic coma of seething dumb anger that spills into the public, attached to various calibers of bullets, or voting patterns that will guarantee these same comatose fools will lose their jobs to some poor schmuck in China for one-tenth the wages, and all because the asshole they're voting for said he/she believes in "God and Country." Oh, yeah, and "gays are evil." Let's not forget the gays.

But let us also not forget our own folly. We, as the Liberal wing of politics in this country, with facts and science on our side, still can't convince a lot of people that global climate change and evolution(!) are scientific facts. Still can't convince a lot of people that pollution is bad for you, that the EPA serves a purpose. We gave up on teaching kids how to think, and pressed them into learning how to pass tests. I know that America was founded on compromise, but I think we've maybe stepped a little too far back from our own ideals.

But the worst part is that America has changed its concept of itself over the last thirty years - and we've just accepted it. We can point to improved job stats, fewer unemployment claims, a thriving Wall Street, and business profits that are through the roof; but what we can't do is say that things are going to get better. Because this version of better is spiritually bankrupt. We are achieving more now than we ever have as a species, and it's making everyone a little more unhappy every year. We medicate ourselves, not to feel better, but to feel less. I have fallen victim to depression, and taken anti-depressants to "fix" me, and what I realized was that I wasn't getting angry about things I should have been getting angry about (they also play merry hell with your sex life, but that's a whole different issue). We have a space station, privately-funded space tourism, we can communicate with anyone in the world via phones we carry around in our pockets, and pretty soon (as Neal Stephenson once said), we'll be able to move Nebraska to Africa overnight for $5.

But why would you want to?

What good does all of this wonderfulness do for us? Certainly, the technology of the present allows me to spew this unformed rant at the lot of you all at the touch of a few buttons, but what of the rest of it? I've had people yell at me because a fax that was meant for them wasn't properly sent two minutes earlier. "I can resend it right now." "BUT I NEEDED IT THEN!" How did we manage before fax machines, Federal Express, e-mail and texting? How did we survive at all? Could we survive without them? We're teaching our kids to fit into this world, because if they don't have those sorts of weird, unfathomable skills, they won't be able to get a decent-paying job in America. Being able to cook a meal, balance a checkbook, or to think for yourself have become not only superfluous, but oddly suspect.

I will allow that thinking for yourself has always been considered suspect by the majority, but we're supposed to be the smart ones...

I'm no luddite. As a filmmaker, I am thrilled that I can edit a film, fix the sound, mix the music, and burn a DVD in my little basement office. It is an awesome, empowering experience to move through the creative process and have what can be termed a professional-looking finished product without spending millions of dollars to do so. I like being able to get feedback from my director in a few minutes, rather than a few days, and he doesn't have to rent a projection room in order to view what we've worked on.

Before we can have our workers' revolution in this country, we need to have people who know how to work. Better still, we need people who know how to think, not just how to be a well-trained parrot or mule or whatever you want to call the hybrid we've been creating of our children for the past thirty years. Celebrities do not matter. What happens to a newsman doesn't matter. What happens in Tahrir Square, that matters immensely. How we could translate it into our own democracy, that matters immensely. We have to raise expectations for our children, and we have to teach them music and art and sports, and all the other things that our educational system has deemed too expensive. We have to learn to live with less, so that at least one parent can be home more. We have to learn to grow our own food, and to teach our kids the value of home-grown vegetables and fruit (and watch them when they try their first tomato plucked off the vine).

Until we can get this country back to where an individual person really and truly has value (and not just because they're willing to do something stupid on YouTube), America has become Metropolis. With better cable.

So, to quote Howard Beale again, you've got to get mad. You have to remind yourself, every day, that your life has value. And that you want your life to have been for something more than just improving the GDP.

The Egyptian Question

2011-02-08T09:26:00.000-08:00

I do have a question to ask, but not without prologue.

I know that of late my rants have been on the sad side of the scale, and for that I have to apologize. Originally, when I began this endeavor, I did so as a sort of entertainment for my friends, all of whom said I needed to write down all the insane stuff that was rattling around in my brains, if only so I didn't have to repeat myself over and over again to different people, telling the same story (something I'm a little too good at). And the stories were often funny, since I have a pretty sarcastic frame of mind, and even the most brutal tales could be told with a humorous edge, so long as they didn't touch me personally, or as long as I wasn't dealing with stories of war and death. But as the years have progressed, the stories have begun to have a depressing sameness, a theme that draws a line from the beginning to now, and I think I know where it really started, where I really noticed what was going wrong in America the first time.

I was sixteen years old, and watched a film called "Network."

For those of you unfamiliar with this work, and other works by Paddy Chayefsky, well, shame on you. Chayefsky was one of the great writers of the twentieth century, and if he hadn't died in 1981, I think he could have skewered the Reagan era beautifully. Strangely enough, he managed to skewer both our current era and the seventies with frightening accuracy, and for the former, he didn't even know he was going to do it. But what was true then is truer now, because we haven't learned much from that era. An excerpt from a rant by the character Howard Beale, played by the great Peter Finch, who won a posthumous Oscar for his performance in this film:

"We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad.

There have been wonderful flashes of lightning in the interim, the punk movement being one of them; but that's been co-opted, and even better, commodified. Any new popular uprisings quickly appear on MTV as the latest fad, thing to do, group to follow, and rapidly become as significant as the latest style in tires. Rap music, which began as a form of street protest, now rarely ventures beyond the confines of the various forms of "bling" one can acquire. Certainly, there are still protest musicians, and they fight in their own ways: Fugazi, for one, Ani diFranco, for another. They have generally eschewed the mass-marketing efforts of the big systems, and are consequently viewed as being so far out of the mainstream that only a small, vocal minority even knows they exist.

Sure you can go to a Green Day or REM concert and feel like you're politically aware, but then you go back to your nine-to-five job and essentially continue to suck on the same teats you've been sucking on since birth. Or you go to see James Cameron's Avatar, and recognize the plight of the indigenous peoples, recognize the obvious references to the militarization of corporate greed, and still manage to go back home and think, "I really need a big-screen, 3D HDTV."

So as we sit in our houses or our apartments, watching a country a world away turn itself into either a great place to live or yet another Middle East hell-hole, we can be distracted by democracy taking place as spontaneously as it ever has. And the question that follows that is, how bad does it have to be here, before we react in a similar fashion? What will it take, ultimately, for America to get off its collective ass and do something that's not just the usual weak street protest, or (my personal favorite) astroturf movements sprung by large corporate interests that people think were their own ideas?

Can't we, like Gandhi recommended in the thirties, have a day of "prayer and fasting?" Where no work is done, no busses, no trains, no planes, no cars on the street, no financial transactions, no nothing. Perhaps someone needs to tweet this out to create the largest flash mob in history, and it's something everyone can do from home - just not go to work.

Happy New Year, or Eurozone Triumphant!

2011-01-13T14:56:00.000-08:00

This year, we can expect investigations into what one Repugnican Congresscritter is calling the most corrupt administration ever. Even the mainstream media is calling Rep. Darrell Issa (R CA) a crusader. Just like he was in California, when he got Gray Davis recalled because Dick Cheney wouldn't allow for price caps on energy, and Davis was forced to pay folks like Enron whatever exorbitant price for power they wanted to charge, thus bankrupting the state. Issa thought he'd get the governor's job. Who knew that California would elect a celebrity mostly known for blowing things up and shooting things, when he wasn't playng the part of the first pregnant man? Next up, New York Gov. Paris Hilton!

(And California is still going bankrupt, even while raising every tax they can in order to close budget gaps and so on. They've even raised tuition at so-called public univeresities until the price rivals that of a relatively decent private university. The mad spiral continues.)

Issa is also notorious for having once been an alleged car thief, and then a car alarm salesman. Hmmm...

Someone smarter than I recently pointed out that between the last three Republican administrations, no less than 27 people were convicted of breaking one law or other. In the eight years of Clinton's Presidency, with thousands of man-hours spent on investigating and holding hearings and so on, a total of one person was put in jail. (and Clinton got impeached for lying about sex, but a President impeached and ousted for lying would set a bad precedent, so they let him off the hook for that one) And the funny thing is, we could probably rack up a few more Republican felons, if someone (can't imagine who) would just investigate the 2nd Bush administration properly. (but that would be looking backward, and we can't have that sort of thing, now can we?)

I've seen too much in my nearly fifty years to believe that the human race is ever going to dig itself out of the mire it seems to love so much. I know that other countries have a better way of dealing with a lot of the problems that the good old US of A hasn't figured out yet (and may never - too much money to be made by prolonging the problem), but they did so at the expense of bloodshed, war and horrors that we in the US barely understand. Yes, we had our Civil War, but we learned almost nothing from it. Just because you declare blacks to be equal to whites doesn't mean hearts and minds change the moment pen marks a signature on paper. And healing only comes from the folks who dealt the wound to see the wounding as a bad thing.

We've certainly managed to hold fast to that which is bad a lot more easily than that which is good.

And we're going to go into gridlock. So, instead of getting nothing useful done, we're just going to get nothing at all done. For at least two more years. While the economy is having... difficulties.

But the worst part of all this is that the USA is (currently) the biggest player on the block. If America fails, what does that say about representational democracy in a fairly diverse society? Next after us is China, and then maybe India. Will we become marginalized by countries whose political systems are less transparent and more corrupt than our own, and whose populaces are both pretty homogenous?

Or will the Germans & Japanese (and to a lesser extent, the Italians) have finally won WWII?

The Meaning of Death

2011-01-12T08:27:00.000-08:00

"Life has no meaning. That's an entirely human creation." Fridtjof Nansen

While the Arizona shooter is being held in custody to determine whether or not he's batshit crazy, a lot of other batshit crazy folks are running around saying that just because they said something about reloading doesn't mean they meant actual reloading.

Gun control advocates will say, yet again, that this does not mean we need more gun control, except perhaps for crazy people getting access to guns. Maybe that's a bad thing, yeah. But of course, you can carry (unloaded) guns into bars. So, crazy people having guns is bad, but drunken people having guns is okay. I guess the bouncer examines the gun to make sure it's unloaded or something. And of course no one would bring a spare clip for their unloaded gun into the bar - that'd be stupid. Gun control advocates have also been crowing about how it was a shame no one else was packing heat, because it would have been over that much quicker. Only it turns out, someone else was packing heat, and nearly shot the wrong people.

There have been many wild accusations coming out of both sides over the last three days, the Left blaming everything on the Right's inflammatory rhetoric, the Right blaming the Left, because only left-wingers are violent. Wait, what? I've also heard that the gunman was using alcohol and marijuana; combined, these two are a weak attempt at self-medicating for paranoid schizophrenia. He was kept out of the Army and kicked out of school, but give the man a pistol!

We all want to find the meaning in the Arizona shooting over the weekend. Gabrielle Giffords lies in a hospital bed with the doctors working round the clock to keep her alive. Five other people are dead, including a nine-year-old girl, who just wanted to see politics in action. Well, she got an eyeful alright. While it's easy to blame all of this on the rhetoric of the Right, however, remember that this fellow is, indeed, completely nuts. He believes in a reality that's divorced from our reality. In other words, he's batshit crazy.

You know, like Fox News.

And there is no meaning in the senseless death of these human beings, who were only gathered to hear a very mild-mannered Congressperson speak.

Investigating With Humor (in a governmental sort of way)

2010-12-22T15:05:00.000-08:00

The CIA has a new task force, the WikiLeaks Task Force. Which they are calling by its acronym, WTF.

Haw-haw-haw...

How appropriate.

Here in Seattle, we have our own acronymical error, the South Lake Union Trolley. (which they renamed, but not before a whole bunch of people capitalized on the error, and had t-shirts printed with the slogan, "Ride the S.L.U.T.!" And I have to wonder, does the Tourism Federation of Wisconsin mind that the CIA stole their original acronym, Wisconsin Tourist Federation?

The CIA is, of course, telling us that WikiLeaks has proved (by virtue of these massive file piles they've been leaking) that it's a bad idea to share information, even when everyone already knows it - but they just don't like to talk about it. Things like, "Boy, Putin's a dick." Who knew?

But I think it's just about time that the CIA got a tiny sense of humor.

The entire WikiLeaks brouhaha has left me interested but cold-ish. I haven't read everything out of these archives, since I have a life doing other things, and I'm sure there are plenty of people who are smarter than I, who do have the time and the inclination to read a lot of dry data, and/or truly bass-ackwards opinions about Latin American leaders (what is this, the 19th Century?). But what Julian Assange is doing, along with all the WikiLeaks crew, is finally showing America what its government is doing, and even at the most superficial levels, what they're seeing is a bunch of frat-boy types acting like they know better than everyone else (because information is power, and having power requires you to use it in wasteful, indiscriminate and criminally stupid ways). The Tea Party folks are right about the government, but then the progressives are, too. Strangely enough, they're right about the same things at the same time, but for totally different reasons. For example: the government involves itself in too many foreign intrigues (Tea Party: bad; Progressives: bad). Now, the Tea Party is all for going after bad actors in the world, so long as the corporate media tells them which ones to go after. Progressives are also for going after bad actors in the world, but only if we're doing it for totally altruistic reasons, and not because the country we're invading or attacking or whatever has resources we might need. Reality may lie somewhere in the middle, or is perhaps nowhere to be found at all. Remember, the Afghan war was a "good" war in the beginning...

(don't talk about the TAPI pipeline)

So, while Assange is getting himself arrested for the alleged sexual assault of a couple of Swedish ladies (and feminists debate whether or not they were actually raped), the digital dump continues. Assange is threatening to release a bunch of documentation about Bank of America should he be threatened with anything resembling jail time. I wonder if there's a correlation there: Assange is threatening to blow the whistle on a bank (a really BIG bank), should the Americans get their hooks into him, or the Swedes actually put him on trial. Is that actually a threat with merit? Does outing BofA constitute a threat to national security? For Sweden? I have to wonder what's on the BofA docs...

The CIA is bothered by the whole "digital" thing, because, you know, once the document is available digitally, no amount of encryption or protection or "security" can guarantee that it won't get into foreign hands, or worse - onto the NEWS. Perhaps that's what makes all of this a very good thing indeed. If the CIA and the State Department don't want to be arrested (or interviewed on the telly), maybe they'll start acting in a way that actually helps people rather than just doing what will keep them employed till next fiscal year. Or what will keep them politically viable ("Invade Iraq? OK!").

Unfortunately, I doubt (unless the legislative arm of the US Government actually cared what other countries thought of the United States) these people will change their behavior. So long as it's "America - Fuck Yeah!", no one has to do anything different. We're number one, right?

Why Can't We Call Them Assholes?

2010-12-20T09:47:00.000-08:00

While Limbaugh, Malkin, Coulter & Beck are obviously assholes, what about their followers? When someone says straight-faced that unemployment benefits makes someone lazy, doesn't that make them an idiot? Or that Social Security makes everyone just another calf needing the government teat - isn't that the thought process of a total dickhead?

Cheney defends the torture we practiced upon our prisoners as "moral", and many Republicans agree. Besides unAmerican, doesn't that make them assholes?

While, in the spirit of compromise, we try to get things passed that will benefit the maximum number of people while not offending the assholes amongst us, we compromise our way into some sort of weird political limbo, where the above statements (made by people that a lot of other people take seriously) actually drive the compromise backwards towards asshole land. Meanwhile, everyone tells the so-called liberal politicians that they're wimps. Which is, on the whole, mostly true. For which they're very, very sorry. Really. So sorry.

Fuck. Me.

I think it's time that we stopped playing nice, and stopped acting like the uninformed, misinformed, self-induced ignoramuses should be given ear. Just because someone is trying to have a "reasonable" argument on a topic that they obviously know nothing about, doesn't give them the right to be treated well or politely. Polite doesn't work. Agreeing to disagree means that nothing gets done, and no one has to change.

If no one has to change, then the status quo wins, and we continue on with an underemployed, increasingly desperate, demoralized populace. I've got my cushy corner of the world pretty much taped off, and I'm pretty sure it will stay that way for the forseeable future. Other people aren't so lucky. I contribute to local charities, I volunteer to do what I can within the community and the world at large, but my individual contributions "don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world." I think, as my New Year's Resolution, that I'm going to tell people who I think are wrong, that they're wrong. I'm probably not going to be nice about it anymore.

Money Pit Of Hell

2010-12-15T08:54:00.000-08:00

There are some who say, this deal with the Senate Republicans and so-called Democrats, that gives tax breaks for millionaires and hundred-thousandaires is the best of a bad situation, and I'd have to agree. It will give unemployment benefits to millions of Americans. It will continue tax breaks to the rest of us. And it will lower the Social Security obligation we all have to deal with in every paycheck. The country will manage to limp along a little longer, and the problems that we face will be a little easier to bear.

For now.

Then again, the debt ceiling will have to be raised in February. Will the Republicans allow it? Maybe, since if they don't and have to shut down the government, they will have to explain their backing of the tax break everyone signed onto back in December. Or, they'll have to explain, after pushing long and hard for tax breaks to the millionaires that revenue would flow into the Fed because, of course, all these millionaires would suddenly be creating jobs all over the place, why they didn't.

Here's the horrible alternative: let all the tax breaks die, the unemployment benefits die - everything. Let it go. What could possibly happen?

Why, the Republicans would have to explain why the economy cratered even further. My house price will sink like a rock into quicksand, and I might get laid off from a company that never lays anyone off. In two years, America might devolve into horrifying anarchy and pain, with armed bands of the unemployed running around the country robbing banks and what-not in order to pay for groceries. The educational system will fall even further behind, and China and India will start outsourcing manufacturing to us. We will become the Third World nation that only rich people visit because "everything's so much cheaper there." Only problem is, our beaches will be fouled with oil, the food is pretty terrible (unless you're willing pay through the roof in New York or San Francisco for a decent meal), and the infrastructure barely functions.

Life will suck. A lot.

And then it comes down to a simple question for us progressives: do we think the country will be smart enough to realize that Republicans want it that way? Or are our fellow citizens so completely stupid that they think this is somehow their fault for not working harder, for not giving rich people enough money so they can be the "engines of job creation."

You know, at yacht-building companies.

People will have the choice of either realizing the Republicans are terrible, and vote in a slate of nothing but lefty-leaning Democrats, or they will continue listening to the likes of Glenn Beck, Michelle Malkin and Fox News in general, and vote for more Tea Party types - or at least more Republicans.

That's the rub. I think people are stupid. Because I talk to them all the time, and they are perfectly willing to swallow the kool-aid that the rich are "taxed enough," that the unemployed are "lazy bums," and that welfare is just another word for "picking my pocket to pay for your crack habit." They also believe that Muslims hate us for our freedoms, and that God wouldn't let us destroy the world because he already did it once, and said he wouldn't do it again. So global warming is a myth that's designed to give money to lazy people (what?).

Chaos may be the result if bankers get any more greedy, if enough people die from no insurance coverage, and if enough fire departments start charging for emergency services rendered. Or chaos won't ensue, because enough people will be too busy just trying to make ends meet, and will be willing to give up a little bit more of their security, their freedom, and their ability to fight back. America will devolve. We will get worse, and we may not get better. We may not even be capable of getting better.

Free enterprise is a bitch.

So Die Already

2010-11-26T13:18:00.000-08:00

Corporate profits are up. Wall Street is doing well. Black Friday sales are humming along nicely. Happy days are here again.

Unless you're one of the unemployed millions. Especially if you're one of the discouraged unemployed millions (whom we don't even bother to count anymore - once you've been been unemplyed for long enough, you're no longer unemployed - you're just "discouraged").

Perhaps what we really need to learn from this is that growth is, in fact, unsustainable. That the ten percent of the nation we can safely call unemployed is, in fact, the "surplus population" that Scrooge spoke of in Dickens' Christmas Carol. We don't need you.

So die already.

If you used to build cars in or near Detroit, Michigan, well, we don't do that sort of thing as much anymore. So stop whining, and either get a job at a Burger King (too much competition? Too bad!) or die. Or maybe you could start your own business, and sell some sort of cheap imported crap to your neighbors.

They're unemployed, too? How do you people live? What the hell is wrong with you?

Remember, we have to keep up with the Chinese in terms of wages and so on, otherwise American businesses won't be competitive. Look at what happened to the Maquiladora factories in Mexico, after all - unaffordable labor closed more than half of those plants down. So, let's raise the retirement age, privatize Social Security and Medicare (businesses are SO much more efficient in doing large, complex tasks - just look at Enron), and lower everyone's tax rates. We'll get the whole country working again, but we have to remember the cardinal rule - corporations are the important thing here, not the people. Much better for corporations live on and prosper than people. Without corporations you don't need people, right?

So die already.

Here's the deal - we'll give you credit cards as soon as you enter college (because you have parents who will co-sign student loans to make the payments), get you on the fast track to some sort of middle-wage paying tech or finance job that you'll have to work at for at least twenty years to pay off your student loan debt, and you'll want to have all the things your folks had when they were your age (or better, if possible) so you can go deeper into debt, getting a used car on credit because local public transportation isn't that great and you need your freedom, man, and by the time you hit thirty you start thinking that you'd like a family (if you haven't already started one, and thus put yourself into some SERIOUS debt), so you get married and have a kid or two, and by the time you're forty you realize that the job you got based on your degree isn't really what you wanted out of life, but it pays the bills, and if you quit now, how will you pay the mortgage and keep the kids and your wife healthy, and gee, the anti-depressants you're taking will cost a lot more if you lose your health insurance.

So die already.

Midterms and Report Cards

2010-11-12T10:29:00.000-08:00

LOTS of goodies in the bag after the midterms. First off, here in Washington state, we still managed to maintain the Prohibition-era law that gives the government of Olympia the power to decide what kind of booze I can buy within the state. And their taste in alcohol is both limited, and kinda crappy. They've chosen a wider variety of flavored Schnapps drinks over a wider variety of Single-Malt Scotch - I mean, come ON - we're not all fraternity dudes, are we?

On the plus side of things, neither Sharron Angle ("Latinos look Asian to me"), nor Christine O'Donnell ("I am not Hermione Granger") got to be Senators. On the minus, 60 seats in the house went to Conservatives, some of them entirely nuts. The folks who retained their seats are talking about compromise, as is the Pres, and the Senate leadership.

Rand Paul has already made several statements that either contradict his own viewpoints during his run, or will piss off his base almost immediately - what was that about getting money for your state? Isn't that the delicious political meat called "pork"? And the suggestion that we could somehow cut military spending, well, I'm pretty sure he didn't mention that during the campaign (TEA Party folks luvs their military spending, for some reason).

Obama has been on the "apologise, appease and appeal" train this last week, first running out of the country to India and Southeast Asia to talk trade agreements and exports, while our dear Fed contemplates a bit of currency fudging that will likely annoy the crap out of the Chinese (and probably everyone else as well). While I get what the Fed is trying to do to some extent, they've led themselves into this hole by continually lowering the prime down til they reached rock bottom at 0-.25% during the Bush administration.

And now, we have what has become known as the "Cat Food Commission" report on the deficit. Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles worked very hard to look at every single possible option for reducing the deficit, and what they came up with is totally baffling, while being completely predictable. Neither of these guys likes Social Security or Medicare very much (Alan Simpson referred to Social Security as a cow with 310 million teats), so a lot of their big ideas have to do with making us work longer and pay people less from the SS trust fund. Great. Rich people get lower taxes, working people have to work until they die.

Of course, the irony here is they're both on the government pension payroll with lifetime bennies.

We're truly heading towards the abyss. America elected a bunch of nitwits who think government is bad, that social programs all suck, who think the Defense Department can constantly grow no matter how few wars we're actually fighting (except maybe Rand Paul - we'll see), and who think that anyone who's on welfare or social security or medicare are leeches. Cut taxes, lower spending, de-regulate, and privatize. And Obama is talking about compromise, compromise, compromise. Un-fucking-believable.

If Obama does turn into a one-term President, it will be because he spent so much time trying not to get into a fight with people who totally hate him, and want him to fail. And they will continue to say that he never wanted to talk to them, and that he's all the bad things they said, and we can blame all the economic problems this country has been living through on him, and not on George Bush and the policies of the Republican party that have been pushed on us since Nixon.

And we'll deserve what has happened to the Left in this country, because we've never had the balls to work out our puny differences and deal with the bullshit the Right has been spewing for decades, letting them get more and more strident, get more and more power, until, like the frog in the pan of water, we've allowed ourselves to be cooked because we didn't notice someone had turned on the heat. We let it happen, and we let petty differences divide us.

And we keep re-electing zombies like Harry Reid.

Gimme a Minute...

2010-11-03T10:07:00.000-07:00

I'm waiting for all the results to be final. Here in WA state that means that we are either going to send the "Mom in tennis shoes" (Patty Murray) or the "Land Shark" (Dino Rossi) to the Senate. Patty's been there a while, and has done some notable things for the state, but has occasionally voted for a few boneheaded things.

Anyway, still waiting to hear Rand Paul's first speech as Junior Senator from Idiotville.

The Ant, The Grasshopper, & a Big Steaming Pile of Manure

2010-10-19T15:08:00.000-07:00

The Ant and the Grasshopper - a Fable from Aesop

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed.

The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

MORAL:

Work hard and save for the future!

MODERN REPUGNICAN VERSION:

The ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while he is cold and starving.

CBS, NBC, MSNBC, PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast.

How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, It's Not Easy Being Green...

ACORN stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the group singing, We Shall Overcome.

Then Rev. Jeremiah Wright has the group kneel down to pray for the grasshopper's sake.

President Obama condemns the ant and blames President Bush, President Reagan, Christopher Columbus, and the Pope for the grasshopper's plight.

Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.

Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer.

The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government GreenCzar and given to the grasshopper.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper and his free-loading friends finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he is in, which, as you recall, just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around them because the grasshopper doesn't maintain it.

The ant has disappeared in the snow, never to be seen again.

The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident, and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the ramshackle, once prosperous and peaceful, neighborhood.

The entire Nation collapses bringing the rest of the free world with it.

MORAL OF THE STORY:

Be careful how you vote in 2010.

BASED ON ACTUAL CURRENT EVENTS:

The ant works hard to sell the grasshopper (whom the ant knows is unemployed) a mortgage the grasshopper will not be able to afford, and falsifies the documents so that the bank will fund the loan. He then sells the loan to a different bank, which combines and sells packages of mortgages to investment bankers who then slice up these securities into manageable instruments, which are then insured by other companies, who then sell shares in the insurance policies.

The grasshopper finally gets a low-paying job, works hard and pays his mortgage on time, thinking that he’ll be able to re-negotiate the interest rate or the loan terms when the loan comes due in the winter. Meanwhile, the ant thinks the grasshopper is a fool, and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the housing market has collapsed (based on the bubble created by so many home sales based on falsified documents), and the grasshopper is about to be foreclosed on. The ant calls a press conference to decry the lazy, foolish, and (possibly) criminal behavior by the grasshopper.

CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, and FOX all show up to the ant’s palatial home and kiss his ass. America is not stunned at all by the toadying.

No one asks why one person who works hard and pays his mortgage on time should be evicted, when the crook who set the whole thing up gets to stay in his mansion.

Newt Gingrich appears on Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, and Glenn Beck, and blames Obama, Clinton, and Woodrow Wilson, respectively.

ACORN does not exist anymore, so they cannot come and help the grasshopper.

Pat Robertson and Franklin Graham ask their followers to pray for the ant, and hint that the grasshopper is probably a Muslim.

President Obama condemns the ant and tries to pass legislation that will prevent other ants from perpetrating such fraud in the future, but only a small fraction of his own party is willing to pass legislation that might deny them election funds in the future.

Mitch McConnell and John Boehner exclaim in an interview with Chris Wallace that the ant got wealthy by putting in long hours of hard work, and should not be taxed any more than the grasshopper.

The US Chamber of Commerce spends millions of dollars on attack ads aimed primarily at any Congressperson who would dare to investigate mortgage fraud in any meaningful way.

The grasshopper is evicted, and forced to move into low-income, subsidized housing, rather than having his interest rate renegotiated to something he could afford to pay. He is laid off from work, as the economy has collapsed. His home is confiscated by the ant, who has received insurance for losing the mortgage payments, and can sell the house for less money on higher interest rates to another grasshopper.

The story ends, but we don’t see the grasshopper at all. Later, the ant writes a memoir, for which he is paid a handsome advance, and which joins many other books about how to succeed at business without really trying.

Ultimately, the ant disappears to Antigua, taking all of his money with him, and never paying another dime in taxes.

The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident, and the house, remaining unsold on the market until the bank can get a better price for it, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the ramshackle, once prosperous and peaceful, neighborhood.

The entire nation, except for a few pockets of extreme wealth, collapses, while the rest of the world looks on in wonder at how stupid we got to be. Surprisingly, the rest of the world does just fine without us.

MORAL OF THE STORY:

Stop letting corporations run the damn country.

Atlas Stank

2010-10-08T09:40:00.000-07:00

I got into a verbal fistfight with an objectivist on the local newspaper forums here in Seattle. To quote the Spleen, "BIG. MISTAKE." I keep forgetting what a cult Objectivism is for some people.

I pointed out something that has come up in a lot of scholarly works about her of late, that she admired William Edward Hickman, a pretty horrible murderer, thief and kidnapper. At the same time, she derided the society that was so up in arms about what he'd done. I won't go into all those details right now, since I don't need to rehash what other folks have done better. Be warned, if you follow the link, you will possibly end up reading about the man's worst crime. It's beyond revolting.

However, this particular Rand acolyte directed everyone to not read anything I was commenting on (as it was based on Rand's less "mature" thought), and to go the website of the Ayn Rand Institute. As with my previous post on the Koran burner, I'm not giving out a website for a group that has more than enough publicity. You wanna read this stuff, go look it up.

The things I find amusing about Objectivists: it's all about Reason, Rational behavior, Rational emotions ("rational" emotions? I was under the impresstion that rational and emotional were kind of at odds with each other), and Capitalism - unregulated, unfettered capitalism - would set everyone free. Financial market meltdowns, depressions, etc., are all caused solely by unwarranted government regulation and interference - not greed, not poor planning, not due to anything that a Capitalist would have done, no, they're all too smart to screw themselves or the economy or the whole world over for a few extra bucks. And Religion, all religion is bad and stupid and wrong and misguided.

Not totally disagreeing with the last thought, but it's not up to me to judge what other people believe, unless their beliefs directly impinge upon my rights and freedoms. Rand thought all religion is inherently evil. She liked that word a lot. So do a lot of objectivists.

EEEEEEvillllllll

Charity: Evil.

Public Education: Evil.

Environmental Protection: Evil.

While I understand the basic premise, that government should only be there to protect us from the violence done by others (physical violence, that is), and to enforce contracts, and to defend the nation against enemies, I think the problem resides in the idea that if everyone just behaved, the world would be fine.

I mean, how naiive can you get?

But the Ayn Rand Institute is carrying water for a lot of large corporate interests, and I wonder how Rand's followers would feel if they really looked at what these shmucks write, and who they like to play with. Michael Berliner, one of the board co-chairs, works for a government-subsidized university, Cal State Northridge. Arline Mann, the other board co-chair, is a lawyer who works as Managing Director and General Counsel of Goldman Sachs. The President, Yaron Brook, regularly appears on Glenn Beck's shows to talk about why government regulation and monetary policies are all bad.

First of all, public education, according to Ayn Rand, is eeeeeevil. So what is Berliner doing, working at a State University, living off the public teat?

And don't get me started on Ms. Mann. Ayn Rand and Goldman Sachs. How absolutely fucking perfect.

Glenn Beck is a practicing Mormon, who promotes the writings of Cleon Skousen, famous for defending the Mormon church against charges of racism (they wouldn't ordain black ministers), by accusing his accusers of being Communists (pretty much anyone who disagreed with Mr. Skousen was accused of Communism - it's an easy out, after all). Beck, of course, regularly promotes religion in his TV and Radio programs, and his Event on August 28th was pretty much a big revival meeting with bits of Sarah Palin thrown in. So, does Brook go on Beck's show and argue theology with him? Of course not. As long as Glenn Beck promotes the idea that income tax is bad, and government regulation is bad, Mr. Brook is perfectly willing to overlook Beck's little pecadilloes regarding the nature of the entire Universe and whether or not there's even a God. Personally, I think Ayn Rand would be spinning in her grave.

One of the "Fellows" of the Institute, Alex Epstein, has written extensively on environmental issues, how we'll never run out of oil if we just keep looking, how all those folks advocating solar, wind and waves are idiots, because it's never been proven to really work that well (except, of course, where it does), and environmentalism is just another form of evil. An Analyst in the Policy Division, Thomas Bowden, writes about Culture (which I thought meant art and music), and at least one of his articles is about how Columbus helped bring enlightenment and prosperity to the American Indian. Never mind about that whole syphilis thing. Mostly he writes about Christmas not being commercial enough (isn't Christmas a relgious holiday?), and at Thanksgiving, we should be thanking ourselves.

The fatal flaw of Objectivism and Libertarianism (which isn't the same, there's no philosophical foundation for Libertarianism - according to the Objectivists I've talked to) is that, given the chance, everyone will behave in a strict, moral fashion, and everyone will have the opportunity to succeed, most especially if government gets out of the way, and lets everyone just do their thing.

Must be nice in that bubble.

All in all, Objectivism is a philosophical wonderland populated by would-be aristocrats who've been kept down by the Man, man, self-deluded, both historically and morally untenable. And I won't fall into the trap of treating one of Rand's followers as rational, ever again.

Burning Down Your House*

2010-10-05T08:49:00.000-07:00

*with apologies to David Byrne and the Talking Heads

South Fulton, Tennessee probably has a lot to be proud for. I have no idea what (since I can't seem to find an on-line version of their local newspaper - assuming they have a local newspaper anymore), but I'm sure they must think of themselves as a good, old-fashioned, blue-collar community.

Gene Cranick, on the other hand, has learned a valuable lesson this last week: pay the firefighter fee!

See, Mr. Cranick didn't pay the fee, or forgot to pay the fee, or something, and when his house caught fire and got a little too out of control for him to put out the fire himself, he called 911.

The firemen didn't show. He called again.

Still nothing. He called one more time, offering to pay "whatever it'll take" to put out the fire.

The firemen came! He was so grateful. They pulled out hoses, hooked up gear, got ready.

And stood there like statues. The house burned to the ground. The fee? $75, annually.

Cranick offered them money directly. No go. They were there to protect his neighbor's house, in case the fire spread (which, eventually, it did). The neighbor had paid his seventy-five bucks, and by God, he was going to get his money's worth.

Libertarians I have read are saying, well, the guy offered to pay - take his money or his written agreement to pay and put out the fire. On the other hand, if there's only the one fire truck and two fires at the same time (rare occurrence, but who knows?), and only one has paid, well, put out the fire for the guy that paid.

I'm waiting to see firemen walking around with clipboards stuffed with legal contracts that authorize them to fight a fire, and hold harmless the City, that requires multiple initials and signatures before they can put out your house, save your kids, etc. Probably a credit check involved somehere, since, if you can't be relied on to make the payments, you'll have to cough up a cashier's check on the spot.

(off in the distance, you hear the crackling sound of your dog burning, and, on the breeze, the smell of roasted flesh)

I'm waiting for the first pay-to-solve-the-crime police department, myself. Pay the fee, the cops show up and solve a crime, otherwise, you're on your own. It'll make murdering your spouse that much easier - just don't pay the fee!

I'm not going to use this as a metaphor for health insurance and health care, even though it's a really easy shot.

Are we truly this insane, this regressive? I'm reminded of Boss Tweed and Gangs of New York, paying for protection, and the firefighters only putting out fires if the folks have a little brass plate on the front of their building, saying they've paid their "fee". I begin to wonder if this is the future the hardcore libertarians/tea partiers have in mind for us.

Platonic Bullshit

2010-09-30T14:15:00.000-07:00

Plato had an idea that somewhere in the universe, on some spiritual plane, every single thing that ever existed either had a mate that it was trying to reconnect with, or a perfect form of itself that the object would like to become. Something like teacup-ness, or white-sidewall-tire-ness.

Does that make sense?

Well, here's Plato's bullshit-ness, and it's awesome:

This is a news website article about a scientific paper

Couldn't resist passing this along. Hope you like.

Terrorists Are Everywhere - Turn 'Em In!!!

2010-09-30T10:20:00.000-07:00

In what appears to be another edition of "you're not paranoid enough", the Justice Department has kicked off the Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative. Suspicious Activity Reporting is its own thing, of course, simply the idea that if someone buys fertilizer, or a lot of hydrogen peroxide, or takes pictures of a building, that that person might be doing those things for nefarious purposes. If they do all three, they might very well be doing those things for nefarious purposes.

The question is, how many things do you report, and who do you report them to?

But now there's an Initiative. Time to get enthusiastic about turning in your fellow citizens!

We've had these sort of concepts before, most recently as the "If You See Something, Say Something!" campaign. How very "Leave It To Beaver" of them.

Now, I'm not a big fan of terrorism. The attacks on 9/11 were horrible, and probably preventable. But since the system we had in place prevented a lot of information from being shared between various parties, and even if they could have shared, they didn't want to, since information is power, and if you own it, you don't just give it away. There was, of course, a certain amount of high-level complacency in the administration at that time as well. While I don't believe the towers were brought down by pre-planted explosives, I'm afraid I have no problem believing that Cheney and others in the Bush administration wanted something to happen, in order to galvanize/terrify the American public into letting them have their way with the country.

This initiative worries me. It essentially sounds like we should all be checking up on anything new or out of the ordinary at all times. If someone does something that's not criminal, but just suspicious, we should report them? I think the worst thing about there not being pay phones anymore is that you can't anonymously turn someone in for buying too much hair gel. Perhaps if I were to buy a cheap pay-as-you-go cellphone, I could have a little fun; but then, of course, it becomes like the Boy Who Cried Terrorist: if I actually saw someone doing something, would the authorities take me seriously?

If you watch Burn Notice long enough, you realize that there are many things you can make with household items that are probably not good for most people to know about. And of course, Fight Club. Gasoline and certain other ingredients in equal quantities is basically napalm.

(no - I'm not going to say what)

So if I see someone going to the Safeway to fill up a gallon can of gas, and then going in and buying a whole bunch of the other thing (a truly innocuous item), do I automatically assume "firebomb"? And what about the old classic, Drano and aluminum foil? Is someone roasting a chicken and unclogging their sink, or are they planning on screwing up the toilets of a bunch of government buildings?

I think Bloom County had one of the best ideas:

I think it's going to be a sad day when eccentric behavior, or photography, or chemical/mechanical experiments in your own home might suddenly become a reason to investigate someone. I've already had the experience where, while taking photos of various objects on one of our local ferries, a guy with no visible signs of authority (except for the gun on his hip) started asking me what I was doing, why I was taking photos, etc. Here I was, being Mr. Eccentric Photographer, and I was suspected of potential terrorism, and if I couldn't come up with a reasonable explanation, they might haul me off to jail and interrogate me further.

I have to wonder, would that be fun? Interesting? Terrifying? If there's a way to document it all without the documentation being compromised, I'd be all over it. Hmmm....

Secks Is BAAAAAD. Really.

2010-09-20T14:37:00.000-07:00

There are some folks out in politicoland that create such a sense of WTF that I have to go backwards out on a limb with a saw in my hand to just to comprehend them.

First off, I should clarify my own views on the subject of sex: I'm for it.

I'm not a big fan of prostitution, but it does serve a purpose in mature societies.

Sex trafficking (the purposeful deception and entrapment of young ladies into a life of unwilling prostitution), THAT I'm really, really opposed to. And not just because I hate waking up at three in the morning to the sounds of

"POLICE! WE HAVE A WARRANT"
and
- BOOM -

a house being battered in so loudly it sounds like they're busting down the door next door to me. Ever heard a shotgun firing a shock-lock round? Like friggin' cannon fire.

It was up the street a block and a half, but the whole neighborhood suddenly knew that the cute young Asian couple with the stack of mattresses in the garage were being busted, and it wasn't until later that we found out why... eeewww...

Anyway, two related stories that have come up in the last couple of weeks, and a friend of mine prodded me a little to write a blog post about this one.

After much cannon fire from various law enforcement agencies, Craigslist has removed the "erotic services" from their websites in the United States. But nowhere else. Not even Kuwait. So, apparently, erotic services are acceptable everywhere but in the good old Puritannical US of A.

By the way, on Craigslist, you can still get a "massage."

And, to add insult to injury, we have this new TEA Party candidate that is running for Senator in Delaware, Christine O'Donnell. Who does not approve of sex outside of marriage, and who does not approve of masturbation in any way, shape or form, and who thinks that only by teaching our teenagers the wonders of abstinence will we save them from STDs and other things that we actually had a handle on back in the seventies. She got here, of course, after doing quite a bit of sexual experimentation back in college, which, she said, left her feeling "empty."

Perhaps she needed to pick a, ahem, bigger partner for her meaningless sexual escapades.

Then there are her stories of consorting with witches. Which is why she is now opposed to Halloween. You have to wonder how she feels about celebrating Easter with bunnies and dyed eggs and all that, since that's based on a pagan ritual that we celebrate at about the time when (supposedly) Jesus died for her sins. Perhaps it would be more acceptable if we explained that Jesus hid the eggs just before he was crucified. Since he was the son of God, and could therefor do anything he wanted to, he might even have laid the eggs himself.

I wonder if she'd feel better about the whole easter-egg thing if we were to simply build a crucifix with a dummy Jesus and pelt him with eggs, to remind us of how naughty the ~~Jews~~ Romans were.

(sorry, blaspheming again, I know)

I get the feeling that if she ever becomes lactose-intolerant, she'll go after Cheese festivals in Wisconsin for not being Godly, since God wouldn't have made her hate something so much if it wasn't some sort of sin.

So, remember, anything you personally think is fun/bad is probably a sin. Which is why you should try to enjoy it more. You know, like murder.

No, wait...

Incredible Shrinking Me

2010-09-15T09:11:00.000-07:00

The more I write about politics, the less it appears that I understand what the hell people are thinking. While I do have a few followers, and I do occasionally stray into the land of unabashed angryville (see the Bible Burn post below), I'm becoming unutterably sad for our nation and our leaders.

The Left (for want of a better word) seems to be composed of a combination of the overly politically correct, the slightly embarrasedly religious, and the completely cynical and misanthropic. I put myself partially in the first and third categories, while skirting around the middle category altogether. I'm pretty much certain there are no deities either watching over us, or even just letting us do our thing while the world They gave us collapses and dies. If there was a God, he/she left a while ago. Probably between the end of the Brady Bunch and the beginning of Beverly Hills 90210. And I'm pretty sure the Star Wars Christmas Special had something to do with it.

Meanwhile, in political LaLa-Land, while freaks like Sharron Angle and Michelle Bachmann get to be heard loud and clear by whomever will give them a hearing, we throw folks like Harry Reid up against them, who still sounds like he's apologising even when he's on the attack. Ms. Angle can talk about doing away with Social Security and Medicare, while Reid promptly comes back with a nuanced, truthful precis of the situation, but no one wants to listen to him, because, well, complicated explanations are boooring, duh!

So, fine, we'll go elect some clown who promises to fix everything for free, no one will feel pain, and everything will be fine again, our children will grow up safe, and well-educated, because the Department of Education won't be filling their little heads with leftist thought, and all those black people will stay in their neighborhoods and not blight the landscape, and the only drugs you'll hear about are the good drugs, drugs that are properly prescribed, or, even better, over the counter meds like cigarettes and alcohol, because those (in moderation) are good for you - just look at Mad Men, wasn't that a great time?

Oh, yes, and by the way, all government is bad.

Except the military.

Here's why the military is so great. It's a nice little chart.

I mean... Holy shit...

Meanwhile, you have David Brooks telling everyone that America isn't in decline, that it's just a state of mind, people aren't doing all the saving they used to, so they feel desperate, and it's time for everyone to get back to work, and not whine about crappy wages or working conditions, because you know, get back to fucking work you lazy slobs.

This isn't fun anymore, and I can't express in words how foolish I feel, nor how foolish I think we have become, as a nation. We've gone past the point of no return. And I'll keep doing the day job, paying my mortgage, paying my bills, and voting for the appropriate D when the time comes. But I understand why people don't want to vote. Facts don't win arguments. Only emotions win arguments.

We make speeches for each other. We reinforce our own ideas. We do well at saying how dumb the other side always seems, or how intolerant, or how wilfully blind, while ignoring our own weaknesses of pedantry, condescension, and an overarching sense of smug superiority.

And I include myself in there, so there...

Re-Announcing: Bible Burn!!!

2010-09-08T08:47:00.000-07:00

For something this nuts, I'm not going to provide links back to the Temple of Crazy, AKA Dove World Outreach Center. They don't need the publicity.

Pastor Terry Jones (absolutely not to be confused with Monty Python's Terry Jones, a man with great respect for the teachings of Christ) has planned to gather his flock on September 11th of this year, and make a bonfire of Qur'ans on his church's front lawn. He does this "out of love for Jesus" he claims. Also, to prove that we still have freedom of speech in this country.

Hmmm...

Then I recommend we prove to him right back, that freedom of speech is a two-way street. I'd like to see an event where we wrap a whole bunch of bibles in American flags, throw in a couple of apple pies (and anyone's dead Mom who wants to be cremated), and start a fire of our own.

(actually, only licensed crematoria are allowed to burn the bodies of the dead, so I guess we'll have to leave our dead Moms at home for this one)

Survival Research Laboratories had a planned event back in the 1980s called Bible Burn. Everyone was supposed to bring a bible and throw it on a nice big bonfire (in a semi-controlled environment - if you've ever been to an SRL show, you know what I mean). Right before it was set to take place, the organizers called it off, in what I would call a moment of cowardice. They claimed death threats. I say, let's start it up again, and see what happens.

I know, fomenting hatred and fear and making people think stupid thoughts about a dead guy nailed to a cross who professed love of everyone, which has brought about a wave of people who say his name as they prepare to unleash hatred on people who don't think quite like they do.

Some of their reasons for burning the Qur'an? (they have a LOT of them)

"Islam denies Jesus' divinity" - just like the Jews and George Washington! Let's burn the Talmud and a bunch of dollar bills, too. IDOLATRY!
The Qur'an is not "recorded in heaven" the way the Bible is. How they know this I'm not sure I get.
Islam teaches "Arabian" idolatry and rituals. The code word here is "Arabian", i.e., non-white, therefor Satanic.
They say the Qur'an wasn't written until years after Muhammed's death, and is full of contradictions. Not unlike the Bible, actually.
"Islamic law is totalitarian in nature", they say. Really? So, the Pope isn't totalitarian? Would they themselves not basically be telling everyone how to live if they had a shot at being in charge?
"Islam is not about democracy or human rights". Hmmm.. Like Guantanamo or Bagram?
Muslims cannot change their faith, because it's punishable by death. Interesting, because Pastor Jones says there are a bunch of ex-Muslims that support what he's doing. If they've changed their religion, why aren't they dead? Someone's asleep at the switch! Christians can, of course, change, but not without their pastor telling them they'll burn in hell. What's the big difference there?
"Deep in the Islamic teaching and culture is the irrational fear and loathing of the West." And deep in Christian teaching (these days) is the irrational fear and loathing of the East.

Yes, I'm an asshole. And an agnostic (at least I'm honest enough to say I'm really not sure about many many things). But I try not to be a hypocrite.

Oh, and a great, non-violent way to see all things Satanic (as far as these twits are concerned), I highly recommend you see this movie: "Unmistaken Child". Makes me think hard about the idea of old souls...

The Post-Modern Corporation (that eats people)

2010-09-08T08:02:00.000-07:00

I've been reading a book on my lunch hour called False Dawn by John Gray, formerly the School Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics. And I've come to the conclusion that Republicans really don't know anything, read anything, or care about their own futures. Because what they seem to be arguing for is not just a return to the good old days of the robber-baron capitalists of the 19th century, they seem to want to become the coal that fired the engines.

The Glenn Beck rally on Saturday, in which Beck attempted to resurrect the spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr. (without actually knowing what it was King was for), had a variety of Tea Party folks, nice old white people (here and there were tiny pockets of nice), and gun nuts who must have felt naked without their concealed-carry pieces. Beck had asked everyone to please leave their guns and signs at home, since this wasn't a political event, but some kind of moral lecture, religious revival, or possibly, The Plan, as Beck had called it a couple of months back when he announced this event.

As it happens, he didn't reveal The Plan, unless you count the folks in the Puritan outfits that are supposed to go out and evangelize for... something or other. He did, however, reveal The Palin, who was her usual incomprehensible self, sounding like a combination of Yoda and Hooked on Phonics played backwards.

Turnout was in the high-seventy- to low-eighty-thousand range. So of course, Fox says half a million showed up. "We report, you decide not to think."

One woman was quoted as saying that if she wanted to buy a gas guzzler, she should be able to, and she wanted to use any kind of damn light bulb she wanted. To which I say, fine, if you can afford the gas it takes to fill up a HumVee, be my guest. If you want to burn lightbulbs that die every six months and cost ten times what a CFL does to power, fine. We won't credit you for much in the way of brains, but go ahead, waste your money.

False Dawn argues that the politicians of the United States, and some in Europe, have decided somewhere along the way that a market-driven economy (what the Right calls Free Markets), now equals a system in which the societal costs of running a factory or driving a car are being absorbed by the society at large, and that big corporations and their owners are not responsible to the society at all. The point of operating a business has nothing to do with enriching the community or benefitting the country in which the business resides - no, it's all about enriching the corporation, making sure that there are as few impediments to the ability of the corporation to do what it needs to do to maximise profits.

If this is the way we're going than I suggest a Swiftian response: if someone is unemployed for too long, and they can no longer get benefits or welfare or food stamps, then I suggest we use them for either fuel for power stations (like coal, only not quite as clean burning), or fertiliser for ethanol corn. If they can't serve any other useful function, let them die and reduce the surplus population.

While I recognize that that was a very mean-spirited paragraph, it wouldn't surprise me if that's what a lot of the Tea Party thinks, simmering just under the surface.

Fred Phelps Hates Superman!

2010-07-23T08:18:00.000-07:00

And Aquaman, Spiderman, Batman, and all the other *****men and *****women in the land of the comic book. San Diego ComicCon was the recipient of a Fred Phelps/Westboro Basptist Church visitation to let them know that what they're doing makes God hate them, and America, and everything else out there. Because God is, after all, really about hating your fellow human being for, well - being, I think.

WBC likes to protest a lot of things. They like to protest funerals of AIDS victims because "God Hates Fags." They like to protest the funerals of soldiers, because "God Hates America" apparently for tolerating "fags" in the first place.

But ComicCon? Is it because of all the Thor references? Perhaps because a lot of folks really like the idea of the Force (without, you know, starting a religion about it, but just thinking it's really neat).

Now for the fun part.

ComicCon attendees knew they were coming. A large group of nerds discovered that they were going to be protested by a bunch of drooling idiots, who haven't managed to work up a new sign design in over fifteen years. So they came up with some classics, posted here.

My two faves: "Is this thing on?", and "Magnets: How the %$&* do they work???"

Defusing Hysterical Puffery, or Making Glenn Beck Cry

2010-06-09T13:44:00.000-07:00

Glenn Beck (whom I try not to talk about for fear of receiving the wrath of his imbecilic followers - yes, they scare me more than the dittoheads) is planning an event of monumental proportions that (with any luck) will be a flaming ball of self-destruction. He's planning on making a speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on the anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech. He's told his followers not to bring signs, but that they should bring their children.

Hmm. I'm thinking. Perhaps we should have something that looks like a child stuck on a pole, so you can get the best of both worlds?

No, truly, here's what I would propose. Get as many people as you can to surround the folks who will no doubt barely fill the steps at the Washington Mall, and laugh your asses off the entire time. Non-stop. Eerily like a bad episode of the Twilight Zone or Outer Limits, but with the appropriate effect. Laugh at him. It's what he deserves. He really is a rodeo clown, who either doesn't read the history books he promotes, or he's a rabid anti-semite. Who can cry on cue, to prove that he "really, really cares about America." Just like all the other crocodiles.

I would also recommend carrying signs that have as little meaning attributable to them as possible. One of the early Rev. Phelps counter-protest signs read "I Have A Sign", which I think is just about the right level of total absurdity. Just so long as we're not calling him names or being mean to his followers. The best way to get them to show their true colors is to be as inane as possible.

Save The Gay Whales!!!

2010-06-07T10:01:00.000-07:00

Wow. I think my brain just imploded slightly.

Sir Elton John sang at Rush Limbaugh's fourth wedding.

I'll say that again.

Sir Elton John (gay as all get-out) sang at Rush Limbaugh's fourth wedding.

He's so family values, Rush has gotten married and divorced three times before marrying the latest bit o' crumpet. Of course, he's been married before. And, like Richard Gere's movie partners, they keep gettin' younger 'n' younger with every wedding. And this time, he's being serenaded by an openly gay entertainer.

I don't know how to feel about this one. Is Rush truly that open-minded (or misinformed?) Does he just ignore the fact that his wedding singer is a gay man who is married to another gay man, which is something Rush is (publicly) opposed to? As for Sir Elton, does he not know about the guy who he's singing at? I was under the impression that Rush is a well-known a-list a-hole, even on the far distant shores of our former owners.

Sir Elton, when asked for comment, said something like "oh, leave me effing alone, can't you see I have another million bucks to shove up me Khyber*?" Or "thanks for the bangers**, 'omophobes!"

Ah well, the more things change, the more they stay the same. After all, Rock Hudson was well-known as a pouf in Hollywood in the fifties, but still managed to get work as a leading man all the way through the seventies. And I can't imagine that people didn't know that that other famous piano player, Liberace, wasn't gay. We've never minded that our entertainers were gay, so long as they stayed up there on stage or screen. Even better when they died well out of sight.

*Khyber = Khyber Pass = Ass

**bangers = bangers and mash = cash

Dark Green Future

2010-05-13T10:34:00.000-07:00

We make cars, washing machines, clothes, plastic water bottles, houses, concrete. We fabricate the very building blocks of what we do out of what nature created, or out of things nature never imagined. We are rapidly running out of things to create with, and we continuously find new ways to destroy the sources of the things that sustain our lives on this planet.

And this may be a good thing. The planet may not survive us, but hopefully the planet will survive if we don't. Our society can go from status quo to madness in less than forty-eight hours, and no amount of television coverage can make people behave rationally when they think their little slice of heaven is threatened.

But make sure you buy the latest 3D TV, because you'll want to see the latest oil well rupture in the clearest possible detail, or the skin texture of the burned, twisted corpses dragged out of the latest mining disaster.

When will we learn that what we think civilization is supposed to be is wrong?

Yes, dear readers, I have found a new thing to read, a new place to look, and weirdly enough, while what I've just written sounds unbearably depressing, it's actually a look over the edge. If our civilization is actually not meant to succeed, what does the next thing look like? The good people at The Dark Mountain Project are asking that very question, and they're not entirely afraid. I'm with them. Hoping to look, unafraid, at the next turn our species makes, and what might be the result.

Thoughts Or Not

2010-05-11T12:35:00.000-07:00

So, with the massive collapse (and nearly intantaneous rebound) of Wall Street last week, many people turned to God to tell them what to do next. Since no one can fathom what the hell happened in the first place.

Ignoring, of course, the evidence that God is pretty much done with us, or at least He certainly doesn't seem to care that we're pretty much as vapid a species that ever plumbed the depths of philosophy. To wit, the Transocean/BP oil rig disaster that they tried to fix by dropping a lid on it (which didn't work because it both iced up and "wouldn't stay still" or some such excuse). Next up: "we're gonna stuff it full of shredded tires and golfballs!"

There's furious activity in no particular direction for ya...

I believe it was the Rude Pundit, speaking as a guest on the Stephanie Miller Show who suggested they stuff a whale into the opening to plug the leak, under the heading of "taking one for the team."

Chris Hedges has a great piece on the failure of religion in TruthDig this week, and it's one of his finer downers. In my mind (admittedly a twisted, rotting place) the best companion piece is here. Read Chris first. Then read the other one. Really. You have to take them in that order or it loses its impact.

To quote Dennis Hopper in Speed, "In two hundred years we've gone from 'I regret but I have one life to give for my country' to 'Fuck you!'?"

It's very important to kneel before the altar of Stuff I Must Have while praying to the Celebrities I Wish I Was.

Drill, Baby, Dr--- Oops!

2010-04-29T13:56:00.000-07:00

So, let's dig for more "clean" coal.

Oh, darn. Dead miners. That'll scotch that up. Oh, yeah, and the Christmas disaster of 2008. Whatever happened there?

So let's drill for oil off the coast of Florida.

Dangit. Oil well blew up in the Gulf. A billion dollars to clean it up.

Let's build more nuclear reactors.

The Chernobyl death toll has now roamed from less than fifty actual deaths up to a quarter million projected deaths from cancer. And the GAO has said that the likelihood of a nuclear plant defaulting on its investors in around fifty percent. So, kills people, and can't pay for itself. The old Catskills joke: "The food here is terrible." "Yes, and such small portions." And the Pres has decided not to use Yucca Mountain as a spent fuel repository due to the earthquake fault-line that someone finally (oops) discovered was right underneath it.

Find natural gas through fracturing!

Really interesting concept - you pump water down into stratified slate deep underground and find pockets of natural gas, which you then capture as it tries to come up out of the ground. Most of it, anyway. The stuff you don't capture somehow ends up in the groundwater, and folks have been lighting their tap water on fire - in their bathrooms and kitchens. Neat!

How about other technologies?

The good people of Hyannis Port, Mass., have been fighting against a huge windfarm that some commie-loving power company wants to install off the coast of Massachusetts (due to the high winds one tends to get on open ocean, vs. the not-so-high winds one gets inland), and they lost. Windfarm is going up, and everyone in this nice, little quiet seaport of multimillionaires is going to have to look at windmills instead of, well, the weather, I guess. 130 turbines on 24 acres of big huge windmills. I understand that the windmuills one can build out at sea are larger than the ones you can build on land.

The fights are over the view, the impact on the ocean floor (why do we never worry about such things when it's a monster oil rig, or a sunken ship? how do fish deal with a massive, sunken ship? do they get lost inside?), and that seabirds might not see the spinning tubines and get chopped into fish bait. This was the same argument used in Livermore, CA when they put up a huge linear windfarm on the hills to the east. Birds managed to fly around, with the occasional far-sighted bird getting mulched into a flying Seagull McNugget.

There are proposals to turn huge swaths of various desert-y areas into solar collection stations (big solar panels or big steam-driven plants using focused solar energy to heat the water - big mirrors sure are cool looking), and all anyone is worried about is whether this will unfairly impact gila monsters, endangered varieties of toads and plants - and off-road vehicles, which, of course, have no effect on gila monsters, toads, or plants.

There's also a cool-looking system that is essentially a buoy that uses waves to generate power. A piston moves up and down inside the buoy and generates electricity, which then must be carried back to shore via some system they've pretty much worked out, but I'm not smart enough to explain.

Plenty of alternatives, but is the political will there to push them forward? Ted Kennedy opposed the windfarm in Hyannis Port, even though he was considered something of a commie by the opposition. If a hardline Democrat can be opposed to something on the basis of ruining someone's view (not even his own view), how long will we be waiting to begin to fix this problem? When it becomes a necessity, and we can't adapt fast enough?

Great. Looking forward to Waterworld...

Tea Party Platform?

2010-04-19T13:17:00.000-07:00

I'm asking a simple question of my own hometown newspaper this week, and I would have thought I could have gotten an answer sooner. So here it is:

"Is there a Tea Party Platform? Where is it, and how can I get a look at it?"

I get lots of hits when I look 'em up on the web, but they're all over the map - some are simply pro-gun; others are anti-abortion; some are both; others are inexplicable. I'm trying to find a definitive one.

Since all of the comments on Letters to the Editor in the Seattle Times have a little "Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down" symbol, I get a lot of thumbs down. Not too many responses, but plenty of "NO."

Which, to my mind, is the biggest problem currently facing the Tea Party: they're the Party of "We don't like this!"

As for what they're for, I'm only certain of the "low taxes, small government" nonsense they keep spouting. But platitudes do not a political philosophy make. (unless you're Rush Limbaugh)

Tea Party to Supporters: Stay Away!!!

2010-04-15T15:19:00.000-07:00

It's fairly simple, really - if the Tea Party, um, Party wants to be taken seriously, they have to put a lid on the folks who were immediately drawn to the original messages. A lot of bombast about "death panels", "socialism", "government takeover of health care" and so on, dragged in a bunch of folks who were essentially believing any conspiracy theory about the Obama administration that folks like Dick Armey and Sarah Palin could come up with. The more the Obama administration would deny this stuff, the deeper they dug in their heels. Once you got past that bunch, then there's the "lower taxes, smaller government" group. Which, I suppose, didn't notice that their taxes were lower this year.

The problem with the Tea Party movement is not it's underlying ideology (which I'm still trying to discover, by the way - anyone know where to look?), so much as the disparate groups it attracts. All of these "live free or die" folks probably wouldn't want to work in the coal mines owned by Massey Energy, even though that company does "live free or die" as pretty much its mantra. Unfortunately, it has also attracted a lot of "birthers" who look more and more like closeted (or slightly less than closeted) racists every day, gun rights advocates who don't just talk about having guns, they bring 'em, and the folks who think Obama somehow "stole" the election by getting a lot of people to "vote" for him, as if that's not how it works to begin with.

If you think Tea Partiers are being treated badly, remember that anti-war protesters were herded into "free speech zones" during the last administration (by the police, no less), so that none of the folks they were protesting would have their pretty little ears hurt by having to listen to people saying that what they were doing was wrong.

Also, does it bother anyone that any Senator or Congresscritter that appears at these events is getting there on taxpayer money?

Of Two Minds

2010-04-13T13:20:00.000-07:00

Jason Levin is working to undo the Tea Party from the inside out, by making them appear crazier than they are.

I'm not sure that's possible, but I think it would be fun to find out. Perhaps one needs to dress and act like a Tea Party person, and carry a video camera with one all the time, just to find out what they're really like.

Anyway, Mr. Levin has created a group called Crash The Tea Party, and says he has 66 affiliated groups around the country, ready to do battle, simply by exaggeration. Join them, show up at meetings, and become more insane than the folks who are protesting. He suggested in an interview that if you see someone in a Nazi uniform with a misspelled sign, that might be one of his. If they're throwing a rock, that won't be one of his. The message board has already been taken over by a bunch of right-wing angry folks, and Mr. Levin has received threats. So, a minor success.

This reminds me of the famous "Ladies Against Women", a protest group that would show up at Phyllis Schlafly rallies in the 80s, and scream things like "You're no one until you're Mrs. Someone." Or "Procreation, not recreation." The best part is, the other folks at these rallies agreed with them.

So, can we use humor against the humorless? Or at least the humor impaired? It apparently worked against Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist ministry (the "God Hates Fags" group - brilliantly parodied on this little website). Someone essentially showed up to one of these protests and waved placards that had more ridiculous rhetoric ("I Have A Sign" on a big pink placard), and the real folks dried up and blew away. I think to be truly effective you have to be able to do this wherever these nutjobs show up, and that might be logistically difficult. And why would Westboro Baptist protest "Fiddler on the Roof"?

While I think this has the potential for all kinds of wonderfulness, I also wonder about giving them more airtime than they currently deserve. It's not as if there isn't enough evidence that these folks come off as a bit unhinged, but by doing these little counter-protests (and worse still, telling everyone you're doing it) gives them the ammo to say, "well, look the Liberal Elite thinks we're stupid, and is plotting our downfall." I mean, what a recruitment pitch. "We were the underdogs, but now they're coming after us, we're actually persecuted!" Not sure that will decrease their ranks.

On the other hand, I'd love to see the kind of signs that might sprout up.

Where We're All Jose Padilla

2010-04-01T08:55:00.000-07:00

John McCain, in his dotage, has proffered a bill that should have either a laugh track or horror movie music attached to it. It's called: ‘‘Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010’’.

And it's a doozy. A good, old-fashioned, lock-you-up-and-throw-away-the-key kind of law.

Essentially, if the President determines that someone is, or may be a, or might help some terrorists, the military gets to take them into custody, no Miranda provided, no habeus corpus, no lawyer, and no need for a trial. A whole new category of un-person is designed with this bill, an "Unprivileged Enemy Belligerent." Our thanks go out to Jose Padilla, who beta-tested this program back in 2002.

While there is a lot of high-minded nonsense, with the inclusion of Al Qaeda as the primary boogeyman, what it boils down to is that if the President so chooses, bang, you're busted by the military, sent off to a place like Gitmo, interrogated by a specific interrogation team created by this new law, imprisoned for potentially the rest of your life, and no one can utter a peep against the system. It specifically denies the Federal Courts any jurisdiction over these poor bastards, and denies funding to the Justice Department to do any prosecution. So no matter what, you will never enter the Federal judicial system once this label has been applied, and the only person who can legally let you go is the President.

Yeah. Right.

I really, really hope that Obama is not the kind of President who would sign a bill like this. But I'm not sure any more. If Congress and the Senate pass this thing, and Obama signs it, it might be time to move away from The United States of Detentionland.

The Loudest Name In Left-Wing Diatriabes (TM)

2010-03-31T14:06:00.000-07:00

There, now it's official. I am The Loudest Name in Left-Wing Diatribes(TM), and no one can use that phrase to describe themselves without paying me a royalty fee. To be determined later. Like The Most Trusted Name In News (CNN) or Fair & Balanced (FOX), my tagline is just as valid.

Even if I'm lying.

Cable news is stupid. All of it. I don't care who we're talking about, but very, very few cable shows actually bother to analyze much of anything in depth. Even if they talk about it all day. I remember Walter Cronkite spending an entire hour laying out Watergate (of course, waiting until the Post had finally gotten all of its shots in) in excruciating detail. The kind of thing that would get turned off by a homeowner who was more interested in playing their new Wii than watching political news.

I know, I'm supposed to be better than that, but I'm just NOT.

The only cable network that's worth watching this stuff on is CSPAN, and somehow they manage to find the most boring events taking place in Washington. I need more angry questions from the folks on the (choose your favorite) Subcomittee.

And even though it was a fairly historic event, the big Health Care Debate between Republicans, Democrats and the President, managed to be so friggin' polite that there was just barely enough fire to keep me interested. One sound bite after another, and fortunately, a President who could at least counter some of the most egregiously wrong-headed claims with actual facts.

But how about a full and complete explanation of something? How about a long lecture, based entirely on fact, about any given topic? You've got time. Hell, you've got a twenty-four hour news cycle. Waste some of it on something other than Britney's bald head, or screaming Tea Partiers who not only can't spell, but who also can't explain exactly what it is they're upset about.

Who Pays For Climate Change Denial?

Well, besides us, especially the folks who used to live on Lohachara island in the Sundarbans. It's gone, and they all had to move off. All 11,000 of them. Interestingly, this territory was in dispute between India and Bangladesh; I wonder who will claim it now?

And, of course, the lovely owners of Koch Industries. These two brothers have contributed more to the cause of denying global climate change is happening even than Exxon Mobil. The link is to a report about them by Greenpeace, and it's pretty impressive.

Two Brief Rants

2010-03-31T13:37:00.000-07:00

Let's Have A Party

The Tea Party is generally at war with itself, but the members may not know it yet. Some of them are calling themselves strict Constitutionalists or Libertarians, and they simply want the two-party system to either go away or make way for more parties. I think they see the whole system as corrupted and unworkable, at least the way things are run now. They're not far wrong. However...

A large part of the "leadership" of the Tea Party is actually hard-core Conservative, self-proclaimed Christians (I'm not saying they're really Christians, that's just what they call themselves), who are hard-line immigrant haters, homophobes, and several of whom used to be part of the government they now claim to despise. Folks like Dick Armey, whose own marketing/lobbying firm is one of the groups that instigated the original Tea Party protests, caught a wave of anger in the populace and has ridden it to prominence. Or Michelle Bachmann, who talked about the Census being part of a conspiracy to round certain people into camps, until she found out that if people don't fill out the Census, her district might disappear, and she might be out of a job. Then - miraculously - the Census is just fine.

This is known as astroturf organizing - spend millions of corporate dollars and shape an easy-to-swallow message that will ultimately benefit the existing power structures. All while telling the folks they speak for "the little guy".

They talk about wanting to go back to "Constitutional" principles, but they claim that that would include prayer in public school, and even literacy tests for voting. Neither of those items were in the Constitution, but these folks claim to "know" the Founders' thinking.

Anyone who thinks they can mind-read the dead, yeah, that's who I'm going to follow...

Rove In Cuffs

One thing about Code Pink - they disapprove of the wars we're in, not the troops that are fighting them. The one thing that I keep coming back to: the difference between Iraq/Afghanistan and Vietnam is that back then the protesters went (mostly) after the troops coming home, as if being drafted was somehow their fault. We who are opposed to these wars are going after the architects, not the troops. If some of those troops commit crimes, then fine, punish them for their crimes, but I would also allow for mitigating circumstances, as well as incredibly unclear orders from the nut jobs at the top that started this whole mess.

I don't see the Tea Partiers getting angry with Bush for putting this country $4 trillion more in debt than when he started, nor leaving it with a $1.3 trillion deficit, nor for the millions of jobs lost. But yeah, let's take on Obama for trying (where no Republican has ever even bothered) to give more people access to health care.

It's Time to Beat the Reaper!!!*

2010-03-22T15:35:00.000-07:00

*with apologies to the Firesign Theatre.

A little story that lets us all know that, given a chance to say "no" to killing someone, eighty percent of us will probably follow orders and kill someone anyway because someone in authority tells us to.

Ain't humanity grand?

A French TV show (leave it to the French) copied Stanley Milgram's experiments at Yale from the 60s in the guise of a reality TV show, wherein the participants were ordered to push a button, shocking the contestant in the booth when he or she got a question wrong. While the button-pusher couldn't see the contestant, they could certainly hear them. The shocks escalated in strength to a maximum of 460 volts. The poor contestant would scream louder and louder, until finally they stopped responding to the shocks, indicating they were either comatose or dead.

If this seems unbelievable, it's because it was faked, and no one actually died.

The button pushers didn't know that, however. As far as they knew, they were probably killing someone, but because they're on TV, and someone wearing a really nice suit says, go ahead, punish the person in the booth, they do it. Sixty-four out of eighty contestants kept going past the point of no return, including a holocaust survivor.

The reasoning behind all of this is that we are conditioned from birth to obey authority figures, no matter how wrong they may be. Some countries do it better than others. America may think that we're all wild-west, free-thinking, anti-authoritarian types who'd never fall for such a thing, but in reality, in the 60s at least, Milgram's experiments showed us to be at least as complacent as the French are now. Given the chance, most of us are capable of killing another human being, so long as we don't see it happening. We might not be able to shoot someone, but we can certainly ignore the pain of others, as long as we don't have to see it directly.

This is possibly why it's so easy for us as a nation to dimiss the suffering of people in Haiti or New Orleans, as long as the TV news doesn't show us the awfulness. We'll certainly contribute to a fund to help, and heck, we'll even have a bake sale, or something. But as long as no one shows us the consequences of inaction, we'll remain inactive. Plus, we all have our own little hells we live in that we've carefully built, year after year, brick by brick, that only give us a few hours a week to come down from the job, and the last thing we want to do is look at someone else who has it worse off than we do (unless it's a James Cameron movie).

So do a little something...

Stop Digging

2010-03-22T14:37:00.001-07:00

So the Repugs and Tea Partiers and former Klansmen and Palinites and other forms of Conservative so-called life have lost the big battle (so far). Health Reform (CAPS indicate that it's the title, not the substance) is going to pass by the weekend. And they HATE that. They want it stopped. NOW. And no Goddamned n***er, f***ot, Nazi Socialist Kenyan is gonna do this to us. Them. Whoever.

Ms. Pelosi pointed out that much of what's in this bill was what the Repugs had proposed to counter Hillary's "socialist" ideas back in '93-'94. Pelosi didn't use the word Socialist, of course. Might have frightened the horses. This, of course, is why I'm not so fond of what little I have read about this particular bill. But still. It's something.

We're probably going to get whatever is in this bill (haven't read it, only intend to read the bits that Repugs object to, since they usually misinterpret the language) by Saturday. And the Repugs, in their desire to make everyone bow down to the twin gods of free enterprise and social Darwinism, have basically shot themselves in the feet, repeatedly, and with progressively larger and larger guns.

Right now, I think they're up to about a 60mm mortar. (That's about 2-1/2")

With every placard calling Obama a Kenyan, a socialist, communist, Nazi, etc., with the Hitler moustache, or the Joker makeup or whatever else they could come up with, and with every gun brought to a rally that had nothing to do with guns (along with the public death threats), the Tea Partiers essentially rewrote the political dialog in this country to be composed almost entirely of fear, rancor and spite. No one, least of all a black, Harvard-educated Constitutional lawyer is gonna be able to persuade them of anything factual. But mostly black. For facts, they turn to Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin, or Michelle Bachmann.

And all of that is too bad, because it might take a generation before they can calm down. During which, thanks to the level of anger generated by idiot talk show hosts, uninformed ex-Mayors of small Alaskan towns, and certifiably crazy Congresscritters, no one will be able to have a reasoned argument. It's become a nation of shouters against folks who know stuff. The shouters are going to buy more guns, fantasize about the coming jackboot through the door, and blame everyone in power for their ills, which might include being laid off from a factory job that had its workforce transferred to Kenya "because the labor's cheaper there" by the guy who funds the Repugs they love to support.

In some ways, this has been a blessing for Dems, since the Repugs are now fractured into the mildly reasonable and the completely nuts. And the completely nuts faction is bigger (or at least they get the most press).

Perhaps they will calm down sooner. I can only hope. There should always be a loyal opposition to whomever is in power. Tamping down the excesses of one party has always been the job of the opposing party, no matter who is running things. It's better to have two parties than one, that's for certain. By allowing themselves to be split into smaller and smaller factions, the Repugs may have sealed their own doom, and brought about that which they fear most: Democrats running the show for decades.

Isn't It Moronic?

2010-03-16T07:48:00.000-07:00

Caution - Snark Ahead...

I feel happy, I feel {thunk}

Two stories are resonating with me, and the first one happened this morning on NPR. Lawrence Reynolds, an inmate on Ohio's Death Row, tried to kill himself less then a day before his scheduled execution, didn't succeed, and they had to wait until he was healthy (or at least conscious) before they could kill him.

Humanely.

They already postponed his execution once, as the previous drug cocktail was shown to leave the person a little too conscious that they were dying while they were dying. How you can tell this I have no idea - they hook up an EEG and watch as your brain waves go from active to really pissed off to just off?

So there's your dose of irony for the day. It's so nice that we're spreading freedom and the American Way around the globe, and this is but one example of American democracy, one we share with countries such as Saudi Arabia and Communist China.

As Texas Goes, So Goes The Nation - Right Off A F**KING Cliff

Texas is the largest market for school textbooks, so once the Texas State Board of Education decides what schoolbooks Texas schoolchildren should have, it pretty much sets in stone what schoolbook publishers can print, because doing different books for different states is expensive. And guess what - the Texas State Board of Education is stocked with a bunch of stupid f**ks that want to rewrite history in their own thought process.

Thomas Jefferson is apparently a little too liberal to be allowed in. He was the one advocating for no state-sponsored religion. As philosophers that one could say were the formative influences of the great American experiment, they are now going to put in St. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, and William Blackstone. I'm sure you've heard of the first two, but you may not know what they really think, and I'd only heard of Blackstone - I've no idea what he thinks at all. So let's look 'em up, shall we?

St. Thomas Aquinas
Basically, believed that heretics should be seperated from both the church (excommunication) and from their mortal bodies (execution). This would probably include most modern people. On the other hand, he argued against price-gouging, which would make him a lousy capitalist. A Catholic saint.

John Calvin
I read of Calvinistic tendencies in Sarah Vowell's wonderful book, The Wordy Shipmates, an epic essay on the thoughts, actions, and indiosyncracies of the Puritans who got here first-ish. One story she recounts is a woman so frazzled by her inability to discern whether or not she was a sinner, she killed all her children to be certain. Calvin was a great believer in maximizing self-control (he didn't think much of sex, apparently). And though he spoke well of Jews who happened to appear in the Bible, he didn't like any he'd met personally. At all. An anti-Catholic.

William Blackstone
A famous judge and jurist, who's influence ranges from Abraham Lincoln to Perry Mason, and is thought to be responsible for the phrase "Pursuit of Happiness". Jefferson didn't like him. To me that's almost enough to disqualify him. Another anti-Catholic.

Lots of other nonsense, such as emphasis on the Republican resurgence in politics during the 80s and 90s, but all mentions of the bad old days of the 60s would be relegated to being, well, the bad old days of the sixties. Any good public law that was passed at that time would be brought up only to show why it was a bad idea (Medicare, Affirmative Action, Title IX, etc.). How wonderful Joe McCarthy was. The deletion of words like "imperialism" and "capitalism" and the addition of "expansionism" and "free enterprise". Like, we "expanded right over all those Native Americans." I guess...

Remember Stephen Colbert's extraordinary speech at the Washington Correspondents' Dinner? Where he pointed out that reality has a well-known Liberal bias?

Interesting. The folks who are quite well known for their hatred of Communism are doing exactly what the Communists have been known for: rewriting history to favor your own political perspective. And you thought the Supreme Soviet was dead.

It's just moved to the Texas Board of Education.

Larger Pictures Ahead

2010-03-15T08:31:00.000-07:00

I've been reading (horrors!) a lot in the press about the financial meltdown we're currently in the middle of (if you think it's over - gee, you're dumb), and a couple of different writers have gotten me with ideas that I think were in my brain, but hadn't found the right voice.

Still looking for it, but bear with me.

Joe Bageant, in his latest post playing on The Smirking Chimp (wonderful clearinghouse for all kinds of left-wing wackiness), talks about a particular fellow who runs a garage and has views on, well, pretty much everything. And if you want your car fixed, listen to him first.

But what Mr. Bageant is saying overall is what got me: we're not the economy. We may have been part of the economy at some point in our history (back when most people were farmers and the folks that supported farming), but now we're consumers. Very few of us are part of a manufacturing trade. Most of us are part of selling things to other people, or making decisions about how to sell things to other people, or tech-supporting people for the things we sold them, or serving food, or making the food. And I think I've been pushing this mantra for a while already, but he said it better. All we do now is service an economy that is in the hands of a very few people, and they're all just gambling. And they can afford for us to lose our homes.

The other article, by Cameron Salisbury, makes a different, yet somehow oddly similar point: we the people have no control of anything anymore. Not our own lives, not our jobs, and certainly not our politicians. Certainly, we can vote. The choices we are given are sold as totally different from one another, two vastly different viewpoints about the way things are, and the way they ought to be. And yet, we elect someone wholly new to an office that is mired in horrible sameness, and what do we get? A lot of the same. Not all, fortunately, but more same than different, and I remember voting for 100% opposite of what we had. At least, that's what I was told I was voting for.

One concept from the Salisbury post I thought could really work well is to decentralize government by moving all US government pols back to their home states, and make them use Go To Meeting (dot com) to have meetings and votes and perhaps we let them all hang out together whenever they're grilling someone in committees. Lobbyists would have a hell of a time trying to track them down (though, knowing the lobbying industy, I suspect we'd see a lot of job-combining - butler/health insurance lobbyist or chauffeur/defense industry shill - you get the idea).

But if your congresscritter is never home, why the hell not? If my congresscritter votes badly on something, I reserve the right to egg their house, TP their trees, and shaving cream their Caddy.

Then, of course, there's that whole social media thing. If lobbying companies had to use FaceBook to do their lobbying, it would all be out in the open, and if not, why not? What is Dick Durbin talking to that Northrop Grumman lobbyist about in their private chat room, anyway? Should we be worried about an Eric Massa problem, or a "let's bomb Iran" problem?

(and no, I don't know if Richard talks to NG a lot, I'm just throwing names in a blender here)

But wouldn't that make a certain amount of sense? Everything needs to be committed to (virtual) paper, and it can be available to anyone with an internet connection. Video conferencing would all be archived for anyone to retrieve at any time. How much would it cost to give every living human in the United States with the right to vote an internet connection and a Netbook or an iPad? We could also (heaven forfend) vote via these wonderful tools, so long as someone can make us secure against, say, Chinese Trojan Horses.

It's about time we gave ourselves a say in government and the economy. And the only way to do it is to vote every single one of them out, and replace them with people we can count on to change things...

damn

never mind...

Blatherings

2010-03-12T12:07:00.000-08:00

Careless

So. Health care reform. Or, more properly, health insurance reform.

It might pass. Ms. Pelosi is even threatening us with a Public Option (which Durbin says he'll whip if it's in - I think that's a good thing). With a Public Option, we might see changes in the health insurance industry. And it won't be let in later, either, if they don't do it now.

So, for now, what we have to look forward to is a new revitalized health insurance industry, with everyone on the rolls, paying whether they can afford to or not, into a system that may or may not be regulated. That may or may not be de-monopolized.

Oh.

Joy.

We don't know. Up or down vote maybe next week. At which time, I will cease to hold my breath (as I have been doing since the Clintons promised this back in 1993).

Air America is Dead (long live Air America)

I know, old news. However, I've decided to talk about their radio show hosts, past & present, because I feel like it, and because I have nothing useful to say about the topic above. I am only going to comment about hosts I've heard more than once. Bill Press - sorry, buddy, I've only listened to you once or twice, and that's because you're on late, and when I'm driving late, I usually have the iPod cranked up.

In order of time slots:

Stephanie Miller
Pros: Cute, funny, pretty well-informed about the topics of the day (though she fell for the "John Roberts Retiring" hoo-ha). With her two co-hosts Chris Lavoie and Jim Ward (voice actor extraordinaire), and with, nowadays, constant special guests, including Carlos Alazraqui, and Hal Sparks, as well as regular input from several folks working at Media Matters. Generally balanced and intelligent, though perhaps a little too happy clappy (as she puts it)
Cons: No longer doing Stand-Up News (or at least, not when I'm listening). Not enough fart jokes. Too many jokes about hot dogs and hallways (you figure it out).

Thom Hartman
Pros: Currently the smartest one of the bunch. Prior to Rachel Maddow defecting to the TV Machine, Thom and Rachel were running neck-and-neck for the smartest people on radio (sorry Rush). Thom brings on people who are guaranteed to get argumentative on his show, and he lets them speak their peace. No matter how dumb they might actually be.
Cons: Occasionally a little too lecture-y and dry. I like facts as much as the next guy, more, maybe, but sometimes, Thom, one needs a little zip with the brain dump.

Ed Schultz
Pros: Now also on the TV machine is a fellow from the American heartland. Ed lets people talk to him, he listens, and sometimes they agree, and sometimes they don't. I don't think you can ask for much more than that.
Cons: Occasionally a little too shouty for my tastes. If I want shouting, I can always head over to Randi Rhodes (more on her later).

Norman Goldman
Pros: Smart legal person who has occasionally talked up the legal issues when it comes to actions by both the previous adminisatraion, and the current one.
Cons: Very shouty. Gets all up in folks' grilles about their viewpoints on things. If a right-wing fool comes on, he calls them a right-wing fool, and all other kinds of bad names. Being insulting is not necessarily a debating point. Don't like it when Rush calls someone a pinhead, nor do I like it when you do (even if they deserve it).

who replaced

Ron Reagan
Pros: Again, a very smart individual with excellent credentials and a long history of commentary. A pretty respectful host to folks who called in.
Cons: Any and all stories got played on this segment. Please, can we stick to simple political info, and not stories about the balloon boy or other tabloid fodder?

who replaced

Rachel Maddow
Pros: Funny, smarter than heck, is the ghey, Rhodes scholar, former AIDS-in-prison protester from back in the 80s (totally imagine her listening to a variety of Grrlpower punk bands - which may be sterotyping, but I don't care). Knows political science like the back of her hand. Oh, and Kent Jones, for his innate ability to find joy in the sublimely silly stuff people do. Oh, and cocktail recipes!
Cons: no longer on the radio, and I don't get MSNBC. Occasional clips via the interwebs ain't enough.

Randi Rhodes
Pros: former Air Force lady, so she knows her stuff about the military. "BS News" is a great segment. Pretty darn smart.
Cons: too quick to shout callers down when they come up with a slightly different slant than she does on the topic she's discussing. Way too quick. And lots of yelling. Plus, "Bounce Yer Boobies" every stinkin' Friday? Just not that funny anymore.

Those are the ones I mostly listen to. When they're being annoying, I flip over to NPR. Oh, and AM radio has what, 10 minutes of programming per fifteen minutes of ads?

CORRECTION

NYLefty has pointed out to me that several of these personalities were never actually part of the whole Air America thing, specifically Stephanie Miller, Ed Schultz, Norman Goldman, and Bill Press. If it offends them that I've included them in the AA roster, I apologize.

I should also point out, that, unless I've specified otherwise, all of these people are still on the radio, at least in my market. (AM radio voice) "Seattle's AM 1090!"

Stephanie 6-9 am

Thom 9-noon

Ed noon-3

Norman 3-6

Randi 6-9

After that, I leave it to others to fill in the blanks, as I neither know nor care.

...Paved With Good Intentions

2010-03-04T08:45:00.000-08:00

I own a Toyota Smugmobile. Also known as a Prius. Wikipedia defines the word "prius" as "the neuter nominative singular form of the adjective whose corresponding masculine and feminine nominative singular forms are prior". Prior meaning first, or before everything else. So I am first, but have no testicles.

In some ways it is kind of a girl car. Or, if you prefer, a nerd car. One could only hope for the HAL9000 red eyeball in the center of the dash for it to be wholly nerdly. Many many computers run this vehicle. And some of them don't always work correctly. Hence, the recall.

I am reminded of the nameless narrator (one hesitates to call him a "hero") of Chuck Palahniuk's novel Fight Club, a recall coordinator for a "major" car company, who explains the company's recall policy in this way: "A is the number of cars in the field, B is the frequency of failure, and C is the likely cost of each litigation brought against the company by survivors. A x B x C = X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one." I hope I haven't mangled the text too much, but that's the gist of it.

And this appears to have been the philosophy of Toyota.

For those of you living on the moon for the last six months, Toyota has had to recall a whole bunch of cars for electrical faults, causing the accelerator system of the vehicle to turn on and keep going, no matter what the driver does. This would be termed a "glitch" in the world of computer programming, but in the world of automobiles, it translates to the phrase "fatal car crash." Originally, Toyota tried to blame stuck acceleration systems on the floor mats being "too tall."

Too tall? You're kidding, right. If it's too tall for ten seconds, why isn't it too tall all the rest of the time. This was not a physical problem, and any idiot with a measuring tape could have told you that.

What drivers are experiencing is somewhat worse. The car goes over a particularly weird bump (like railroad tracks), the stabilization system takes over, and the person (being a person) puts on the brakes. This causes the accelerator to engage. In other cases, it's simply been the accelerator that's decided to engage, and no amount of braking will slow the car down.

Imagine someone driving the car, slamming on the brakes to no avail: "Stop! STOP! STOP!!!"

"I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that."

Toyota used to be much more proactive about this sort of thing, not relying on others to point out their mistakes. Japanese car companies in general are known for meticulous attention to detail, and for quality standards that far exceed what's required by law. I read an article about the opening of the first Honda plant in the United States, written by a line worker. In it, he described spending all day every day for the first two weeks, building bikes for the first six hours, then taking them apart for the last two hours, all in aid of figuring out the best way to run the line. This was considered the standard Japanese model for building cars and motorcycles. From what I've read about American car manufacturers, this is all done through computer modeling and giving the line workers a few days furlough, while management figures it out. Much more cost-effective, I'm sure, but I'll bet the Honda model works better.

Anyway, I keep bringing my car in for regular maintenance, and I ask about the recall. They keep telling me that Toyota will get in touch with me if my car is one of the cars affected. Great. I'll find out my cars is a potential deathtrap when they finally decide it's my turn to get it fixed.

And even then, is the fix working?

Computer systems are as imperfect as the human beings who program them. Cars have become more complicated than the moon landers. As we gradually accept computing systems in more and more spaces in our lives, I think it would be wise to emulate the Amish. Talk about it endlessly, examine it and re-examine it before tentatively sticking one's toe in the water, and take years and years to incorporate such systems into one's life. As opposed to the "isn't that cool?" mentality, adding functionality upon functionality without perhaps, sufficient concern about whether each new function doesn't cause something else to fail under the right circumstances.

Which is all a shame, because damn, I like my car.

SNAFU or FUBAR?

2010-02-08T09:49:00.000-08:00

The Defense Budget is hawribble! Again.

Over a trillion dollars when you account for all the non-defense stuff the defense department still gets paid for (protecting our diplomats abroad, for example, is something the Marines did until they gave the contract to the company formerly known as Blackwater, Xe).

This seems like a lot of money. I understand we're fighting two unwinnable wars at the same time, and in order to remain tough-looking, we have to keep doing that. So that's a bit of a drain on the old coffers. But perhaps there are a few things we could think about ending, or reining in, or something. Like the F22 Raptor, which apparently can't be flown in the rain, because it'll rust. $138 million bucks per plane, and they f$%king rust.

I'd also be curious about the V-22 Osprey, known for killing its occupants at an alarming rate. This is one of those, "wouldn't it be cool if this worked" sort of projects, where the rotors that are supposed to drive the plane forward can be tilted straight up to raise the airplane off the ground. Basically a Vertical Take-Off and Landing (or VTOL) plane that uses blades instead of jets. Unfortunately, if things go wrong high up (but not high up enough to deploy a parachute) the plane will belly-flop or flip over or just plain explode. $110 million per aircraft. They say they've fixed all the problems, but when you've had a test flight drop straight into the Potomac in front of various congresscritters, you'd think that's be enough to kill it.

Not so in pork-land.

It's like the growth of private prisons. Once you've started down this path, it's really hard to pull back. The DoD is a rapacious monster, and it likes its appropriations. It doesn't like to give them up. It's all about local job creation after all. Which is why the one thing we manufacture in large quantities in this country are munitions.

Can we go back to making toasters? Refrigerators? Brooms? Anything that doesn't go boom?

I know, not enough political payback.

PS: to the Repugs/Libertarians reading this: why is it, if Government is such an awful waste of money, do you trust them to spend wisely when it comes to the DoD? It's the biggest expense there is. It's 55% of GDP in this country. Why do you think they'll do that right and do everything else wrong? What's wrong with you?

SOTU Speak

2010-02-02T08:22:00.000-08:00

Calling the bank bailouts as "popular as a root canal" is an insult to root canals.

I agree with him on how to deal with the aftermath of the bank bailouts, i.e., getting little fees from all the banks that haven't paid everything back yet. Stabilizing the economy he hasn't done.

As the the 2 million who'd have jobs if he hadn't done what he did, I don't know. A lot of the Recovery Act (AKA the Stimulus Bill) was for temporary programs that injected a small amount of capital into select markets, then stopped. Cash for Clunkers, First-time home buyers credits, etc. Short-term spikes do not a recovery make.

Infrastructure. How lovely. About damn time.

It's nice he's talking about how wages have gone down or stayed flat while everything else keeps going up.

Nuclear power plants. "Safe, clean nuclear power." What planet is this guy living on? Clean means no waste. Nuclear power plants that don't generate waste are fast breeder plants that recycle the plutonium, and use molten sodium as a coolant. Molten sodium, on contact with air or water, explodes violently. Once the reactor is done giving up energy, or is no longer maintainable due to age and/or simple decay, the fuel is still viable, still radioactive as hell, still the most poisonous substance on the face of the earth. I read somewhere back in the seventies (when we were all afraid of being bombed off the face of the planet) that a grapefruit-sized ball of plutonium had enough radiation in it to kill everyone on the planet if they would just stand close to it for a few minutes.

"Offshore areas for oil and gas exploration." Who is this, Sarah Palin? Jeebus....

More exports would be good, yes. Don't we have to make things to export them?

I agree with him on education, as far as it goes. I'd love to know how, for example, the State University system in California got to the point where it costs $10,000 per semester for tuition. How is that affordable education for anyone who qualifies? Then again, the private prison industry is the fastest growing business in California.

While he states that "a high-school diploma no longer guarantees a good job," and that's true, why is that true? I don't know many manufacturing line work jobs that require a Bachelor's Degree. An MBA in riveting? Perhaps if more of our manufacturing base hadn't been outsourced to other countries, and high schools still did a good job educating people, this wouldn't be an issue. Oh, yeah, and then there's the unions. Moribund, antiquated, still very necessary unions.

"I do not accept second place for the United States of America."

This, apparently, includes being first in highest cost of health care on the planet. Or spending six times on the military what our next rival down the line (China) does.

Keep waving the flag, that's all you're good for, apparently.

State Of The Onion

2010-01-28T07:48:00.000-08:00

I have two quibbles with Mr. Obama, and his grandiloquent speech:

Nuclear energy, no matter how you package it, or play with it, or hyperbolize it, isn't "clean."

Ever.

The second is, when you talk of all the Taliban, or Al Qaeda, or whatever you want to call them, that we've killed in 2009 vs. 2008, are you sure that's who you killed? And were civilians killed as well? Any kids?

Other than that, a pretty decent speech, and hopefully one that the Democrats are listening to. In one section, hs basically scolded the Senate and the Congress saying, "you've got the votes, use 'em."

And to all of these twits: if you continue to do things that are only politically expedient, you're going to be voted out of office.

UPDATE

I will read the whole transcript as carefully as I can and do some sort of analysis. Especially on the parts where he says [APPLAUSE]. I love those...

Addendumb to the Below

2010-01-25T08:31:00.000-08:00

By the way, I forgot to mention this about the Supreme Court decision to let corporations rule the roost:

Now foreign-owned American companies can influence elections. If you're not happy about the Senator from Citibank, how about the Congressman from Dubai Investments, Ltd.? Or the President of Bin Laden Construction?

(by the way, all of these points were made, and made better, by Greg Palast, about a month ago, when this decision was still pending)

Sociopathic Politics

2010-01-22T08:00:00.000-08:00

The Supreme Court has done it - they've made corporations people.

Welcome to the future election of the Senator from Citibank.

Thanks to the above link, Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad in 1896, the Supreme Court at the time ruled that corporations were allowed certain protections under the 14th amendment, because of what a court reporter noted in the header record of a decision that didn't talk about whether corporations are people. And in a different Supreme Court ruling on Buckley v. Valeo, they stated that the limiting of campaign contributions was, in fact, a limit on political speech, i.e., money equals speech.

I know, my reaction was "huh?", too...

So now, in their incredibly finite wisdom, the conservative majority of the Supreme Court has decided that corporations have the same rights as all of us real people. They can "talk" just as loudly as they want, because to do otherwise would be to restrict their rights as "citizens."

I don't know about you, but I've never seen a corporation vote.

Thus, corporations now have the right to contribute as much as they want to political campaigns, to particular candidates, or to particular issues. They can spend as much as they want on smears and disinformation, and they pay for the news to be broadcast as well. If AIG is paying for the fact-checking of what AIG is saying, who's to say whether AIG is lying?

There was a movie made a few years ago, a documentary entitled The Corporation. Essentially a series of case studies where the corporate model is held up to the mirror of psychoanalysis, and does not come off well. Corporations (large ones) tend to follow either a psychopathic or a sociopathic personality, i.e., there's no empathy, there's no real sense of community, and the driving force is (pretty much) greed. I know, duh, but...

A few years ago, a gentleman named Marc Kasky brought a lawsuit against Nike for lying about it's labor practices in Indonesia and Vietnam. Nike said this was protected speech under the 1st Amendment. They cited the Santa Clara v. SP Railroad decision. In other words, they could lie about whether they were mistreating their workers because it's "free speech, man!" The court ruled against them, calling it "commercial speech," which has to be factually accurate.

Would this court rule the same way, now?

Horrors!!!

2009-12-07T08:09:00.000-08:00

Tiger Woods!

Tiger Woods had secks!

Tiger Woods had secks with someone Not His Wife!!!

[breathe]

[breathe]

[breathe]

OK, done now.

Huckabye-bye

2009-11-30T14:09:00.000-08:00

We here in the Northwest are generally pretty proud of most of our local law enforcement folks. When one of them is shot in the line of duty, everyone gets pretty upset.

We're pissed as hell right now. Some of us at Mike Huckabee, former Governor of Arkansas.

Four police officers in the Lakewood area of Tacoma were slain today in a coffee shop. A man came in to the shop, was sitting at the counter, and suddenly turned and opened fire on the four officers in what has been described as an assassination. Another officer fought with him, shooting him non-fatally, but getting shot in the process. As of this time today, he has not been found. This suspect's name is Maurice Clemmons. He is still classified as a suspect, but I would guess that if he doesn't turn himself in, he can be looking forward to death in some sort of shootout. As most cops will tell you, cop-killer suspects have a much greater life expectancy if they turn themselves in. Putting yourself at a patrol cop's "mercy" after executing four of them (even if you're only a suspect) is considered, ahem, foolish.

Why is this relevant to Mike Huckabee? Well, it turns out that he paroled this guy back in Arkansas. There has been a lot of water under the bridge since then, but the suspect has recently been in court in Washington (he moved here) for both violent offenses and child sexual abuse. So there's going to be plenty of blame to share. But Huckabee paroled another guy, Wayne Dumond, who did far less after he got out of prison. And it pretty much scuttled Huckabee's ever gaining the presidency. After Mr. Clemmons, Huckabee's gonna have a lot of esplainin' to do.

Now we have another case, where someone appealed to Huckabee's Christian teachings, which, while noble, have nothing whatever to do with whether someone is reformed. If it is known that by appealing to the Governor's Christian feelings in order to get an early parole (Clemmons was due to be released in the year 2015 or so), you can bet every lifer is going to figure out a way to work Jesus Christ in to his parole statement. A little naiive, perhaps.

Update:

Maurice Clemmons is dead, shot by a lone patrol cop, who claims the suspect refused to remove his hands from his pockets when the officer demanded it (several times). In other words, I told him to reassure me he wasn't armed, he wouldn't, and he kept circling towards me. So I shot him dead. With a few bullets.

While I can't blame the police officer for trying to protect himself, this is a story I've heard before. It is also possible that Clemmons was looking to suicide by cop. We can't know. The only people who know for certain what happened are the police officer and the dead man. Obviously, the dead man ain't talking. If you shoot a guy in the leg (which policemen are NOT trained to do in such situations - it's always kill or be killed), you can at least slow him down if he's thinking about shooting you. Maybe.

I don't know. I hope that there is enough evidence to prove for a certainty that Maurice Clemmons was the shooter. I hope that the fact that he was shot does not end the investigation. If we take it as a given that everyone who gets their mugshot on TV is guilty, we're in trouble.

Not sure how to feel about this one. If Clemmons was guilty then he deserved life in prison. If he was nuts then he deserved life in a mental institution. If he's innocent...

FED Suicide

2009-11-30T14:01:00.000-08:00

Well - egg on my face again. The rightwing bloggers are right - as soon as I saw the article about the guy hung from a tree with the word FED scrawled on his chest, I jumped to conclusions about the TeaBaggers and the various rightwing radio and TV screamers having influenced some lame-brain to lynch this poor guy.

Turns out he killed himself and tried to make it look like a murder so his kids would get his life insurance money, which they wouldn't if it had been a straight suicide. Which it was. He wrote the word FED on his own chest, then hung himself.

Sad.

(hmmm.... time to start my own rumor)

Or the local cops are on the payroll of the insurance companies so they don't have to pay out.

Toys R Death

2009-11-27T14:25:00.000-08:00

Introducing the Zhu Zhu Pet, a little toy hamster that everyone really, really must have or someone might have to DIE.

On Black Friday, the day where shopping is more important than oh, thinking about Jesus, last year someone had to die for something. There was a rush at the opening of a WalMart in New York, and an immigrant from Haiti was crushed under the crowd. One of those ironies of life - all the way from the killing slums of Haiti to safe old America, only to be killed by the one thing we do well - consumption.

This is all due to a disorder in the DSM-IV-TR called "Holiday Shopping Frenzy". A dose or two of Adderal or a large amount of red wine usually calms the patient down, but the head-squeezing sensation of not having bought enough stuff will pester them until Christmas morning, after which it will be too late to feed the monkey; the aftermath of HSF is usually NYRD or "New Years' Returns Depression." The prospect of spending half of January in line at WalMart to return the ugliest purse you've ever seen cannot be ameliorated by any drug known to man.

Not all the feeding frenzies have been at WalMart this year, however. Toys R Us has had to deal with the madness associated with these little robotic pets. While the retail price runs around ten bucks, folks are scalping them on eBay for upwards of forty dollars a pop. Don't even include the little car. Pshaw.

I've seen several reports of police being called in to stem the tide of bloodshed.

There have been line-jumpers tased by more law-abiding non-line-jumpers, melees in WalMarts when folks started ripping open the shrink-wrap on pallets of merchandise that hadn't, you know, been merchandised yet. And apparently, a scuffle broke out in Sheboygan over GPS units. Not that big a deal, really, but writing "Sheboygan" is one of those rare pleasures.

My favorite awful irony is for the folks in Houston, Texas, whose cars were towed out of the Best Buy parking lot, because the tow-truck drivers assumed they were late night partiers at the bar/club across the way. Punished for being thought "a drunk," when all you are is "desperate to buy something."

Only in America in the 21st Century.

UPDATE

Not making this up:

One of Santa's little helpers charged with terrorist threats

'nuff said.

UPDATE

According to GoodGuide: "Antimony was measured at 93 parts per million in the hamster's fur and at 106 parts per million in its nose. Both readings exceed the allowable level of 60 parts per million, said [GoodGuide CEO Dara] O'Rourke, an associate professor of environmental science at the University of California, Berkeley."

I was just bein' a little sarcastic about the death part...

UPDATE

According to the Consumer Products Safety Commission, these things are actually safe after all.

I don't know who to believe anymore.

Categorical Nonsense

2009-11-25T15:37:00.001-08:00

I gotta remember to stay away from the "local forum" site in my local paper. Besides the fact that a lot of non-local folks are doing the commenting (and why shouldn't they?), there are so many people who have very fixed ideas about certain topics and nothing - NOTHING - will change their minds.

First, the "Christians" who hate everyone but themselves. Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, etc., all of 'em - goin' ta Hell. Christians don't propagate violence against other people, only Muslims do that. Christians are always in a defensive posture. Like, oh, Iraq.

Near the "Christian" category are the "Palinites." They are more tolerant of other religions, but negroes seem to bother them, once said negroes achieve a level of power previously thought unreachable by dark folk. All Presidents who do not perceive the value of the Divine Sarah are liklely to be Socialists or Terrorists or both. Suggesting the assassination of such a President could be classified as "blowing off a little steam."

The "Birthers." They perceive any person who won the presidency that has the temerity to be darker in hue than themselves might have stolen the election, or worse, have conspired since birth to take over the country and destroy our way of life. This Obama person has been working (along with his minions in the Communist, Socialist, and Nazi parties - AKA SEIU and ACORN) since 1962 to figure out a way to become President. Talk about ambitious.

All of these folks currently reside on the pages of various newspapers and in the news. One doesn't know their actual numbers, as reliable sources seem to have trouble counting. Unreliable sources, such as Fox News, portray their numbers as a kind of variable, with different angles of the same event showing different numbers of people. Also completely different weather patterns, and dissimilar architecture from one shot to the next. But you know, LOTS of 'em.

They also reside in their own little fantasyland, where folks like Hannity, Limbaugh, Beck, etc., reinforce their internal crazy by reiterating (for example) that people who believe the President might not be an American citizen as having "genuine concerns." I think they have "genuine concerns," too - but mostly about why their medication isn't working properly.

Breathless,

2009-11-10T12:32:00.000-08:00

sputtering rage.

The Health Care Billwhacky passed the House last weekend, and I hadn't seen how wrong it was until someone pointed out this lovely post over at Welcome Back to Pottersville.

Oh.

My.

God.

$25,000 fine for the felony of not buying health insurance from some big damn insurance company, even if you can't afford it? And the cost for these health plans? $5,300 per year if you're single, and $15,000 for the "Family Plan."

I don't pay that much (I don't think). And my health care is pretty darn good.

And NO public option at all. WHAT THE F&*K?!?

This will be an absolute disaster if it passes the way it is. I've been a bed-wetting liberal a long time, and the only thing I can think to suggest is to throw all the bastards out who voted for this. And put in real progressives, not these damned, swindling, money-grubbing a-holes that have decided that thirty years on the public tit isn't enough, no - they gotta keep their corporate paymasters happy, or they might not get re-elected by the folks who ACTUALLY PAY THEIR BASIC SALARIES. WHICH INCLUDES HEALTH CARE, DAMNIT!!!

What have we learned, children? That until the election system in this country is completely seperated from corporate money, and until corporations are finally treated as fictional entities of law (not as people), we will have no say in what becomes of us as a nation.

We have no need for $600 billion a year for defense spending, unless everyone else in the world has suddenly developed a nuclear arsenal. We should leave Iraq and Afghanistan right away. But we stay there and blow through money as if we can print it at will. (oh... right.) And once our troops are home, free college educations for every single one that wants it. Or prison. Whichever is cheaper.

If I have to pay more in taxes to give everyone health care, I'll be glad to do it. We must end the "three strikes" laws wherever they have been passed. They do no good, and we now have the largest prison economy in the world. And the educational system has been gutted in favor of locking people up forever.

Rant finished for now.

Yet Another Film Quote

2009-11-03T12:48:00.000-08:00

From Steven Soderbergh's Schizopolis:

"Newswoman: A New Mexico woman was named Final Arbiter of Taste & Justice today, ending God's lengthy search for someone to straighten this country out. Eileen Harriet Palglace will have final say on every known subject, including who should be put to death, what clothes everyone should wear, what movies suck, and whether bald men who grow ponytails should still get laid."

I think is what Repugnicans are hoping for - someone to straighten us all out, make it all work, and basically, define each and every little thing that is or is not permissable for human beings to do.

While letting corporations do as they please, of course.

This line has kept me from growing a ponytail with what remains of my hair, so we have someone to thank for that.

Liebermaniac

Joe Lieberman. Besides the late-night and Daily Show punchline that he has become, he is looking more and more like the worst politician ever to grace our hallowed Senate halls since the Teapot Dome scandal. But then I think, "what about Tom Delay?" and Joe drops back into the number two spot. He gave us unregulated stock options for salaries, hates the public option, supports Repugnican politicians, and of course, it's all out of "principle."

We're Doing JUST FINE

2009-10-29T12:18:00.000-07:00

The Dow is back above 10,000.

Then it isn't.

The economy grew 3.5% in the last quarter.

Until they revise the numbers.

Unemployed people are still unemployed.

Nope, that hasn't changed.

However, consumer confidence has rallied back, thanks to government plans that pay people to buy stuff on credit. Couple thousand for a car, eight thousand for a new house, yay. Cash for Clunkers ended, and the new homebuyer credit is going away, too.

So then there's next month.

Is it my imagination, or does all of this exuberant capitalism smack of dancing while the ship sinks? And you have guys like Jim Cramer, the sideshow clown who is trying to distract you by shouting, louder and louder, "Buy this and sell that!!!"

Health-less debate

It becomes more and more concerning that all of this is occurring while our dear House and Senate can't pass a simple health reform bill, instead trying to pass an ungainly elephant of a bill that may only serve those who make money out of the health inurance industry, and not the poor bastards who are paying our Congresscritters' salaries.

Most favorite son

Obama is trying to be all things to all people and becomes nothing to no one. But he gives great interviews. Where is the Man of Steel Spine that we thought we were getting? Is he a horribly squishy liberal after all?

अच्छा कलम, श्री गांधी!

2009-10-02T12:00:00.000-07:00

or, Nice pen, Mr. Gandhi!

Montblanc's current release is raising eyebrows, and causing at least one person's ashes to spin in their respective molecular orbits.

I'd say spinning in his grave, but they cremate people in India.

Yes, Montblanc, living in a level of irony that was once considered an imaginary universe, is releasing a pen on Mohandas K. "Mahatma" Gandhi's birthday. They are only making 241 of them (to commemorate every mile Gandhi marched to the sea in order to make salt and protest the British Empire's unreasonable control of the salt trade). The price?

Wait for it...

$23,000. While it oughta be, this is not a joke.

Gandhi's sole possessions for much of his life amounted to little more than the clothes on his back, the sandals on his feet, a food bowl, a watch (he liked to be punctual;I think that may have been the lawyer in him), spectacles, and his wooden staff. These of course, were auctioned off for a little over $2 million to an unnamed Indian businessman, who promised to bring them back to India to be put on public display. Also ironic, but not nearly as many irony particles.

There are so many things wrong with a limited-edition, high-price-tag luxury pen, commemorating the life of a man who thought such things were not only stupid, but verged on criminal, that I can't even begin to figure out what the brainy marketing a-holes at Montblanc were thinking. That Steve Jobs would use Gandhi's image to sell more Macs, well, that's pretty reprehensible, though it's more of the image of the guy, and the fact that he was bucking the system, not that he would have used the computer.

(Would the Mahatma have simply blogged, like the rest of us? Imagine one person being able to influence millions of people through the printed page. Whatever happened to good old pamphleteering?)

Gandhi would be in the streets protesting the thing. That should be enough for Montblanc to not do this. Montblanc is attempting to mitigate the irony by donating a lot of money (the cost of six of these pens, plus a thousand bucks from each sale) to the Mahatma Gandhi Foundation (his great-grandson runs it, and is quoted as using the thin metaphor that Gandhi's "writing instrument was his greatest tool" - apparently not his mind or his courage - what could Gandhi have done with a really great pen?). So much for standing on the old man's principles.

Meanwhile, the folks running his old Ashram think that Gandhi-ji would have sold the damn thing and used the proceeds to feed the poor.

Unfortunately, even Gandhi's own advice to his followers about "adopting every western vice as quickly as possible" would fall upon deaf ears these days. Apparently quite a few Indian well-to-do types have already pre-ordered the pen, including a few government bureaucrats. More irony particles, in the land of one-third of the world's poor.

If I ever get the chance to have my own Montblanc commemorative pen in my image, I want it to include a small firearms function, so that every time someone tries to write with it, it shoots them in the foot.

The Future Is Hard To Breathe In

2009-09-28T12:54:00.001-07:00

I have seen the future, and we are not required to participate.

The world doesn't need people. It could certainly use a lot fewer of us. We've known this for a good long time.

I'm not going to mandate killing off this or that group - that would be work for a Repugnican (all life is sacred until it's born, then good f&*kin' luck).

And here we are reaching toward the seven billion mark. Houses will have to be smaller, and they're gonna have to start paving stuff that ain't paved yet. Or do the Hobbit thing (an outcome I would probably prefer, except for the spiders that always get into these sorts of structures).

And of course there is the whole God thing. I don't remember exactly where it says be fruitful and multiply, but it's not helping. Mother Teresa can share some of the blame, wandering the world trying to combat poverty and telling women to breed like rabbits. Disconnect, anyone?

Pollution, overpopulation, global warming, noise, buddy comedies starring middle-aged children, it all just keeps getting worse and weirder.

Anthony Bourdain (of Travel Channel and Les Halles fame) goes to these groovy places, meets groovy people (most of the time - his Lebanon special is truly amazing), and realizes that he has begun the downward spiral of more and more tourists going to these out-of-the-way places that still have their magical charm specifically because no one goes there. Horribly enough, because Americans don't go there and demand Big Macs.

Daniel Kalder (The Lost Cosmonaut: Observations of an Anti-Tourist) goes to out-of-the-way industrial or poverty-stricken hellholes in the former Soviet Union to point out that he may one of the very few people who ever go to these places as a tourist, and he goes there because no one else would. Places that sound made-up like Kalmykia (roughly translated "remnant land") where the Buddhist population is forced to learn to play chess, because the head of the republic, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, is a chess freak (also head of the world chess federation, FIDE). Kalder has visited places that don't strike one as potential eco-tourist venues, or even cultural interest spots.

While we decry the spreading tentacles of American culture into otherwise isolated places, we also miss it when we visit places like that (though I'm pretty sure a Big Mac would taste somewhat odd in Udmurtia). And if we keep adding more people to the population while living longer and working longer, won't we run this planet out of things? Oil is certainly on its way out, as is coal - but what about toilet paper?

The future keeps coming and going, and we have learned only that we might be creating the engines of our own destruction, but let's keep making more of 'em, because we all need something to do in our vanishing spare time.

People are odd.

Sweden? Togo? Madagascar?

2009-09-28T10:09:00.000-07:00

The more I debate folks about the health care thing, I keep running into this wall of resistance about the military budget. And I finally found a quote that I love. I don't know if you've seen the movie Wag The Dog (most liberals have - I think most conservatives would spend a lot of time going "what did he mean by that?"), but it essentially involves damage control in an election cycle. The pres has been caught with his hands on a girl scout, and the opposition is about to run an ad with a picture of the White House with the music from Gigi, sung by Maurice Chevalier, "Thank Heaven For Little Girls." eeeeew

So, the Pres' handlers begin a fake war against fake Albanian nuclear terrorists, produced by a Hollywood producer, just in time to scare everyone into keeping the Pres in office. The CIA doesn't like the "fake war" and steps in to stop the fixer, Conrad Brean (played by Robert deNiro). The CIA is played by the always fun to watch William H. Macy.

Conrad 'Connie' Brean: Would you go to war to do that?

CIA Agent Mr. Young: I have.

Conrad 'Connie' Brean: Well, I have, too. Would you do it again...? Isn't that why you're here? I guess so. And if you go to war again, who is it going to be against? Your "ability to fight a Two-ocean War" against who? Sweden and Togo? Who you sitting here to Go To War Against? That time has passed. It's passed. It's over. The war of the future is nuclear terrorism. It is and it will be against a small group of dissidents who, unbeknownst, perhaps, to their own governments, have blah blah blah. And to go to that war, you've got to be prepared. You have to be alert, and the public has to be alert. Cause that is the war of the future, and if you're not gearing up, to fight that war, eventually the axe will fall. And you're gonna be out in the street. And you can call this a "drill," or you can call it "job security," or you can call it anything you like. But I got one for you: you said, "Go to war to protect your Way of Life," well, Chuck, this is your way of life. Isn't it? And if there ain't no war, then you, my friend, can go home and prematurely take up golf. Because there ain't no war but ours.

That's verbatim from the script, including the "blah, blah, blah," which I think is a terrific way to simplify all the usual particulars of any conversation between rival factions. If all you have to say to explain your position is "blah, blah, blah" - and they get it - you could win every argument. I also love the "Sweden and Togo" stab. Do we need so much military power in order to defeat essentially a small bunch of people who dislike us for blah, blah, blah reason? Or could we do what we need to do in the current military system with a small force of SpecOps guys along with a bunch of high-tech satellite systems to spot developing threats?

Or, following the current model, do we need to continuously develop new and more powerful weapons systems to defeat enemies that do not exist?

We're pulling out of Iraq (excruciatingly slowly - has no one heard the Band Aid theory of combat extraction?), and we're adding troops to Afghanistan. Or not. But we are. Then we're not. I'm sure the troops would like to know. And their families. This kind of pushmi-pullyu sort of behavior can bring on pre-deployment PTSD.

And once we're out, what does the military need all that money for. I mean, we've been paying for both these wars off the books for so long, it's like working for the Jimmy Hoffa, Sr. teamsters' accounting department. You could dye Iraq in the red ink we're creating.

I know, it would be ugly, but way better than the blood we've been using up to now.

Sloganeering (feel free to join in)

2009-09-24T15:07:00.000-07:00

"The Republican Party - Might Makes Right"

"the democratic party - no offense meant"

"Republicans - Dumb & Loud Always Wins"

"democrats - we're awfully sorry, really, so, so sorry"

"The Republican Party - Standing On Principle Since 1860 (until 1870)"

"The Democratic Party - Winning Through Anti-Republican Acrimony Since 1976"

FED

2009-09-24T14:31:00.000-07:00

A Census worker has been found hanging from a tree with the word "FED" scrawled across his chest (they won't say how). Bill Sparkman, 51, was a single father and Eagle Scout who worked as a teacher and a census worker in his spare time.

Thanks to the hysteria whipped up by such Right-wing idiots as Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin and (most especially) Michelle Bachmann, many people are now in abject fear of the government. Ms. Bachmann has repeatedly said that answering the Census questions might get you interred, like the Japanese-Americans during WWII. Of course, her partner in fun in all this, Michelle Malkin, has no problem interring folks, so long as they are terrorists, or folks who look like terrorists, or folks who think like terrorists, or folks who might become terrorists should the country continue to vote democratic. And the Japanese.

And so, in fear of the government, specifically fear of the Census, a Census-taker has been murdered, apparently for asking how many people live in this house, and to what ethnic groups do they belong? You know, preparations for permanent interment of all the poor white underdogs in the country.

In keeping with being "balanced," I have only one thing to say to these people:

GET A GRIP

or, if you prefer:

JEEBUS - YOU'RE STUPID!

Killing a man for the reasons stated above chills me to the bone. Are we really becoming that paranoid as a culture? Do we really believe - after eight years of warrantless wiretapping, falsifying evidence for war, library and medical records searches, incarceration without trial - that the government would really do anything bad with the records it collects in the census?

Oh. Um...

So thanks to George W. Bush (no one mentions him any more), we now believe the government is capable of anything bad we could ascribe to them. Unfortunately, the folks who think they have the most to lose waited until he was out of office before they completely overreacted.

What to Make of it All

2009-09-23T08:29:00.000-07:00

I'll start off by saying that I have no idea of what to make of it all, just to be clear. I'm not some oracle or prophet or super-smart guy with an inside track. I'm a loud-mouthed, opinionated jerk who likes hearing myself talk, and hates liars, wackos and cranks almost as much as they might hate me if they ever read my stuff (most don't or won't). So here's some raw feed:

I think we probably should confiscate every red-blooded American's guns until each one can prove they understand the Constitution better than the Supreme Court. Then they need to prove that they can shoot straight. Then they need to prove that they've never hit anyone in anger. Then they need to show that the only reason they will ever use the gun is to defend themselves or their families against villains. And of course, this puts the onus on them to prove future behavior, which no one can. As a people, we're simply not mature enough to handle the guns we own.

I don't want to read the words "Processed Meat Food Product" on a can ever again. It's everything that's wrong with the American diet. We eat food that has sugar added where none should be needed, food that has fat created in test-tubes that does really interesting things to one's digestive tract, and where everything has either been sprayed with pesticides that can cause grocers' hands to burn (unless they wear gloves), or we modify the crops so that all insects might die from interacting with them, including honeybees (which means fewer crops). So, no more high-fructose corn syrup, and no more ads in favor of it featuring idiots who don't approve of HFCS because they "read somewhere that it was bad." If all the industry can do to counter scientific data with is, "you're dumb," and the population goes, "gee, I guess I'm dumb," then they're right and we're dumb.

Printing money to create lending to create jobs is a morally bankrupt idea that seems to go down well with all but a few very cranky economists. America is still shedding jobs, and we still don't make stuff (except weapons), but trade in your not-very-old car and we'll let you buy a new car. On credit. From Japan. Which might have been made in Ohio. I'm confused.

Everything Obama talked about when he was running for Pres seems to still be in his mind, but not on his radar politically. The idea that healthcare, jobs, global warming and the economy might all be linked is one I've been thinking about for a long time, and of course, so has anyone else who cares to read about why Europe is generally doing better than we are.

So, with universal health care comes one large burden relieved from the backs of business and the poor and the wealthy all at the same time. So everyone has a little more money, and a lot more freedom to move. If I want to quit (for example), I will still have health care, and it won't cost me $500 a month to maintain it. If I have an idea to start up a company, not having health care anymore won't be a reason for me to stop. So, one can have healthcare and a job, or healthcare and no job.

Since there will be more money, perhaps there will be more jobs. If we bring manufacturing back from offshore, perhaps jobs will be more readily available. If we work towards dealing with climate change, there may be more green jobs, and more onshore manufacturing. A bigger middle class. What would be wrong with that?

What's wrong with it is that it's not politically expedient to change things so much that even one Republican senator might disagree with it publicly. Which means that none of it will change without a lot of yelling and screaming and pain. And no one wants to feel any pain. Just keep piling on that anaesthetic, be it WWF or Jack Daniels or Oxycontin or porn, and we'll just keep going along until it all collapses, and then we'll all be in pain at the same time, except for those smart or lucky enough to have escaped with our money.

Is it just me, or do I seem more depressed than usual?

So, it would appear that it's time to take some kind of action (again). And you thought voting was enough. Also, go see Capitalism: A Love Story, Michael Moore's new film.

Don't despair, however - there's plenty of life left in the old country, if only we could harness the energy of the loons in these town halls. What we really need is some genuine, intelligent, burning anger to coalesce in some useful way. Protests are passe. Personally, I'm looking to find some sort of organization to parody, the way the Yes Men parodied the WTO. If, perhaps, i can be portrayed as a kind of everyman, Joe the Plumber sort who, with his native intellect, can correctly portray the underlying attitudes of the Repugnican Party in all its glory.

Kind of like showing up at a town hall meeting and yelling "He's black!", but with more subtlety.

Money Doesn't Just Talk, it YELLS REALLY LOUDLY

2009-09-09T08:39:00.001-07:00

So, the Supremes are going to be listening to oral arguments (I thought all arguments were generally oral) concerning campaign financing laws, specifically the McCain-Feingold law, and whether corporations and labor unions can spend money like rain on any advertising they want, without checking whether their shareholders/members approve.

This all hinges on whether corporations are "people." Nike basically said this a while back and lost the argument, because they wanted to lie. They thought, as a "person," they could lie because they had the right of free speech accorded to people under the First Amendment. The Supes said "NO" because commercial speech isn't the same thing as speech by you or I.

So now we come to the New World Order, which may say that corporations have the exact same rights as you or I, so that if they want to, they can spend all of their profits on commercials or "documentaries" that speak ill of folks they are politically opposed to. They will be allowed to spend all the money they want to influence an election.

President Jeb Bush, elected by Exxon/Mobil. Just what you'd expect, really.

War is Exciting, Sexy and Not At All Bloody

2009-08-31T15:08:00.000-07:00

Truffaut once said it would be impossible to make an anti-war film that featured actual war footage, because war still looks like fun. All that dodging, skulking, hiding, shooting, and running away seems like an adventure, still gets the blood moving, is very exciting!...

So are the recent spate of "join the service" ads running on TV.

Like the Navy Seal ad that features a calm beach in the moonlight, a wave comes in, recedes to reveal footprints, then the next wave comes in and obliterates the footprints, hinting that a large force has just snuck silently past you. Cool.

Then there's the Predator drones, floating above a battlefield, or over mountainous terrain, or sandy desert, or something, then linking back via satellite to a guy (or gal!) on an air force base or carrier or somethingorother, piloting the drone with a joystick.

Join the Air Force. Be all you can be with a Nintendo Wii!

Then there's the actual war. Where you see the results when a small child picks up an unexploded cluster bomblet, and having it blow his arm and half his face off.

Or cleaning the blood and body matter out of a humvee after an IED blew your best friend apart on some godforsaken road in Afghanistan.

We still use cluster munitions and land mines, even when the rest of the world has condemned both. We still use white phosphorus (we say) as an illuminant, or as a smoke munition, unless it gets too close to the ground, and there's half your face melted off.

Being a US Marine is an honorable profession, so long as the war you're supposed to fight in hasn't been manufactured for the sake of fulfilling some chickenhawk's videogame fantasy of playing Commander-in-Chief.

War isn't pretty, sexy, edgy (well, I guess it's a little edgy), cool or fun, unless you're talking being on leave. War is brutal, painful, leaves men and women burned, maimed, psychologically damaged, and dependent on us for their care; in some cases, for the rest of their lives. Civilians who had no complaint with us before become the next generation of terrorists, insurgents, or whatever you want to call them, because we dropped a 500 lb bomb that blew up their house and killed their child, or their wife, mother, father, husband. Because we fight from a distance, so that we don't have to see the face of the victims of our mistakes or our successes, we can look at war as clean. And the Muslims look at us as cowards.

There was a photo on the front page of a local Sunday paper about two years into the war, showing a pool of blood running out of someone's door into a street in Baghdad. No body parts, no screaming children, just a few gallons of someone's blood. Many people wrote to the paper to complain that they didn't want to see that kind of thing on a Sunday morning over the pancakes. At least one or two wrote in to cancel their subscriptions because they felt this displayed a lack of taste.

I'm all for it. Publicize the violence, show the carnage, let people see the results of their being able to sit back and eat pancakes in peace while other people, many of them innocent victims ("collateral damage"), lay dying in the ruins of what were once their homes. If the only thing this prompts a person to do is cancel their subscription, what does that say about the American character? That, so long as we're not made aware of what is being done in our name, we're OK with it?

Wow...

Can Open, Worms Everywhere

2009-08-15T07:42:00.000-07:00

This is one horribly long, rambling post, and I apologize, but a lot of things hit me at once.

Common Grounds

A Republican friend (yes, I have a couple) is convinced the current health care reform proposals are all about encroaching government control, i.e., Socialism. He has no problem with the Department of Homeland Security, warrantless wiretaps or torture.

A Libertarian friend (only really have one that I'm aware of) is convinced that the controls are already there, but that some form of universal health care should be part of what government does anyway. He's not a very good Libertarian, apparently.

Both of them think the tax structure stinks (one says he's paying too much taxes, the other says no income tax at all), and in this I heartily agree, but for different reasons. With which they will both disagree. No big surprise there.

What I am finding is common ground. And it's disturbing me. But I'm not sure the R will believe my side of things. I'm certain the L will, but again, he'll have different reasons.

The bank bailout: I agree with you both, we bailed out the wrong people. But to the R, remember: the bailout began under Bush with zero restrictions. Only when Obama continued it did he say, well, if we're going to do this we want to know how you're spending it. Oh, and bonuses? You're kidding, right? You're gonna get bonuses for reaming out our economy? This idea of treating the banks as if we're the shareholders (which, under the Obama plan, we are) is regarded as socialism by the right, justice by the left, and as an example of everything that's wrong with our whole economy to the Libertarians.

Personally, I regard the whole thing as socialism. These guys make record dollars by rigging, gaming, and then tanking the whole system, and then they want the rest of us to bail them out? Not on your nelly. Private profits should not equal socialized losses. There is a special ring in Hell assigned to Joseph Cassano.

We could halve our military expenditures and still be spending more than China, Russia, the UK, France, Japan and Germany. Combined. My L friend would say, oh, so true - bring back state militias, and kill the Standing Army. My R friend has said, "we have enemies." Apparently that's all you need to know in terms of whether or not we're spending enough on the army - if we have enemies, no amount of money is too huge or ridiculous. Our 2008 military budget is 48% of the entire world's military budget. And we're mostly fighting guys who occasionally resort to muskets and rocks.

We're Sheep

We watch television - while one side says something very provocative, and the other side responds with something very provocative, no one actually comes out and says one of you is lying, or both of you are lying. But someone has to be lying, or wrong, or stupid. The Right has no problem calling the Left liars, cheats or thieves, and the Left goes along its merry way trying to be "fair", "nice", or whatever you want to call the affliction of having no damn spine.

Here is my problem with news and newspapers - when someone says something that's not true, don't just print the other side and call it "balance." Balance equals justice, and justice requires facts and proof, not consensus or worse, "fairness."

True fairness is about being fair - not just giving everyone equal time to be stupid. But we accept the dumb with the smart as if both were equally valuable. We trust the large, two-legged beings that feed us, and ignore rumors about the "slaughterhouse."

Will Work for Food, Shelter,
Warmth and Dignity

People should be allowed to work for a living, even a job they may not like, but at least they have the option, and they should make enough money to survive on the one job. Welfare does indeed corrode society, especially if it's unending and simply gives one no incentive for getting a job. Forcing people to work for their welfare, or worse, forcing people to work more than one job for their welfare, on the other hand, is cruel and unusual punishment.

We are the world's richest country, and I'm sure there are quite a few people who live here that simply don't want to work. That doesn't mean everyone who can't find a job doesn't want to work. Poverty breeds illnesses of all kinds.

Agitate, Agitate, Agitate*

2009-08-07T12:32:00.000-07:00

In no way is there anything good to be seen in the current administration regarding foreclosed homes, Guantanamo, government transparency, or financial bailouts. And (as with my post below) healthcare isn't too far behind in terms of badness.

We elected a "Progressive" African-American to the White House. Who appointed a Puerto Rican woman to the Supreme Court. So far, so good.

At every town hall meeting that our Senators and Congresscritters are currently putting on to sell the healthcare plan, Repugnicans have been showing up in force to shout the speakers down. In one case, a representative decide not to have his town hall after receiving multiple death threats. Effective, though wrong. But the main thing is, the Rs are getting the noise out there.

FDR once told one of his supporters to "make him" promote the policies she wanted, to change the laws to benefit the maximum number of people. No President will go completely against the will of the people (mostly), and if all the news that's being printed or displayed on the TV machine involves angry people in town hall gatherings protesting health care reform, then the Pres will look at it, and think, well, maybe I should back off a little.

Or when the policies for negotiating a new mortgage with your bank are voluntary - for the bank - I don't know whether many banks would bother.

I think this all boils down to the same basic issue: people are greedy and stupid. They don't want to pay taxes, even if there's a war on, and the idea of sacrifice is not even considered as an option, unless your talking sacrificing a plate of brussel sprouts to the starving children in China.

So we sit here and whine, and wish that Obama would get off his duff and start doing something, use that powerful, articulate voice of his and the bully pulpit and whack a few Repugnican moles back down into their holes. Instead, we get safe speeches and safe actions, and no one's political career is really going to tank over any of this, are they?

Protest. Write letters. Write an angry blog. Talk to your neighbors. We mobilized like maniacs to get Obama elected; did we think that once he's in, that's all we had to do?

*with thanks to Frederick Douglass

Rants At Rallies

2009-08-06T09:12:00.001-07:00

I'm thinking of turning up at one of these Health Care Town Hall meetings and yelling "He's BLACK!" really, really loud, and see if anyone joins me.

Or would that be over the line...?

"President" Obama Was Born On Alpha Centauri!

2009-08-06T08:08:00.000-07:00

They're called "Birthers," and they're really stupid, and they're really nuts, and they're really getting a lot of press. And apparently, there are a LOT of them.

Begun just after Obama's grandmother passed away (no witnesses, see?), a movement questioning the validity of Pres. Obama's Certificate of Live Birth (not a Birth Certificate - can you see the difference?), sprung up and has not only grown, but flourished, most specifically within the ranks of Republican voters. Unfortunately, many Republican Senators and Congresscritters are proclaiming themselves "unsure" if the documentation provided by the White House is sufficient to settle the issue.

Normally, this is where someone ought to say, "joke."

A woman by the name of Orly Taitz is now famous for posting Barack Hussein Obama's Kenyan Birth Certificate on the internets and calling it genuine. Everyone with half a brain has looked at it and pronounced it an hilariously easy-to-spot forgery. So many inaccuracies on it that it could only come from the mind of someone who simply wants to believe what they see, rather than actually looking for references to prove their point.

David Weigel, of the Washington Independent has posted a wonderful dissection of this new piece of Repugnican hogwash.

Orly Taitz: who is she, and why is she selling real estate, fixing teeth and going to court?

The photo on her website is pretty priceless, as it would appear to be a few years old. I imagine that's the picture she uses for her real estate sales ads. Or her dental practice. Or her legal practice. Seriously - she claims all three titles when she appears on TV. She has apparently appeared before the Supreme Court, for which her current law degree (from a correspondence school) is not sufficient.

Anyway, enough about her. Apparently she's already had one meltdown on MSNBC, and is probably waiting for her next chance to appear hysterical and, well, just plain nuts. The fact that the only other person whose photograph appears on her website is Alan Keyes is another leaf on the crazy tree.

However, while the official spokesnut for this "movement" is not worth the pixels she's printed on, there is one more horrifying fact: 60% of registered Republicans either don't believe Obama is a native-born citizen, or they're "not sure." It's about a fifty-fifty split between the "not sures" and the "certain he's furrin" crowd.

OMG

I really don't know what to say about this (obviously, since I've spent so much time talking about it already), except: "ARE YOU PEOPLE STUPID, OR WHAT?"

The worst part is you have supposedly respectable TV pundits like Lou Dobbs bring this item up all the time and giving the Birther movement more airtime than it deserves.

Just like I did.

Anyway they're fun to throw verbal tomatoes at.

Temp Reads $10,000,000,000,000

2009-07-22T15:41:00.000-07:00

For those of you that thought most politicians had a stick up their what'sits, it's not exactly a stick - it's a thermometer.

It seems a shame that our Congresscritters and Senatorpeople can't actually look at the healthcare situation in this country without first checking their temperature with Aetna or Cigna or whichever insurance company is paying the bills this month.

It seems very simple to me: if we mandate that people have insurance, and the government is willing to help pay for health insurance for poor people, and we don't have a public plan in place, what do you think the big insurance companies and big pharma companies are gonna think? I'll tell you:

Cha-CHING!!!

It's going to be Halliburton & KBR all over again, except now we're talking health insurance, instead of army showers that double as execution chambers and food that doubles as bioweaponry. Assuming the government wants to make sure they don't piss off the big industries that pay for their campaigns, all of these contracts will likely be some form of "cost-plus" system. Which means the insurance industry will be guaranteed a profit (duh), only now, the taxpayers will probably be paying more for it than we have been.

I've not been blogging about this yet, simply because the more time passes on this issue, the more complex it all grows. That everyone has shied away from the single-payer system the whole country (except for the dittoheads) seems to want is bizarre enough. Jim DeMint of S. Carolina has even suggested that if Obama doesn't get his public option, this could be "his Waterloo" in relatively hopeful tones. Bill Kristol has stated that instead of letting the process play itself out, the Repugs should "go for the jugular," and make sure that Obama's failure is splattered all over the mediascape, in order that Obama loses the next election, and perhaps the Rs can regain some lost seats in congress. Nice to know that what matters most to some Repugnicans is Obama's failure, not the public's needs.

I know - what else is new?

So here we are, with a Democratic president and a Democrat-controlled House and Senate and still, healthcare is too big a nut to crack. If that doesn't tell you that something is wrong with both the Democratic Party and the way we do politics in this country, well, I can't write letters that large.

Power to the (Rich, White) Minority!

2009-07-20T13:25:00.000-07:00

Is Pat Buchanan a 50s holdover? Or just really, really dim? In yet another harangue on the subject of Affirmative Action (or, for the knuckle-draggers in the crowd, "reverse discrimination"), good old Irish Pat went up against young upstart lesbian Rachel Maddow on her show on MSNBC. I think Rachel has him on sometimes just to get the extreme whacko viewpoint. They're friends, of course, but on TV, how could you tell?

While Ms. Sotomayor was having her legal abilities tested by some of the poor, downtrodden, rich white guys in the Senate Judiciary Committee, dear Pat was swiping at her from the sidelines. Quoting Ms. Sotomayor herself, who once said that she was an "affirmative action baby," this incensed dear Pat, because she took some poor, downtrodden, rich white guy's spot at Princeton (in the 70s!). And then got good grades (maybe better than dear Pat's). Her career after law school was a mixture of prosecution, corporate law and public service law in her home community of Brooklyn. She's had many years on the public bench.

Let us remind ourselves how things have "changed" over the last fifty years: In the early sixties, Black people had to prove they could read before they could vote in many southern states. Black people were routinely lynched in many southern states. Latinos were rarely allowed to get beyond "wetback" status in society at large. Even though Puerto Rico is considered a US Protectorate (and its citizens can pass to and from the US without a passport), folks from Puerto Rico won't be treated any better than the local Mexican, Honduran, or Salvadorean population.

Since then, Black people have finally been allowed to vote (unless you're in Florida or Ohio). And being Latino is not as much of a strike against you.

But people's minds don't change that easily. Rachel pointed out that, of the 110 jurists who have sat on the Supreme Court, 108 have been white or male. We've had two jurists who have been Black. And two that have been female. So far, no ethnic minority females (would that be too much, or what?). So what does this tell us? When we pick Supreme Court justices, why do we pick nothing but white guys? Could it be that white people tend to pick other white people, so as to be assured that the person they're picking is as much like they are as possible? And is this not normal, for the person in charge to pick someone who looks like him?

Pat pointed out that he opposed Harriet Miers on the grounds that (even though he suspected she'd vote exactly the way he'd want) she was horribly under qualified. I applaud him for that. Why didn't he say that John Roberts, current Chief Justice, wasn't qualified? He's younger than Sotomayor, and was only on the circuit bench for a couple of years before being nominated to the top post in the highest court in the land. In contrast, Sotomayor was on her local district bench in the early nineties and moved to a federal court bench in 1997. So if she's not qualified, how is he qualified?

Just asking.

The farther right (can you see that far? because I'm needing glasses) comes up with a wide variety of ethnic slurs and/or anti-feminist wackness (G. Gordon Liddy, that perennially law-abiding citizen, suggested that Sotomayor's PMS might be an issue). And I guess I have to say, if people who are paid to be listened to on the TV can't resist revealing what bigots and idiots they are, doesn't that mean that Affirmative Action is still necessary? Don't we need to keep ramming Blacks and Latinos and Indians and Chinese down the throats of these poor, downtrodden, rich white guys, until they either shut up - or evolve? I sure think we do.

I'm convinced that one day, dear Pat will either have an epiphany or apoplexy, and I really hope it's the former.

Cats? Cats...

2009-07-14T09:58:00.000-07:00

My dear fiend Boegle has requested cats and politics. I will have to approach this obliquely, something about leopards and their (in)ability to change spots...

While the current nominee for the US Supremes has to listen to a lot of pseudo-Hispanic jokes without getting all huffy on them ("you got a lot of esplainin' to do" is the worst by far - Tom Coburn R-OK), it seems as though there is a current of either racism or outright stupidity running through the GOP side of the aisle in the Senate Judiciary Committee this week. One Repugnican upbraids her for not voting the same way as another Puerto Rican justice sitting on the same court, while others want to be certain she's as neutral as possible.

So this leaves me confused - either she should be a biased judge and vote with her P.R. posse, or she shouldn't. And while she's sold as a very passionate person when it comes to the law (comments made by defense lawyers that have come up before her appeals court describe her as a kind of Judge Crankypants), if she actually shows any sort of irritation to the members of the Committee, she would be lambasted for being too emotional, too erratic, too... I dunno... female...

So here we rest again, saying that affirmative action is bad, and that the only reason Obama picked her is because she's a Latina. Of course, when the black judge retired during George HW Bush's presidency, no one said affirmative action about Clarence Thomas. Well, except Clarence himself, who basically felt that it tarred him with an awful brush. So, while he's grateful to have received the benefits of affirmative action, it's bad. As Al Franken said in his Rush Limbaugh book, kind of an "I've got mine" attitude.

And so we come back to the spots of the Repugs. When we nominate a perhaps not-perfectly qualified person to the Supremes, it's affirmative action. When the Republicans do it, it's the "right thing to do." Hmmm... the constantly shifting patterns in their fur makes them hard to spot, yet when they bite you, it doesn't matter - it just hurts.

I know. If I'm going to write about politics, facts or truth or whatever you want to call it basically has to go out the window. When you ask a question like, "how far is New York City from Los Angeles?" and all you ever get are answers like, "well that's a complicated question..."

Cats are better than politicians, because they're honest about their appetites. If they want to eat, they eat. Politicians think they have to sound like the food asked for it.

The Magic Number

2009-07-01T06:54:00.000-07:00

Sixty senators. 60. We have no excuses. The Democratic Party is either going to do good works for this country, or it's going to get itself voted out of office for being too Republican.

Al Franken, Saturday Night Live alumnus and best-selling author, decided to go after the late Paul Wellstone's seat, occupied by a man with too many excessively white teeth, Norm Coleman (R). After a vote that was way too close to count, Norm battled his way all the way up to the Minnesota Supreme Court, who (yesterday) unanimously gave Franken the win in last November's senate race. And a long, hard slog it's been.

So now we have a majority that can do things in both the House and the Senate, and we have the White House as well, with a President who is possibly the most progressive person in the White House since FDR.

Shame about the lack of spine, though.

Federal Reserve Notes

In other good news, it appears that the most Libertarian Senator, Ron Paul, and the only sitting Socialist Senator, Bernie Sanders, are both approaching the Federal Reserve with the right idea: "Let's Have An Audit!" Many people are advocating a return to the gold standard, which I am guardedly in favor of. It's all about perceived value, after all, and just because something is rare doesn't mean it's desirable. Uranium is quite rare, but I sure as hell don't want uranium coins in my pocket.

But the Fed is a law unto itself, and feels no compunction to tell the United States government (or the people of the United States) where they spent the money we told them to flood the market with. Or rather, Bush, Obama, and the Congress told them to flood the market with. Still not sure that was such a good idea. But hundreds of billions of dollars later, I'm still paying for a pretty inflated mortgage.

740 + 20% down

And (speaking of credit ratings, et al): why is it that when I pay off a credit card, or my car loans, my credit history is dinged? Or if an account is closed by a credit card company because I've decided to stay away from being further in debt, my credit rating is lowered? Can anyone reasonable tell me this? I know that one must experience small debts before one amasses larger debts (Macy's card, then car loan, then mortgage); but if a person pays their mortgage on time, and pays off credit cards, apparently that means you're some kind of deadbeat.

Requests

2009-06-24T15:24:00.000-07:00

I have run into a wall. Some of my loyal readers may have noticed that posts have gotten far and few between these days, and part of that is my ADD when it comes to choosing a topic.

So, I leave it you, dear readers: give me a topic, any topic, multiple topics, to write about, and I will look through the list. If it's a short list I'll write about all of 'em; if it's long, I might put the list up for a vote.

Thanx!

Political Obedience

2009-06-22T10:41:00.000-07:00

And the grand corporations say "sit... Sit! SIT!"

"Good little politico. Have a campaign contribution."

When will we see the influence of money leave politics? Will there have to be a revolution? Will the Supremes finally remember that money does not, in fact, equal speech?

In its most base form, witness the health care debate. On the side of the existing system, there are those who cry out "socialized medicine!", "rationed care!", and (my personal favorite) "the government can't do anything right!" Said, primarily and loudest, by people who work for the government.

When your insurance company says it won't cover certain things, like, say, chemotherapy, because you were diagnosed with cancer right after you got insurance, and they want to claim "pre-existing condition," that sounds like someone's rationing something. Money, maybe. Of course you can get the coverage you need, so long as you go to court. Everyone has time to do that these days, right?

And the idea that the government is just SO incompetent: why do we trust them to do anything right, like, say, protect our borders, or field an army? If they can't buy a light bulb without a hundred forms being filled out, how can they possibly have enough time to move an aircraft carrier from point A to point B?

To all the conservative nay-sayers (who don't read this blog - why do I even bother?): single-payer health care is cheaper than for-profit health care. It means that the government simply acts as the insurance company, paying doctors and hospitals when they are billed for services. You will pay higher taxes in order to get this, but employers no longer need to contribute their own money (unless they so choose, I guess) in order to offer you health care. In other words, you can work anywhere, and have health care. You can be unemployed and have health care. You can be retired and have health care. And you can buy supplementary health care insurance (if you want) so you can get fancier health care. Common amongst Great Britain's wealthier citizens.

Medicare (which has its problems, no denying that) has an overhead cost that is only 15% of private health insurance overhead. For every dollar you spend on your doctor visit, 12-20% of that is spent on paperwork, legal fees and profits for the insurance company. For every dollar spent by Medicare, that number is somewhere below 3%. Because all you're doing is saying how much does it cost, and what was the illness being treated.

The one thing you don't have to ask is whether the CEO needs a bigger yacht.

A Glimpse of the Perverse*

2009-06-03T13:12:00.000-07:00

In which we discover that Newt Gingrich has no scruples, the Left has no spine, and Rush still has no testicles.

Obama got make his first big appointment, that of judge Sonia Sotomayor, to the United States' Supreme Court, as a replacement for the retiring David Souter. who wrote a famous decision saying that the government had every right to take the property away from those folks who weren't using it to its full potential. Prompting an immediate lawsuit by someone saying that the land under Souter's antique ranch house in New England could be more suitably used for the construction of a shopping mall.

Don't worry, he still lives there.

However, the story isn't about him - it's about her. Or, more importantly, it's about the right-wing punditocracy that's currently foaming at the mouth and flailing around madly trying to come up with ways to block the nomination, or at least to turn the nominating process into irrelevant crap by making the nominee answer all those "when did you stop beating your wife" kind of questions that the Repugs are so adept at creating.

She said once (severely paraphrasing) that being a Latina would give her a different perspective than that of a white male, and that having her background might make her a bit more empathetic to a poor minority person's plight than an old white man might be. Not unlike the quote from Samuel Alito about how his Italian-American background might influence his decision-making.

"Racism!" shouts Newt and Rush. Of course, not to be outdone, G. Gordon Liddy suggested that there might be certain times of the month where she shouldn't be asked to make decisions because of PMS.

Wow.

I mean.

Just.

Wow.

I have to wonder how Sandra Day O'Connor (a Reagan appointee) might have reacted to Mr. Liddy's statement.

Anyway, the Left, with it's infinite ability to find things to apologise about, has already been out there, full-throated, quite sorry that their prospective nominee actually had the nerve to go out and to say something that's true (darn her!). Both Robert Gibbs and his master, President Obama, have sort of said something to the effect that if she had to do it all over again, she probably wouldn't have said something like that.

When will the left-wing in power develop spinal bones? Get the mealy out of their mouths? Remove the skirting from around the issues?

And for Rush to call someone else a racist...

"You know who deserves a posthumous Medal of Honor? James Earl Ray [the confessed assassin of Martin Luther King]. We miss you, James. Godspeed. " - Rush Limbaugh

That's not racism, that's just tellin' it like it is - right, Rush?

*With apologies to E. A. Poe

Reserving the Right to Arm Bears

2009-05-20T11:26:00.000-07:00

So the House and Senate have moved a bill through that makes credit card companies a little less like Captain Jack Sparrow, and a little more like the British East India Trading Company, i.e., they have to put in writing how they're going to rip you off and when, and they can't rip you off quite as much. Can't be so punitive with higher interest rates on late payers (never made sense to me - yes, they're more of a risk, but now they've become even MORE of a risk; how does that help?), have to use plain english in the small print they put into those endless contracts, etc. Vast improvement, while not quite weaning America off her great need to be in debt up to her follicles.

And then there's the gun amendment. Wait, what?

That's right, the gun amendment. One of the beauties of parliamentary procedure is the ability to add amendments to bills that have nothing whatsoever to do with the legislation at hand. Want to make a bill go down in flames? Add something to it that no one wants.

Like a "George W Bush National Monument in Baghdad" amendment. (just made that up - don't worry)

So, good old Sen. Tom Coburn (R - OK) decided that giving consumers better protection from obscure and/or just plain mean credit card policies wasn't enough; he felt it was necessary to protect the rights of the individual to carry loaded weapons into National Parks, including shotguns, rifles, or assault weapons. Going on a climb in Yosemite? Make sure you've got your Barrett 82A1, because you never know when you're going to need a .50 Cal. sniper rifle that can hit a target at two miles out - can you imagine all the stuff you could hit from the top of El Capitan?

Please, write your Senators and Congresscritters and make them strip this amendment off.

Or, as one of my cow-orkers has suggested, if this DOES come to pass, and CITI is having one of their annual meetings in Yellowstone - bring an Armalite AR-15, and express your opinion.*

*The Odd Bald Liberal does NOT advocate the use of violence to solve problems. But it would be fun to scare the snot out of 'em.

Whither Responsibility?

2009-05-19T12:56:00.000-07:00

Nancy Pelosi may or may not have been properly briefed by the CIA on the question or the possibility or the actuality of torture being used/not being used on detainees at Guantanamo/Bagram/Abu Ghraib.

And the Right says, "well, she okayed torture, therefore she is responsible for the torture."

I leave it to you to fill in the blank: ______ed logic.

Ya see, it's the guys in charge, like Cheney and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and Bill Kristol who decided whether or not we should be using torture. Then they tell the CIA to do so. The CIA is then told they have to brief Congress about it, but not that they have to be completely truthful (yes, that's called speculation). So, the CIA swears a few Senators and Congresscritters to absolute silence, tells them either faulty or slightly incomplete information, and one of the Congresscritters writes a letter of protest (since he can't actually, you know, talk about any of it to anyone) to the folks higher on the food chain (Cheney), and SURPRISE! nothing changes.

Here we are, years later, declassifying memos, and hiding photos (Mr. Obama, I believe you misplaced your government transparency special power), and people start talking about who knew what when, rather than who ordered what, and then told everyone lies about it. Or not.

Torture is torture, and no matter who knew about it while it was happening, the more important question is who ordered it, and when will they be punished?

I'm not absolving Nancy of any responsibility. If she knew about this and did/said nothing, then she needs to be replaced by someone who will stand up to whomever is president, should that person do something so inherently illegal and (more importantly) immoral. Her fumbling press conference was embarrassing enough without her having criminal knowledge. Hint: it's called "preparation," Nancy.

I Fought the Law, and the Law Yawned

2009-04-23T16:47:00.000-07:00

It appears that perhaps, our long national nightmare of accountability has finally come to an end.

The Conservative will tell you it's all about taking personal responsibility.

Unless, of course, you're talking actual jail time.

Then, it's about partisan witch-hunts. Heck, even a few democrats are acting this way about it. Like the President.

Sort of.

I mean mixed messages, folks. Obama has released a bunch of memos detailing the opinions of the various lawyers who decided whether or not waterboarding and other little fun pastimes could be considered torture, and whether or not the Geneva Conventions should be obeyed or ignored, depending on the individual you were dealing with. But "let's not prosecute?" Why tell us they've broken the law, and then tell us we won't go after them?

The Repugs have come up with their own twisted version of accountability - they're saying that if we can declassify these secret documents, then we can also declassify the documents proving exactly which potential terrorist horrors all of our horrors have prevented. Which will come back to bite them, I think. What if there weren't any incidents prevented? What if all we have to show for all this stupid, self-righteous behavior is a great deal of international legal egg on our faces?

And all of this "all in the past" nonsense: fine. I will consult a lawyer who will come up with some sort of (pardon the pun) tortured legal finding that says robbing banks is OK. I will rob a bank based on this. I will admit it publicly. Then I can use the (admittedly inaccurate, or probably illegal) opinion my lawyer has come up with, and the local DA will look at it and go, well, it all happened in the past, so we shouldn't bother with this? I kind of doubt it.

We are still trying to capture Nazi war criminals, even when they're past the point of being punishable for much more than a two or three-month sentence (they're kind of old, you know), but by God what they did was wrong and they should pay. Better still, their crimes should be made public, so that we can all remember the horror that happened.

Our own dear elected officials allowed torture, mistreatment of prisoners, etc., but "that was all so long ago. Let's look to the future."

I'm sorry, but if you're going to hand out evidence of criminal activity that all can see and read, then you damn well better act on it as if a crime has been committed. Because if you don't, transparency and accountability mean very little. The rule of law is only as strong as those who enforce the laws. If a lawyer tells you you can kill people, does that make it legal? Or only if you're the President, and the people you want to kill might be bad guys? And if the President gets to define who and what a bad guy is without trial, isn't that a little too much power for one person to have? Especially one who already has quite a lot of power to begin with?

Just asking...

Raging Cretinous Has-Beens

2009-04-14T13:10:00.000-07:00

Here's to Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly: we salute you, o idiots of the major media!!! I would add other media luminaries to this list, but I need to keep it manageable. Your consistent, ass-hatted opinions are keeping America safe for the Michigan Militia! Unfortunately, everyone else is going to have to buy a few bullet-proof vests.

First, the "Tea Parties:" I learned from Thom Hartmann last week that the Boston Tea Party was staged, not (as my history textbooks would have it) because the poor, benighted colonists were being overtaxed on something as common and important as tea, but because the British East India Trading Company was not going to be taxed at all for importing tea to the Colonies, thus killing competition between BEITCo and any other tea company.

Kind of like when Wal Mart comes to town and gets a ten-year-long property tax holiday, because they're going to employ a lot of locals (which they will, because all the local business will be going under).

So, once you get past that little semantic difference of opinion, you're then left with a fairly crazy conspiracy theory: Obama is planning on taking away all the guns, nationalizing all the banks (so?), and essentially forming a Muslim States of America. His own statements notwithstanding (about America being a secular state that has religious people living in it - oh, my GOD, I had no IDEA), loonballs like Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity are running around with their mouths hanging out all over the place, telling "Patriotic Americans" (AKA knuckle-dragging inebriates with too much time and/or too many firearms on their hands) that it's time to think about armed insurrection.

Wow. Wasn't it just yesterday that criticising the President's war plans was tantamount to treason? (that's the last President, by the way, not the current one)

So, if criticising one President's war plans is treason, what do you call telling people to arm themselves and prepare for war against their own government? A friendly argument? An agreement to disagree?

A joke in poor taste?

And thus we have a spate of random shooting sprees. One guy specifically said in his (attempted, as it turned out) suicide note, that if you're going to kill yourself, because the world is becoming a socialist state, take out a few liberals along the way. I'm not saying all the shooting sprees are specifically politically motivated - though when you're broke, laid-off, and desperate, and the wackos tell you that the guy in charge did it, well, then you might think about going after the guy in charge.

Shame that it wasn't the current "guy in charge" that screwed everything up. But, you know, that's just semantics...

This Just In - OPEC Says Oil Tastes Great!

2009-04-02T12:04:00.000-07:00

In a story in Reuters today, OPEC displayed a deep schizophrenia when talking about it's primary source of revenue.

The General Secretary for the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, Abdullah al-Badri, blamed industrialized nations and their factories for Global Warming, then suggested that revenues from taxing oil should go to environmental issues, but then lambasted developed nations for trying to wean off the their respective populations off of OPEC's product.

So, oil doesn't cause global warming, but coal and natural gas do?

It's enough to give you whiplash.

Even the head of Royal Dutch Shell says that maybe people should stop buying penis-replacements and just get some sort of car that works and will get them from place to place without the huge carbon footprints.

If you're going to tax petroleum products anyway, make sure you use those revenues to fund environmental needs in your country.

But God forbid that you stop buying big cars that need lots of gasoline to run.

"It's the damned United Auto Workers' fault for GM and Ford and Chrysler all going belly-up."

"It's the damned poor people with their sub-prime loans that have caused this banking problem."

And now, we have:

"It's the damned industrialized nations that are causing global warming, not oil."

I'm still confused.

The implications of this are, of course, staggering. Next thing you know, the polar ice caps melting will be because polar bears have too much sex, and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch will be blamed for all the junk in the ocean.

Yes, I'm Depressed

2009-04-01T08:07:00.000-07:00

So, my last post sounded (after I read it the next day) a little depressed, perhaps a little gloomy. So in the spirit of trying the cheer everyone up, I submit the following links, so that you can experience my renewed sense of optimism:

On the economy:

Paul Krugman interviewed in Newsweek

Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone

Jake DeSantis in the New York Times

Matt Taibbi in Alternet, responding to Mr. DeSantis

Joseph Stiglitz in the New York Times this morning

I could go on, but I'd hate to lose too many readers to suicide.

Then there's the wars:

Fort Hood soldiers

Karzai legalizes rape in Afghanistan

Iraqi insurgents don't see why they should stop

Okay, enough.

I do try to approach every day not as if it's going to be my last, but with a sense of "anything can happen, and it might be good." While this often leads to disappointment, it also occasionally leads to good news. For example, the Spanish are looking to try some of our prior administration's best and brightest for war crimes and crimes against humanity. With apologies to Monty Python, "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!" It was a good thing to hear about on an otherwise dismal day, at least as far as world economic news was concerned. The other good news was that the head of GM was forced to resign by President Obama, and the conservative pundits immediately went into full lathered-up mode, decrying socialism, nationalised industries, and other conservative bugaboos. Anything to piss off a Republican, is what I always say.

One comment on the above articles, though: interesting how Paul Krugman, who has been lambasting the current President way less than he ever did with former White House Occupant Bush, is suddenly the man to listen to. Why is it we never saw an article in Newsweek or Time magazine titled "Paul Krugman Says: Bush is Wrong"? Hmm......

Stupid Human Tricksters

2009-03-30T15:42:00.000-07:00

When Carter spoke of a national malaise, I wonder if he saw it coming.

Since all this began pretty much during my lifetime, I keep wondering what it was I thought I was seeing while I was seeing it. I've read Thomas Frank's The Wrecking Crew (after reading his equally infuriating What's the Matter with Kansas?), and, while I certainly agree with his theses and conclusions, I worry whether, at this point, if there's anything we can do about any of it?

And the answer of course, is yes, we can. Not the way President Obama wants to do it, but the right way, the grass-roots way. Call your Senators and Congresscritters and tell them that we've finally overstepped the bounds of taste and sanity in bailing out billion dollar entities that have spent the last twenty years or so figuring out ways to keep most of the money they've handled, even when it wasn't their money to begin with. Call your local media outlets (assuming you have any local media outlets left) and scream bloody murder about the poor stenography that they're trying to pass off as journalism. Write to the President, the Chairman of the FCC, and pretty much anyone else you can think of, and say that the concentrated ownership of large media is unacceptable, and if the government is going to subsidize anyone, it should be local newspapers.

While it's good that the government is finally telling GM that they need to get their damn act together when it comes to how the company is run, the main thing GM really has yet to learn is that oil doesn't grow on trees.

(and even if it did, global warming will make the trees shorter and less productive)

And, of course, we're asking the good old autoworkers at GM and elsewhere to take a pay cut. And that's not even said with a hint of irony while we try to take back bonuses paid to people who (on average) made about nine million dollars a year while coring the economy with a chainsaw, and who now complain about not being able to keep their lousy million-dollar bonuses.

And we have to not say, the sky is falling. Because while the sky is falling, all you can do is stand up straight and hope your head can stand the blow.

The conservatives have done their job well. They've managed to drag as many millions out of the system for themselves and squirreled away the money while complaining about being taxed too much, thus gutting the functions of government. The liberals have done their job equally well, by being the loyal opposition, but not much of an opposition, since none of them can agree on enough of anything to get the job done well, but just well enough not to offend anyone, thus gutting the government. And if that's not playing into their opponent's hands, I don't know what would (one can also argue that the liberals are just as guilty as the conservatives in sneaking a little cash out for themselves). The monetarists have finally seen their system collapse before their eyes, and either a) want to continue how it was done before; or b) want to make sure the systems that were in place before the collapse are financed properly so they can build up to a bigger collapse in a few years. And everyone wants more regulations, but no one is willing to give the regulations teeth, so what's the point?

Give up while you still can, and move to some other country, and wait to watch as the United States of America, that great experiment in democracy, shoots itself in the foot repeatedly, all the while complaining that the bullets cost too much and buying a gun is overregulated and going to the emergency room counts as primary care.

Unfortunately, I think I might be optimistic.

Cause I'm the Taxman

2009-03-23T10:18:00.000-07:00

(with apologies to the Beatles)

I'm hearing a lot about how Obama's gonna "tax the rich." To which I reply, "so?"

When you think about it, the folks who have been hit hardest by all the taxes we currently have are the poor. Social Security is now running around 6.2%. So, no matter how many kids you have, 6.2% of your income goes to Social Security and 1.45% to Medicare. Once you hit $106,800, the Fed stops taxing that income for Social Security. To illustrate it with a number, someone making $100,000 per year, they will pay $7,650.00. Someone making $200,000 would pay $9,521.60. The AIG folks who received a $1,000,000 bonuses for fixing the mess they made would pay $21,121.60. So, someone making 5o times what a garment worker in Soho makes, only pays 2.1% of their income in Social Security and Medicare taxes, while the garment worker pays 8.65% of their income. Doesn't seem fair, does it?

After that it's sales tax. And sales tax in Washington State, King County, runs around 9%. So anything other than unprocessed food is going to cost you 9% more of everything you buy. For poor people, that's not as much, but still.

Then there's fuel taxes. Poor folks tend to buy older cars that have poor gas mileage, so they buy more fuel (and create more pollution) than their wealthier counterparts. And fuel taxes are collected to pay for road repairs and bridge and tunnel maintenance. Except that we haven't been paying for those things, except for maybe the occasional pothole.

And there's the Estate Tax (known to the Republicans as the Death Tax). Enacted originally in 1916 (same time as Income Tax) it tends to affect a very small percentage of families in the United States, and since 1987, it affects less than three-tenths of one percent of all estates in any given year. It provides for approximately one percent of the federal revenue. What if we brought it all the way back, but exempted estates worth less than $15 million?

Now, there are some new proposals that worry me. Since people are trying to buy more fuel-efficient cars, the gas tax isn't creating the revenue they would normally see, so they're now talking about a mileage tax, and the way a mileage tax would work... Well, would you like the government knowing how far you've gone, and where to? Didn't think so.

So what's the solution? Tax the rich a little more, use the taxes to construct new infrastructure and to finance a new generation of industries, such as mass transit and research into renewable resource energy systems. Then you get a lot more paid middle-class workers paying regular taxes into the revenue of the federal government. We may have to deficit spend for a while to do this, but hopefully it will be worth it.

Get people educated, give them the opportunity to be the leaders of tomorrow, and maybe we have a country I can be proud of again, and not the potential Third World, plutocratic cesspool we're slowly sinking into.