And Doctor Biobrain's Response Is...

Nihilist of the Day: Male Rape

2012-01-07T01:05:00.002-06:00

Here is a must read post I wrote at American Nihilist. It is in honor of Obama's newest attempt to destroy the fabric of society: Male Rape.

And remember, American Nihilist is the go to blog for anyone who's visited Obama's luxurious re-education resorts. It's not a marching order if you didn't read it at American Nihilist. Life is Nihilism. Obama is life.

Excerpt:

Since the beginning of time, the sole purpose of the human race was to protect Yahweh's greatest gift to man: The Female Vagina. This is because female vaginas help God help us to procreate and expand upon his creation, plus they're very very sexy. But thanks to the hard work of Commander Supreme Barack Sidney Obama and you, his loyal minions, the whole rape ballgame's gone topsy-turvy, where you can't tell the rapists from the victims and everyone will be raped for at least fifteen minutes.

That's right. Obama has decreed the new existence of Male Rape. So strap on your strap-ons and hope you're the one who ends up on top, because it'll sure be a lot more fun than the other way around.

Learning How to Control Your Life

2011-12-24T04:15:00.000-06:00

A friend on Facebook posted a link to an essay on Learned Helplessness. And I liked the idea, as most people aren't really in control of their lives and assume that there is no way of controlling it. Nothing works out like how they think it should, so they make excuses instead of figuring out how they can make things better. Blaming your boss for being a dick is easy. Figuring out how to make that dickie boss support you is difficult; but you'll never do it if you assume it's impossible.

While there might not always be a good solution for all your problems, that's absolutely no excuse to stop looking for one. You should always try to find a better way of doing things. Always.

Anyway, here's the response I gave to that essay.

While I agreed with the general point of that essay, I felt that it didn't really hit the nail on the head. For one thing, I don't think helplessness is learned, but rather, it's the default we start with. People aren't trained to accept shitty lives. It's that they were never trained in how to fix things in the first place. It's easy to just go with the flow, while very few people ever learn how to control their lives; including the "rebels" who imagine they're different because they do all the same things all the other "rebels" do. As if contrarianism somehow represented freewill.

Moreover, I think this phenomenon can be more generalized into saying that we can learn to get used to ANYTHING. It's how we cope. It's not just helplessness. Rich people get used to wealth and don't realize they're getting anything special, just as poor people get used to poverty and can't imagine anything different. A smelly room stops being smelly once your brain adjusts, while loud sounds stop being loud after awhile. Our ability to adapt is a key feature in the human brain which is generally a positive thing, though it can obviously lead to bad things, too.

And one glaring error in that essay was the idea that normal people externalize their failures while helpless people blame themselves. This is completely the opposite: Helpless people externalize their failures by believing things were out of their control, while normal people blame themselves and figure out what they could have done differently. It's easy to make excuses for why we fail, but it's hard to see what we could have done better. Even someone who thinks "I failed because I'm stupid" isn't really blaming themselves. They think their failure is outside of their control, and not really their fault because they didn't make themselves stupid. You only blame yourself when you accept that you could have done things differently, but didn't.

Another error was the belief that changing one's ringtones would somehow make one feel more confident in their ability to improve their lives. Again, it's the opposite: You search for superficial and meaningless change in your life because you don't know how to affect real change. Ringtones fix nothing. Learning how to work harder is a real improvement. Most people strive for the superficial because it's so much easier than fixing the real. That's why they're ultimately unhappy, because they've never learned how they can improve their lives for real. People in control of their lives don't spend much time rearranging furniture or changing ringtones. I know I never do.

Being Better Than Our Bodies

2011-12-24T04:06:00.000-06:00

Over on Facebook, I've got a friend who keeps posting stuff about how we need to learn to accept our bodies and not be upset with what we look like. And I'm sorry, but I think that's incredibly misguided. While we are essentially stuck with who we are and can't all look like quarterbacks and super models, that's no excuse for just letting ourselves go and accepting whatever we look like.

I myself suffered through that, as I once weighed sixty pounds more than I do now, and believed that I looked normal and complained to my wife on more than one occasion because I truly believed she was shrinking my clothes in the laundry. Seriously. Over time, I decided to not eat quite so much and to get a little exercise, and now I look at pictures of myself from ten years ago and I'm embarrassed that I ever accepted that. Not that I looked bad, but wow, I look so much better now.

And it wasn't that I had to go on some crazy diet or anything, as I wouldn't do that sort of thing. I just realized that I was eating stupid and drinking too much, and learned to adjust. Now I still eat fast food and drink, but not as much as before; and I look great. While we should never expect ourselves to look like something we're not, that's no excuse to let ourselves go and do whatever we feel like.

Anyway, here's what I posted as my comment.

I think it's dangerous to believe that we are our bodies. We are not. We are our minds and our bodies are stupid material things we are stuck with. If our bodies are unhealthy, it affects our minds and makes us unhealthy. In addition, when our bodies are unhealthy, it makes others treat us badly which makes things worse for ourselves.

It is wrong for someone in bad shape to think "My body sucks, so I suck." But it's equally wrong to think "My body sucks and I should accept it because that's who I am." The correct thing to think is "My body sucks and I'm better than it, so I'm going to fix it so it becomes what it should be." We are not our bodies. We are our minds.

To accept an unhealthy body is an excuse. While there are many types of bodies, there is an ideal body for each of us. We should be our ideal body and fight to make sure we attain it. Not because we are our bodies, but because it makes who we are better. We should always strive to be our best selves, always. No excuses.

Defending Obama Against Fantasies

2011-12-21T04:16:00.002-06:00

I'm in a debate on Facebook with someone attacking Obama, who finds it incomprehensible that I don't think a "smart savvy political thinker" could dislike Obama, but who has yet to explain why I should do so. Instead, he's asked me what it'd take for me to realize that Obama is "corporate-owned scum like all the rest of them." I haven't been posting much lately, so I figured I'd reprint my reply.

No, Jeffrey. I can't imagine any reason why a smart savvy political thinker might dislike Obama. I already said that. And your response was to imply that Obama is scum without specifying any reason whatsoever.

But to answer your second question, assuming you were expecting an answer: I would be convinced that Obama was a corporate-owned scum if he acted like one. But since he continues to do things that help working class people, including giving us better healthcare, extending unemployment benefits, and continuing the payroll tax cut he gave to all working Americans; I fail to see how this makes him a bad person.

Obama made sure that cancer patients can't have their policies rescinded when they get cancer, as well as making sure that babies born with birth defects get insured. You've done literally NOTHING that can compete with either of those things, and that's just the beginning of all the things he's done for us. So you can talk big all you want, but I know which person is fighting for me and who's just talking.

Words are cheap and it's easy to stand tall on principles that don't cost anything. I put my support behind the guy who has backed them up. Until you can protect us against a Republican president, you've got little ground to attack the man from. You might say that the system is rigged against someone like you winning the presidency, but it was rigged against him too, and he made it. And so he's had to accept compromise in order to get us what we want. That's what democracy is all about and the only reason you don't need to compromise is because you aren't in a position to win anything by compromise either.

Btw, Obama has personally saved me a few hundred dollars in overdraft fees thanks to his bank reform law in 2009. What have you done for me lately?

After wards, the guy responded back attacking the standard mistruths that Obama's critics on the left use against him, which you can figure out by reading my reply:

Ok, I'm glad you at least bothered saying why you're upset with him. Fortunately for us all, your list is incredibly flawed.

For NDAA, could you explain why that was a bad thing? As I already said, it didn't really change anything. I know people SAY that it allows the government to hold US citizens indefinitely and whatnot, but since that's not true, they're wrong. The law really didn't do much of anything, as it's still up to the courts to interpret what the law really is as it didn't really change anything from what we were doing already.

As for the American citizen he killed (I'm only aware of only one, so I'd like to hear of more if there are some), I fully agreed with that. That was done with the approval of many people within the government, using a legal argument that I find sensible. So I find nothing wrong with the one case I know of in which this happened.With Gitmo, he wants to close it. Congress won't let him. Have you some evidence that this isn't the case, or do you believe him to be a dictator who can close Gitmo without the approval of Congress?

The "sell out" over the Bush tax cuts got us many great things, including extended unemployment benefits, a payroll tax cut that saved people $1000 on average this year, a nuclear treaty with Russia, and the end of DADT; among many other things. And had he not agreed to it, he'd have gotten NOTHING. This is a democracy and Republicans do have power. Had he waited until January, they'd have had even more power. But he's stated repeatedly that the tax cut was dumb and that he'll be in a better position to fight this battle next year; and my political calculations say the same thing.

The stimulus package did have many tax cuts, though the majority of it went to low and middle class people. Of the $787 billion bill, only $51 billion went to businesses, so I'm confused as to why you think it went "mostly" to corporations. Btw, the experts say that the stimulus worked and that we'd be worse off without it, so I'm confused as to why you're listing this as a problem.

As for the "trillions" that went to secret bailouts, those were loans. Loans. Loans. They were loans. In many cases, we received stock ownership of these companies, like Citigroup, AIG, and GM; and they were expected to repay their debt to us, and largely have done so. And the "trillions" number is deceptive, as the group that claims that includes money that was borrowed, repaid, and borrowed again; only counting the borrowing and not repaying. So if a bank borrowed a $10 billion, repaid it, and then borrowed $10 billion again as a short term loan; that counted as $20 billion borrowed, even though it was the same $10 billion as before. And of course, much of this happened during the Bush Admin and NOT the Obama Admin. As a reminder, TARP happened in 2008, not 2009. Obama was merely a Senator then.

And look, this is why I don't think that a smart politically savvy person can disagree with Obama, as everything you wrote was incorrect, if not completely wrong. Not that I'm saying you're dumb, merely that you're looking for reasons to criticize Obama and not bothering to find out if it's true or not. I'm sorry, but there's nothing savvy in anything you wrote.

Why Romney's Campaign Sucks

2011-12-12T12:57:00.002-06:00

One of Romney's biggest problems is that his campaign staff sucks and doesn't understand how politics really work. They've obviously got a superficial understanding of politics that may have worked well in a pre-Clinton era and could even have competed well against the new elements of what Clinton brought to the table in terms of tactics and strategies.

But Obama brought things to a whole new level with a smooth operation that was girded by a brass-knuckle understanding of politics that fought tough without being dirty and always stayed above the fray. So while his opponents are swinging wildly at him, he can counter and jab while staying on message and outside the reach of his opponents. Anyone upset that he doesn't sling mud doesn't know what they're talking about, as mud slingers get covered in mud; while Obama has retained a reputation as a likable guy.

Yet Romney's team doesn't really understand politics and keep making pointless mistakes. Their most fundamental error was in not realizing that people have memories and his prior record couldn't just be wished away. And so he needed a story that explained why he switched positions, rather than a straight-up denial that it never happened in hopes that everyone's too dumb to remember. And so now his multiple personas have become part of the DNA of his narrative and it's too late to change that.

Even people who don't know exactly what he's changed will still hear that he changed and there's nothing he can do to fix that now. And the rule is: If you're not writing your narrative, your opponent is. So you have to have a story for everything and it better be good. Yet even now, Romney can't properly answer questions about his own record, even though he's had plenty of time to invent one.

Returning the Money

His latest mistake was in his attacks against Gingrich for accepting $1.6 million from Freddie Mac and then telling everyone what a problem Freddie was. Gingrich too is working under the old style of politics and still seems unaware that we can remember things.

And Romney's problem with using this attack is that he invested half a million in Fannie and Freddie. And so it's kind of hard to attack Freddie Mac as being to blame when you clearly gave approval with your wallet. Romney should have known this, but didn't. But Gingrich being a lobbyist is still worse than Romney being an investor, so Gingrich still gets the worst of this issue.

But that's not the part I don't like about this. The dumb part was how Romney staged the actual attack.

Mitt Romney said Monday that Newt Gingrich is part of a Washington culture that disgusts Americans, and called on the former House speaker to return the seven-figure sum he received from the government-backed lender Freddie Mac.

Asked on Fox News if he thinks Gingrich should give back the $1.6 million that Freddie Mac paid him, Romney answered: “I sure do.”

And this was just dumb. Why would he want Gingrich to return the money? Does he want to give Gingrich an out, so that he's slightly tarnished but giving a mea culpa for accepting money he shouldn't have taken? Or does he want to hang this around Gingrich's neck, to show that he deserved the money, and shouldn't be in the race because he was part of the problem?

How Tactics Work

They obviously haven't thought this one through and are just going with the standard "Return the Money" line that campaigns often use in these cases, even though it doesn't make sense. Because sometimes you should use that line of attack, and sometimes you shouldn't; and if you don't know why you're doing something, you probably shouldn't do it.

When a radioactive group or individual associate with a campaign, you go with the "Return the Money" argument because you're using it as an excuse to tie them to the group and bring it into the news. So the initial association is a news story, the "Return the Money" attack becomes a story, repeating it also generates a story, and if the money is returned, that's also a news story. And because returning money is an admission of guilt, it becomes part of the campaign's DNA. So one bad association that often isn't the candidate's fault turns into multiple damaging stories that puts the candidate on defense the whole time. And best of all, your opponent lost the money and gained nothing from this. That's tough politics, but not dirty at all.

But in Newt's case, he's already tied to the group, because he was essentially working for them. And since lobbying was part of the problem, they need to show how Gingrich was also part of the problem.because he was a high priced lobbyist getting paid to make things easier for Freddie to do the bad things they did. This isn't a case of a candidate accepting money from a tainted source. This is a case of the candidate being tainted. So what good does it do to demand for Gingrich to disassociate from them, when the association is already so much better for you?

That's just dumb, and if Romney were smart, he'd be demanding to learn more of what Gingrich did for his money; not demanding that he disassociate from a group that he now regrets working for. And Romney needs to tie that into a bigger narrative of Gingrich as an influence peddler who sold his name to whoever paid him. And best of all, that's a fair attack on Gingrich. Gingrich would be the Lobbyist-in-Chief and people need to know that about him. He's not an outsider fighting the system; he's an insider who helped make it worse. That's where this should have gone; not a stupid focus on the money.

Romney's team is obviously too incompetent to know how this works, and are just going through the motions they've seen other campaigns do. As it turns out, their suits are just as empty as Romney's, and that's why he's having trouble fighting bozos and hasn't a chance against Obama if he somehow makes it through this alive.

An Explanation of Obamacare

2011-12-09T15:25:00.001-06:00

I'm in a debate with a dude on Facebook who insists that Obama's healthcare law was a rightwing policy that primarily helped the insurers. And his evidence for this was that insurance mandates were originally a conservative idea, as if that somehow trumps all the good things it did.

Because, of course, the original plan didn't include subsidies, more regulations, and tax hikes on the rich; as ACA does. And it's as if we're still in 2009 and these people get to speculate about how bad it is, and refuse to learn what the law actually did. After all, they keep reading from so many progressives about what a sell-out it is, so that must be true.

And while this is far from the definitive summary of this, here's a quickie recap of the plan I gave him, to counter his idea that the plan is "overpriced" and that subsidies wouldn't apply to most people. I'll let you know if he posts a reply that refutes anything I wrote, as I acknowledge up front that I am NOT an expert on this. I'm just someone who knows how to use the internet and likes to know what he's talking about.

And in case you're interested in learning more, here's a subsidy calculator that will show how much you'll pay in 2014 for insurance if you can't get it through your employer. And here's Wikipedia's page on ACA, which covers everything and a PDF summary for those who don't have time to read everything at Wikipedia.

This stuff has been out for awhile, so anyone who still doesn't know what it does really shouldn't talk about it at all, as ignorance is no excuse for making shit up.

ACA Recap

Here's an overview: Employers now have big incentives to offer insurance to their employees and the larger ones will be punished if they don't. And it has to be GOOD insurance, and not the crappy stuff McDonalds and Walmart are currently getting away with. So the majority of people will be covered this way, as they are already, but will have even better insurance than before.

For those who can't get employer insurance and make too much for the newly increased Medicaid limits, you'll go to your state's insurance exchange (which will include at least one non-profit) and the rates will be capped according to how much you make and you'll receive a subsidy. Out-of-pocket expenses are also limited, and you'll get to choose which level of coverage you want, depending upon how much you want to pay. But the more you pay, the more coverage you're guaranteed to get.

For example, a forty year old with a family of four who wants a "silver" plan who makes $55k will not pay more than $4135 in insurance premiums a year. And that same person making $33k a year will only pay $1143. If he makes less than $30k he won't pay anything, while the subsidies go all the way up to those making $90k a year. And of course, they can't raise your rates without government approval, can't rescind your policy when you get sick, and can't deny you coverage for preexisting conditions. And that's just the tip of the iceberg, as ACA does a TON more than this.

Does that really sound like a rightwing plan to you? This is WAAAAY better than what we had before, and while it has elements that were once approved by conservatives, it's also stocked with lots of goodies that make it an effective liberal policy that will certainly save lives.

The Limited Powers of Media Spin

2011-12-04T13:07:00.001-06:00

Jonathan Chait has a post about the limits of the Republican Elite's power in nominating their preferred candidate, writing:

The more important function of the debates is that they circumvent the party apparatus. Republicans are less dependent on tuning into the media – in this case, usually Party organs like Fox News – to learn who the leading candidates are. They can squeeze the merchandise themselves. Certainly debates have existed before this cycle, but now they seem more frequent and far more influential. Viral moments are spreading farther and wider.

Jonathan Bernstein counters by saying that the debates are being spun by Fox News and others in the rightwing media, writing:

Debates are far more mediated than ads or direct campaign contacts. And that means that to understand the effects of the debates, we need to know who is interpreting them and how.

And his evidence for this? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Nor could he, because all evidence points to the contrary. As Chait noted, Romney is surely the candidate the Republican Establishment wants, yet Newt now seems to be the front-runner; even though he's a terrible candidate. And I've got to agree with that, as Newt is perhaps the worst candidate they've got; with the possible exception of Ron Paul and Rick Santorum.

Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence

So for Bernstein to refute Chait's argument, he needs to show how his theory explains what we're all obviously seeing. But he doesn't, and instead basically goes with a Rightwing Media Works in Mysterious Ways sort of thing, which might work when applied to acts of God but isn't even satisfactory in that case.

Seriously, this is what he wrote:

we don’t really know exactly how what I call the GOP-aligned media works

So he admits that he doesn't know how they're doing it, yet he "knows" that it's happening, enough so that he can imagine he's refuting Chait's point without needing any evidence whatsoever to support his claim.

Sorry, but that's just not good enough. Since reality seems to contradict Bernstein's claims, he needs to explain how this fits into his theory, yet he doesn't even attempt an explanation. Instead, his argument is a mere assertion that this is true and leaves things at that. And since Chait's describing a new phenomenon that changes the old dynamics, Bernstein really needs to show how the old dynamics are still in effect.

Yet he ignores that part completely. He started his post by asserting that Perry's brain fart about not remembering the three agencies he wanted to cut could have been spun either way, yet doesn't offer anything to support even that assertion; let alone explain any of the rest of this.

My Rebuttal

The rest of this is the comment that I wrote on his post, which I'm just reposting here.

I'm sorry, but this is a ridiculous argument which is proven false by reality. Are we REALLY to imagine that Fox News had it in for Perry, even though he was at one time the Anointed One and the best chance the Republicans had at uniting the Tea Partiers behind a candidate that at least stood some chance of competing against Obama? That seems doubtful.

First off, the influence of the media has ALWAYS been vastly exaggerated, even before the internet became so pervasive in politics. One needs only to contrast the negative news coverage of Clinton with the high approval ratings he had to see that. But when you've got groups like Think Progress and TPM, as well as lots of conservatives posting these clips while the debates are still going on, it's a bit hard to imagine how Fox News is the one controlling all this.

Because NOBODY could spin the brain farts committed by Perry and Cain as being momentary lapses by knowledgeable people; primarily because neither of them had a reputation as someone who was knowledgeable. Instead, they had reps as being guys with a very superficial understanding of the issues and no amount of spin can fix that. Same goes for Palin. While spin does have some effect, those powers aren't infinite and can't turn a turd candidate into Obama just by waving a magic wand.

And seriously, are we to imagine that Fox WANTS all these candidates to look like boobs? Could they be so delusional as to imagine that a Gingrich nomination could be GOOD for the party? Or is it maybe that they're as powerless to create the New Reagan as anyone else?

There's a reason that Mitt Romney avoids media interviews and it's NOT because he's worried that Fox will destroy him for making smart comments. It's because he too has a superficial understanding of the issues, but is smart enough to realize that he's safer in controlled situations like advertisements and speeches than in debates and interviews. And even debates are safer for him than interviews, as he can at least hide behind talking points and not have to worry too much about follow-up questions.

And it shouldn't need to be said, but Chait's theory explains why Gingrich is beating Romney, even though Romney has GOT to be the one that the Republicans want; while this theory of all-powerful spin does NOT explain that. After all, Fox News HASN'T been hammering Romney for his debate performance, and yet he STILL lags in the polls. I'm sorry, but this alone completely contradicts this theory.

Gingrich is one of the worst candidates they've got, has a terrible campaign, was considered to be dead in the water by everyone including Fox earlier in the year; yet now seems to be the front runner. If your theory can't explain that, then you need to get a new theory.

In Defense of Hate Crime Laws

2011-12-01T03:31:00.001-06:00

Over on Facebook, one of my FB friends posted a link to an article criticizing hate crime laws, with the idea that it's a violation of free speech to punish someone for the reason why they committed the crime. And the whole thing was just a rehash of the same debate we had during the 90's when the idea of punishing hate crimes first came up, by someone who seems to imagine they've found a novel argument against it. You know, how it's thought policing and protecting special groups at the expense of white people. That kind of thing. But I don't post often enough, so I figured I'd post my response here. Enjoy!

So...when the KKK puts a burning cross on someone's property, should that be punished the same as someone who starts a fire on that property to keep warm? Or should the burning cross be taken as something more than a mere fire?

And when a Neo-Nazi paints a Swastika on a Jew's house, is that the same as someone tagging their name on the house as graffiti? Or is there something more going on than just spraypaint?

And I'll admit to not being a lawyer, yet I'm of the understanding that criminal law DOES take the reason for our actions into consideration. For example, we have various levels of how to treat someone who kills someone else, depending upon the reasons and actions behind the killing; ranging from first degree murder down to manslaughter, and all the way down to self defense for people defending themselves. So we clearly treat killers differently, depending upon their reasons for killing.

Moreover, our punishments are different, depending upon the circumstances. So someone convicted of first degree murder for shooting their wife with a gun is treated differently than someone who shoved their wife into a woodchipper. Plus, someone who's killed before will be treated differently than someone who's never killed before, because it's assumed that the repeat killer is developing a pattern.

Again, I'm not a lawyer, but it seems to me that we already treat the same actions differently depending upon the circumstances, which is why we have such leeway in how to prosecute people and what the punishment should be, because different circumstances deserve different punishments. And so hate crimes would be an extension of that principle, as someone who goes around mugging for money is less dangerous than someone who only mugs white people because they hate them.

BTW, unless I'm mistaken, hate crimes can be committed against EVERY group, including whites; so the mention in the article that some groups are treated differently than others would be false. It's not that there's a protected group of people. It's that we're all protected against people who are specifically targeting us due to the group we're in.

And the overall point is that free speech is still free and you're still entitled to think whatever the hell you want to think; including hatred of others. But as soon as you act upon those thoughts, it becomes an entirely different ballgame and you can be treated differently based upon the reasons why you did it.

Attacking the Messenger

2011-11-30T12:25:00.001-06:00

I'd like to say more, but I've got places to go and things to do this afternoon, so this will be short. I saw a story at TPM about how the DOJ Inspector General concluded that The New York Agency for Community Affairs was a front group for ACORN, using grant monies given to NYACA entirely to pay ACORN employees. And that's it. That's all the story said.

Was this a bad thing? Was it illegal? Is this proof that ACORN was illegitimate and deserved to be destroyed? I have no idea, as the story didn't say. It only reported what the Inspector General said and nothing else. Yet, for merely reporting the story, TPM's writer was accused by liberal commenters of being a "Bloomberg puppet" and of being another James O'Keefe.

When I defended the story, one commenter actually wrote:

The sparse reporting in this "story" seems designed as red meat for conservatives who have demonized ACORN and nothing else.

Because yeah, TPM has a real incentive to throw red meat to conservatives.

And look, I understand how the rightwing spin machine works, and how this story will be spun as a bad thing for Democrats. But does that mean we need to attack the messenger? Because what these people want is to live in a bubble, where they only hear good news and ignore the bad. As if that will make the stories go away. But as I said in my initial comment, it's GOOD for us to know what Republicans will be talking about, so we can better separate fact from fiction when it comes up. Burying your head in the sand will NOT make the bad things go away.

And more importantly...why do we care what they say about ACORN? They don't even exist any more! Same goes for all the other nonsense Republicans rant about. How does it hurt us when Republicans deny Obama's citizenship, or call him a socialist Muslim, or any of the other imagined windmills these bozos keep attacking? Because these stories are just a distraction to them, and the longer they attack these distractions, the less they'll be able to attack things with traction.

And that's a big reason why Obama's doing as well as he is. Sure, his approval ratings aren't good, but the longer Republicans focus on trivial idiocies, the less relevant they are to anyone. These dummies did a lot better back when they were attacking Obamacare than they are now that Obama isn't doing anything drastic to overhaul our system. So it's a lot better for us if they waste their time denouncing a group that doesn't exist anymore than doing something useful.

Alan Grayson: Lying for Truth

2011-11-29T03:13:00.001-06:00

A friend on Facebook had a link to Alan Grayson Says Every Man, Woman and Child Gave Almost $100,000 to Banks. Now, I've never really been a fan of Grayson's, as I feel like he's just playing progressives as suckers, by throwing them tons of red meat without having to accomplishment anything. And sad as it is to say, that's exactly what most progressives seem to want from a politician. Sure, Obama can get health insurance for millions while ending rescission, and he can even put an end to DADT, but if he doesn't insult Republicans while doing it, he's just no use to them.

Now, maybe I'm wrong about all this and insults really are some magical way for us to score points, just as Grayson's loss in 2010 was somehow a sign of how much he won. I don't know. These political theories have never really made sense to me, so I just accept on faith that somehow there's a theory underneath it all that explains everything and these people aren't just looking for an excuse to be petty. I'm sure the Underpants Gnomes have incorporated this into their business model.

So needless to say, I didn't read that article with the highest of hopes, and it was even worse than I imagined. Long story short: No, every man, woman, and child did NOT give $100,000 to the banks. In fact, they didn't give anything at all. Just as with TARP, these were loans, not giveaways, it was the Fed's money and not ours, and as the original Forbes article mentions, we didn't lose any money from this at all.

Stomping on the Fine Line

Now in Grayson's defense, he wasn't really making the point that everyone paid $100,000 to the banks. He was just making the nonsensical point that the amount loaned out was the equivalent of that per person, in order to put it in context. He merely made a statement that sort of sounded like we all paid for this.

But as what usually happens in these cases, Grayson stretched the truth to make things sound more repugnant, and then his fans take the fine line he was walking on and dash it to hell by making bold claims about how we all got ripped off.

So we end up with the blogposts that say stupid stuff like:

Grayson says every man, woman, and child in America paid almost $100,000 to the banks.

and

Grayson points out that we paid almost $100,000 per man, woman and child in America to bail these banks out without any congressional authorization. We paid them $100,000 and they can’t cut us a break.

Yet...how could anyone really believe that each of us paid almost $100,000 to the banks? That defies all logic. Seriously. I don't know about you, but I kind of think I'd know it if that much was missing from my account. That's such a dumb thing to believe that I'm willing to say that outright, even if it hurts the feelings of people on my own side. This whole OWS thing has gone to their heads and now they're starting to believe the sheerest nonsense with no sense of shame; and I'm determined to fix that.

When Truth Isn't Enough

And seriously, Grayson's entire interview was stupidly offensive; at least to anyone who respects truth. Like complaining about how these banks got giant loans for low interest rates that the rest of us couldn't get. I mean, duh. It's just common sense that you loan money to people who can pay it back, and the more someone's able to pay it back, the more you'll loan them. That's not inequality. That's just common sense. Similarly, I trust a major bank with all of my money, and I don't trust any of you with it. Is that unfair? No, that's just smart. And if you disagree, then loan me all your money and see how much you get back.

Yet that blogger actually wrote his piece of idiocy:

They knew that no American citizen could turn to the fed and ask for a bail out or a loan at the rates the banks were getting. No mom and pop could take their tale of woe to the fed, because the fed played favorites and the big banks won

What?? It's obvious that this person didn't even understand what Grayson was saying. Yes, Grayson said the Fed played favorites, but it had nothing to do with the rest of us not getting loans from the Fed because we NEVER get loans from the Fed. The Fed doesn't even give loans to citizens. Only giving money to banks isn't playing favorites. That's what the Fed does. And if this person doesn't realize that, then they have absolutely zero business blogging about it, because they're simply incompetent. Once again, they took Grayson's fine line and smeared it all over the place, as they were not summarizing what he said.

Grayson also complained about how this was all done without Congress's approval, which implies as if it should have been done with their approval, yet unfairly wasn't. But does Congress approve of loans the Fed makes? No, they don't. And that's a good thing, as the Fed is supposed to be non-political, while Congress obviously isn't. And if we opened up the Fed lending window to Congress's authority, it'd become yet another way for the crooked ones to funnel money to their cronies.

And really, Grayson's whole interview was meant to be inflammatory, to get people's attention. And I guess I can't blame him for that. And yet...yeah, I do. Because when most politicians do this sort of thing, it's kind of a given that they're phony politicians who aren't really telling the truth. But Grayson's different, because he holds himself out to be a truth-teller; so people who are typically more cynical will believe everything he says. Yet he doesn't seem to think the truth is good enough for him. He's got to juice it up a bit. Find the red meat and make it a little sexier. And if he says things that can be misconstrued into the ridiculous, so be it; because it's all for a good cause.

But I'm sorry, that's just not how truth works. It's either true, or it isn't. And if you have the truth on your side, you're only damaging it when you juice it up with inflammatory red meat; and possibly helping the other side to undermine your credibility. Misinformation can be worse than no information at all; and if the truth isn't good enough for you, then you probably shouldn't be saying anything at all. Apparently, Grayson didn't learn his lesson from before.

News Coverage: Occupy Protest v. Tea Party

2011-11-21T02:33:00.001-06:00

One of the more naive beliefs of the Occupy protester type is their belief that there's some sort of conspiracy to keep them out of the media or portray them in a bad light; as if it's easy for the rest of us to get our message out. As if any other group of people can just call up the NY Times and say "Hey, give us some positive press today, ok?" and they'll just do it; starting a whole feeding frenzy of positive news rolling out...just as long as you're not an Occupy Protester.

But...if you're an Occupy Protester, there's no such luck. As if Tea Partiers have the easiest time in the world getting their message out, while only the OWS protesters get misrepresented in the media. And that's, to put it gently, absolute horse shit. Seriously. Look, I know you guys *talk* a lot about how the media is pro-corporate, pro-conservative, etc, and is skewed against us, but...do you actually read the news? Because if you do, you'd find that this argument makes no sense.

I mean, just ask Barack Obama how hard it is to get his message out. The man makes liberal speeches all the time, yet many on the left don't even know about it and attack him for not making any. Or ask John McCain. Anyone who thinks he had an easy time getting his message through the media in 2008 just wasn't paying attention. The highlight of his mastery of the media happened when he proudly announced his selection of Palin as his running mate, and that lasted about two news cycles before she became an albatross around his neck and nobody listened to what the dude said anymore.

Seriously, anyone who's tried to get their message out knows that it's not easy. That's just common knowledge. Yet for the Occupy Protest types, that's just not true. Because they're having a hard time getting the media to report positive news stories about them every day, it can only be a conspiracy. The rich people have decided to shut down the protesters and there's no reporter in the nation telling us about it. They've all been told that their positive stories will be rejected, so they shouldn't even bother; yet no reporter has mentioned this yet. Of course.

And of course, the thing to remember is that it's not enough to have some facts on your side. It's not enough to have some evidence proving your case. You've got to have all the facts, and if you're forced to ignore facts simply because they don't fit your theory, then there's something wrong with the theory. And in this case, you've got to show a consistent bias, not just in selected articles about OWS and the Tea Party, but all of them. Or at least enough of them to show a pattern. As they say, data is not the plural of anecdote.

Dismissing Palin

But hey, let's not just take my word for it. Let's put this to the test. I went to the NY Times website and typed "Tea Party Rally" in their search field, to see what I could find.

The first result was from April 16, with the story Palin Speaks at Tea Party Rally in Madison. Was it a glowing display of fealty to Palin and the Tea Party Movement? You be the judge.

But there she was on Saturday afternoon, a throng of Tea Party supporters cheering her on and a throng of union supporters trying to shout them (and her) down. And in a way, it looked like just another day in Madison, a place already so polarized that even with the presence of Ms. Palin, a figure beloved and detested, people here seemed to go right on with the debate they had been having for months.

And rather than hype up the Tea Party rally, we get a touch of cynicism with a sly diss:

The police estimated a crowd — at its highest point — of about 6,500 people, though it was uncertain how many of those were Tea Party supporters and how many were there to protest. Either way, the figure was far smaller than the tens of thousands of demonstrators that had been reported around the Capitol on several days in recent months.

And the whole piece had a dismissive quality to it, basically saying that Palin and the Tea Party Rally had no real impact on Wisconsin politics. And of course, since Wisconsin politics were nationwide news at the time, with conservatives and the dreaded Koch Brothers siding with the Tea Party...why wasn't the piece about them positive? Why didn't it say how important Palin is and how the Tea Party had come to save the day?

That's what I'd expect to see if this was pro-corporate propaganda, but it was exactly the opposite. It didn't praise the Tea Party or demonize it. It just gave Palin and the Tea Party a dismissive yawn, letting everyone know to not take it too seriously. And that wasn't bias against the Tea Party. That was just the way it was. The Tea Party came to Madison, and nobody cared.

And btw, this storied originally appeared on page A17 of the newspaper. Not exactly front page news.

All Hail Beck

The second story that comes up is about Glenn Beck's religious revival at the Lincoln Memorial in August of last year, titled At Lincoln Memorial, a Call for Religious Rebirth. And I've got to confess, this particular article actually went against my theme, as it really was pro-Republican propaganda. It quoted lots of what Beck said and described it all in glowing terms.

Here are the opening two paragraphs:

An enormous and impassioned crowd rallied at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial this weekend, summoned by Glenn Beck, a conservative broadcaster who called for a religious rebirth in America at the site where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech exactly 47 years earlier.

“Something that is beyond man is happening,” Mr. Beck told the crowd, in what was part religious revival and part history lecture. “America today begins to turn back to God.”

Blech. That's not a news article. That's a hagiology. Not that it didn't present things from the side of Beck's critics. Take this passage:

Even Mr. Beck’s critics acknowledge that he is one of the most powerful conservative voices. With a mix of moral lessons, frequent outrage and a dark view of the future, his programs draw millions of followers.

Chris Wallace, a veteran Washington journalist who interviewed Mr. Beck on Fox, told Mr. Beck that he had never seen a public figure quite like him.

Mr. Beck acknowledged that he was not cut from ordinary cloth.

Oh, wait. That didn't present anything from an opposing side. Earlier in the article, it mentions Beck's critics accusing the rally of being political, and then gives Beck the next paragraph to deny it without ever presenting the other side.

And so that really did show a pro-Republican bias, but all the same, you'd have had to go to page A15 to read it, as it once again wasn't considered front page news.

Rowdy Vitriol

The third article that shows up is Thousands Rally in Capital to Protest Big Government, about a big Tea Party rally sponsored by Freedom Works in September 2009, back when the movement was really heating up.

And while the article was mildly skewed to present them in a positive fashion, it clearly shows that things aren't all hunky-dory with the movement. For instance, referencing the "anger" and "vitriol" in the crowd, or when they were all chanting that Obama was a liar.

And there's this bit:

The atmosphere was rowdy at times, with signs and images casting Mr. Obama in a demeaning light. One sign called him the “parasite in chief.” Others likened him to Hitler. Several people held up preprinted signs saying, “Bury Obama Care with Kennedy,” a reference to the Massachusetts senator whose body passed by the Capitol two weeks earlier to be memorialized.

Other signs did not focus on Mr. Obama, but rather on the government at large, promoting gun rights, tallying the national deficit and deploring illegal immigrants living in the United States.

And again, the whole thing sounds fairly objective, perhaps slightly leaning in admiration of the crowd, or maybe not. And it definitely showed some of the more negative aspects of the rally. And believe it or not, in the heat of the Tea Party's rise when they were the story de jour, this story was printed on page A37. Again, no front page for the Tea Party.

The Protests Endure

So those were the top three search results for Tea Party Rallies. So let's look at the Occupy protesters and see what sort of coverage they get. In this case, I did a search on the phrase Occupy Wall Street.

The first story that comes up is Occupy Wall Street Protest Reaches a Crossroads from November 4. And what was it about? Surely it was a pro-corporate screed about how freakishly radical the protesters are, right? No. It was about how the weather has turned bad, but the protest has endured.

Here's the second paragraph:

Seven weeks in, the protest has become a fact of life in New York City, a tourist draw to rival ground zero, and a teachable moment for parents. Its slogan, “We are the 99 percent” is a staple of the popular discourse.

More than $500,000 in donations has flowed to the protesters in Lower Manhattan, while labor unions and elected officials have come to their aid. Marches and occupations that have sprung up nationwide have served as a national microphone for the cause.

Wow. That's not quite as positive as the Glenn Beck article, but it ain't bad. These people weren't described as dangerous freaks. It shows what a positive impact they're having, and how they're toughing it through rough times. Hard to say how anyone could read this and still insist that the media only portrays them badly.

This was also a significantly longer article than the Tea Party articles, and was printed on page MB1. Not front page of the newspaper, but it made the front page of some section.

All About Control

The second OWS article was from November 15 titled City Reopens Park After Protesters Are Evicted, which you probably already can figure out. And the whole thing is an even-handed piece, which doesn't at all put the protesters in a bad light.

Here's the third paragraph:

“You have to walk through a gantlet of officers,” said Andy Nicholson, 54, of Manhattan, who entered the park, stopped and was told by the police to move along. “It’s all about control,” he said.

Doesn't sound particularly damning for the protester quoted or praising of the establishment. Again, I fail to see how anyone can read this article and suggest that there's some media conspiracy to keep them down. Btw, this story didn't mention which page it was on, so I can't give that info.

Germ Optics

The third article was a somewhat light piece about health problems amongst protesters, titled A Petri Dish of Activism, and Germs. It was a fairly even-handed piece, talking about the efforts they're going through to fight illness, though I was slightly troubled with this paragraph:

Many protesters recognize the threat the conditions could pose to the optics of their occupation. Earlier this week, a man at an Occupy New Orleans encampment was found dead in his tent — and had been dead at least two days, authorities said. If similar news were to come out of Lower Manhattan, some protesters have said quietly, the camp’s reputation could suffer significant damage.

Indeed. Were someone to die in their camp, the most pressing issue is the optics of it all.

Towards the end, we're given this quote from a dedicated protester:

“That’s what makes an occupation such a powerful statement,” she said. “We will risk our own health and give up completely our own comfort.”

And again, there was no negativity here. The NY Times wasn't demonizing the protesters. This wasn't pro-Koch propaganda. It made the protesters look like real people trying to make real change, and while it clearly wasn't pro-occupier propaganda, it wasn't meant to be. These were meant to be objective news stories about events that were happening, and that's exactly what they were.

BTW, this one was on page A26.

The Only Thing They Know

And this is what I find so frustrating when talking to these people. Because they don't have any specific goals and insist they don't need them. Instead, they waste all their energy defending their right to protest and demanding that everyone write positive news stories about them.

But of course, I'm fairly certain that the reason the protesters and their supporters keep talking about these things is because it's the only thing they know to talk about. They've done spent their wad of superficial talking points about inequality and still haven't the faintest idea of how to recommend a realistic solution to any of this. So what do they have left, but to talk about process?

And just as superficial people in the media prefer to boil down all policy issues into a story about a political horse-race, the Occupy protest types want to change the world, but all they can think to talk about is their right to protest and positive news stories. And as Josh Marshall suggests, the issue about the treatment of the protesters seems to be overtaking the issue of equality. Apparently, passive resistant is a lot easier than coming up with solutions.

Legal Protests v. Illegal Protests

2011-11-21T00:05:00.001-06:00

On Facebook, I saw an FB friend's link, 25 Reasons Why Police Officers Never Showed Up To Tea Party Rallies. It's a bunch of pictures of Tea Partiers bringing guns to their rallies, with the idea that the Occupy Protesters maybe should pack heat if they don't want to be harassed. And, uh, no. That would be a terrible idea. Simply terrible.

Because the thing is, there's another reason why the Tea Partiers didn't get in trouble with the law: They didn't do anything illegal. That's really one of those basic things they teach in Civics class, though I suppose some people might need a refresher. So just to be clear: If you do something illegal, you might get in trouble with the police. And if you don't want to get in trouble with the police, you shouldn't do anything illegal. That's not difficult.

Now, it can be argued that the police have no right to prevent the protesters from doing anything they want. It can be argued that the protesters are serving a righteous cause and represent the will of the people, and therefore are a law unto themselves. I myself find that to be atrociously naive, to put it mildly, but I've argued with people making such a case and don't at all doubt their sincerity.

But the thing remains that Occupy Protesters keep breaking the law and pushing the system, and the Tea Partiers didn't. And that's the real difference. And if the Tea Partiers showed up with guns and started blocking streets, violating park curfews, using public places without permits, trespassing into private and government buildings, and camping in public places for months; those stories would surely have ended a lot more violently. And if anything, I daresay the guns would have made these stories end much more violently than without.

Again, this isn't to argue necessarily that the protesters are wrong by engaging in illicit behavior. Nor is it to justify the excessive violence used against them by police. It's simply to point out that the Tea Partiers didn't break the law and the Occupy Protesters are. That's the difference. And so we don't need to get into conspiracy theories about them targeting the Occupy Protesters as their way of keeping us down; nor do we need anyone bringing guns to an Occupy protest to prove the theory in the post. Because there's a more obvious reason.

And hey, if you don't want to be harassed by cops while rallying, have the regular kind. Have the ones the Tea Partiers had. They weren't terribly effective, but nobody got hurt. At least not by the police, anyway. So if you don't want to be harassed by the cops and potentially hurt, have a regular protest and not the pushing-the-envelope kind. But if you want to push the envelope, don't be surprised when the envelope pushes back. That's life.

Spare the Starvation, Spoil the Child...Unless They're Rich

2011-11-19T11:21:00.001-06:00

It's good for people to have to deal with adversity. It's good for people to be challenged, to have to solve their own problems and suffer from their mistakes, as that's the only way we can expect to improve. Just as we need to lift weights to challenge our muscles, we need to be challenged in every way, mentally and physical.

Republicans too, supposedly believe in this, which is why they decry Big Daddy Government. To hear them tell it, children should be challenged with starving bellies and crumbling schools, or they'll stay soft and dependent. We need for unemployed people to hit rock bottom and face homelessness or they'll never build the character they need to become self-made millionaires. Mere adversity isn't enough for them; they insist we need to suffer.

And while most conservatives are at least smart enough to not say this out loud, at least not if they're running for political office; some of them apparently haven't faced enough adversity on this issue to learn their lesson. And so we get this sermon on suffering from Rick Santorum; the angry white male who's so unliked by Republican voters that they'd seriously consider nominating Newt Gingrich before even looking at Santorum.

(For the record, Santorum is regularly polling at 2-3% in every poll, which not only puts him behind "no one" in the polls that give that option, but with the margin of error, might conceivably put him in negative territory.)

He Said This...Out Loud

And so what better way to kickstart your failing campaign than to insist that it's good for children to suffer. Seriously.

Here's the tape:

Wow. I guess I'm a bad parent, as I've made a point of never letting my children suffer from lack of food and shelter. I mean, never. On the contrary, I've always made it a point for my children to not only believe that they're entitled to food and shelter, but for them to not even consider it to be optional. This apparently constitutes neglect according to conservatives.

Kids Shouldn't Feel Entitled to Eat

Here's the transcript, as it really does help to take this stuff apart and see it in amber:

And if you're low income, you can't buy something, you can qualify for, in many states you can qualify for Medicaid, you can qualify for food stamps, you can qualify for housing assistance. And that's not if you're in poverty. That's if you're above the poverty line.

And so you have all of the children growing up in an environment where the government is paying you, and then you wonder, "Why do these kids feel like they're entitled to something?" Because that's how they, that's how they (garbled), that the government provides. And that is not a healthy thing for children, it's not a healthy thing for society.

So, that's how I square it. I square it that suffering, if you're a Christian, suffering is part of life. And it's not a bad thing. It is an essential thing in life. And that we suffer, we, there are all different ways to suffer. One way to suffer is through lack of food and shelter. And there's another way to suffer which is lack of dignity, hope. There are all sorts of ways that people suffer, and it's not just tangible. It's also intangible and we have to consider both.

First off, I'd like to apologize for any potential mistakes in this transcript, as it wasn't a great sound recording; but more importantly, it was obvious that Santorum really didn't know what he was going to say before he said it, and was often shifting ideas mid-sentence. So it was tough to know where he was going with this, because his sentences didn't quite mesh up.

After all, his theme was that suffering was good, and yet ends by saying we need to consider both intangible and tangible suffering, with the idea that it's ok to let kids suffer tangibly if it means they're not suffering intangibly. And that would imply that suffering isn't good, because it's a trade-off of suffering. And that completely undermines what he had just been saying about suffering being good.

Some Suffering is Better than Others

But there's a bigger element of this missing from Santorum's sermon. Because yeah, sure, it's not good for people to be too accustomed to having everything handed to them. Santorum seems to believe starvation is within the realm of adversity children need to endure, while I draw my line a little higher than that. Like, say, making them do their own homework, or making them do chores to earn money, instead of just giving it to them. But I guess we all have our standards.

But there's a group of people who Republicans like Santorum support, who not only don't suffer from starvation, but in fact, don't suffer from lack of anything. From the time they were born to the time they die, they are given just about anything they want or need. They're given the best toys, the best education, the best food, worldly experiences, and get to meet all the best people; and they didn't do a damn bit of suffering to earn any of this. They don't just feel entitled to eat, but feel entitled to the world.

And of course, I'm referring to children of the wealthy. They're given all the best advantages in life, and rarely endure any real adversity at all. And Republicans insist that it must be this way. It's cruel for us to punish the rich by forcing them to endure taxation. And it's better for us to cut food stamps for the poor than to tax the inheritance of people born into luxury. And so the wealthy will endure the suffering of not getting to suffer, just so the poor can reap the benefits of a starving belly.

Ah, those poor rich people. What they endure so the rest of us can be better people.

Adversity's Only for the Poor

And this makes no sense to me, because I *do* believe that adversity is a good thing, and think one of the worst things you can do to a child is to bring them up feeling entitled to everything. Just as I've made it a point that my children are raised to believe that I'll always provide for their needs, I've also made it a point for them to know that I won't always provide for their wants. And so I agree with Santorum's analysis that adversity is a good thing, even if I disagree with who he thinks should suffer.

But for conservatives, this only applies when it's the government providing for you. As if food purchased with food stamps is somehow less morally nutritious than food purchased with wages...or the money you inherit. As if there are six year olds out there feeling morally bankrupt because the Hamburger Helper they're eating was charity from Uncle Sam.

But if it's the parent's own money we're talking about, well then, nothing's too good for the little buggers. These kids don't need to suffer, because their parents suffered enough when earning the money they're spending. Or maybe it was their parent's parents who did the suffering to earn it. But whoever it was, someone suffered to earn all that money, and that suffering gets transferred on down the line to the end. Or...something like that.

The Twain Shall Never Meet

But it's obvious that conservatives can't really put these two sides together. They know that it's bad for poor people to be given things and they know it's never good to deprive a rich person of anything, but these two ideas just can't possibly mesh. And that's why they're always so confused on this stuff, because none of it comes together. It's like they've got half an apple and half an orange and are trying to argue that this is one fruit.

Because the reality is that conservatives aren't interested in the moral well-being of poor people one way or the other. They're just looking for an excuse to not help them. Why? Is it because they're bad people? Not really. The problem is that they're conservatives and the conservative ideology simply has no mechanism for helping poor people. Yet because these people know in their hearts that they're good people, they have to invent moral rationalizations for why they're letting people suffer.

And so this is the best they can come up with: To insist that children will become lazy if they feel entitled to being fed...unless they're rich, in which case they shouldn't have to suffer at all.

And the big mistake Santorum made here is that these arguments are only meant to be used for lazy adults. You're supposed to say that food stamps are bad because they let adults be lazy. But they're not supposed to mention that the children of these adults are also suffering from the consequences of our inaction. And they're definitely not supposed to say that it's better for children to starve than to eat food purchased with food stamps. While he was smart enough to not say that out loud, he apparently wasn't smart enough to realize that that was the implication of what he was saying.

I'll score Santorum some points for honesty, but that's really just because he's so damn dumb that he didn't realize he had waded into water he wasn't supposed to be in. And if he fully understood the argument he was making, he couldn't be a conservative. Because yes, adversity is good; but not to the point that it requires children to suffer. In this regard, he got the whole thing backwards.

Bachmann and the Seven Foot Doctor

2011-11-18T03:08:00.001-06:00

The fact that Michelle Bachmann ever imagined she had any chance of getting the Republican nomination not only shows how insane the party has become, but what a total loon she is. Seriously, there is no part of her that is in any way connected with reality. Rather, she lives in a parallel reality that has many of the same names and faces as our own, but where everything's distorted and weird, and more than a little creepy. Kind of like Mardi Gras, but without the fun.

And so it's no real surprise to see her say completely loony things to an audience that clearly wished they had something better to do that afternoon; which describes pretty much every audience Bachmann has. As fun as the highlight reel is, I'm sure it'd be a lot harder to have to sit through the whole thing with a straight face. Had I more gumption, I'd add a laugh track to this. Enjoy!

Now, forget about her nonsense about the dreaded illegal aliens ripping us off, which only makes sense if we forget that "Obamacare" is all about Medicaid, Medicare, and private insurance, just like it is now and the dreaded aliens will still need to have insurance if they want to benefit from it. And seeing as how she once voted on the law and imagines herself to be an expert, you'd kind of think she's know that.

And needless to say, the big joke on anyone complaining about "illegals" ripping us off is that: The bozos complaining are the ones who won't let them become citizens! Duh! And if someone doesn't want illegal aliens getting better benefits than citizens do...why not let them become citizens? That way, we could "punish" them by removing their rights as illegals by forcing them to become citizens. Somehow, this logic escapes them.

But as silly as that is, it's the ridiculous story about the seven foot tall physician that's the real mind blower here.

A Physician in the Community

Here's the transcript:

One man stood up. He was over seven feet tall. He was a physician in the community. And he said "I had a little lady in my office. She was on Medicare, and because of Obamacare, I had to call the IRS and I had to get a number to put on a form before I could see her." He said, "Guess how long I sat on the phone, waiting to get this number from the IRS." And he said, "Two hours and fifteen minutes."

He was sitting on the phone. He couldn't see the woman until he got the patient (sic). Not only did this little lady have to sit there and cool her heels for two hours and fifteen minutes, but meanwhile all the other patients were stacked up in the waiting room. So he was waiting on the phone with one bureaucrat to get a number that long. That's the beginning of what Obamacare's going to be like.

Of course, that doesn't do it justice compared with hearing this come from her mouth, particularly when combined with the bored look of the people listening to her. But seeing it in cold writing really helps you realize how completely crazy this lady is.

Seriously, forgot about the content of her speech, the style alone is just horrible; particularly with all the verbal junk she puts into her sentences that add nothing to what she's saying. It's bad enough that she's annoying, but she's boring too; and that's not a good combination.

And one thing to note: Pathological liars embellish fake stories with unnecessary details because they think it makes their fictional stories sound more interesting and real. That's not to say that Bachmann made up her story, just saying that that's a tell of a bad liar. And so you hear of tall doctors and little ladies, and patients stacking up while the lady is cooling her heels. Lots of pointless detail, and no specifics as to what she's talking about.

And the part of the story of the other patients waiting the whole time is ludicrous, and is the kind of detail that a pathological liar would make up, as they're just trying to prove a point and haven't really considered how ridiculous that is in reality. As if the doctor can't see any patients until he handled her first. As if the patient would have gotten into the examination room without her paperwork being in order. And that's how you become a pathological liar: By being so disconnected from reality that you can't separate fact from fiction and everything sounds believable.

Followup Questions

Here are a few questions I asked over at ThinkProgress regarding this.

I'd seriously like to know the full story of this. Doubtful the guy was a 7-footer, so I'm thinking it was a tall guy and her imagination did the rest because she was so in awe of him. And what's up with the "little lady" reference the doctor supposedly made? Was she particularly little, or is that just the way he talks? And was it a necessary part of the story to mention she was little? Bachmann seemed to think so, but I have my doubts. Is there perhaps some part of Obamacare that requires doctors to tag small people before releasing them into the wild? Why was it important that he was tall? Was that why the bureaucrat put him on hold for so long, because he was jealous?

And seriously, could Bachmann truly be so ignorant of the healthcare law that she really believes there's some element of this story that makes sense? What number could the IRS possibly be giving him for a Medicare recipient? Exactly what part of Obamacare supposedly made this happen? And why would the fricking doctor be the one on hold for two hours, instead of his receptionist? Could she have dreamed up the whole thing, and if she did, would her staff let us know? Perhaps someone should ask Ed Rollins about it, as he always seems eager to dish dirt on her.

And most of all, we need to know precisely which drugs she was on when this tall doctor supposedly told her this, as well as which drugs she was on when she told the story. Because whatever it was, people need to be warned about it. They could just put a picture of Bachmann on the label and everyone would know what that meant. I wonder if she was suffering from another migraine during either episode. From the looks of her audience, they were all suffering with her.

The Myth of Obama's Assassination of Americans

2011-11-14T02:43:00.001-06:00

It truly bugs me when people in a respected position act like they know what they're talking about completely mislead people because they don't know what the hell they're talking about and don't know it. Sure, not all of us can always know what we're talking about, but when you act like you're an authority, you have a responsibility to actually be one, or to shut the hell up. That's how it works.

And so I was very annoyed when I read this at The Atlantic:

President Obama insists that he has the authority to order the assassination of American citizens who haven't been convicted of any crime or afforded due process so long as he first declares -- in a secret process the details of which we're not allowed to know -- that the target is a terrorist.

And I'd say he had a point, assuming I had a very superficial understanding of what happened because I can't comprehend ideas that aren't binary. Some people just look for black/white events, and refuse to listen when you keep telling them about all the grays they're missing.

Obama's Declaration

In this case, has Obama insisted that he has the authority to order assassinations against anyone he declares to be a terrorist? In a word: No. That's not what happened at all.

First off, he wasn't the one who declared Awlaki to be a terrorist. And secondly, the justification for assassination was extremely limited. Specifically, that it can only be done to a citizen who was working on attacks against us and can't reasonably be captured.

And Conor Friedersdorf of The Atlantic might have known this, had he read a little known newspaper called The New York Times and its piece: Secret U.S. Memo Made Legal Case to Kill a Citizen.

As the memo explains:

The legal analysis, in essence, concluded that Mr. Awlaki could be legally killed, if it was not feasible to capture him, because intelligence agencies said he was taking part in the war between the United States and Al Qaeda and posed a significant threat to Americans, as well as because Yemeni authorities were unable or unwilling to stop him.

And had he read it, Mr. Friedersdorf would have realized this wasn't just some arbitrary decision made by Obama, but rather...

The deliberations to craft the memo included meetings in the White House Situation Room involving top lawyers for the Pentagon, State Department, National Security Council and intelligence agencies.

And this article from Reuters explains how you end up on the hit list to begin with:

They said targeting recommendations are drawn up by a committee of mid-level National Security Council and agency officials. Their recommendations are then sent to the panel of NSC "principals," meaning Cabinet secretaries and intelligence unit chiefs, for approval.

And this was all known in early October. Yet here we are in November, and some expert at The Atlantic's perpetuating myths about Obama's supposed arbitrary decision to kill an American citizen, while a no-name blogger like me knows all about what happened.

Not All Secret Memos the Same

And I happen to agree with their analysis. This isn't a precedent to set missile drones lose in our cities. It's a common sense.

And yeah, sure, it's a bit iffy that this is all secret. After all, Bush had secret memos too, and they turned out to be bunkum. But does that mean that all secret memos are bunkum? Because this one makes sense. And no one's presented any evidence to suggest that Awlaki wasn't trying to commit terrorist attacks. So why wouldn't a secret panel within the NSC have authorized this?

And this makes all the difference in the world. Bush's pro-torture memos were a joke. Bush/Cheney knew what they were looking for and went for whoever could give them the justification for it. And you don't need to be a legal scholar to know it was bunkum. It wasn't the secretive nature of the memo that made it dumb. It was dumb all on its own.

But the Obama assassination memo makes sense. I mean, Yemen wasn't going to hand the guy over to us, and he couldn't easily be captured (which would involve an infringement of Yemen's sovereignty in any case), and he was a danger to us. So in these limited circumstances of a citizen who's known to be helping attacks against us and can't reasonably be captured, we can kill him.

Seriously, are we really to imagine we have to put up with this otherwise. What, are we kindergarteners? Grow up. The world's a scary place and bad things happen. But just because there's a legal justification to kill this guy doesn't expand it beyond this limited circumstance. That's why he's the only American who's been put on the hit list.

And again, we need to get beyond the superficials here and deal with the real issues. Not all secret memos are the same, not all secret panels are evil. And I know it's a lot more fun to self-righteously grab the high ground, but that doesn't give us the right to throw facts to the wind and pretend things happened when they didn't. And if nothing else, even if the secret memo and the secret panel are bogus, we don't get to pretend that Obama says his authorization stemmed entirely from himself; as that's obviously not the case.

Do I think a president should single-handedly be given the authority to assassinate American citizens? No, and I'm glad that Obama doesn't either.

Anarchy Helps the Powerful, Always

2011-11-13T19:34:00.001-06:00

And so I'm at Think Progress and see a post titled Wielding Assault Rifles, Police Arrest Chapel Hill Occupiers Of Building Left Derelict By Developer.

The gist: There's a property in downtown Chapel Hill that was bought six years ago and the developer hasn't done anything with it, for reasons unknown. And since this building is in a good location, it's bothering people that it hasn't been developed yet. And so a small group of anarchists who associate with the Occupy movement decided to take over the building and turn it into a community center, as if that's a thing. As if there's some rule that says you can steal someone's property if they're not using it to your satisfaction.

And needless to say, we're supposed to be outraged that the police put a stop to this. And yes, the cops used assault rifles, but no, nobody got hurt and the eight people arrested were eventually charged with a misdemeanor breaking and entering and released without bail.

And so this shouldn't be a thing. The anarchists were in the wrong for taking the property, and while the police may have gone a little overboard with their choice of weapons, nobody got hurt and the law was carried out the way it should. And I should stress, they weren't occupying the building to draw attention to a problem. They really believed they could take it over for their own purposes, which apparently included yoga classes.

Birds of a Feather

And so this really was a non-event. Or should have been, but because these anarchists associate with the OWS movement, this has now been added to the egregious offenses committed by the government against people who just want the right to protest and a fair shake.

And you can go to that post and see all the people agreeing with the anarchists, and rather than focus on what these particular protesters were doing, these guys are just welcomed into the fold; as if it doesn't hurt the movement to associate with loons who take property. But just so it's clear, this was not done by the Occupy Chapel Hill group, some of whom opposed this move, while others supported it. But because they called themselves occupiers, that means everyone who supports the movement is expected to support them.

Here are a few comments in their entirety:

"We must appeal to our brothers the police, to remember that the movement is fighting for the Policman's right to bargain, and to not have health care and retirement taken away. Bad orders should not be obeyed. Policemen please don't beat up on your friends and allies."

"the militarization of our "protect and serve" police forces... inevitable with all that "homeland security" money - and paranoia - floating around..."

"The reason 300 people own this country is because their families have been awake and scheming for hundred of years... if 350 million of us remain asleep and don't join our awakening allies/citizens (especially when the media portrays our movement as homeless-deviants and hippies.) IT'S TIME TO "SCHEME FOR THE DREAM.""

To them, it doesn't matter if these anarchists were completely in the wrong. They were part of OWS, so the emphasis is how wrong it was for the cops to stop them. And assault rifles! Heaven forfend! As if the very presence of a particular weapon makes the force excessive. Now mind you, there weren't reports of violence used by police. The weapons alone are enough for us to side with the anarchists over the property owner.

And yeah, that first guy really did tie the theft of this building with the right of public employees to bargain; as if there is any overlap to these issues whatsoever.

Faceless Villain

Joe Riddle: Ruthless Villain

And here's the thing on this: The property owner isn't some large faceless bank. It's not even a small bank with a face. It's a single dude. I put his picture to the right. Here's his website. It looks like it's straight out of 1996 and says it hasn't been updated since May 2007. According to his site, he's just a regular real estate guy who became a landlord with his first shopping strip twenty-six years ago and slowly added from there.

In other words, this guy's one of us. Yeah, he's a landlord. But he actually owns the property himself, and it's even listed in his name. If you want, you can go to the tax appraiser and see that the property is appraised at $800k and he's paying $13k a year in property tax on it; which is about $4k more than the previous owner paid on it. And more likely than not, he's got a mortgage on it; and is quite possibly underwater; meaning that he might not be able to sell it.

So this is what the OWS people are now associating with: Stealing $800k worth of property from an individual because they don't like what he's doing with it. Seriously, this movement hasn't even been going on for very long, and we've already gotten to the point of vigilantes arbitrarily stealing property from people they don't think deserve it.

Now, maybe this guy's a multi-millionaire who routinely evicts old ladies while kicking orphans, but more likely than not, he's just a regular guy trying to make a few more bucks. But because he hasn't done anything with this particular property, we're to believe he deserves to get screwed. And hell, looking at that goofy picture he put on his website, I think he's been through enough already.

The Right to Steal

And it's not just the eight anarchists who thought this guy deserves to get screwed. Here's a comment on that post which outlines this theory:

I feel that if someone owns a commercial building, promises to develop it into something that brings in revenue for the town and then fails to do that, the citizens have the right to take it over and turn it into useable space for the community.

When I questioned her about this, she went on to say:

Nope they shouldn't pay. The developer promised to develop the building 6 yrs ago and the town is suffering from the lack of tax revenue they could gain from this building. The developer is most likely writing it off on his taxes as a loss. As far as I'm concerned he reneged on a promise to the city and forfeited his rights to any monetary gain from the building.

Indeed, because he reneged on an unbinding promise, we're allowed to screw him without any prior notice.

And of course, he wouldn't just be forfeiting monetary gain. He'd be forfeiting the entire building. And since he probably had to borrow to buy the building, he'd be stuck repaying a loan for a building he doesn't own anymore. And remember, it's not his business that got screwed, but him personally, because the property's in his name.

Yet these people don't care about this at all. All they care about is the "common good," which only they are righteous enough to govern. And that's the thing: They've been told over and over how evil villains own our buildings and screw us over, yet they don't realize how many of our buildings are really owned by regular people who work for their money. Trust me, I have clients who are regular people and they own buildings. It happens.

Oh, and when I suggested that her theory would justify me taking over her place, she insisted that her invented rule only applies to commercial buildings. But of course, she just made up that rule; which means I get to make up my rules, which means I get to take over her place. That's how it works when you're dealing with arbitrary rules.

Citizen Government

And the big kicker on this was when I suggest that the government can't just take property, she wrote:

Who was talking about governments taking anything, these are citizens activists and the government isn't involved.

Of course. As long as it's just citizen activists taking property based upon arbitrary rules they invented, what could go wrong with that? And this is a common theme amongst these people: That things would be so much better if we had citizens handling this stuff, instead of the faceless government.

But of course, we don't need to turn to anarchy to have a system that allows citizens to pick leaders to write rules and enforce them. That's our current system; while anarchy means that there are no rules, so anarchists can occupy buildings and the powerful can hire people with assault rifles to slaughter them.

In anarchy, the only thing stopping the powerful is more power. I'm not sure why anyone imagines anarchy would be fun, because history has shown that it benefits the powerful in every case. If you're interested, here's an old post I wrote about anarchy.

Democracy v. Dictator

Because that's the absurdity of all this. These people have been told that the system is rigged against us and the entire government is designed to protect the property owners. As if that's all the police ever do, and rapists and murderers go scot-free as long as they leave the property owners alone. And so what they're really wanting is a system exactly like our system, but without any corruption and which can change rules at a moment's notice so that only good things happen.

But that's ludicrous and they're going to have the same problems everyone else has. Because we already have a government of citizens. Government employees aren't above the law. Congressmen don't get to shoot people at random. Even cops go to prison when there's hard evidence against them. And as much as some people get away with things that the rest of us don't, those are problems you'll always have and our country is better about this than most.

You'll always have a cop who turns a blind eye when he catches the Mayor speeding. And you're going to have politicians who include loopholes to benefit their buddies. But at least this is a system. At least it's something. And when we get to the point of citizen activists acting as self-righteous vigilantes who get to create their own law, then you're dealing with the same sort of people who are to blame for many of our problems now. People who don't understand what laws are for, and imagine that life would be better if only they could call the shots.

Because yeah, having a dictatorship is nice...just as long as you're the dictator. But I'll take a flawed democracy over a benevolent dictator any day. And if you're of the belief that government can't be good unless it's doing what you think is good, then what you're wanting is a dictatorship. Like it or not, that's what you're talking about.

Quote of the Day: Herman Cain Edition

2011-11-08T03:08:00.001-06:00

I'm sure going to miss this guy once he's gone. It's Herman Cain, in an email to his supporters after more allegations of sexual harassment emerged:

when you haven't 'calmed the firestorm' - if only because the people wielding the blow-torches have no intention of putting them out - more experts are put on the air to say this proves you are 'not ready for prime time.' Maybe that would matter if I was trying out for the cast of Saturday Night Live. But this should be a slightly more serious undertaking than that.

What?! Now, I get what he's trying to say. But...what?! Now mind you, this was in the written form. This wasn't just some nonsense he pulled from the top of his head. This was an email. This was planned.

First off, the reason he hasn't "calmed the firestorm" is because his explanations keep shifting and he seemed caught totally flat-footed. In fact, he kinda sorta has been acting like a guilty guy who isn't sure how much guilt will catch up with him. And nobody's keeping a blow torch to it. They're just asking questions because his answers keep changing. I mean, you don't get to pretend you've already answered the questions if the answers you gave have been proven to be false. That's just not how this works. People with good answers don't need to keep changing them.

And who, exactly, does he imagine is putting all these experts on the air to say these things? Does he honestly imagine there are lots of experts who could look at his trainwreck and say that it shows he can handle the presidency? Like they're all sitting at home, waiting next to their expert hotline phone for CNN to call and have them explain to America how Cain's shifting explanations strategy could bring peace to the Middle East. If only they'd call...

Here's a clue, Herman: Maybe the reason all the experts keep saying that you're not ready for primetime is because, duh, you're not. And yeah, that's got something to do with your shifting explanations and the whole caught flat-footed thing. And combined with that the fact that he doesn't have real campaign operations set up anywhere and seemed to be on a book promotion right up until the time that Perry pulled a boner; and it's obvious that Cain's fifteen days are just about up.

And yowch, that Saturday Night Live reference was painful. Like the sort of connection an eight year old might make. Because yeah, "not ready for primetime" is a Saturday Night Live thing. And yet...if you're admitting that you're not even ready for Saturday Night Live, doesn't that mean that you're really not ready for the presidency? And really? Running for president is more serious than trying out for SNL? Ya think??

I'm sure going to miss this guy once he's gone. Does anyone have Alan Keyes on speed dial? At least we still have Perry.

When Fiction is Better Than Truth

2011-11-07T01:33:00.003-06:00

I recently wrote about how too many people with a superficial understanding of an issue cast themselves in the role of experts, because they're too ignorant to realize how ignorant they are of the issue. And other people who are equally ignorant latch on to the pseudo-expert's flawed opinions and repeat them, now believing themselves to be experts.

Now, I'm not using the term "ignorant" as an insult. I mean it in the non-judgmental sense that these people are not experts, have no real claim to expertise, and are really just repeating what they remember from those they agree with, as they lack even the basic tools needed to know which experts to listen to. Unfortunately, it takes quite awhile of study just to know what the hell the experts are talking about, and most non-experts don't think it's necessary.

And thus, too many folks are forced to make these decisions on emotional appeal, or some other non-technical reason for deciding who to trust. And that's just how it is. That's not a slam on them. I'm not suggesting that they're stupid. It's just that they are espousing opinions on topics they're unfamiliar with, and thus making things worse. That's simply undeniable. I'm not being a jerk here. I'm just stating facts.

Please Read This

And so I saw one of my Facebook friends post a status saying

PLEASE READ THIS. Iceland has gone though what we are experiencing right now in this country, and they are now thriving. See what they did wrong and how they fixed it.

And it was for an article titled Why Iceland Should Be in the News But Is Not. And the whole thing is about how Iceland had all kinds of problems, but thanks to an unnoticed revolution, their neo-liberal government made all the right moves and has now created a new constitution, thanks to "participatory democratic process."

The piece is written with the air of an expert educating us about something important we hadn't heard of, because the media refuses to cover the story. And so now this piece of "expertise" is buzzing around the internets, as people proudly proclaim the success in Iceland, despite the blackout in the mainstream media. This is definitely a good narrative.

Icelandic Experts

And what's the problem? Large chunks of the article are simply wrong. As it turns out, the person who wrote it wasn't an expert on the issue of Iceland, but rather, they were someone with a very superficial understanding of what was happening in Iceland, and they were piecing it together from various tidbits they had picked up.

Here's a debunking article: A Deconstruction of “Iceland's On-going Revolution, which is a considerably better read than the original. So when the first paragraph of the original article describes Iceland as a member of the European Union that went bankrupt, you'll learn that Iceland isn't a member of the European Union and didn't go bankrupt. Yeah, it's at that level of inaccuracy. I mean, if you can't get the big stuff right, how much of an expert can you be on the little stuff?

And this isn't to pick on the writer, as I'm sure she meant well. But intentions aren't good enough. If you're going to act like an expert, you've got to be an expert. That's how it works. And while she now admits that there were errors with her piece, she still stands by the conclusion and refuses to update the article with any correction.

When the mainstream media does that sort of thing, we denounce them for it. But because this writer is just an amateur and isn't expected to be held to the professional standards of those she denounces. But of course, that's not how this is supposed to work. Again, if you're pretending to be an expert, you've got to be an expert. There are no excuses.

Occupy Oakland Flexes Muscle; Accomplishes Nothing

2011-11-03T02:12:00.001-05:00

It's obvious that the Occupy Wallstreet people have made an impact. And yet, it really troubles me that at some point, they're going to realize that the 99% does not, in fact, want what the protesters want; and in no case was this going to result in the death of capitalism, the destruction of our financial system, or the end of politics as we know it.

And if you're one of those OWS supporters who say "Hey, not all the protesters want to end capitalism," then you're in agreement with me that the tiny percent of people who do want these things are going to be sorely disappointed when it never happens. Because yes, there are people of all walks of life who support this movement, but the truly hardcore, the ones who are truly occupying these places, aren't mainstream and they don't represent the rest of us.

And so I'm reading about how the Occupy Oakland people shut down the Port of Oakland. Why? To stop the flow of capitalism. And I mean, huh? You really think you're going to score points by preventing the delivery of cheap TV's and audio equipment. That's a pretty damn quick way to lose the masses.

And they actually declared a victory from all this. Seriously.

Hours later the crowd began to dwindle and a voice on a bullhorn declared a victory for the movement, saying, "The port has been shut down. Let's head back to the plaza."

Of course. They temporarily shut the port down. Huzzah!

And seriously, what is the matter with these people? What makes them think that the 99% wants an end to capitalism. Or more importantly, an end to getting all the those great products we get from overseas? Seriously, do they not realize who's buying this stuff? It's the 99.99%. And it's not because we're brainwashed. It's because we like these things. And if we didn't like cheap electronics, we wouldn't buy them. So why are they trying to screw with this?

Burning to Burn

But here's what really got me:

As protesters left the area on foot some stopped to burn money, others bickered, and one burned an American flag.
Zachary RunningWolf, a well-known Bay Area activist, said he burned the flag "to start an educated discussion among us."

And seriously, what kind of discussion would this be, even in a perfect world? Assuming he proved his point and everyone agreed he had the right to burn the flag, there'd be no point in doing it at all! Would that mean that we couldn't have educated discussions anymore? Would we all stand around daring each other to be offended by it, just to give us something to talk about? Should we start burning books, in case that's good for discussion too?

Seriously, I'd feel stupid even partaking in such a lame discussion. Go back to the 60's, wannabe hippy! We've got real problems to deal with, not phony baloney made up stuff about burning flags. Obama made it so insurers can't deny healthcare to babies born with birth defects, while this bozo imagines he's saving the world by burning a flag. How pathetic.

And the punchline is that what he really wanted was attention. He wanted people to be offended, maybe attack him, possibly get arrested. And from that, he could pontificate about freedom and liberty and about how all he wanted was an educated discussion, when what he really wanted was attention. Because burning the flag isn't an end of itself. It's not its own purpose, and the only reason you'd do it is if you're trying to get attention. Period.

The 100%

And really, what the hardcore protesters really want is what we all want: A sense of purpose. To feel like you're part of something, to help give meaning to our meaningless lives. And that's why this will only end in tears for them. Because they don't really know how our system works, or how it benefits them, or why other people prefer it, or any kind of sensible alternative. All they know is that they're dissatisfied and for this brief time, people are finally listening to them.

And the reason they have no end game is because there isn't an end game to all this. And our best hope is that they do what they did at the port, by declaring a nothing victory so they can he'd back and do nothing again. They have a superficial understanding of how our system works, and that's why they have superficial goals. They protest for the right to protest, shut down a part of the sake of shutting down a port, and burn flags for the sake of burning flags. There one true goal to all this is simply to have a goal and to do it together.

And as much as they imagine they've really got the best interests of America in mind, all they're really doing this for is themselves. And if they had their way, there would be no Walmarts, banks couldn't give me credit cards, Christmas wouldn't be a time for buying presents, and 99.99% of America would be PISSED.

Debate v. Dueling Lectures

2011-10-24T05:01:00.000-05:00

One big mistake people often make is to assume that they're the baseline; the norm by which all others should be judged. They all imagine that they're the obvious default position, and anyone who disagrees with them is close-minded and stupid, because they have the normal position, which requires no explanation or proof. As if such a thing exists.

And I don't even mean this just for politics, but for everything. In every debate, argument, or heated discussion you hear, people always assume themselves to be the open-minded, clear headed moderate; while anyone who disagrees is a close-minded fool with their heads up their rears. And they do that, not by positioning their arguments to be open-minded, or by actually being open-minded, but by positioning the point of the debate itself, so that whatever their point is, that's the one that's open-minded.

And so they're not arguing about whose facts and opinions are relevant, but rather, they're arguing about what the entire debate is about; yet they don't realize that, as they're so pisspoor at debating that they imagine they're having a real discussion. And so you have a Christian who insists that the debate is about whether or not the Atheist can prove that God doesn't exist, while the Atheist insists the debate is about whether or not the Christian can prove that God does exist.

And these simply aren't the same debates, as both sides are insisting that the other side has to prove their argument; and neither of them sees the need to prove their argument. And since the Christian isn't proving that God exists, the Atheist proclaims victory by saying the default position is that God doesn't exist. And since the Atheist isn't proving that God doesn't exist, the Christian proclaims victory by saying the default position is that God does exist. And they both agree that the other person is close-minded for not seeing this obvious logic.

And of course, the big joke here is that the reason they're doing this is because neither side can prove their point, which is why they keep insisting that the debate requires the other person to prove the point. And this is something I learned a long time ago, which is why I'm agnostic; thus removing me from the requirement of proving anything.

My big secret to any debate: Find the winning argument and stick with it. And if you can't support your claim, don't make it.

And seriously, pay attention to this the next time you see a bad debate. You'll realize that they're probably not even engaging in a real debate, but rather, are merely jockeying for position as to what the debate is about; with both sides insisting that the subject of the debate is how they're open-minded and don't need to prove anything, while the other person does the same thing. It's quite funny, once you realize that.

When Headlines Lie

And this came up because I saw a headline at TPM titled Mission Accomplished? Questions Remain For White House on Iraq, Afghanistan.

And this headline clearly implies that our plan to withdrawal from Iraq was in question, even referencing the "Mission Accomplished" jab at Bush's attempt to pretend the conflict was over early; as well as an outright claim that questions remain. And as evidence that I'm not imagining this, I should note that all the pro-Obama people didn't like the headline because of this implication, while the anti-Obama people liked the headline and used it as a pretext to knock Obama for his position on Iraq.

Yet…I read the article, and it was a series of questions and answers from a Whitehouse conference call and had absolutely ZERO unanswered questions. Not even one, as the article wasn't an analysis piece about unanswered questions. It merely reported a Q&A from a Whitehouse guy answering questions and had no analysis at all. In other words, the headline was the exact opposite of what the article was about. And while I'm sure there are still many more questions remaining, there wasn't one remaining question listed in the article; so the headline shouldn't have said there were.

And so I pointed that out, as well as mentioning that the writer of the piece, Susan Crabtree, has been making a habit of writing speculative articles that imply damning information; which upon further reflection turn out to be bogus. And while I made it quite clear that the article was helpful, as it was mostly a dictation of the conference call, the headline gave the exact opposite impression; acting as if there were reasons to believe the answers were still in doubt.

Here's my opening shot:

Questions remain?? What questions? This article had questions, and then gave answers. And that would mean that the questions DON'T remain. Are there OTHER questions about this? Or was this a misleading headline to feed into people's worries that the Obama Admin is doing something sneaky? If anything, the headline should have been "White House Answers Questions on Iraq, Afghanistan," as that's what the article was about. Answers, not questions. And if there are still questions remaining, then maybe you should have told us what they are.

Dumb Debate

And so for someone to disagree with that, they'd need to show that the article asked lingering questions, or that it showed the troop pull out was in doubt. But that's impossible, because the article did neither; nor did it purport to. It was just a bad headline that didn't belong on the article.

But of course, the world wouldn't be complete unless there was at least one person to tell you you're wrong, and so I had a guy twist everything around, and insist that my criticism was wrong; due to my pro-Obama bias.

What was his point? That the article was good, but the headline was intentionally misleading, and that's a good thing, because that's what newspapers do. And anyone who criticizes that does so because they hate any article that doesn't praise Obama. Seriously. He agreed with everything I wrote, except he felt my criticism was wrong because it's good for headlines to trick us.

Here's his opening statement:

Actually I thought this story provided answers by the administration to questions many have raised, including myself. You people are so Obama crazed any article that does not claim him the greatest person ever sucks in your opinion.

And note, his first sentence was in agreement with what I wrote. My problem was the headline, not the article. And he never disputed that. He just kept insisting that I was mad because it was a pro-Obama article that didn't praise Obama enough; even though I kept telling him that I liked the article.

He went on to say "The aricle IMO is pro Obama because it gave the Obama administration an opportunity to dispel rumors and innuendo," as well as saying "sometimes the story contradicts the headline to foil those that read the headline and comment without reading the story."

Got that? It's pro-Obama propaganda for the Obama Admin to tell people what their plan is, thereby dispelling rumors and innuendo. And he insisted repeatedly that the reason for the bad headlines was to trick trolls who don't read the articles so they'd write stupid comments that didn't apply to what was written; and this is a good thing. As if the best way to combat trolls is to have them write comments that are even worse than normal.

Right. And he kept insisting that *I* was the one digging my hole, and needed to quit digging.

Defining the Debate

And the problem is that he refused to engage on what the argument was really about. The argument was about my statement, so he needed to say why my statement was wrong. Yet, he agreed with most of what I wrote, while his point about misleading headlines was embarrassingly dumb.

So instead, he flipped things around by ignoring what I wrote and insisting that I was mad because the article didn't do more to praise Obama. No longer was the debate about the misleading headline, as he insisted that the debate was about my inability to rationally think about stories involving Obama, and he refused to back down from that, no matter how often I told him that we were in agreement.

Here was his final comment:

I know when to quit. TPM, you're bad, bad, bad website with your tricky headlines.
Susan Crabtree, you don't like our Obama and I am mad as hell and not going to take it anymore. Happy y'all? Good night.

In case you couldn't tell, that was sarcasm. I kept saying this was about the headlines and not Obama, and this guy couldn't see passed that, and kept insisting to the end that we were mad about an attack on Obama. And as long as he kept thinking this was about Obama, rather than taking our words at face value, it was impossible for us to even engage in debate, as we simply weren't discussing the same things.

He was trying to mock our love of Obama, while we were trying to get TPM to not have bad journalism. And seriously, this wasn't a big deal. I wasn't going to boycott TPM over this or anything. I was merely calling an attention to an example of bad journalism, in hopes that TPM wouldn't do that again. I wasn't trying to make a federal case about it or anything. But once he attacked my credibility, what choice did I have but to defend myself?

And because I defended my position and didn't capitulate to a nonsense argument, I was automatically deemed a close-minded fool, deserving of mockery and derision. Anyone else see something wrong with this?

The Rules of Debate

And as I said, this is fairly standard in any bad debate. Not only are they not listening to their opponent, but they refuse to even engage in the same debate. Each side is trying to position the argument to one that favors them, as it requires their opponent to prove their point, or insists that their opponent is biased against the truth.

And sadly, they never really engage in the actual debate at all. They're just flailing about, as they lack the intellectual capacity to form real arguments and support them. And the problem here is that people assume that the point of debate is to convince the other person that they're wrong. When, in fact, the point is for people to share their POV's and the facts supporting those views in order for both people to hash out Truth. I know that sounds quaint, but that's the idea.

Unfortunately, since most people don't even know why they believe what they believe, as it's often just emotional appeals and team politics (i.e. Repub v. Dem, Christian v. Atheist); they can't ever really explain why they believe what they believe. Therefore, they lack the very tools required to engage in even a basic debate. It's like trying to row a boat without any oars: Nothing hits the water and they just sit there frustrated and looking stupid.

If you can't explain to someone why you believe what you believe, then you can't possibly engage in real debate. That's why the vast majority of debates are dueling monologues, which serve no other purpose than a pretext to insult others and feel satisfied that everyone really is as stupid as they imagine them to be.

And sadly, even when I play by the rules and attempt to engage people on their own terms, I can't get people to make a proper debate. Because again, they can't support their assertions, and if you're not willing to immediately accept what they've said without question, then you're close-minded and don't know what you're talking about. As much as people pretend to loathe insult wars, when you ask them to support their claims, you really freak them out.

High Finance is Hard Work

2011-10-22T05:28:00.001-05:00

I'll admit that I'm not much of an expert on anything. I make it a point of knowing enough about everything to understand the world around me, but I tend to not go overboard with it, and only get in-depth on subjects that I need to get in-depth on. As long as I know more about something than the person I'm talking to, I probably know enough.

Sadly, that really isn't a very high standard, as most people haven't a damn clue what they're talking about. And for people who know they don't know what they're talking about, that's fine. People who lack the intellectual capacity to understand high finance or economics really shouldn't bother with these fields, as they're extremely complex; and even I, with my infinite capacity for knowledge, generally only know enough to know that I really don't know much about any of it.

For example, while I can easily follow the typical Paul Krugman column, I've read some of his real work and immediately recognize that I'm barely following along. I get the concepts, but I doubt I'll be asked to teach a class on them any time soon. And while I'm a CPA and technically have the expertise to audit any bank on Wall Street, I would most assuredly turn down any such assignment as I'd be in waaaaay over my head. That's why I keep things simple and only handle small business clients, so I can make sure I'm always the smartest guy in the room.

Don't Know Much About Anything

And what troubles me is how many people imagine themselves to be experts on these subjects, because they read a few websites by people who tell them what they want to hear, or watched a documentary that painted Wall Street as a bunch of thieves. The guy I wrote about in my last post actually attacked me for having taken college classes on these subjects, as if that's somehow the mark of the Devil; sarcastically writing:

Well from your the brief CV, I see that you're the intended product of everything the US has come to expect from higher ed...McLuhan, Postman, et al, would concur.

Congrats on your education.

And while I don't know who McLuhan and Postman are, I can only imagine that wasn't a compliment. Apparently, knowing what you're talking about is now proof that you don't know what you're talking about. I guess anti-intellectualism isn't limited to the Republican Party.

Expertise in One Easy Step: Step One: Watch Movie

Meanwhile, I had another debate on that same thread with a guy who repeatedly insisted I was a "nitwit" because I refused to watch several documentaries that taught him that the banking and insurance industries are a Ponzi scheme, yet refused to explain what that meant.

As I pointed out, the victims of a Ponzi scheme are the investors, while the investors in the banks are the ones who were reaping the obscene profits he was upset about. And Ponzi schemes don't really have profits, while banks are reaping huge profits. In other words, this would be the opposite of a Ponzi scheme; where the investors make money fleecing the customers; not unlike many legitimate business models. And yet, as much as he insulted me for saying this, he refused to explain why I was wrong unless I watched the documentaries first.

He also insisted I needed to watch a documentary that covered the issue of businesses that buy insurance policies for their employees, with the business listed as the beneficiary. And even after the employee stopped working there, the policy stayed in effect. And this is something I read about years ago and was covered in Michael Moore's film Capitalism: A Love Story, which I found interesting, yet ultimately flawed, as Moore didn't seem to know much about how the banking industry worked either.

And yeah, it's ethically questionable for a business to do this sort of thing, and yet...where's the harm? This is essentially a wager between a business and its insurer, and as long as the employer isn't murdering the employee, I fail to see how this has anything to do with them. As calloused as this might sound, the employee is incidental to the wager, not a victim of it.

And so I pointed that out, saying that I didn't see how this hurt the employees, and asked him to explain how I was wrong about that. Yet he refused to explain this and insisted that I had to watch the movie before he'd discuss it. So I told him I wouldn't watch the movie, because I think movies are a bad way of learning things, as they're hard to fact check or research. And for this, he wrote "Of course not. So from the bottom of my heart I say, "GO FUCK YOURSELF!" ... I have wasted enough of my time with you. You are a nitwit, and intellectually corrupt."

Seriously. I never insulted him. I didn't use harsh language. I merely told him that I wouldn't watch these movies and for him to explain his point or find me a website to read it at. After all, if he feels so seriously about these issues, surely he can explain what the problem is. But no, he continues to refuse to explain anything, and the longest explanation he gave during the whole debate is when he thought I was a conservative and lectured me about all the stuff Fox News doesn't cover.

And that's a big problem with many progressives, as they only know how to attack conservatives. But if you're already on the left, accept the same facts they accept, and still refuse to agree with their baseless opinions; they freak out and resort to insults.

Don't Know Shit About Shit

But of course, he couldn't explain any of this, because he didn't know what the problem is. He watched these films because he was already upset at the financial system, and they filled him with rage against the machine. He was angry and he wants us all to be angry. Yet...he can't actually explain what he's angry about, because he doesn't know a damn thing about this stuff.

Why? Because high finance and economics are sophisticated subjects that require years of study, and can't be taught in two hours on a movie screen. I mean, I took three semesters of economics, two semesters of finance, loads of accounting classes, lots of real world experience, and I read articles about this stuff all the time; yet if I was brought into Goldman Sachs and told to make a lot of money with all their resources at my disposal, I wouldn't have a fucking clue where to start.

Seriously, you are NOT going to learn this stuff from a damn blogger. Nor did your time spent reading Paul Krugman's columns against Bush prepare you to understand what's wrong with Wall Street. And for god's sake, you will NOT learn this spending two hours watching a movie, no matter how angry it makes you. I know it's not fun or sexy to say this, but these are TOUGH FUCKING SUBJECTS AND YOU PROBABLY DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT.

And what's so hard to understand about that? Are we REALLY to imagine that Wall Street is as simple as a bunch of thieves conspiring to steal from our bank accounts, as many on the left assert? Try going there and see how far you get. More likely than not, you don't even know enough to get an internship as a gofer, not just because you don't kiss the right rings (though that certainly helps), but because they'd expose you as a know-nothing fraud in under a minute.

Wishful Conspiracies

And the point here isn't that we can just trust what these people are doing, as we obviously can't. Wall Street has shown repeatedly that it loves to get high off its own supply, and there's no reason to think that trend won't continue. Nor do we have to choose between accepting things the way they are or trash the whole system, as we already know how to deal with these problems, if only Republicans would step out of the way and let us do them.

The point is that this is complicated stuff, and if someone's giving you the impression that Wall Street just stole our money, then that someone doesn't know what they're talking about. Yes, there are huge problems. No, it's not as simple as basic theft. And while it's our duty to get a working knowledge of how the system works, that shouldn't allow us to imagine that this is all there is to it. You might know that Credit Default Swaps were used to screw things up, but that doesn't mean you really know what they are.

Because the problem isn't that there's some cabal that's screwing us over to steal our money. That's the fantasyland scenario that implies that this is all a game and we're really always safe the whole time. No, the reality is a whole lot fucking scarier: Nobody is in charge. The bankers who almost brought our financial system down really almost brought our financial system down. That wasn't a hoax. They really believed they had discovered a new Fountain of Profits, and did some scary fucking stuff that really did require billions in bailouts to fix.

When America Was Vegas

There's this myth among many on the left that the banks were intentionally screwing us before the crash, engaging in risky practices for their own profits; while the rest of us got hurt. But of course, this was a game we ALL played; or at least those of us who dabbled in home purchases. I myself once used my home as an ATM, agreeing to an ARM because I knew I'd cash out before it came due. It was a risk, and I knew what I was doing when I went into it; and it worked to my advantage. In fact, millions of Americans profited from this system.

And that's the thing, the vast majority of people who bought homes during the boom knew they could have rented, but chose to buy a home at a higher price, because it was an investment. Housing prices were going up and up and up, so it just made sense to get in on that. It was free money for everyone. And as long as the housing prices kept going up, it was a smart investment.

And that's exactly what the bankers thought, too. They weren't tricking us. Or if they were, they were tricking themselves, too. Because once the bubble popped, they were screwed too. We were all in the same boat and anyone who's pretending as if the banks completely ripped us off has rewritten history. Did they do bad things? Yes. Was there actual fraud involved? In many cases, yes. Was this a one-sided screwing that took us all by surprise? No, that's just not what happened.

The Gamblers

And so, yes, Wall Street got bailed out and Main Street, didn't. But of course, since the majority of taxes are paid by the rich because they have most of the income, it wasn't the middle class who paid for the bailouts. It was the rich. And the majority of that has already been paid back. And if they knew the housing bubble was going to pop, they wouldn't have done what they did.

And that's just how it is. No one group was fully responsible for this. No one group profited from it. And this most definitely wasn't a conspiracy by a Wall Street cabal so they could loan us money at high prices and foreclose on us at low prices. That doesn't even make sense.

Seriously. If a bank loans you $200k to buy a home and sells it as a foreclosure for $160k, they lost money. And while they try to recoup that with hidden fees and deceptive practices, they still lost money. And who got the $200k? The previous homeowner, not the bank. And if the previous owner bought that home for $160k, then he's the one who got the profits; not the bank. That's where the money went. And of course, nobody put a gun to anyone's head to buy these homes. These were investments, and as we all know, investments can also depreciate in value. The profits on all these homes weren't made by the banks, they were made by the sellers. That's what made home flipping so damn popular.

And that's why we need to learn this stuff, because it really is too complicated even for the fat cats on Wall Street. And so we need regulations to protect them from themselves. These people really did almost bring our financial system to its knees, and it wasn't a conspiracy. And the more people realize that, the more they'll realize the need to focus our attention where it will really make a difference: Washington.

We don't need to destroy the banking industry to save America. We just need a Congress that will help save it from itself. And that means we need to get rid of as many Republicans as possible.

Fighting the Dumb Fight

2011-10-20T06:26:00.000-05:00

Over on Facebook, I was in what might possibly be the dumbest argument ever with a dude who started off by writing:

The SCOTUS is little more than the Judicial Branch of the Ruling Elite, while the POTUS and Congress (the Executive & Legislative branches of the Oligarchs) take their marching orders from K-street...I would say that 'Democracy's for sale...', but we do NOT have a democracy in the US; that's a bad joke.

And it went downhill from there. I'll just tell you the punchline: After lots of insults and repeated demands for me to explain why I hate America, he ended up deleting many of his posts, so it'd look like i was just arguing with myself; which he bragged about doing in his final comment. Simply hilarious.

And the saddest part might possibly have been his one actual attempt at making an argument, which I'll repeat verbatim:

In both fascist Italy and Nazi Germany:
wages were cut drastically
domestic programs were rolled back
huge subsidies were given to heavy industry
labor unions were broken
taxes on the very rich were greatly reduced or eliminated altogether
workplace safety regulations were ignored or abolished...
I KNOW none of this sounds the least bit familiar, but as a matter of FACT, that's how Fascism gained power...that's IS what's happening here...just a fact.

And of course, NONE of that stuff has happened. Are Republicans attempting to do many of these things? Yes. But if this guy's theory is correct and the so-called Oligarchs control all three branches of government and our political fighting is just theater, then...why haven't these things actually happened yet? What are they waiting for and why are the billionaires spending so much money trying to make it happen, if they already control everything? After all, you don't have to bribe a politician you already control.

And I kept making that point while refuting every point he made, asking him to explain why none of these things have happened if the Oligarchs already control everything. And I never got anything even resembling a response. Just lots of insults about how stupid I am and how I need to read more, because I'm obviously a victim of the corporate media. The only example he gave proving that these things were happening was the bizarre claim that QE 1&2 somehow cut government spending; and refused to explain even that.

And this kind of thing is just too sad, as this dude clearly thought he was the savvy one, yet he couldn't even attempt to explain any of this. And his example of how we're falling victim to the fascists was obviously borrowed from someone else he trusted, yet...why? None of this stuff has happened, yet he was attacking me for not seeing that it has. And hey, i'll admit that I might not know everything, yet he couldn't even attempt to explain any of this, and instead kept asking me repeatedly "Why do you hate America." All I wanted was a good debate, and this guy couldn't even do that.

And what sucks about all this is that, if he's worried about these things, there IS a solution: Support Obama and the Democrats. It's that simple. Republicans want to do these things, Obama's obviously fighting it off, so why not join the cause? And that's because he's convinced that it's already too late, and so nothing will work.

And this is the sort of thing we need to combat. We'll never convince conservatives to vote Democratic, yet there are lots of people who don't like Republican policies, yet have become convinced by others on the left that there's nobody left to fight for them, and reject Democrats just as much. We need to put a stop to

Nothing for Evil

2011-10-15T05:20:00.002-05:00

A Facebook friend asked a question about the nature of evil, and here was my response:

I don't believe in evil and find that, unless we're simply defining it as "really really really bad," the entire concept is a red herring. Because the point is that it's some thing inside people that's somehow so beyond the normal level of behavior, that mere mortal flaws aren't enough to have caused it. Yet, would could that possibly be?

For example, is Hitler evil. No, of course not. He was a product of his genetic makeup and life experiences, and those things combined together to form a warped mind who imagined that he was the victim of some vast conspiracy and countered that by taking vengeance upon the people he imagined were conspiring against him. And he aspired to create a new world with a master race of people who would make the world a better place.

In other words, he was nuts. And why? Because he was evil? No, because of a mix of his genetic makeup and his life experiences, neither of which he had any control over. After all, what can we use to make decisions other than the genetic makeup and life experiences that came before them; which again, we have no control over.

So...at what point did "evil" enter the picture? This isn't to excuse his behavior, as humans need to draw the line on certain behaviors for the sake of everyone; yet, when you really think about it, you realize he was just as much a victim as anyone else. He didn't "choose" to be a delusional paranoid. Why would he? He didn't "choose" to be a sociopath. That's how he was born and he had no more control over that than you had with the color of your skin. He did the things that seemed right for him to do and he obviously didn't think there was any reason he shouldn't.

Because that's the thing, there *IS* no real freewill, as we're just doing what our genetic makeup and/or life experiences dictate we do. And there *IS* no evil. There's just crazy people doing horrible things and if you were born with Hitler's genetics and lived his life experience, you'd have done exactly what he did. To suggest otherwise is an absurdity. Hell, we can even add a soul to the picture and it STILL doesn't change anything, as we wouldn't have any control over what sort of soul we had either.

And really, the whole thing's a farce, and while it's still necessary for us to punish people for doing bad things, we always need to remember that it's not their fault and that we're only punishing them for the good of everyone and not because it's anything personal we're holding him responsible for. Evil is just a label we use when we don't want to admit that the world's a crazy fucking place that really doesn't make any sense to anyone. Don't let yourself believe otherwise, as it's just a delusion. This shit just doesn't make sense. I know. I checked.

Part II

There's the old joke about the girl who thought the world rested on the back of a turtle. And the professor asks her what the turtle is standing on, and she says it's another turtle. And he asks what *that* turtle was standing on, and she says it's yet another turtle. And so he asks, "well, what's at the bottom of all these turtles?" And she says "Oh no, you can't trick me. It's turtles all the way down."

And that's exactly where we are with any system that posits "freewill" and "evil." Whether you believe in the Christian god, or Hinduism or whatever else people might dream up, you still get to a point of origin where we had to make that first decision that was based upon something that was out of our control, and that's the point that started us on our way.

If God created our soul in Heaven and that turns into Charles Manson, then God and society created Charles Manson. If the Pope was a good aardvark in his past life, which had been a bad human in the life before, and started with whatever it is Hindus believe we all started with; then it's whatever the Pope was given at the beginning, as well as society, that made the Pope who he is.

There can be no other explanation. At a certain point, we have to acknowledge some starting point which is at the bottom of the stack of turtles, and that's what's holding the turtles up. We cannot be held truly responsible for what we do because we are simply products of our genetics and environment. There is no other piece that could be missing, because if there's another piece, than that too is something that was out of our control.

Even if you picked your soul and your parents and everything else about your life, at some level you're basing those decisions upon something that was out of your control, so you can't be held responsible for the decision you made.

Anything Goes

2011-10-07T01:14:00.000-05:00

One of the scarier aspects of many people is their undying belief that everything's going to work out alright. And while that's a positive attitude to have, it's entirely naive and quite possibly fatal. Because there are no guarantees in life and everything can get a lot suckier than it already is.

The Sun might explode, the killer might be in the house, the alien missiles might already be on their way; and there's not a damn thing you can do about it. There are no promises and the world is a scary scary place. That's one reason I can't take any of this stuff seriously, as it's all a crapshoot without much rhyme or reason, and the best we can hope for is to enjoy the ride while it lasts.

And part of that means that Might really *does* make right, and by nature, the strongest get to have anything they want. Absent of any other agreement, me and my buddies and my weapons get to run roughshod over anyone who can't stop us. But that's not much of a way to live, so people agree to work together under any rules they can, and then punish people for violating those rules. Not because the rules are inviolate, but because we need to have rules and those were the rules we decided upon.

How Governments Formed

And that means if a warlord can gather enough followers to establish rules over his own territory, that's what happens. And if someone can establish themselves as King of England, then that's what happens. And if the King's top men get enough strength to force the King to relinquish some of his powers, that's what happens. And that's how we eventually got to democracy. I learned that from Winston Churchill.

And in our current system, we're not a democracy because we have to be a democracy, or because it always picks the right policies, or as some courtesy to us peons who aren't rich enough to field our own private armies. We have a democracy because it's the best system for getting everyone to agree to work together and do the right thing.

You're given a voice in our government so that you're vested in seeing it continue and flourish. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and it doesn't matter which outcome you get, as long as you keep playing. And anyone who might deign to remove our voice does so at their own peril, as it's the only thing that's keeping them as well fed as they are.

The Commies Are Coming!

But too many people don't see this. They imagine that things will always be as they are, and can't fathom the possibility that things could be any other way than how they are. And so they think we can get rid of child labor laws without kids getting hurt, or dismantle our financial system without hurting the small businesses that rely on them.

And we see this with George Will, who referred to Elizabeth Warren's speech on shared sacrifice and the Social Contract as her "collectivist agenda," writing:

Such an agenda’s premise is that individualism is a chimera, that any individual’s achievements should be considered entirely derivative from society, so the achievements need not be treated as belonging to the individual. Society is entitled to socialize — i.e., conscript — whatever portion it considers its share. It may, as an optional act of political grace, allow the individual the remainder of what is misleadingly called the individual’s possession.
[....]
The fact that collective choices facilitate this striving does not compel the conclusion that the collectivity (Warren’s “the rest of us”) is entitled to take as much as it pleases of the results of the striving.

Greg Sargent already did a good job of showing how Warren's speech was making the exact opposite point that Will said it did. So I wanted to address a deeper point: Why *can't* society choose to take as much as it damn well pleases?

Now before you think I've gone all crazy on you, I promise, I'm not suggesting such a policy would be advantageous, advisable, or sane. But on a theoretical level, why can't society do this?

Because of course society can do this. Society can do anything it wants. Society can wipe their butts with the Constitution. Society can legalize rape. Society can choose to end childbirth. Society can do anything it damn well pleases, unless someone can stop it. Because there are no real rules. There are no guarantees of democracy or peace or anything else for that matter.

And we know that, as we see what happens in places like Somalia, and Africa, and Nazi Germany, and anywhere else where injustice reigns. The natural state of things are that you can do whatever you can get away with, period.

A Natural State

And the reason that doesn't happen is because of the social contract. We don't kill one another because we realize that's mutually destructive for everyone, which is why lawful countries are generally superior to lawless ones. Who wants to set up a factory if they know a warlord can come in and steal everything with impunity? But we outlaw theft by choice, not because we need to.

And the reason we allow individuals to reap the benefits of their efforts is to encourage people to work hard, as that's what's most beneficial to society. But there's no god that promises such things. That's by the grace of society. We built you up; we can take your ass out. And if there's a god that has a problem with that, then he'll have to deal with us in the next world.

And if we help educate you, and build roads to facilitate your business, and educate your workers, and protect your factories, you're expected to pay for it. And since the rich get more benefits from society than the rest of us, they're expected to pay more than the rest of us. Not because they're doing us a favor, but because we're the ones who helped set them up in the first place.

That's the deal: We let you have lots of great things so you can make your fortune, but we get a piece of the action on whatever it is you make. And we get to change the terms of the deal whenever we like. That's not even disputable. That's how it works and if you don't want to build a fortune under these conditions, then don't.

And it all comes down to us doing what's mutually beneficial for all of us. And the more someone imagines they can build their empire in spite of the rest of us, the closer they are to learning otherwise.

Simple People Demand Simple Answers

2011-10-06T11:28:00.000-05:00

This is the kind of post I invariably get a little hack for from folks to the left of me, because I *dare* to criticize anyone on the left; in accordance with the rule that anyone to your right is a prime target, while anyone to your left is a saint you should be worshipping. Thusly, this one will once again prove that I'm an enemy of the people.

Because there are two kinds of people in the world: Those who base their theories on the facts, and those who base their facts upon their theories. And unfortunately, people on both ends of the political spectrum are going to fall into the latter category, and the further to the ends they are, the further into fact-making mode they'll be.

Because that's how they ended up there in the first place. They don't really know how the world works, but they're convinced it'd always be better than this, if only their enemy wasn't working so hard against them. For righties, it's based upon a childish belief that America was once a better nation, before the socialists and minorities screwed things up. For lefties, it's based upon outdated economic theories of the 19th century, back when the economy was simple and small enough to actually be manipulated by a handful of powerful men.

Expert Is as Expert Does

And so you have people on the far-right who believe there's a socialist cabal which is intent on destroying the nation by engaging in class warfare on the rich in order to destroy the middle-class, while those on the far-left believe there's a Wall Street cabal that's engaging in class warfare on the poor in order to destroy the middle-class. And if you're foolish enough to disbelieve in these theories, then it's a clear sign you're part of the problem and should be treated as the enemy.

Oh, and without a doubt, both sides are convinced that Obama is in on it. Righties will tell you that everything he's doing is the opposite of what should be done, even if it's what they said should be done a few years earlier; while lefties will tell you that everything he's doing is too little too late, and only made things worse by making people believe he was doing something positive when his policies couldn't have done anything at all.

And when all the experts agree that Obama's policies were certainly helpful, those experts are to be ignored by both sides. Apparently, an "expert" is only knowledgeable to the extent that he tells you what you wanted to hear; and his expertise is limited to the expertise of the person listening to them.

Self-Evident Class Warfare

And where is the proof of this cabal? It's self-evident: The middle-class is being hurt by whichever side is supposedly engaging in the class warfare on the heroes. Therefore, it *must* be that this cabal exists and is the cause of all this. Case closed. Now let's get our torches and run the bastards out of town!

And seriously, for them, this constitutes proof. They don't need to see transcripts of what this cabal is saying during these secret meetings. They know the Koch brothers are talking about how they can further erode the middle-class, while Obama secretly meets with his mentors Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright to discuss how to destroy religion in our nation. They *know* it. I mean, how else can these things be happening unless it's intentional sabotage by the enemy.

And basically, these people have their theory of what's happening, and reverse-engineer the facts until they get the only possible answer. And deep down, these people truly believe that America will continue to grow and its people prosper, unless there were a cabal doing something to stop it. And it's all based upon a simplistic model of how economics works, as if a $14 trillion economy can easily be manipulated by a handful of bad men.

It's the Demand, Stupid

Because there's another explanation for our economic woes: Low demand. People don't have money to buy stuff, so businesses can't hire more people and produce more stuff, which means people don't have money to buy stuff, so businesses can't hire more people and produce more stuff.

That's it. It's that simple. That's basic economic theory for decades, and it all makes sense. And it doesn't require a secret cabal of Wall Street bankers and Chicago-style Islamasocialists. And in this situation, if Big Business decided to use their cash stockpile to hire more employees and produce more stuff, they'll lose that money and eventually go out of business. That's because you can't sell what people aren't buying. They might as well just take their cash stockpiles and burn them.

And this makes all the difference in the world. If you think you're being held down by a secret cabal intent on destroying you, your only recourse is to destroy them. If capitalists or socialists are waging class warfare on us in order to break us down and make us their economic slaves, then a mere economic policy could never provide any help. But...if it's simply a matter of increasing demand, well, we've got an app for that.

Because of course, none of this would be good for either side. Big Business isn't enjoying this, while socialists don't want to see their people suffer. Both sides want a return to the 90's, where demand was high, the stock market was booming, and unemployment was unreasonably low. And sure, Big Business is doing ok right now, but they'll be doing much better once the economy picks up.

And if one side succeeds in destroying the other side, we'd see economic ruin on all sides. This only makes sense to people who don't understand economics and imagine one side could keep taking a bigger slice of the pie until they had the whole pie. But of course, that would only make the pie vanish. And they'd know that, if they had even a basic idea of how our economy really works, instead of a simplistic 19th Century model of a puppet-master pulling strings.

No All-Powerful Enemies

But...none of this is sexy. None of this involves an evil cabal or a simple plan of how to defeat them. Instead, it's all about increasing demand by using blah, blah, blah, time to fall asleep in economics class; assuming they even took one, and they probably didn't. No, it's much better to see this as an epic struggle of good versus evil, than to hit the textbooks and try to figure out how the world really works.

And since I say this kind of boring stuff, both sides are convinced that I'm a "useful idiot," in accordance with the rule that if you can associate the other side with a Nazi or Soviet, you've already won. Because yeah, the Koch Brothers really do have get-togethers where they discuss how to grow their fortunes using the political system to their advantage. And there really are socialists in our country who get together to figure out how to take wealth from our wealthy oppressors and give it to their rightful owners.

But...these aren't all-powerful cabals that can give orders to the President and other powerful people. These are competing interests all fighting for the football, and sometimes they win and sometimes they lose. The Koch Brothers aren't far-sighted villains intent on destroying the middle-class; they're shortsighted fools who enjoy playing the game so much that they can't see how it'll end up hurting them. It's not that they're greedy. They're just bored men looking for a purpose in life, and making money and grabbing power is the game they enjoy best. Perhaps someone should buy them a Wii.

And like it or not, there's no Big Daddy that can control our economy, and no guarantees that the economy will prosper if we remove these enemies from their position of power.

As it turns out, the world is a scary place and things really *can* get all fucked up on their own; and there's little we can do about it, unless we work together and try to fix things the best we know how. And in this case, that involves using the government to increase demand until the economic pump starts working faster on its own.

And while there's nothing sexy about that, that's just how it works; and we don't need a revolution or a crackdown on Alinsky socialists to make that happen. We just need to use the basic economic tools that are already at our disposal. Oh, and Obama's job's bill. That'd be a start.

Take Back Congress: Support Obama's Jobs Bill

2011-10-06T02:46:00.000-05:00

Over at TPM, I was in multiple discussions with people over the Wall Street protests and what it is they're supposed to achieve. It's obvious that the movement has no concrete goal beyond "Fix things," yet if you say that, you'll get deluged with individuals giving their personal idea of what the movement will achieve.

And that's great but...there's no agreement between them at all. Seriously, I get responses ranging from a return to Glass-Steagall (which I approve of), all the way to Constitutional Amendments banning opinionated news; which is more than a bit problematic. And then you'll find weird rants against police states, based upon the horrors of not being able to use a bullhorn in downtown Manhattan. I'm sure the folks in North Korea feel much solidarity with us over that lost freedom.

These people are so elated to finally have a group of people to yell at Wall Street with that they haven't yet grasped that there's no common goal. They all know what to do, even if they can't agree as to what it is. And that bugs me, as there's great potential to this movement, if only because it gets people's attention. Yet I get meaningless slogans that even Tea Partiers could agree with, like "Take back our government" and "99%er: With Us or Against Us." And they act upset that I don't instantly know what these things mean. Hell, 99%er looks like some weird web sign that my kids might use.

And my biggest fear here is that we'll have a bunch of nutballs saying nutty things while pretending to represent the views of all liberals, just as we saw in the Bush years, when everyone who disagreed with Bush was symbolized in the media by hairy people holding silly puppets and simplistic signs about blood and oil. These people are convinced that they're the antidote for Republican tactics, entirely unaware that they're a key feature of the plan.

My Solution

So I came up with my own quickie goal, which not only is a good use for the movement, but it's attainable: Let's support Obama. Specifically, his plan with the jobs bill, which isn't just good policy, but good politics too.. He already set us up for this one, and we can help mow down the opposition for him. Here's what I wrote:

The solution is simple: We need to let Congress know that liberals are pissed and will rain hellfire on anyone too conservative for Obama's job bill. That's a concrete thing that we can rally behind and use as a good litmus test heading into the next election year.

Is it *enough* progress? No, but it's a start and it's attainable. Nothing gets success like success, and if conservative Dems and Republicans in swing districts realize they face unemployment next year if they go against the bill, that'll get their attention. And that means we vote with our wallets this year and promise to vote in person next year.

We don't need to take back our government. We need to take back Congress.

Candidate Flawed v. Blank Slate

2011-10-04T14:11:00.000-05:00

For as much as polls serve a real purpose and can be more representative of public opinion compared with actual elections, if they're done properly; there's one type of polling question I don't like: Comparisons of a known candidate with a generic candidate.

And yeah, that can have some usefulness in determining a general sense of how popular a candidate is, yet the implied notion the media portrays is that the known candidate is soooo unpopular that he can't even beat any opponent of the other party. And so it's considered a huge weakness if you can't beat a generic candidate. And that's utterly bonkers.

Because the problem is that a generic candidate has no real flaws, no negative record, and no skeletons in the closet; while the known candidate most probably has all of these things; at least to some extent. And once the eventual opponent surfaces, they too will have flaws and negative records and skeletons in the closet.

Obama v. Generic

And we see that right now, where Obama's compared to a generic candidate and shown to be doing badly. But so far, there are NO Republican contenders who are even close to being flawless. In fact, they're all so incredibly flawed that the party is reaching out desperately for any Republican to step in to run against Obama, including relatively moderate Republicans who have said they wouldn't run, and who have a closetful of skeletons himself.

And so this Obama v. Generic is entirely dumb, as it only shows Obama's bottomline support, of people who will support him no matter how awesome the opponent is. But if the opponent is an extremist who is also viewed as flawed by his own party, then all bets are off and you're going to see lots of numbers shifting to Obama. Not because they'd always support him, but because the Republican was such a freak that it scared everyone to go for the president. Because there simply is no Republican whose positives outweigh the negatives.

And finally, there's the issue of how far out from the election we are. I've looked at poll numbers from previous presidential elections and can tell you that the actual numbers don't really start shaping themselves until about a month or so before the election. Before that time, you'll have the more fervent supporters who have already made up their mind, but these are the same people who never change. While the precious swing voters who make all the difference don't start paying attention to this stuff until the election approaches.

And in a political cycle like ours, the hardcore voters will tend to lean right because they're already so upset, while the undecided are more likely to go for Obama. And the more Republicans ratchet up the hate rhetoric, the more they'll flock to Obama.

Even Gallup Knows it's Dumb

In Gallup's recent Obama v. Generic poll, we got this little tidbit towards the bottom:

Thus, the results more than a year ahead of the election do not have a large degree of predictive ability, and underscore that things can change greatly in the final year or more before an election.

Then...what exactly was the point? Moreover, 15% of those polled don't even have an opinion, including 22% of independents. 22%? That's more than half the number of independents who support Obama. And of course, the biggest joke is that there isn't a single Republican who polls as well as the Generic Republican candidate. So every Republican is getting beat by the Generic Republican, but because Gallup didn't poll for that, they won't tell anyone. And so this is just an exercise in futility.

This stuff might make reporters and political junkies feel better, as they usually prefer horserace analysis over issues; but it has very little predictive value and should always be ignored.

You Can't Fix What You Don't Understand

2011-10-02T15:28:00.002-05:00

As a follow-up to my last post, I had someone respond to what I wrote, saying:

They're not lawyers writing up legislation. They're demanding that the political elites start representing everybody and not just the champagne swillers cavorting on their wall st balconies. Its up to the elites to propose the remedies.

But of course, Martin Luther King wasn't a lawyer either, yet that didn't prevent him from identifying racist laws or identifying specific inequities we needed to fix. He didn't just say "end racism." He said, "End Jim Crow Laws." You don't need to write legislation to have a basic idea of what you want done, yet these people imagine you can go from Slogan to Solution simply by holding a sign long enough.

And what's so troubling here is that these people really seem to imagine they're experts on this subject, yet refuse to accept any responsibility for getting it done. They imagine their job is simply to show up and shout "Fix everything." Well, that's great, but when the protesters themselves can't even give a basic idea of what those fixes are, how can the "political elites" know what they need to fix?

And that's also why they're so frustrated with Obama. For them, fixing things is as easy as talking about it, and then it'll get done. And since Obama hasn't fixed everything in this manner, it can only be because he's not trying.

Lazy Protesters v. the Banker Cabal

And seriously, this just won't do. These people imagine they're the responsible ones taking a stand, yet they refuse to do any of the hard work. Holding a sign is easy. Crafting good legislation is extremely difficult, even under the best of conditions. Yet these people not only want to leave the legislation to legislators (which I understand), but refuse to even identify basic solutions to our problems. And that's just lazy. It's no different from Tea Partiers who rant against Obama, yet can't identify any specific areas to fix.

These people aren't trying to change the world. They're wanting to live in a fantasy, which makes them heroes combating villains; yet without any actual combat. Hell, they don't even think they should be arrested for breaking the law! They say Wall Street bankers broke the law, well what law? They say we need to make things more fair, but don't even know exactly what is making things so unfair. They're just the messengers, they say. It's for others to figure out what needs to be fixed. And that's just lazy.

And of course, the real problem is that they don't even understand how complicated our system really is, as they've got this insane idea that there's a ruling class that works together to do whatever they want. And a media elite that gets together and determines what will and won't be covered in the news. And that's not sane, and if anyone is basing their "fix everything" solution on the idea that a cabal can get together and fix everything, it's no wonder they can't find any solutions, because they don't even know how our system works. And you can't fix what you don't understand. They know bankers are stealing our money and that's good enough for them.

And so that's why they're so frustrated when we call them aimless. Because they really do think the bankers on Wall Street will soon get together and decide to stop being bad. It's just that simple. And after that, Obama and the GOP will get a call from this bankers cabal and be told what laws they need to pass and everything will be happy and fair. Huzzah! Fixing things is as talking about it.

Now I'm going to go hold a sign telling my kitchen to clean itself. I mean, I'd do it myself, but I'm no maid; so this is the next best solution. It's got to work.

Wall Street Protesters Demand Better Slogans

2011-10-02T12:39:00.001-05:00

As you've probably heard, there's a group of people protesting on Wall Street. What are they protesting for? The end to greed and inequality, as well as the prosecution of Wall Street fat cats for breaking laws that probably don't exist.

Seriously, TPM had an article about this, which mentioned that the goals of the group weren't really defined, as the protesters themselves disagree about what needs to be done. Sure, they all agree to a basic level of "greed is bad," but beyond that, there are no actual policies they can agree to.

And many readers took exception to that, condescendingly writing comments like the following:

The aim uncertain? Really, TMP, really?!

The aim is stop the corporate greed, restructure the financial system, hold accountable the crooks who cause the financial meltdown, stop the corporate loop holds, make the 1% pay their responsible share, end BIG money politics.

Now what part of that don't you understand?

Oh, ok. Stop greed, restructure financial system, and hold people accountable. Of course, now I know *exactly* what I'd be supporting if I sent them money: Feel good slogans and a general dissatisfaction with the way things are. Great. Let me bust out my checkbook.

Slogans v. Policies

Below is a comment I wrote there, which I'm sure the person would disagree with, without being able to explain why it's wrong.

Ok, the part I don't understand is: What the hell does this mean?

Stop corporate greed? That's not a policy, that's a slogan. Restructure the financial system, how? Hold the crooks accountable? How? The ones that obviously broke the law are being prosecuted every day, but most of what went on was legal. End big money politics, how? Seriously, these aren't real goals, these are generic concepts. But unless they have a basic plan for what they want done, this whole endeavor is for nothing.

We're never going to stop greed, though we can certainly bring back laws and regulations we used in the past to prevent the abuses of greed, as well as making our laws more effective. But until these people have a basic idea of what those remedies are, then this whole thing is an exercise in futility. As things stand, I have *NO IDEA* what exactly I'd be supporting if I supported this movement. Are we talking a few tweaks to our laws, as I think we need? Or are we talking about a radical overhaul of our entire system, as many of these people say they want? Because that's something I most definitely would NOT support.

Until some specific goals are outlined, this movement isn't going anywhere.

And what's sad is that the reason these people don't understand why this is a problem is because they don't understand exactly what it is that Wall Street did wrong. I'll be considered a corporate stooge for not agreeing with them, because they have no idea how vague all this is and don't know enough to realize it.

It's like going to the doctor because you're coughing up blood and his prognosis is that you're sick. And you'd be like, "Well no fucking shit I'm sick, but what's wrong with me?" And all he could do is to continue to tell you that you're sick while belittling you for not agreeing with his assessment.

Where's the Crime?

One commenter insisted that the "crime" was in taking our money and denying it for public services, yet I suspect he'd have a hard time finding that law on the books. And that's one of the problems, in that what most of these bankers and brokers did wasn't illegal; while we already HAVE been prosecuting the ones who broke obvious laws.

And so we'd have a nice policy goal right here by identifying exactly what they did wrong and making it illegal. But since these people already believe crimes have been committed, that's not a policy goal they can have, because they imagine we already have laws about it.

It's the same as with people who accuse Obama of "war crimes," completely unfamiliar with what a war crime really is, as they imagine every war they don't agree with is criminal. Needless to say, the Hague has a slightly different standard for these things.

Protesting the Wrong People

Because yeah, greed and inequality are bad, and there certainly ARE many things we should do to fix these things. But seeing as how all these remedies need to happen in Washington, which Republicans control and who will NEVER agree to ANY of this stuff...what's the point? When MLK protested, he had a specific goal in mind and addressed it to the people who could do something about it. He didn't go to the KKK headquarters and demand they stop being racist. He took it to the people and said which things needed to be fixed.

These new protesters, on the other hand, have picked a fairly useless target to protest (Wall Street bankers who will merely laugh at the protesters), instead of picking actual targets who we have leverage on and who have the power to do something about it (elected officials). In fact, the best use of their energy would be to target Republicans and right-leaning Dems, to put the pressure on them.

But of course, they'd STILL need to know what they wanted these people to do. They need to identify specific areas that need to be fixed, not make vague demands about changing our entire system from the ground up; as if that really meant anything. I mean, who exactly would do this, when the main people who understand best how Wall Street works are the very ones screwing us in the first place? While many of these protesters know they don't like Wall Street, they have never bothered to learn exactly what it does, beyond taking our money and screwing us over.

Reinstating regulations on the size of these banks and the risky activities they engage in is a practical goal; which is acheivable. Trying to "end greed" is not one. Nor is demanding that we arrest people for being greedy. Until these people can give us a better idea of what it is they want us to do, they're unlikely to see much success.

As much as I'd *like* to be able to support them, I can't possibly do so until I know what I'm supporting. To do otherwise is absurd. Yes, the patient is sick, but until I'm given some idea of what the doctor wants, I can't possibly know if I support it.

When Libertarians Dream

2011-10-02T03:50:00.000-05:00

I have a confession: I've kinda got a soft spot in my heart for hardcore libertarians of the Randian-anarchist variety. Because they're just so damned earnest in their beliefs. For as much as they like to believe they're the cynical reality-based objectivists Rand idealized, just a quick review of their basic belief system exposes them to be the wide-eyed dreamers they really are.

Like with their belief that everything will work out, as long as government authoritarians step out of the way and let people live their lives. But why? Why do they assume that nature will protect them, when they fully acknowledge that anything goes and the weak should perish? More importantly, they can never explain how, without laws and government, they could possibly prevent authoritarians from taking over and forming a tyrannical government.

Because that's the thing: It's not as if our governments just formed themselves overnight or were imposed upon us by aliens. Instead, our current system is the product of thousands of years of people doing whatever the hell they want, and this is the outcome. This is how anarchy arranged itself. Human history has been a long experiment in anarchy, and so far, it's led to powerful men ruling our lives with laws, taxes, and police. I mean, duh!

And yet these people really imagine that they'd be the masters of their domain, if only the power-mongers stepped out of the way and let them do their thing; completely unaware that Rand was arguing on behalf of the power-mongers, whether she knew it or not. It just doesn't occur to these innocent naifs that power-mongers will always exist and that government and democracy is the best proven method for dealing with them.

These people aren't looking for a new solution to government; they're looking for a do-over button, in hopes of trying it again. But unless your system of anarchy can prevent me and my buddies from taking over, then a do-over is the last thing you want.

Lassiez Faire Fairies

And so I read with relish when I stumbled upon such a person discussing his trials and tribulations with a like-minded group of anarchist libertarians. It was part of a movement called Lassiez Faire City, which apparently was setup in Costa Rica, as a way of finally establishing the libertarian utopia they keep imagining can exist.

As he explained it:

LFC was an organization that had some publicity in the mid-nineties for gathering money in a trust to found a free city. Unfortunately, it couldn't find a willing government with reasonable land, and the project lost steam. It was reinvented as a project to create an independent, sovereign state in cyberspace, with physical territory as a longer-term goal. Dodge City was the most visible arm of the project to outsiders, being a sort of web-based BBS with message groups, internal email, and access to various LFC projects being tested, such as an internal stock exchange.

Needless to say it didn't work. And from what I read, the whole thing sounds like a total scam, with the people in charge bilking the rest out of their hard earned money. And what's so hilarious about this is reading the libertarians complaining about this, while continuing to go along with it. And rather than realize they were scammed, they instead think the people running it just didn't understand the philosophy properly.

But of course, that's completely backwards: The guys running this thing understood Randian libertarianism perfectly. It was the suckers who were confused. The leaders came up with an idea for making money and reaped the benefits of their idea. It's not their fault that the people who gave them the money had a different idea in mind.

I mean, what would you think about an online group that was established to sell web services, and yet their only income source were "founders" who paid $5000 a pop for the privilege, and rather than provide the services they were supposed to provide, they instead used funds to "sponsor teams of kids across the world on internet projects." Right.

And when anyone questioned this on the messageboard, they were attacked, censored, and finally banned from the group; never having received answers to their basic questions about where the money was going and why they weren't hiring more programmers to finish any of the projects. Needless to say, they didn't get their $5k back after they were kicked out.

Now, the natural assumption would be that it's a scam, right? I mean, duh. The money didn't go to teams of kids across the world. It went into the pockets of the people running the site. Duh. And yet these libertarians were so infatuated with their fantasy world that they refused to admit to this possibility, and preferred to believe that the offending leaders of the group didn't understand libertarianism well enough. And really, that's just tooooo cute, right?

But as this page from 2003 will attest, when the group finally split up, having collected millions of dollars from Randian suckers, all they had to auction off was an encrypted email service that had been created by a separate group, as well as posters showing what their ideal city would eventually look like. How precious.

Building on Quicksand

And just so you understand, I actually agreed with much of what the guy said and believe him to be quite intelligent...when he wasn't talking about our "terrorist government" and his inability to realize he had been scammed, anyway. And that's what makes it so mystifying that he could be so stupid about all this.

But of course, no one is truly all-intelligent or all-dumb, and it was likely the shaky Randian foundations in his brain that allowed him to be so blind to reality, while the other parts of his brain functioned properly. It's like someone building a house and placing the bedroom over quicksand. The rest of the house might be fine, but you'll need to find somewhere else to sleep.

And the funniest part about reading his story was that so many of his complaints really boiled down to him not being in charge. He kept coming up with good ideas about how things should be done, ranging from encryption on software to the seating arrangement at the LFC bar in Costa Rica. And since they weren't doing it "right," they were wrong and part of the problem.

And that's the thing: He had his idea of how things should be done and was miffed that no one was following his suggestions. Typical Randian: It only works when they're the one in charge. That's why Ayn Rand was the undisputed voice of her movement, while everyone else had to shut up and repeat what she said. That's not the outcome of her philosophy; that was the point.

Our Momentary Ego-Thing

And really, the whole damn thing was a farce. Even if these people weren't scammed, and I'm sure they were, they were still stuck in an authoritarian group that ruled with an iron fist, instituted arbitrary rules, and dealt with dissent with censorship and banishment. Seriously.

And yet like abused wives, they'd send private emails to one another, quietly complaining about this in hopes of changing things for the better, rather than understanding that they were part of the dumbest group on the internet and needed to move on. I'm sure Ayn Rand, a world-class cult leader of her own, was laughing in her grave about this one.

From that 2003 page, I found this little bit of hilarity:

Freedom lovers need community -- not just "cybercommunity," which we have, but real-world communities and networks of mutual interest and support. But we tend to be absolutely lousy at long-term cooperative endeavors. The most philosophically "pure" of us, especially, seem to lose sight of the fact that, in order to accomplish anything with a group, we have to put the group goal ahead of our momentary "ego-thing."

Uhh, looks like someone forgot the entire lesson of everything Ayn Rand wrote. I mean, putting the group goal ahead of the "ego-thing" is the very anthesis of Randian thinking. That's why the rest of us know it's so ridiculous, dummy. I mean, duh. The whole point of their philosophy is that individuals don't need the community, as communities are parasites that drain the talents of the individual. I knew that simply from watching Foutainhead, as it was the whole point of the movie!

Yet, these people are convinced that if they work together as a team and follow the unwritten rules of everything, we'll finally get our ideal society that has no rules and abhors teamwork. And it's that exact sort of delusional obliviousness that makes them so damn adorable.

It's because of people like this that Ayn Rand didn't have to work for a living.

When Ideology Meets Reality: The Contradictions of Liberal Conservatives

2011-10-01T13:59:00.000-05:00

What's so annoying about talking to my rightwing mom is that I *know* that she's a liberal. She's *totally* a liberal. Once you get passed the rhetoric and listen to what she really wants, they're all solutions that can only come from a liberal, while the conservative policies she advocates are responsible for the problems she's complaining about in the first place!

And it's not just her: Almost EVERY conservative really wants liberalism, if only they'd allow themselves to think it. And if they could erase our minds and grab our policy solutions on everything, they'd gladly do so and be grateful that they finally got a platform that makes sense.

Yeah, they'll wail about how unfortunate it is that Obama's stifling the economy with all that uncertainty caused by him not doing what they were told he was going to do (i.e., anti-gun Islamic socialism), but underneath it all, they know the problem is lack of demand and would like nothing better than to use stimulus spending to pay businesses to build things and improve what we have...if only that wasn't the liberal solution.

Let Them Eat Chalk!

Like with the issue of free lunches for children. Seriously, I'm of the opinion that a proper nutrition is essential for a child to learn and believe that all school children should be given a basic free lunch that is hardy enough to sustain them for the day, not just as a benefit to the parents or the child, but to the school. Hungry kids don't learn and have more behavior problems, period.

As things are, when schools do have meals for children who can't pay, it's usually little more than a PB&J with a pint of milk; as if that was adequate nutrition. And older students are simply told to do without food all together. Seriously. If the student doesn't have money, they just have to tough it and go hungry. And again, it's for the benefit of the school, other students, and society if children are properly fed. So if any parent feels they can't afford to feed their kid and want to take advantage of these programs, I say, let 'em. As long as the funds go towards feeding a kid, I can't imagine what the problem would be.

And that shouldn't even be controversial. Yet conservatives don't like the idea of any free lunches, and as Montana millionaire Rep Dennis Rehberg (R-$$) believes, the program is probably rife with fraud of parents claiming to make less money than they do in order to have their children fed with tax dollars. Because yeah, the $600-$700 a year these people are costing us is really going to be worth the added layers of bureaucracy required to make sure it's not happening.

But of course, that's why their ultimate goal is really just to get rid of the lunch program all together, and as noted in my last post, that means that their only solution can be one that involves getting rid of the lunch program. The idea that anyone's getting a free lunch is deplorable enough for them, but to think that someone might get their kid a free lunch fraudulently...well then, that's the final straw and it's time to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Apparently, 'tis better that many children go hungry than one kid get fed erroneously.

No Free Lunches

And my mom feels that exact same way. Every time we get started talking about free lunch programs, she's instantly against them. But then, she gets into an odd strain of thinking, as she begins to discuss another reason the lunch program is bad, based upon her personal experience: It's too difficult to get.

And that's from when she was involved with the Catholic school at her church and lamented how they couldn't get the free lunch program because there were too many hoops for them to jump through and bureaucratic audits to make sure the money wasn't being spent fraudulently; and they didn't want to follow the regulations.

That's right: She was complaining that more children weren't getting free lunches, and that there were too many safeguards in place to prevent fraud. And yeah, on the surface, that fits the conservative line, as it's all about government red-tape and whatnot. But...the underlying message is quite clear: We need more free lunches.

Her ideology and rhetoric tell her to hate free lunches. Yet in practice, she understands the importance of these programs and would like to see them expanded; which, of course, is the liberal position. While the conservative position is to deny these programs all together and make everyone pay for their own lunches. I tried explaining that to her, but to no avail.

Government is People

And we see this sort of contradiction all the time. People who complain about fraud in Social Security and Medicare, who also complain about red-tape making it difficult to get benefits or doctors willing to accept the limited payouts. Or they complain about government interference in healthcare, yet rant endlessly about how their health insurer screwed them over and tried to deny them care while lying to them about it; as well as lamenting the high cost of healthcare and wanting someone to do something about it.

And really, you can see this again and again, as long as you stay away from their rhetorical hand grenades and keep the focus on reality and their real problems. And the secret is to look for the openings and push past the rhetoric. You might not see when they're pushing for liberal policies, but it's there. You just have to keep them talking about reality and actual problems, and not the fantasy problems talk radio and Fox warn them about.

Because ultimately, they don't really want conservative policies. They don't want a free-for-all which allows the powerful to trample them. What they want is that ideal world Rush Limbaugh keeps telling them about, where everyone takes care of everyone and no one needs Big Daddy Government getting in the way of that. And if they could only internalize the idea that the government is people, and is our way of ensuring that everyone takes care of everyone, they wouldn't be suffering from these contradictions.

But until then, they'll keep attacking big government until it finally steps out of the way and lets us work together to fix our problems collectively. Sigh...

Conservative Problem Solving: Don't Dream It, Be It

2011-10-01T02:32:00.003-05:00

The problem with conservatives is that they look at how they imagine the world *should* be, and then work backwards to determine the best way of making life work exactly like that; no matter how unrealistic that may be. Moreover, the only problems they see pertain to how life doesn't match how they imagine it should be, and their solution is simply to deny the possibility that any other life is advisable.

For example, they "know" that Mexican citizens shouldn't be living in our country. And so they develop all sorts of rationales for why they shouldn't be here; complaining about how they don't pay taxes and get lots of great perks that regular citizens don't get, and how they don't learn English and are lazy.

But of course, the easy solution for that would be to create a citizenship program which required immigrants to learn English and hold a job for a certain amount of time. Problem solved. They'd pay their taxes, learn English, and work hard. And that's not such a crazy solution, as Obama's already suggested it.

Yet...conservatives can't endorse that policy because they aren't REALLY trying to solve the problem of lazy foreign parasites. Their REAL problem is that Mexican citizens shouldn't be here, period. If your solution doesn't fix that, then they don't want to hear it. I mean, not that they're racist or anything. It's just that...Mexicans just shouldn't be here, period.

No Teen Sex

Or like the problem of sex. They "know" that no one should have sex unless they're married and ready to have a baby. And they insist this is important because of the risk of unwanted babies, sexual diseases, and the sheer misery of having sex without God's approval.

But of course, we have easy solutions for that too: Pills, rubbers, and abortions. And if you don't want to live with your god's disapproval, get a new god. Problem solved.

Yet...conservatives can't support that policy because they aren't REALLY trying to solve the problem of unwanted babies and sex diseases. In fact, they actually encourage such things, as punishments to the sinners and warnings to the others. No, their REAL problem is that they don't want people to have sex unless they're married and ready to have a baby, and the mere suggestion that you can have sex under any other circumstance is abhorrent.

...unless you're the one wanting to have sex, in which case you can go ahead and do it, and then beg for forgiveness if you're caught. But no one else is allowed to do that! Only the special people for whom the rules don't apply.

The List Goes On

And you can go on and on with these sort of examples. They believe that you can grow the economy by removing billions of dollars from it and firing lots of workers, and so their solution can only involve those fixes. They think the free market should solve all problems, so their only solution is to go back to the days when the free market was screwing everything up. They believe that regular folks are actually SMARTER than the people who understand what they're talking about, and so their solution is to get all the experts out of the way so the plain folks can institute their common sense policies and practical advice.

The list goes on and on. Seriously, if you look at a conservative solution, you've already found what they were looking for. There's no point in doing anything, besides aiming directly for your target and going for it. You want a society where men are men and women stay home? Then treat women like slaves and gays like outcasts. You think drugs are bad? Outlaw drugs. It's all soooo simple when all you have to do is to act out your solution.

And these people simply can't see anything else. To even *suggest* that we accept an imperfect world is to advocate for imperfect worlds. And that's why they really do believe that we want Mexicans stealing our resources, doing our daughters, and enlarging our government. We're looking for solutions that still permit these horrible outcomes, so these must be the things we want.

To conservatives, solving a problem is as simple as denying the possibility of any other outcome. If you can dream it, be it; and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Politics Before People

2011-09-28T01:41:00.001-05:00

It's really too funny when Republicans attempt to explain why they like Big Government. Like when they insist that stimulus projects don't stimulate the economy, yet fight to get funding for their districts so they can brag about it to their peeps. As they explain the hypocrisy, they're against the idea of spending, but figure they'd be foolish to not get money for their constituents if others are getting it.

And yet...why would this be important, unless the money helped their districts? And if they admit that the money is good for their districts, then...why isn't it good for all districts? Why isn't it good for America?

And of course, this is really all about them putting their party loyalty first, but if that falls through, they're more than willing to act like liberals and promote government spending for their districts. Apparently, Keynes only works on the local level, while the money just disappears into a moneyhole once you combine all these districts together.

Similarly, Eric Cantor got caught with his hands in the hypocritical Big Government cookie jar, as he put party needs first by using the FEMA disaster funding as political leverage to please the Tea Partiers. But once that fell through, he considered it his duty to ensure that his district got disaster funds as soon as possible.

As his spokesman explained it:

The purpose of the call was solely to keep local officials informed on the timeline and process for determination by President Obama and Secretary Napolitano as to whether federal disaster aid will be granted. That is, you know, his job as a Congressman.

Of course, his job as a Congressman. Too bad his job as a Congressman had to take a backseat to his job as Majority Leader until Democrats finally found an end-run around his little stunt. And only then is Federal assistance for disaster victims a priority. Only then is it his job as a Congressman to make sure that these much needed funds get handled properly.

Only after the play is whistled dead and there's no chance for moving the ball that he'll finally get back to the only thing his constituents need him for. Because yeah, I'm sure the conservatives in his district are proud of him when he fights Obama and the Democrats. But they'd feel better if Cantor did his job a little more, and kept the silly political games to a minimum. Sorry I don't have a better ending for this post, but I feel like going to bed.

Ideological Boxes

2011-09-23T04:54:00.000-05:00

One of the thing I don't understand about people is when they have a perfectly good explanation for why they did what they did, but instead of admitting the truth, they invent endless hoops to jump through in order to avoid making a point they would have made if they had told the truth. And the spotlight of the political world only enhances that, where politics trap politicos into absurd ideological boxes, which disallows them from telling the truth which also would have made them look better.

And that just never made sense to me. I want to win arguments so I make sure to get the right argument, period. And if my position isn't the right one, I'll find the right one and figure out how it fits into the rest of my beliefs. And since I make a point of weeding out any defective arguments as soon as I find them, it helps make things easier to fit them all together. But some people can't do this, and so they make things harder for themselves, rather than just saying what they should say.

As a note, I just reread the examples I gave in this piece and realized that NONE of them prove my original point. Instead, they're people who say dumb things because their ideology forces them to, but they don't show how these people could have told the truth while benefitting politically. I had other examples in mind for those, but somehow lost them and went with these instead. That's what happens when you drink and post.

And so we have Ron Paul . I'm sure he's not a bad guy. He doesn't want people to die. He just has a thing about government, and has painted himself into an ideological box which forbids him from saying sensible things. And so he pines for the days when cancer was incurable, heart transplants were impossible, and the life expectancy in America was ten years younger than it is now; and wonders why healthcare got so expensive. And this man is a doctor.

But of course, he knows all this. When he's not talking politics and liberty, he knows that it's better for everyone to have insurance. And he knows the real reason why healthcare is expensive. But he's laid his bed with libertarianism, and so now he's stuck trying to fit reality into it.

Word Salad, For Two

And we see the same thing with Michele Bachmann, who has taken the Laffer Curve to a whole new level with her idea that "you should get to keep every dollar that you earned." And even that must have sunk through to her at some level and caused a minor short circuit, as she momentarily joined reality by mentioning that we need tax dollars (duh!), but then finished up with this:

Obviously we have to get money back to the government so we can run the government, but we have to have a completely different mindset, and that mindset is: the American people are the genius of this economy, it certainly isn’t government that’s the genius, and that’s the two views.

And...what?!? Now remember, this wasn't a completely improvised answer. She was asked a question about what she had already told someone, and she totally could have cleaned this up. But no, we get this gibberish.

First off, she starts with the phrasing that we're getting the money back to the government; which clearly implies she believes it was the government's money to begin with. And what the hell is "genius of the economy" supposed to mean? I mean, yeah, I get the basic concept of what she meant to say, but how did she come up with the word genius?

And of course, she's wrong. The government can be an excellent "genius" of the economy. That's basic economics. Oh, and one other thing: There already are people who get to keep every dollar they earn, at least as far as federal taxes go. And Republicans hate them and bemoan that these lucky ducks don't have to pay any taxes. Apparently, only rich Americans can be the "genius of the economy," while everyone else can suck it.

The Horrors of Harvard

And then there's this line I just read from Romney:

All those years, perhaps, in the Harvard faculty lounge and looking abroad to Europe to see how Europeans did things, [Obama] imagined that if somehow we were more like Europe things would be better…I believe in America.

And now, come on! Mitt Romney is a bright guy with a lot of money and if he has a problem with Harvard grads, I seriously doubt he mentions it to them. Yet here's Obama, stuck in a Harvard lounge and looking abroad. Europe. How horrible.

And really, this is just silly. I'm not sure who ever told Romney he had any populist-cred, but he really needs to quit while he's behind. Mitt Romney's father was a wealthy governor, while Obama was raised by his grandparents. And of course, Romney knows this. And I'm sure if Romney had the chance, he'd love to be rubbing elbows with the president, if only he was a Republican.

But he has to play this charade, because that's what's now required of conservative intellectualism. I'm sure William F. Buckley is rolling in his grave over this one.

Again, sorry for the misleading opening. I only kept it because I liked the idea, even if the rest of this turned into a different post.

Bigtime Presidential Exploratory News Coming Up

2011-09-19T22:28:00.003-05:00

Stay tuned!!!

Insulting Your Way to Victory

2011-09-13T13:06:00.003-05:00

If anyone could please find me evidence that direct insults from one political candidate to another was a winning strategy, I'd really like to see it. Because I keep hearing all this talk from progressives about how we'd be doing better, if only we used harsher insults against Republicans; yet I can't imagine how that's supposed to work and keep seeing evidence to the contrary.
And what's so boggling is that these people could witness eight years of Bush, and STILL not understand how the game is played. When did Bush ever insult Democrats? When did you ever hear him call Gore a loser or suggest that Kerry hated his country? He didn't. Because that would be beneath the presidency, and more importantly, would have covered him with as much mud as he was hurling. Instead, they used surrogates to hurl the tough smears, while Bush stayed above the fray and couldn't be tied to the attacks.

Why? Because having your candidate hurl insults is a zero-sum game, at best; and you might end up worse off than if you hadn't said anything. Yes, you should attack your opponent, but it can't come from the candidate himself, or you end up hurting him. Just ask John McCain, who's job it was to lose the last election while crippling Obama as much as he could.
And just think to yourself: When Palin smears Obama and Democrats, does it make you want to lie down in defeat? Or does it make you want to attack right back and make her eat her own words? Exactly, and that's how it is for the other side. These people don't want political victories; they want a cage match. And since Obama isn't giving it to them, they'll look elsewhere for their heroes.

And that's been their problem since Obama came along: They didn't want a president; they wanted a warrior. Unfortunately, they ended up with someone who'd rather see results than symbolic victories and epic defeats; and so they'll deny the existence of his actual victories and gnash their teeth that we didn't achieve the impossible.

Gladiator!

And that's why every time Alan Grayson says something, progressives come out rejoicing. At last, they say, a Democrat who's willing to tell the truth. But of course, he's not REALLY saying anything other Democrats aren't saying. He's just using harsher rhetoric, solely for the purpose of getting attention for attacking Republicans. It's like a little kid saying "doodoo" over and over, because he found it got people's attention. And they'd much rather hear Grayson hurl insults than see the end of rescission and decent health insurance for everyone. As it turns out, insults are bigger than achievements.

And in this latest issue, Grayson's attacking Republicans for their behavior in the GOP debate last night, which I myself covered previously. But whereas I used the opportunity to show that Republicans didn't really mean these things, as they're only repeating empty rhetoric that they don't truly believe in, Grayson used it as a chance to attack Republicans for sadism. Seriously, in Grayson's world, these people are no longer misinformed people who can be educated, but rather monsters who are leading us down the road to ruin.

As he said:

“What you saw tonight is something much more sinister than not having a healthcare plan,” he told the Huffington Post on Tuesday. “It’s sadism, pure and simple. It’s the same impulse that led people in the Coliseum to cheer when the lions ate the Christians. And that seems to be where we are heading — bread and circuses, without the bread. The world that Hobbes wrote about — “the war of all against all.”

What??? Because some Tea Partiers cheered about the idea of hypothetical man dying for lack of healthcare, it means we're heading towards bread and circuses without the bread?? Seriously???

But no, not seriously. Grayson doesn't REALLY think we're on the percipice of gladiatorism. He's just using hyperbole to make a point: He doesn't approve of Republicans or their policies. And that's fine, as I don't either. But I see little advantage to us using such hyperbole when the Republicans themselves have already done a superior job of disgracing themselves. The only people who can watch that clip and NOT begin to suspect that Tea Partiers are nuts are the Tea Partiers themselves. Most everyone else will be on our side.

They Way They Should Be Described
But of course, since some progressives get weak-kneed every time a Democrat insults Republicans, it's inevitable that you'll see comments like this one.

Alan Grayson is the only Democrat that describes the modern day Republican Party the way they should be described.

Really? Unless we invoke Ancient Rome and the Gladitors, we're not describing them right? That's like invoking Nazis as a way of scoring points in a healthcare debate. Oh wait, Grayson did that...repeatedly. And as expected, those incidents also got certain progressives weak-kneed, as they'll fall for whoever's using the harshest rhetoric that day; just like the Tea Partiers on the other side of the aisle. And just like the Tea Partiers, victory is a side effect of their strategy; while the main point is to insult the other side.

Look, if the worry is that moderates and true independents will watch that clip and side with the Republicans, then we've already lost and insults won't be enough. But all this is more evidence that these people aren't necessarily looking to win.

How Not to Smear

Anyway, here's the rebuttal I posted:

Yes, because we can really win this, just as long as we insult Republicans enough. After all, that really worked well for one-time Congressman Grayson, didn't it. Oh wait...

While I definitely had issues with the GOP and Tea Partiers in that debate, I have a hard time seeing how this is the first step towards "bread and circuses, without the bread." I mean, seriously. What the Republicans are doing is bad enough. Do we really need to use extremist hyperbole to get that across? I don't think so and think it's counter-productive.

And Grayson's mistake is that by engaging in this harsh rhetoric, he makes each story about him. No longer are we talking about Republicans, but instead, we're talking about what Grayson said about Republicans and whether or not it was appropriate. That rarely works to our advantage, as it takes so much of the pressure off Republicans and puts it on to us. Similarly, when Joe Wilson yelled that Obama lied, it was no longer about what Obama said, but rather what Wilson said; and the story became about Wilson and whether he meant it or not.

In contrast, when Rove and his bunch smear you, you hear all about the smear, but very little about who did it. That's what a proper attack is like: When the ball is firmly in your opponent's court to explain everything and you aren't expected to explain anything. But if you have to spend as much of your time defending the attack as your opponent spends defending against it, you've already negated your own attack and you shouldn't have started.

Yeah, insulting Republicans might make you feel better, but it doesn't win elections. Just ask former Congressman Alan Grayson.

The Price of Freedom

2011-09-13T04:44:00.000-05:00

During the Republican debate tonight, there was a horrible display when Wolf Blitzer asked Ron Paul who should have to pay for the medical care of a hypothetical 30 year old who chose not to get insurance and ends up in a coma, and Paul did the typical libertarian thing of keeping things vague while never actually explaining the implications of his words.

And it was all about freedom and assuming responsibility and evil socialism, and not about blood and comas and an actual human being in a hospital bed; let alone lost wages, from both the young man and the people who care about him and all kinds of costs associated with this man being allowed to suffer and die. These things really happen, yet Ron Paul was talking about it as if it were a movie or video game.

And Blitzer presses him for specifics, trying to get Paul to give a real answer instead of the nonsense he'd be spewing; asking directly if Paul thinks people should just die if they don't have insurance, and to my dismay, many people in the crowd shout that he SHOULD die. That everyone who doesn't have insurance should just die. They not only apparently believe this, but feel quite strongly that such people should die.

Unfortunately, I don't have Paul's full response to this, as I'm too lazy to look up the rest of this, but it seems quite obvious that Dr. Paul couldn't give an obvious "No, we shouldn't let people die" when asked the question. Seriously, the man's a doctor, yet he couldn't even give a direct answer to a question about whether or not we should let someone die if they can't afford healthcare. Watch it yourself.

But here's the thing, he doesn't really mean this. He doesn't think we should let people die just because they can't afford healthcare. And I'm quite positive that he really would support mandatory healthcare, if only he thought he could. Because he's just making excuses and if he TRULY believed this stuff, he wouldn't have any problem answering the questions. But he's just trying to be ideologically consistent, and while I suppose that's some achievement, it forces him to say a lot of stupid things he doesn't really believe.

And if nothing else, I'd like you to learn that lesson from this: People don't always believe what they say they believe, and just because someone says something doesn't really mean they believe it. More often than not, people say stupid stuff they don't believe because they imagine it makes their argument better. And if you can't do any better than to get beneath their rhetoric and find out what they REALLY think, you'll never be able to communicate with them.

Freedom Ain't Free

And what REALLY got me started on this was a post about this on Facebook, in which someone posted a link to that video, and a libertarian tried to defend Paul by saying that they weren't cheering for the guy to die, but only for him to have his freedom to die...or something like that. He also went on to condemn the EGREGIOUS practice of trying to protect idiots from car accidents by making them pay money if they don't wear seatbelts. And so I wrote the following comment:

Nice try, Arthur, but we all know what happens when these people go to the hospital. Hint: We don't let them die. Instead, we pay for their healthcare, in the least efficient way possible. Same goes for idiots who don't wear seatbelts. Even if they have insurance, we all end up paying for their stupid decision. That's the very nature of insurance, as it's shared risk.

And so the question is: Do we want to allow idiots to go without medical care, even missing regular checkups while ignoring early symptoms, so they can show up at the emergency room and make us all pay for their foolishness? Treating diabetes is a lot less expensive for us than amputating their foot; and that's exactly what we're talking about: People losing their feet because they don't have proper healthcare.

As I said in my last comment, I'm a liberal because I'm selfish. I know that I'm going to end up paying for the uninsured and the idiots who don't wear seatbelts, so I'd rather do so in the least expensive way possible. Sorry Arthur, but there truly are no free rides in life and we're all in this together. Anyone who doesn't like it can go to the craphole countries that don't have these protections and see how truly shitty it is

9/11: Biggest Framejob in History; Framed the Wrong Dude

2011-09-13T03:02:00.000-05:00

I've got a few posts just sitting on the backburner because I can't bring myself to finish them, but thought I'd share this comment I wrote on Facebook, in regards to someone who imagines 9/11 was an inside job. Enjoy!

What I always wanted to know: If they were so smart as to plan out all the details of the most treasonous act in American history without getting caught or any insiders exposing the truth, why did they pin it on the wrong dude?

I mean, if the point was to attack Saddam...why didn't they pin it on Saddam? Why did they blame Bin Laden, who didn't have any ties to Saddam? The Bushies spent a LOT of energy and lying to try to tie Saddam to Bin Laden, but if Saddam was the target, why didn't they make him look like the guy who did it and save themselves the hassle? And then they wouldn't have had to muck around with all that WMD nonsense, as they'd already have had the goods.

None of the hijackers was even Iraqi?! Why wouldn't they have had a least ONE Iraqi, if the plan was to attack Iraq? Hell, if they were smart, they'd have blamed it on a rainbow coalition of bad guys; even throwing in a North Korean for good measure. And if they fabricated the evidence, why couldn't they easily fabricate it to look like Iraq and Iran planned it together? That'd SURELY have made the most sense.

And that's the thing: The government's story sounds MUCH more valid than yours: That they wanted to attack Iraq and used 9/11 as an excuse to attack Iraq, even though it wasn't related. That's the official story and it makes so much more sense to me, and doesn't require the greatest coverup in history.

The lies that got us into Iraq helped destroy the Bush Administration and disgraced them all for years. That shouldn't have happened if it was an inside job, as it shouldn't have been necessary.

I've yet to get a response, though I'll keep you posted if it's anything good.

Associated Press: Fact Checkers, or Nitpicking Nitwits?

2011-09-09T01:20:00.001-05:00

There are Fact Checks and there are Fact Checks, and when I saw a headline on Yahoo saying FACT CHECK: Obama's Jobs Plan Paid For? Seems Not, I knew I'd be getting a crappy fact check.

If you're pressed for time, I'll give away the ending: None of the facts "checked" were actually wrong; and the author had to tease out ways of finding flaws in what Obama said. Rather than a "Fact Check," it was more like a Statement Nitpicking; and even then, required the authors to implicitly rewrite what Obama said into a false statement and then declare it to be false.

When Everything Isn't Everything

The first fact they "checked" was when Obama said:
"Everything in this bill will be paid for. Everything."

Why was this fact wrong? Because for Obama to have the bill paid for, it requires other people to do stuff they might not do. Plus, future Congresses could undo it. Besides, Obama won't say exactly how it'll work until next week. Next week?! In cable news time, that's like twenty years!! In other words, we should just assume that it won't happen and Obama knows it won't happen, which means what he said was a lie.

The article summarizes it thusly:

So there is no guarantee that programs that clearly will increase annual deficits in the near term will be paid for in the long term.

Seriously, that's it. That's the main complaint: Obama's lying because the bill hasn't passed yet. Seriously, doesn't this kinda apply to ALL policy proposals that EVERYONE makes ALWAYS? Perhaps my civics lessons are a bit rusty, but I'm pretty much sure it's impossible for a single man to enact legislation the moment he first tells the public about it.

And so yeah, this Fact Check was going to be a doozy.

"That's Been Supported"

Obama's second fact checked was the following statement:
Everything in here is the kind of proposal that's been supported by both Democrats and Republicans, including many who sit here tonight.

And what was so egregious about that? I mean, it not only sounds good, but it has the benefit of being true. Everything in this bill has been supported by Democrats and Republicans. What's not to like?

The problem? The proposal has stuff that the current batch of Republicans will hate. But of course, the fact remains that everything in the bill has "been supported by both Democrats and Republicans," so...what exactly is the point here? Did Obama say that all Republicans will support everything in it? No, he didn't. That was something the writers just invented in order to have something to write about.

Meaning of the Word "Deficit"

The third fact "checked," was Obama saying "It will not add to the deficit."

This go around, they went the semantics route. As they point out, since the plan is to run short-term deficits that are paid with long-term revenues, and since deficits are determined on an annual basis; therefore Obama is lying because it'll run short-term deficits.

But of course, we're all grown-ups and rather than Spend Now, Pay Later being some trick of the hand; that's a key part of the plan. It's not a lie that we'll be paying for this with future monies; that's the plan, dumbasses.

It's Not ALL Right Away

The final fact checked:
"The American Jobs Act answers the urgent need to create jobs right away."

Their response?

Not all of the president's major proposals are likely to yield quick job growth if adopted.

Did Obama claim that every piece of the bill would create immediate jobs? No, he didn't. So...how does this criticism apply to what Obama said? I have no idea and neither do you.

Better News Orgs, Please

And what's sad is that I'm sure there had to be SOME valid fact that could have stood correction. But the guys given the task of writing this story were clearly too incompetent to do so. I mean, when your boss says "write a fact check piece on Obama," that's what you're expected to do; whether you find anything or not, apparently.

But that all just goes to show what a fraud the entire news profession is these days: First, that they'd treat such an important part of the democratic process with such routine disregard that they'd correct facts that weren't wrong to begin with. And perhaps worse, that they'd assign such blundering dopes to do the job. Seriously, this was such a superficial dig on Obama's speech that everyone involved should be demoted.

Rather than perform the civic duty of informing the public, the AP has yet again spat out another mudclod of misinformation that only served to confuse the issues and make us all dumber. People can blame Obama for not fighting Republicans enough or people can more rightly blame Republicans for being such lying douchebags; but none of that blame would be necessary if shallow news organizations like the AP didn't help the liars by repeating their lies and attacking the truth.

Perhaps some day we'll have a world in which misinformation is denounced and truth is trumpeted, but until then, we have the Associated Press.

Medicare is Death

2011-08-25T01:01:00.000-05:00

I read an article about how Marco Rubio said that programs like Medicare and Social Security have “weakened us as people," and I couldn't agree more.

As Rubio says:

These programs actually weakened us as a people. You see, almost forever, it was institutions in society that assumed the role of taking care of one another. If someone was sick in your family, you took care of them. If a neighbor met misfortune, you took care of them. You saved for your retirement and your future because you had to. We took these things upon ourselves in our communities, our families, and our homes, and our churches and our synagogues. But all that changed when the government began to assume those responsibilities. All of a sudden, for an increasing number of people in our nation, it was no longer necessary to worry about saving for security because that was the government’s job.

And that's perfectly true. Who amongst us hasn't regaled in the stories of yesteryear, as our grandparents delighted us with tales of miracle cures and wonder drugs. Back when local doctors whipped up batches of chemotherapy in bath tubs and routinely preformed open heart surgery on the kitchen table while ma lay next to him, giving birth to another little 'un; and all for the cost of some hot water, a bottle of snake oil, and a little old fashioned moonshine.

That's how things used to be, back when people lived forever and no one ever got sick or died poor. It wasn't until Medicare and Social Security came along that people stopped looking out for people, and everyone started getting sick and dying. And now, instead of depending upon our kin folk to take care of us as we crap our pants into oblivion, we expect educated doctors and expensive equipment to make us better, rather than the spit and gumption people used to rely upon all those years ago.

Once again, liberal policies cause the very thing they were supposedly meant to cure, and if the liberal policy went away, we'd go back to the utopian world we had before liberalism destroyed it. That's why liberals do it: Because we hate people and want to see them die. Why else would we work so hard to take care of the elderly and disabled, unless we were secretly planning to hurt them?

There was once a time when a man could count on his fellow townspeople to build him a new CAT Scan machine when his wore out. Thanks to liberalism, those times have long since passed.

What a Conservative Wants: Immigration Policy

2011-08-18T17:45:00.000-05:00

One of the weirdest things about conservatives is how much they support liberal policies, if only they knew what liberal policies were. Case in point: Illegal immigrants.

Now, you've heard their whole spiel, I'm sure. All about how illegal immigrants (ie, Mexicans) are stealing our jobs while leaching all our government services without working for it. And of course, we're reminded endlessly how illegals don't pay taxes, which fails to take into account all the taxes that illegals DO pay, such as sales tax, gas tax, and property tax. And that only leaves income tax and payroll taxes they don't pay...because we don't let them.

And seriously, every time I've pointed out to conservatives that we don't allow illegal immigrants to pay income taxes or payroll taxes, and that they'd LOVE to be able to become citizens and pay these taxes; these people act as if I've said the craziest thing in the world. It's like it somehow never occurred to them that it's their own fault these people don't pay more taxes. And no matter how much I repeat that, they simply refuse to accept it, even though the logic is completely undeniable.

It's kind of like people who cite violence in the drug war as a reason to be anti-drug; completely unaware that it's the war on drugs that is the source of the violence in the drug war.

The Path of Freedom

But the weirdest part is how much these people really support the liberal policy for immigration, but don't realize it. For instance, they insist that they'd be perfectly happy if immigrants came through the proper channels and became a citizen the way people did in the old days. They insist that it's the illegal, sneaking across the border stuff they don't like, and don't have a problem with people who come here legitimately.

But then I always point out: What IS the legitimate way of coming? Seriously, it's as if these people imagine that these illegals could have filled out an application and waited their turn, and soon be brought right in. But no, these locust-like hordes are crossing the border and sucking all our precious resources. But of course, that's utter bullshit, as there IS no direct path to citizenship like in the old days, which is why so many people risk their lives trying to sneak their way into the country...or just marry their way in, if they're attractive enough.

And again, I'll mention that repeatedly to conservatives, and they act as if I'm speaking a different language. As if there is some obvious path to citizenship that these lazy brown hordes refuse to go through. And I ask them repeatedly to explain to me this magical procedure, but alas, the most I'll get is an assurance that there is a legitimate path to citizenship; which these people shouldn't have bypassed.

And what does this tell us: These people definitely think there should be a direct path to citizenship. They're not against immigration because they hate immigrants, but because they imagine there's already a direct path to citizenship. Therefore, if we open our borders and give a direct path to citizenship, these people should be happy.

The Cycle of Immigration

And that leads into another area: Hard working immigrants who play by the rules and work to succeed. It's an article of faith among the anti-immigrant crowd that Hispanic people are bad immigrants because they refuse to assimilate, as all prior immigrant hordes did, which makes them a danger to America's long-term greatness. After all, you can't be the hardest working country in the world if you're sipping on margaritas and getting fat on queso and tamales.

But first off, that's something that all immigrant hordes have been accused of, and there's a reason such places as Little Italy and Chinatown were formed, and it wasn't just to give tourists a kitschy experience. It's a well established pattern that the first generation of immigrants naturally groups together, and that they're widely assimiated within a few generations. And before you know it, America has got another traditional cuisine its bastardized with ketchup and waxy food products. Thus is the cycle of immigration.

And so liberals have addressed that point, and we want a policy whereby immigrants who play by the rules, learn to speak English, go to college, and stay gainfully employed can get on the path to citizenship; while the ones who commit crimes get deported. If the anti-immigrant crowd is worried about these people not learning English or leaching off of us while raping our daughters, this should be a win-win.

And I've mentioned this to them, and the answer: They refuse to believe this is real. They refuse to believe anyone's trying to institute a policy that gets these people on a track to success and citizenship. Why? Because if they acknowledged such a thing, it'd completely undermine their preferred option of deporting all the buggers forever and ever. Seriously, when I've mentioned this before, these people all insist that no Mexicans are interested in learning English, getting good jobs, or being successful. And hey, if these people are right, then we've got nothing to lose, because no one will be able to take advantage of such a program.

And so again, the answer for us is to continue to push our immigration policies, because it's obviously what conservatives want. And again, it's all the weirdest thing, because if you listen to what conservatives think they want, it's almost identical to what liberals want. The trick is getting them to stop disagreeing with us enough to bother finding out what it is we're trying to say.

Driving from the Back Seat

2011-08-12T11:00:00.000-05:00

Really wish I had more time to write about this, as it's a topic I've wanted to discuss for awhile now. But one of the chief problems Republicans are facing these days, besides the fact that they're locked in a death spiral of relying upon an ever-shrinking group of crazies who have a stranglehold on the party which forces out the less crazy, thus strengthening the grip the crazies have. That's been in the works for a few decades now, and becomes harder to fight against with each passing year.

No, the current problem that even the rightwing crazies have is that they still haven't understood that they're the ones in power. They're the ones responsible for doing shit. And if they don't do shit and even prevent others from doing shit, they're ultimately responsible for that. It's like someone who's so busy backseat driving that they haven't realized they're in the front seat and behind the wheel. They're shouting "Slow down, you're driving too fast!" while we're shouting "You jackass fool, you're the one driving!"

But they don't get that, and still think they're critics on the outside, yelling at "the Government" to fix our problems. But...they're now in power. They're the government. They're not some loud-mouthed civics organization or powerful voting bloc throwing their weight around. They're the ones responsible for doing stuff, and are expected to have actual plans beyond spouting the vague "Support America, Obey the Founding Fathers, Shrink the Government" rhetoric they've been relying upon all these years.

Defaulting on Accountability

And this is evident from the whole Debt Ceiling fight, where they were insisting that it was completely acceptable if we defaulted on our debt, and wrongly assumed Obama would get all the blame for S&P downgrading our credit rating. After all, since Obama cared so much about it, it was clearly his problem and they could force him to listen to them. And that's because they didn't understand that this was their responsibility too, and would be stuck with the blame if they did what they did.

And why did they make this mistake? Because they were busy listening to the know-nothing radio hosts and other barstool talkers who weren't actually responsible for getting anything done; and imagined themselves to be part of that crowd. Somehow, they still haven't grasped that they're not part of the crowd anymore. They're part of the government, and it's a heckeva lot easier to criticize than it is to do stuff.

And so they sit there in the House, like little kids playing grown-up; passing symbolic legislation and showing how they'd do things if they were in charge. Yet...they ARE in charge. They CAN do real stuff. And they ARE expected to DO real stuff. They'd like to just sit back and criticize Obama, while insisting that they're of no importance and no one should bother criticizing them; because they're the critics, not the players.

And so we're still racing through a mountainous area with cliffs on both sides, while they continue to shout at us to slow down, while waging symbolic battles of Good versus Evil. And they're honestly confused as to why anyone's holding them accountable for what they say and do. And sadly, it's not an act. They really don't get it, and the more we scream at them to grab the wheel and drive; the more they imagine they're doing the right thing.

After all, having liberals angry at them is the only way they know they're doing it right. They might not know what they're doing, but dagnabit, they know who not to listen to.

American Nihilism Post

2011-08-11T11:20:00.000-05:00

And if you're interested, I just wrote a post at American Nihilism (now American Henchmen), regarding the Nihilist Deed of the Week: Sinking Destroyers. It's all about how Obama is sinking precious military vessels in order to help fish. Enjoy!

Acting Like Chumps

2011-08-11T10:51:00.000-05:00

As you may have noticed, I really haven't been posting much. But it's not because I don't have anything to say, but because I respect your time too much for me to post just anything on this blog, and it takes too long for me to perfect these posts to my liking as I've really become a busy man. (As I mention on my Facebook page, I'm so busy lately, I don't even have time to bleed.) And so I've been posting lots of stuff elsewhere, and nothing much here.

So I figured I'd share a comment I left at WaMo. Carpetbagger wrote a post expressing dismay that so many progressives denounce Obama more than they do Republicans, even though they themselves realize that Republicans are far more to blame than Obama and that this, in fact, is their strategy: To obstruct Obama at every turn in order to rally their base while depressing ours.

And yet these people play right into that, knowing that it only hurts us. For this, we should be considered Chumps. Naturally, I agreed with all that, and wrote the following comment:

What bothers me so much is that these people all INSIST that there's a straight forward path for Obama to take which would assure victory, and he's not doing it. And were that true, I'd agree with them completely. But it's not. In fact, there's no obvious path for him at all.

Their advice is for Obama to ratch up the rhetoric and insults, as if he can talk his way out of this and force Republicans to back down. But it wouldn't. It'd only have the opposite effect, as the Republicans' biggest problem is that they have no fricking idea what they're doing and only know how to hurl insults and obstruct things.

And we're to imagine that if Obama refused to compromise that it'd magically force Republicans to compromise. But it wouldn't. Instead, it'd only give justification for Republican obstructionism. The reason Republicans don't compromise isn't because they think Obama's soft. It's because they think he's dangerous and there's almost NOTHING that can get them to compromise. Were he to actively prove he's not "soft," it'd only make them fear him more.

The sad truth is that there are no magic bullets here and rhetoric will NOT win this for us. What WILL help? If these people devoted the energy they spend attacking Obama towards attacking Republicans; just like they did when Bush was in office. That'd be a HUGE help. It's OUR job to make the claim for liberalism and make conservativism look bad; not Obama's. It's easy to blame everything on one man. It's a lot harder for us to take responsibility for our lives and do something about it.

Obama's not preventing us from pushing liberal policies. That's ALL on us.

Movie Review: Cowboys & Aliens

2011-07-30T03:30:00.002-05:00

Just saw Cowboys & Aliens. Meh. I almost never see new movies as I don't much care for what Hollywood's doing these days, but I thought this one had potential and really wanted to like it, yet...meh. Calling it dumb is fairly pointless, as I like dumb movies and wasn't expecting this to be Macbeth. But it was dumb even by the standards of a movie called Cowboys & Aliens, and the more you think about what happened, the dumber you realize it was.

Very paint by numbers. Things only happen because the plot needed them to happen and then they'd move on to the next plot point, with no real desire for presenting us with anything we hadn't seen before. Hell, they couldn't even bother giving us full-blooded cliches, as even the tired tropes they used were barely fleshed out; as if they couldn't wait to get to the end and be done with it. And once all the secrets are revealed, you realize you've been conned, because people and events no longer make sense once put into context.

And I hate when filmmakers cheat like that. It's great to manipulate the audience by not letting them know everything, but it still needs to make sense once the truth is revealed. Instead, they just keep the action moving and hope you never think too hard about it, while acting like they had done something clever. And if they're going to do that, they shouldn't bother pretending they had a good secret anyway, as you leave feeling confused and disappointed.

Hint to Hollywood: When you're making a film called Cowboys & Aliens, don't try to have serious moments. Just have your fun and let us enjoy it. As with everything in life, if you're doing something dumb, own it. You can't turn piss into lemonade just because you don't want to be holding piss.

Not a Western

And without a doubt, this movie proves that having cowboys in a movie doesn't make it a western. The timing was wrong. The feeling was wrong. And while the acting was decent, they mostly acted like modern people wearing dusty clothes and didn't give the vibe like they were truly in the old west.

And that ruins half the gag. I mean, when you've got a movie with the same damn alien invasion story that's already been done before, the only thing they had going for them is to put it in the context of a western. But no. This felt like your standard alien invasion movie which just happened to involve characters in the old west; as if they could just throw in a few cliche characters on horses and call it a western.

Anyone who thinks this movie is a western deserves to be punched in the face by Sergio Leone. After all, Leone was a primary culprit in why you can't make real westerns anymore, as he made a western so perfect that it made a mockery of the entire genre and ruined it for everyone. Still, people have made good westerns in the post-western era, including Silverado, Young Guns, and Shanghai Noon; all dumb films which are incredibly entertaining.

Yet even by the standards of those pop-culture westerns, Cowboys & Aliens flags far far behind.

Just Not Fun

Not that it was a complete write-off, as the acting was decent, it had a few laughs (not that I laughed out loud, but it had its moments), and the special effects were excellent. But the plot felt rushed, the characters only existed to fill that rushed plot, everything was mindlessly predictable, and of course, it was incredibly dumb, even by the low standards you might expect from such a film.

And I think the main problem is that it just wasn't fun. While there were fun parts in it, like all of the scenes where Daniel Craig kicks ass; that was pretty much it. And the whole weirdness of alien abductions permeated the entire movie and made it far too creepy to truly be enjoyable. Seeing aliens destroy whole cities in Independence Day: Totally cool. Seeing aliens use chains to snatch family members to be zombified and tortured: Very uncool.

Overall, I don't think I'd call this a bad movie, as there was nothing bad about it. But...it just wasn't a good movie. And that's the biggest problem of all, as I like good films and I love bad films; and this was neither. Just a nothing summer blockbuster with more polish than heart. Again, I wasn't expecting to see a work of art, but I did at least expect to be entertained. Unfortunately, this one isn't art or entertainment.

As it turns out, sometimes, filmmakers can know so much about making films that they focus on the craft of polished filmmaking and forget to include the fun.

The Real Legacy of Conservativism

2011-07-26T12:47:00.000-05:00

One odd trait of many progressives is their insistence that Republicans have a great track record of being bold and creating their own reality, and that we need to emulate that strategy. And that, of course, is in complete contradiction with reality, which clearly shows time and time again that conservative "boldness" almost always backfires in the long run.

And sure, Republicans pitch an unpopular agenda, which helps explain a big chunk of their longterm failures. But of course, if many of these progressives pushed their agenda, unfettered by the demands of popular opinion, I daresay they'd be as unpopular as the Republicans keep finding themselves to be.

Whenever you listen to talk radio and marvel at the fantasyland Obama version of Obama is, remember this: The Obama they're caricaturing is the same Obama many progressives would like in the Whitehouse. And were Obama to follow that lead and be the bold leader who ignores political realities and attempts to create a new reality, he'd be as unpopular as Bush was when he tried the same thing. As it turns out, the reason they tell everyone that Obama is a socialist radical, is because that would be a bad thing for Obama to be and people would reject him.

Revisionist Empowerment

Anyway, over on TPM, I wrote:

At what point do we admit that boldness in politics is usually a handicap, and in the long run, d-bags rarely prosper?

To which AJM3 responded:

When we live in an alternate universe where neither Reagan nor Bush became President.

And what's weird here is watching progressives rewrite history, in which Reagan and Bush both had successful presidencies based upon their bold ideological stands. And that posits a reality in which a president COULD be successful by boldly following their ideology. But why do that? Why empower them? By suggesting that Bush or Reagan were successfully bold, they're making conservative look better and more popular than it's ever been.

Now, I understand why conservatives want to reimagine Reagan as a successfully bold leader, but I fail to see why a liberal would ever do such a thing. Besides, even wingnuts aren't delusional enough to believe that Bush was successfully bold. Rather, they insist now that he was too liberal and timid, even though they fully supported his policies at the time.

The Real Legacy

But anyway, here's my rebuttal, basically saying that:

Yes, because Bush had longterm success. Oh, wait. No, he didn't. He is still considered a disgrace several years after leaving office, and a majority of people STILL blame him for the problems we're facing. He tainted conservativism for years, causing them to lose two straight elections and the presidency. Wow, what a legacy!

Meanwhile, it's only conservative-vision hindsight that posits Reagan as a successful and bold leader. Reality shows that he was wildly unpopular during several periods of his presidency, he repeatedly compromised with Democrats, negotiated with Commies, ran away from terrorists, and by the end of his presidency, he was a doddering old man facing the onset of Alzheimers and mired in impeachable controversy.

This isn't remembered as much now, but Reagan was very unpopular towards the end of his presidency, and it was only because they liked him personally that his popularity came back again and his legacy revised. But he got hammered HARD for his boldness, and it was only by giving up key platforms that he was able to keep the popularity he had. After all, Reagan wanted to kill Social Security and Medicare, and got hurt so badly by it that he actually saved them. That wasn't boldness. That was pragmatism.

The only two groups who cite Reagan and Bush as successfully bold are hardright ideologues and leftwing progressives who demand that we copy the conservative blueprint for success; despite the fact that they've lost more elections than they've won since they started this strategy; and their prospects dim with every passing election.

And of course, not even conservatives believe that Bush was successful in his boldness; as they insist he was too timid and liberal. It's only these progressives who will insist that Bush achieved much with his boldness, despite the small handful of items they can list that Bush actually did. Sure, he got us wars, taxcuts, and lots of conservative judges and cronies. But he got almost nothing else. If there's a person who proves that boldness can backfire, it's George W. Bush.

These men failed when they pushed hard-right ideals, and did better when they compromised and quit. I see no reason to pretend it was otherwise.

What I Learned Today

2011-07-26T11:54:00.000-05:00

I actually learned something today. I don't mean like a fact or the day-to-day stuff you learn as it comes up. That stuff's easy to learn and you usually would rather forget. I mean, I learned a new idea. It's been a long time since I learned an idea from someone else, but it actually happened, so I thought I'd share it with you. It comes from TPM's Josh Marshall:

As we move closer to intentionally jettisoning the full faith and credit of the United States and eyeing the pulse of the bond market, we shouldn't forget one salient fact. The centrality of debt holders in our constitutional order isn't a bug, it's a feature. Indeed, the national debt -- created through the federal assumption of state war debts -- was created to do precisely this: get the holders of bonds, necessarily wealthy and powerful people, to have a vested interest in the fixity and stability of the federal government.

And yeah, that makes sense to me. I get it. Now, I'm assuming that Josh got that from someone else and this represents some known thing that Hamilton intentionally did for this reason; so if that's not the case and someone just made it up, it's somewhat less impressive.

But all the same, it's an excellent theory to explain why our system works as well as it does. Because one big problem with democracy, obviously, is that without a common bond to tie people together, you'll quickly find that the various interest groups will tear the things to shreds vying for power. But as long as you find some way to get people's interests vested in the common good of our country, they'll still have a common purpose to move towards.

And our problem right now is that conservatives have been fed such a long stream of delusional reality that they genuinely don't know what's really going on at all. And while that's been a problem for a long time, thanks to Fox News and the rest of the echo chamber, it's all any of them can hear and they're all getting off of their own supply.

But if we can ever convince them that we all have a common goal, and explain to them how real economic and financial theories work (ie, explain liberalism); we can get back on the right path towards greater stability and understanding. Culture wars suck, but things have gotten a heckeva lot worse now that they've started dabbling in economic theory.

Fox News and Their War on Logic

2011-07-22T02:48:00.000-05:00

So I'm over at Think Progress and the first headline I see is Fox Host: Free Birth Control Is Liberal Conspiracy To ‘Eradicate The Poor' which is exactly what it sounds like it'd be. And because, yeah, if there's one thing us liberals hate, it's poor people. That's why we work so hard to help them, so we'll have fewer poor people.

Oh wait a minute, that actually makes sense. In fact, one big reason to give birth control to the poor is so they'll have fewer children, which will also help them be less poor. So this isn't really a conspiracy, in that it's our stated purpose for poor people to have the ability to limit the number of kids they have. And being that conservatives typically lament how many kids poor people have, you'd think they'd be in on this "conspiracy" with us.

But that's not my point, my point is: How much longer can they continue to spew this offensive nonsense before they lose their last believers? Seriously. I mean, who can listen to this and be like "Yeah, those lousy liberals hate them poor people so much they want them to have fewer kids"? At best, they have to hope that nobody's paying attention to what they're saying, because even the most diehard Foxfan can't possibly find these arguments convincing;

And then there's the weird issue of them going on and on about women not needing birth control if they "stop having irresponsible sex." Uhm, duh? Using birth control IS having responsible sex. And really, are they imagining that only sluts need birth control?

And it sounds like they forgot they weren't talking about STD's. If you abstain until marriage and stay in a monogamous relationship, you won't get STD's; but you can STILL get pregnant. And if they're arguing that it's irresponsible to ever have sex unless you were wanting a kid from it, then I think they should go right out and say it, and see how far that gets them. I suspect they'd lose a big chunk of their audience with that one.

But of course, they don't really mean this stuff at all, as these are all codewords for what they're really talking about, and this code is so ingrained in their viewers that the words pass through without their surface meaning being heard. This isn't about birth control. This isn't even about helping poor people. This is about them attacking irresponsible black hos who are too dumb to close their legs, as well as getting a funny little dig on liberals. That's it. That's the uncoded message that Fox viewers are receiving.

Because at the end of this, you're not supposed to think "Oh, those damn liberals want to prevent poor people from having kids." You're supposed to think...well, hold on. It's late and I'm still actually having trouble with the exact message on this one. Because again, conservatives should be happy about a program that helps poor people be more responsible and have fewer children. And so they're attacking the very program they should support, as well as attacking and defending the ability of minority women to have fewer children.

And so I'm thinking they're just mindless dolts who are using codewords irresponsibly and don't really know what they're doing. And if their viewers aren't cluing in on how moronic this garbage is, it's only because they also don't know what they're doing, and aren't even really paying attention. They know they're upset about something, and that's good enough for them.

Clueless Conservative Sobriety Test

2011-07-16T22:07:00.000-05:00

As a devout anti-authoritarian, I typically don't like watching police videos, as I usually feel bad for the suspect and these videos almost always involve bossy cops yelling at confused civilians and escalating the situation out of control while always placing the blame on the confused civilian for not being more obedient.

I mean, even when the suspect is clearly in the wrong about something, it's generally the case that the cop could have made things better, had they made an attempt to do so. But they often teach these people that the only way to control a situation is to establish authority and demand obedience, so that's what they go with. So if you don't obey every command, even the confusing ones, there's a good chance you'll be arrested and/or tasered.

And then...there are videos like this one, involving Republican state legislator Robert Mecklenborg; Voter ID sponsor and skunk drunk idiot. It's a long video, but definitely worth the length if you have time.

And wow, that was simply hilarious. Because first off, Officer McCreary is a funny dude and it was obvious that he knew exactly what was going on, and was just humoring the drunk while subtly mocking him; as if he's seen it a thousand times before. We're not in Ohio anymore, indeed.

Reality is for the Other Guy

And what's so funny here is how oblivious Mecklenborg seems to be the whole time. He seems entirely clueless as to what a drunk test is, imagined he passed the tests instead of failing so badly that he couldn't even complete them, didn't seem to understand what a breathalyzer was, imagined he would be let go if he refused to breathalyze, and finally, thought the cop would remove the handcuffs if he asked him to. I mean, is this guy part of our reality or what?

And here's the thing: It's quite possible he was playing dumb. But...why? Did he imagine the cop would say "Hey, you failed the field sobriety test, couldn't understand the basic words I was telling you, and seem entirely clueless as to what drunk driving is; so I think I'll just let you go home. Have a nice day!"

Of course not. So, if it was an act, what did he hope to achieve other than to make a bad situation worse? I suppose it is possible to talk your way out of a DUI, but this guy wasn't even close.

And that's the thing: Either way the guy is oblivious to reality and seems to lack the basic knowledge people need for daily life. At a guess, I'm thinking this guy only thinks of drunk driving and arrests in the abstract and didn't realize it could somehow happen to him. And unfortunately, those are key traits to being a Republican these days, as the more reality based you are, the less likely you are to adopt conservative positions.

Conservative policies look great, until they actually happen to you. After that, you'll beg for a little liberal empathy and assistance.

Atheist on Atheist Violence

2011-07-14T04:08:00.000-05:00

I'm having one of those problems where I've got so much I want to say that I end up not saying any of it. So I'll just share some stuff I wrote in a Facebook exchange with a friend who is a strong Atheist atheist who dislikes Agnostic atheists like myself; who he considers to be weak and wimpy. As if it takes strength to be rude towards people in an online debate.

He's a nice guy and everything, but he's one of those atheists who's more of an anti-Christian than anything, and fails to see how he causes problems for the rest of us atheists who are neutral on the issue of other people's religions. As I always say, if someone claims they need guidance from God to stop them from raping dogs, who am I to disagree?

He even wrote a book on the subject, called Malevolent Design: The Death of a Loving God, which I'll plug, even though I don't necessarily agree with it. If you're interested, here's the first chapter; which isn't bad, though it's far less convincing that he thinks it is. As you can guess from the title, it's all about why Intelligent Design isn't compatible with a loving god. And yeah, I'm afraid I might have just given away the whole thing.

And anyway, I saw a post of his on Facebook which kind of insulted Agnostic atheists like myself, so I defended agnosticism while explaining that it's the only logical position for a skeptic to take. And this guy not only continually refuted the idea that you can't prove a negative, but actually claims that he can prove that gods don't exist. Seriously, he said that repeatedly; that he could prove no gods exist. And that's just ridiculous, but being the open-minded kind of guy I am, I asked for the proof. Needless to say, I was disappointed.

Here was my reply to him:

Uh, Matt. Nothing you wrote gave any evidence that gods don't exist. When you write things like "where do gods fit in" and refer to contradictions and bad science, you're not proving your claims. You're merely disproving other people's claims, and that's not the same thing at all.

And this all ties back into the "can't prove a negative" thing that you clearly don't understand. Your arguments haven't been to prove a negative, but to disprove a positive. I already explained the difference earlier, while you're still hung up on the semantics of the phrase.

And just so it's clear, I intentionally used the terms "gods" repeatedly, and wasn't referring to any god in particular. While you're still stuck arguing against Yahweh and other known gods, I was addressing the entire concept of gods. That wasn't accidental on my part, as I've been using that construct for years, because my arguments apply to ALL gods, not just the Christian god.

And even Yahweh himself is clearly outside of your disprove zone. What part of omnipotent didn't you understand? He supposedly can do ANYTHING and works in mysterious ways. So mysterious, in fact, that it's impossible for mankind to understand what he's doing. That's part of his story and makes it utterly impossible to prove that he doesn't exist. Do I think this sounds likely or probable? Of course not, or I wouldn't be an atheist. But proof isn't about guesses, probability, or opinion. Proof is proof, and if you claim you can prove no gods exist, you better back it up or stop making the claim. That's the first rule of skepticism: Claims require proof.

All you've done is to dispute manmade religions. But that doesn't mean anything, as it's widely understood that most religions are false, if not all of them; or there wouldn't be so much disagreement among them. But for argument's sake, let's say ALL the religions are wrong: Does that prove that Yahweh doesn't exist? No, it doesn't. It just means mankind got it wrong. Showing contradictions in religion does NOT prove that gods don't exist. After all, maybe the gods WANTED people to get it wrong, and it's all part of their design.

And so, how about it? Are we going to get your proof that gods don't exist? Or will you continue to disprove other people's claims without ever supporting your own? But I'm telling you, you shouldn't bother. It's simply impossible to prove that gods don't exist, so you shouldn't even try.

I then posted this:

The weirdest thing about all this is that I remember having these debates with Christians fifteen years ago, with them insisting that I had to prove that gods didn't exist; and if I couldn't prove it, it proved that their specific god DID exist.

And forget about their odd belief that proof of any god is proof of THEIR god (a mistake they make constantly, including their mistaken belief that the "Creator" Jefferson wrote about was Yahweh), it all came down to them insisting that I had to prove my claim. Yet I didn't have to because I wasn't making a claim, and rightly insisted that I couldn't possibly do so. And since they were making the claim, the burden of proof was on them.

And that's so often the case with these sorts of debates, as people aren't really arguing about the real topic, but merely joisting about to decide who has the burden of proof. Everyone always wants to be the skeptic demanding the evidence, as it's far easier than being the sucker who has to prove his claims. And they all believe that if the other guy can't prove his claim it somehow proves the skeptic's claim, without understanding that all claims have a burden a proof and the moment you make a claim, you're the sucker who has to provide the proof and there are no shortcuts out of it.

And that's why I'm agnostic, so I never make the mistake of making a claim I can't prove. Agnosticism is the only logical answer for the true skeptic. Being skeptical about the existence of gods is easy. Proving it is impossible.

So, is that the cheapest way of filling blog space? No, but it's not great either. But hey, what do you expect for free?

Real Republicans Lose in Wisconsin

2011-07-13T00:09:00.000-05:00

The headline says it all: Fake Democrats Lose in Wis. Primary Recalls

Ouch. Talk about your political fails. I mean, yeah, sure, even Wisconsin Republicans knew that their fake Democrats wouldn't win and were just doing it to help themselves politically. But, man, what a fail.

Because the thing is, anyone over the age of twelve should be too mature for this kind of garbage and it cost taxpayer money to hold these sham primaries. Yet the Republican Party in Wisconsin actively told people to vote for these fake Republicans, which only makes them look like immature con-artists. Besides the headline, the article used the phrase "Fake Democrat" seven times! And the story made the Yahoo homepage. As much as people pay attention to political stories at all, it'll be known how Republicans ran fake Democrats in a perversion of our electoral system.

So yeah, they scored a few cheap points, and even had to spend some of their own dough to support these fake Democrats. And in the process, they announced to the country that Republicans are jerk-faced tricksters who enjoy taking a crap on the head of democracy. And rather than undermine the Democrats, all they did is give them more momentum and make any sensible Republicans turn their heads in disgust.

But that's all we've seen from Republicans ever since they allowed the far-far-right take over the party. They continue their death spiral downwards, taking bigger and bolder stands that they imagine shows themselves to be gaining power; when it's really just more evidence of how delusional and impotent they really are.

But By The Grace of God

2011-07-08T04:09:00.000-05:00

I was just reading about the story from Grand Rapids about some guy who apparently killed his ex-girlfriend, her family, his child, and whoever else; and how he went on a "rampage" throughout Grand Rapids trying to escape, shot at police, drove down the wrong side of the highway, crashed into a ditch, ended up busting into a house to take hostages, and finally killed himself while the police were trying to coax him to surrender. And I don't know how much of this is accurate at this point, but the whole thing sickens me.

And naturally, our sympathies go out towards the victims and their families and loved ones, and it's at this point that I always hope maybe there is some sort of afterlife that makes everything better. But for as much as it seems absolutely wrong to feel sorry for the killer, I just have to. Because he was a human too, and as wrong as what he did was, there can be no doubt that he'd have done things differently had he been able to.

Because he can't have wanted it this way. I'm sure he was overwhelmed with horrible feelings, felt trapped into reacting based upon out-dated animal instincts, and must have felt the whole world crushing in on him before finally killing himself. And again, it's at this point that I hope for an afterlife with a forgiving god of some sort that can make this guy feel better. When I even try to imagine the despair he must have felt before he pulled the trigger it makes me sick to my stomach.

Because in the end we're all just stupid animals trapped into a society that was never meant for us, and we should all be thanking the heavens that we weren't born in his shoes, experienced what he experienced, and ended up like he ended up. For as much as we all want to pat ourselves on the back for being great, we don't deserve any of it.

From the time we're conceived until the time we die we're all stuck on a one-way railway built on genetics, learned behavior, and fate. There is no other alternative and if you believe that you would have lived this guy's life differently than he did than you're simply deluding yourself. The very concept is an absurdity and I'm constantly amazed that anyone tries to argue otherwise.

The whole thing was sad from start to finish. There were no winners here. And as much as it was possibly a sensible decision he made to kill himself, this wasn't justice. There can be no justice in this sort of story. A man going to jail for stealing from the elderly can face justice. In this story, it's sad all the way around. And I read comments on the story from people gladly denouncing the guy, wishing that we could destroy him while he was alive, and reveling in his ignominious death at the end; and it just breaks my heart even more.

And yes, I definitely believe we must punish wrong-doers, though I place far more emphasis on rehabilitation than most folks. And if we punish people, we shouldn't be happy about it. Justice is a necessity of life, but it doesn't bring back the dead or make the victims' families any happier. I just hope some day mankind can get past our primate urges and can live amongst each other as civilized beings. Until then, we just have to be kind to each other and understanding when people need to be understood, and hope that we can receive the same in return.

Justifiable Bigotry

2011-07-06T12:00:00.001-05:00

Yahoo has an article on Tarantino's new movie about slavery. So what else can that mean other than that we can see lots of comments from bigots complaining about how bigoted black people are, as their big excuse for acting racist towards black people?

The angle here is that black people are supposedly still extremely upset about slavery, and use that as their excuse for being lazy, stupid, and hating white people. Oddly, I guess I don't hang around many black people, as I have yet to hear them use slavery as a reason for what's keeping them down. When I hear about the problems facing black people, it's more about poor education and discrimination; not slavery.

Yet there are apparently lots of white people who will insist that black people are blaming slavery for their problems, and since that's ludicrous, they use that to show how ludicrous all black people are. And so you can read comments about how Jamie Fox is a black racist who hates white people, as evidenced by him agreeing to be in a white guy's movie involving slavery. My theory, on the other hand, is that Jamie Fox is a bad ass who is superior to these racist morons in every way, and it bugs the hell out of them. After all, Fox is a black man, which means he's supposed to be stupid and lazy. How dare he use his stupid laziness to be such a huge success!

And what's so weird is that these people are conscious enough about the problems of racism that they know they can't be outright racist. But...if they can convince themselves that black people were racist to them first, then it's completely ok to attack all black people for doing this to them; unaware that this is still racist on the first level of racism.

So they continue to make these completely racist attacks, all the while imagining themselves to be so clever as to have dodged them and act outraged when we call them bigots anyway. And they're completely unaware that even the original racists justified their racism in this exact manner, by insisting that blacks were a scary inferior race that would destroy whitey if they could. Some things never change.

Examples of Racism

Here's an example of some of these ridiculous comments, edited for offensive words, of course:

Oh, well. Never mind. I started re-reading the comments and couldn't find a representative one that didn't make my stomach hurt, and I just couldn't do that to my loyal readers. If you're interested, you can click on the link and read them yourselves. But I just can't stand to have that garbage here.

But if you do read the comments, what you'll find are a few people interested in the movie, a few people who say this is an interesting discussion, and quite a few people who insist that black people hate white people, are lazy, and are blaming slavery for their problems. Yet, you'd think if black people were doing that, that you'd see an equal number of comments from black people attacking white people and blaming their problems on slavery. But I guess the wily black man is up to his tricks again, as the only racists there are the white people attacking black racists and using that racism as an excuse to be racist.

And of course, the big irony is reading lots of bigots insisting that black people can't "move on" from slavery, yet they're entirely obsessed with the issue, while few black people wrote comments about it at all. Likewise, they insist that all black people are blaming us for their problems, which is their excuse for blaming black people for their problems.

New Bigots, Same as the Old

But really, as much as these people imagine they've invented a clever new form of justified racism, it's really no different than the old racism. Back in the day, bigots invented reasons to rationalize the enslavement of other races for their personal benefit. After that became illegal, they invented rationalizations for denying other races equal treatment with themselves. Now that that's illegal, they've invented rationalizations for treating other races badly, and it defies belief to imagine they wouldn't happily discriminate or enslave other races if given the opportunity.

And in the end, there can be no doubt what their game is. Some people will always be discontent with their own lives unless they can tear down others to make themselves feel better. For these people to be up, someone else has to be down, and if they're not getting ahead and being the awesome Master of the Universe they know they should be, then obviously somebody is holding them back.

For authoritarians like them, life is a zero-sum game, and if they are denied their god given right to oppress others for their personal benefit, then they'll use that as their excuse for wanting to oppress others for their personal benefit. For these people, the concept of the win-win situation eludes them entirely, and so they wallow in their own disgusting world, as they refuse to build themselves up in a world that doesn't give them everything they want in the first place.

All That Glitters Isn't a Conspiracy

2011-07-02T01:17:00.000-05:00

Note: I wrote this one a few days ago. Still don't know if it's worthy to post, but decided to do it anyway, just to post something.

Brains are incredible things, but you really have to be careful with them or they'll start playing tricks on you and make you see things that aren't real. And so I'm bored and looking at Yahoo and see an article about how the government is sitting on $1 billion in gold coins because an idiot Republican thought he could get people to start using gold coins, so he mandated that the government make them; but people still didn't care. So no one uses the coins and taxpayers are now stuck paying to store them in a warehouse..

Pretty straight forward story, right? Not if you're an anti-government conspiracy monger. To them, this is all about some secret plot to undermine gold and destroy our economy. And I saw that on the most highly ranked comment on that story, which said:

The headline should read "Gold Colored Coins"

Now, I get his point. His point is that these coins aren't actually made of gold, but of course, that's because they couldn't be. After all, $1 of gold isn't really going to be big enough to make a coin out of. But all the same, they look gold and coins have long been referred to as "gold coins" even if they're not actually made of gold. Similarly, I can say I'm wearing an orange shirt without people thinking it's made of fruit.

And from that, we see comments like these:

You can't trust Yahoos' headlines anymore..

The Presidential Dollar coins do NOT contain any gold ... they have a golden color due to a special mix of alloys. Makes me wonder if this article is a propaganda article to spin the country's financial condition as being sounder than it is?

sounds like they are saying that gold itself is pretty worthless, and trying to call these coins gold? i agree fully with michael s

Eric, I want our currency made of real gold and silver so the fed can't just devalue them and steal my wealth.

Yahoo you suck!!! Big time!!!

This article is trying to convince me (emotionally) that these "gold-colored" coins (ergo gold coins) aren't worth considering because nobody wants em (bandwagon propaganda) BUT I'm not buying it. Gold and Silver Bullion is so much better than fake, digital, fiat, debt financed, federal reserve notes, and will be worth more when this country crashes and burns (by purposeful engineered design BTW)

And here's the thing: The word gold was NOT in the actual headline of the article. It was the teaser headline on the Yahoo homepage that these people are referring to, while the actual headline was The $1 Billion That No One in the United States Wants. In fact, the word "gold" was only used once in the article, and the point of the article wasn't about them being gold, but about them being metal and how people don't want metal dollars.

Yet, we're to imagine that Yahoo conspired to have someone write this story for the explicit purpose of devaluing gold by making people think it's worthless. And naturally, Yahoo would have no purpose for doing this, were it not some plot from the government or some shadowy cabal.

But...if they were going to do such a thing, don't you think they'd do a better job of it? I mean, you'd think between the combined resources of Yahoo, the government, and Obama's Kenyan-Chicago ties, we'd have a little better push on this than a minor story on a Yahoo blog.

For that matter, don't you think they'd have just written an article about how coins made of gold are useless because it's just a shiny rock with no intrinsic value beyond what we give to it? That'd be a much better article for pushing that sort of agenda, and has the benefit of being true. But no matter. These people see a conspiracy and that's all that's important.

I've actually tried to explain that to people whenever they start talking about how paper dollars only have value that we give to it, as they somehow believe that gold has magical value that will always last. But of course, value is all in the eyes of the person willing to pay for it, and if our country ever gets to the point that our money becomes worthless, we'll have a lot more problem on our hands than how many shiny rocks we have in our pockets. If the shit goes down, bullets will most assuredly be worth more than gold.

Democracy Means You Can't Always Win

2011-06-27T12:36:00.000-05:00

There's this fantasy thinking that says that life is black & white with easy answers and if people just did the right thing, they'd do the right thing and the world would be a better place. And so you have people who believe that Obama can force Congress into rubber-stamping anything he wants, if only he told people what he wanted and went on the offensive against anyone who got in his way. As if that's ever worked for any president in the history of our country.

And then you have people who demand vigilante justice and insist that bad guys don't deserve a trial; like many of the commenters at this news story about a serial killer in Cleveland. And yeah, sure, in this case I'm sure the guy did it and vigilante justice would be swifter and perhaps more accurate than what he's going to get. And just as the liberals criticizing Obama "know" the right answer and are frustrated by this whole democracy "balance of power" system, these commenters "know" the right answer and are frustrated by the whole Due Process system.

But the reason we have these rules is because there AREN'T always easy answers, and we CAN'T always know if the guy is guilty; and the best way to sort this out is to have laws, elections, and trials. And yeah, this can be frustrating and you will often get bad results. We can't always get the laws we need and bad guys will get treated better than they deserve and might even be set free.

But that's simply the price we have to pay for having our form of government. If we want people to be willing to cooperate and obey laws they don't like, then we have to cooperate and obey laws WE don't like. And if we want to make sure mobs don't kill innocent people, we have to have a fair justice system that also applies to guilty people. Like it or not, this is the best option.

As I keep saying, our system of government isn't designed to find the "right" answer. It's about having a process that we can all agree to, even if we don't agree with the results. And this benefits us in the long term. Sure, it'd be nice if Obama could unilaterally give us free universal healthcare and if serial killers could be made to suffer the way they made others suffer; but that also means we could have rotten laws forced on us and endless warfare as vigilante groups waged vengeance upon one another.

As messy as democracy can be, it's still far better than the alternative. After all, dictatorships rarely get the right answers either.

The Case for Staying in Afghanistan

2011-06-23T02:53:00.000-05:00

It feels good to be smart. We all want it. We all want to be experts, just as we all want to be rockstars and superstar athletes and sexy pornstars that everyone wants to sleep with. Unfortunately, that's just not the case for the vast majority of us. And whereas it's obvious to people when they're not rockstars or athletes or pornstars, too many people fall into the delusion that they're experts. That they have some piece of inside information that the majority of folks don't know, and this is what sets them apart from the rest of the heap of humanity.

But...this is simply a delusion and becoming an expert isn't as simple as making up your own facts or agreeing with people who you think are experts. No, being an expert takes hard work and just as we can't all play guitar like Jimi Hendrix or slamdunk like Michael Jordan, we can't all know what we're talking about. And if you go stumbling through life imagining yourself to be an expert, then you probably aren't one. Sorry, but that's just life.

And so I had to laugh when reading about Obama's plan to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, and saw this comment at TPM:

10,000 is definitely not enough at this point. I understand the fear that some may have about violence breaking out again with a more significant draw down and the instability it may cause, but Afghanistan is going to have to do it on its own at this point. The country needs to transition from the "nation builder" model that the neo-cons wanted us to be, and move into the arena of military activity that netted us OBL.

Ah, of course. Obama has been working on this plan for some time, with the best military experts who have real world experience both in managing troops and understanding the situation on the ground in Afghanistan, yet Hobbes83 knows this isn't enough. Damn, why couldn't the Pentagon have hired him?

And hey, I'm not trying to pick on Hobbes, but come on. This is a dumb comment. Seriously. There's no real thought behind this at all, as it's nothing more than a confirmation of what he was already thinking.

Fixing What You Broke

And what bugs me about all this is the people who insist that we need to leave immediately as if that's the liberal pro-peace position. But it's not. We're not there because we're war-monger invaders exploiting their country. We're there because we invaded and are now responsible for fixing the country. Those are the rules: You break it, you bought it.

Now, if someone wants to argue that we simply can't afford to fix their country, that's fine. That's an argument I can understand. But that's not a liberal argument. That's not in support of peace. Because if we leave, there won't be peace. There will be fighting and death. Sure, it won't be American lives or American money being lost, and it might even be less violent than it is now. But let's not delude ourselves into thinking that peace will break out the moment we leave. That's simply not the case. There will be violence whether we're there or not, and our purpose there is to make it as painless as possible.

And so we're pulling out 10,000 troops now and another 23,000 by next summer. That's the plan drawn up by the experts we've got. And maybe they're full of shit war-mongers who simply like killing people. And maybe Obama's a sellout who won't remove all the troops for political purposes. Or maybe this is the best plan possible and it'd be better for the world if we put more troops in. I don't know. I'm not a psychic or a military expert, so I'm not in a position to say. I'm a smart fricking guy, but even I've got my limitations.

But I will say this: If we had unlimited funds and an all-volunteer army willing to do the job, I think we should stay. While I always opposed the Iraq War and am glad we're still on track for our withdrawal there, I always supported the war in Afghanistan. Partly, that's because Afghanistan's leaders were responsible for attacking us and Iraq wasn't, and partly because Iraq had a stable government and Afghanistan didn't. And I believe that all humans have a right to a decent society and truly believe that America could help that become a reality.

That's what liberalism is all about, and if we're pulling out of Afghanistan because it's too costly for money and men, that's fine. If we must, we must. I'm a pragmatic liberal and don't believe in fighting fights I can't win. But we still must remember what liberalism really is, and it's not just about helping America or opposing all military interventions. It's about helping everyone, and sometimes a military intervention can do that.

If the troubles in Afghanistan are too much for us to handle, we should leave. But that's not to say we should like it.

The Problem of Subjective Facts

2011-06-22T11:42:00.000-05:00

Politifact has a problem: It doesn't believe in facts. It's a fact checking site, yet on some of the key issues of the day, if there's a difference of opinion on what the facts are, they get all squishy and start insisting that facts are subjective and perception is more important than reality. And if there's a dispute over a fact, they'll not only refuse to settle the dispute, but they'll insist that anyone who considers it to be a settled is wrong and will use their "fact check" to declare that person wrong.

Needless to say, you can't have a difference of opinion on facts, which makes it so many of their "fact" checking pieces are beyond useless and we'd all have been better off if they said nothing.

And so I just read this "fact checking" piece they did on Jon Stewart's claim that Fox News viewers are the least informed of news viewers. According to their "analysis" this claim is false. Their evidence? Three studies by Pew Research Center which show that Fox News viewers rated consistently low when asked questions about who the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court is and other relatively meaningless questions. And then there were two studies asking meaningful policy questions, which Fox viewers did the worst on.

And that's it. Three studies showing Fox News doing poorly, and two showing they did the worst. So how, might you ask, did they rate Stewart's claim to be false if Fox did so poorly? You see, while they did poor on the Pew studies, they weren't the worst. And on the two studies they did the worst on, Politifact didn't like the questions because they saw them as being subjective because some people might disagree on the facts. Huh?

As they say:

Meanwhile, the other set of knowledge surveys, from worldpublicopinion.org, offer mixed support for Stewart. The 2003 survey strikes us as pretty solid, but the 2010 survey has been critiqued for its methodology.

Ah, well then. If someone critiqued that study, then it must not be a good one. After all, no one would have disagreed with it if it were good, right?

Objective-Objective Questions v. Subjective-Objective Questions

You see, when you ask a relatively meaningless question like "Who is the president of Russia?" there's no subjective angle to it so it's entirely safe; even if it has little importance to what's going on around us. But when you ask questions like

"Is it your impression that most economists who have studied it estimate that the stimulus has created (a) saved or created several million jobs, (b) saved or created a few jobs, or (c) caused job losses."

and

"Do you think now that the American economy is (a) starting to recover, or (b) still getting worse?"

These questions don't count, because some people's perceptions might disagree with the facts. And because their perceptions differ, we must pretend that these objective questions are subjective, even though they have definite answers that informed people should be aware of.

As Politifact explains, that last question is no good because:

However, given the phrasing of the question, a respondent might think the question was asking for a personal opinion of how the recovery was going, rather than what the official statistics say.

And so we're not allowed to declare someone to be misinformed even if the facts and experts show they're misinformed. Right.

And this is where Politifact can get all tangled up, because they just don't like controversy. That's why in this very piece, they identify Fox News by saying they're "widely perceived as a conservative-leaning network," as if there was any doubt about that. I mean, come on! Saying that Fox is perceived as conservative-leaning is like saying that NBA players are perceived as tall. Yes, everything's relative at a certain level, but even Fox doesn't really pretend to be balanced anymore.

Curiously, later on in the piece, they describe MSNBC as "a liberal counterpoint to Fox," as if that's undisputed fact. So...MSNBC is a counterpoint to Fox, yet Fox can't be accurately described as conservative. Of course. How squishy of them.

But thus is the world of Politifact. When a fact isn't disputed, they'll proudly denounce any who get it wrong, but as soon as you get to an issue that might piss off Republicans, even facts aren't good enough anymore.

Man Arrested for Baggy Pants on Airline

2011-06-21T03:03:00.000-05:00

This kind of shit just pisses me off. It's a story about some dude who had baggy sweatpants that were a little too baggy for US Airways, and so they made a big fucking deal about it and finally removed him from the plane because he wouldn't pull up his pants and had him arrested for trespassing. Trespassing! And now there are all these people insisting that this guy had it coming, because people shouldn't have baggy pants that are too baggy and we should all respect the authority of airline employees.

But, no. This wasn't about baggy sweatpants at all. I mean, it's an airplane. The dude was sitting down. And if they had just left him be, nobody would have noticed that you could see his underwear. And even if they did, so what? It's just underwear and you see worse than that at any pool, lake, or beach every day. This guy was at least an athlete. I've seen a lot grosser dudes than him wearing speedos, and in front of children, no less.

So it ain't the end of the world. This is America and if some fool wants to wear his pants to the ground, what's the problem? They're his pants and he's the one who looks like a fool. And if you don't want to look at his underwear, don't look. That's what I do with the fat speedo dudes, and it's worked quite well for me.

Respect My Authority

The only problem here is that the US Airways employees decided to make it a problem and demanded that he respect their authority. Sure, he wasn't hurting anyone and he was being polite towards them, but that's apparently not enough. And as a full-fledged red-blooded anti-authoritarian, this shit pisses me off. Because I'm sick of control freaks telling me what to do. Schools that dictate what color shoelaces you can wear and employers telling me how to dress. I thought we settled this shit back in the 60's and the freaks won!

But no, we're now in 2011 and have a shitstorm of real problems in the world, just like we always have, yet some jerkoffs insist that they get to tell us how to dress and will imprison people simply to prove that point. And that's just fucked up.

And here's the thing: It's not Big Government doing that to people. That's private industry. That's the free market that got this guy arrested. Sure, it was the government that enforced the law, but they had no choice because they had to follow the law. It was these freaks at US Airways making a big deal about nothing that's the problem. And even when governments does this sort of thing, it's local governments that enforce dress codes on baggy pants. The federal government doesn't give a damn how you dress. And the bigger a government is, the less likely it is to screw with your everyday life.

Big government, I can deal with. It's authoritarian control freaks that bother me, and more often than not, it's the people without much power who insist upon exercising it the most whenever they can that are the real problem. I'll take an intrusive Uncle Sam over a snippy Flight Attendant any day. I understand that they have tough jobs, but screw it, so do the rest of us. And as much as I'm sure it's not fun dealing with annoying kids and drunk passengers, this was an entirely avoidable situation that didn't require anyone to do a god damn thing.

Balancing the Budget by Screwing the Old

2011-06-21T02:36:00.000-05:00

Fortune Magazine's Geoff Colvin wrote an article titled Why Can't We Fix Medicare Once and For All?, in which Colvin announces the solution to bringing Medicare costs down: Pay less for Medicare. Ah, genius! Why didn't anyone think of that before?

As he sees it, there are two approaches to solving the problem: The "Brute Force" solution and the "People Aren't Dummies" solution. And yes, Colvin plays us all for dummies, by using a bad name to describe the option he doesn't like and a good name to describe the option he does like; even though the labels serve no descriptive purpose other than to make us favor his solution while opposing the other. It's as if we're all so stupid that he's just going to win us over with silly labels.

The first approach is to use the strength of the government to keep costs low by using its purchasing power to force health providers to charge reasonable rates. And he says this doesn't work because:

Turns out that if you unilaterally cut prices, some providers will quit providing services and some patients won't get care, so you can't cut too much. And if you pay providers barely profitable rates when they perform a given service, they will overperform those services, grossly inflating the government's costs. That's what has happened.

Ahh, of course. If the government uses its power to keep costs down, greedy health providers will game the system for their own advantage. The solution? Tossing old people to those same greedy health providers in hopes that they can achieve cost savings the government couldn't.

Quality Rises, Costs Stay Reasonable, and Magic!

Here's how he puts it:

Providers aren't dummies, so they'll innovate in ways that bureaucrats would never think of. Consumers aren't dummies, so they'll choose what works for them. Quality rises, and costs stay reasonable.

Yes, innovation that will happen magically once providers realize that seniors won't have unlimited funds. And this is different from the Brute Force model of keeping costs low because...uh, well, because...magic! It's as if we're to imagine that health providers only bristle at low pay from Medicare because they hate government, but they'll gladly invent new ways of providing better services for less money if Medicare steps aside. Of course.

Now granted, there is a way that government intrusion could be causing healthcare to be more expensive than what our bright individuals would do for themselves. For example, if the government was forcing hip replacements on people who would otherwise prefer to walk funny to save a few bucks. But more likely, it's Medicare recipients who are choosing to have their hips replaced, and the government is the one trying to cut corners and keep costs low.

Apparently, Republicans haven't yet learned that the Freedom to Get Screwed really isn't such a great freedom at all.

A Screwing By Any Other Name

And of course, Colvin's article never says it, but it's not seniors who will make any of these choices in any case. It's the insurance companies that would make the choices, not the seniors. And the only choice the seniors get is to decide which insurer will be screwing them over. Somehow, Colvin didn't think it necessary to mention this little aspect of his plan.

In fact, in his entire piece, Colvin never uses the word "insurance" at all. Not even once. Someone unfamiliar with his plan could easily assume that this New Medicare involves letting seniors pick their health providers and the government will pay the cost for them. But of course, that would be the Old Medicare that does that, while the new one guarantees nothing, as seniors might not be able to find a plan they can afford.

And even if they do get insured, there's nothing to guarantee that the plan will be there when they need it. After all, the free market would surely punish any insurer who denied coverage for improper reasons, right? I mean, yeah, that's how things worked until Obamacare came along, but...but...magic!

And of course, the word "voucher" never makes it in either. Instead, we're given the focus group approved "premium support." Yet I have no doubt that if the phrase "premium support" ever catches on to describe this plan, it'll be as unpopular as the word "voucher" and conservatives will demand a retraction from anyone who uses that phrase, too.

As I've said before, there's nothing magical about these words, and you could call Ryan's plan the Apple Pie & Matlock Medicare Bonanza and seniors will hate it as soon as they hear what it is.

Two Approaches: Big Daddy Government v. Screw the Old

So how could Colvin's No Dummies approach possibly work? It couldn't and it doesn't. The Ryan Plan for Medicare doesn't truly believe that senior citizens are smart enough to get providers to lower costs in ways that the government can't. The Ryan Plan cuts cost by limiting the amount of money seniors will get for their care and forces seniors to pick up the difference, period.

There's no mystery magical forces of free markets here. We're saving costs because seniors just won't get enough for healthcare, period. That's it. That's the whole gimmick. We're saving money because we just won't spend as much money, and if people suffer, well, that's their own fault for not being smart enough to pressure health providers into doing things that the experts in the government couldn't even do.

And as much as there is a mechanism for lowering prices, it's only by denying extra money into the marketplace; which is just like the "Brute Force" option Colvin derides; except it's far less likely to work. More likely, old people will still need to have their hips replaced, but they'll have to figure out some other way of making that happen. Perhaps with their new titanium hips they can turn to purse snatching or professional sports to help pay their medical bills, as it's quite unlikely that they'll get the care they need from the insurance companies.

And the kicker on all this is that the Republican plan most likely won't screw the elderly in the long run. Just as Obama filled the "doughnut hole" that Bush's prescription drug plan created to keep costs low, if Republicans were somehow to bring Ryanicare into existence, it'll only be a matter of time until lots of angry seniors realized how little their voucher was getting them and Democrats would once again step in to save the day by making the voucher's work; thus removing any cost savings we might possibly have gotten from this misbegotten plan.

Or...we could just let the government continue to do the job for less money and not screw around with a good thing. Is Medicare expensive? Yes, because healthcare for old folks is expensive. But if the only solution is to simply pay less and hope it magically works out, then that's no solution at all.

Breaking News: News Media As Dumb As They Appear

2011-06-16T05:15:00.000-05:00

There's this theory many liberals have which suggests that the media is biased against us because they're owned by corporations and therefore do the bidding of their corporate masters. And while that would make a bit of sense, it fails the general rule of all conspiracies: If a conspiracy involves lots of people keeping a big secret, the conspiracy probably isn't real.

And so, if the corporate masters of CNN (Time Warner) and MSNBC (NBCUniversal) and the New York Times (New York Times Company) were all telling their employees to stifle liberal policies while pushing pro-corporate policies...don't you think we'd have heard about it from at least some of their former disgruntled employees?

We're all familiar with Bill Sammons' email directives telling Fox reporters how to push their propaganda, and that's from a fairly secretive network that keeps a tight lid on leaks. So how is it that this is just limited to Sammons? Where's the CNN, MSNBC, and NY Times memos on these subjects? Bozo nitwit Bernie Goldberg has made a career out of exposing the so-called liberal bias of the media. Why haven't we seen the opposite?

Are we really to believe that there are literally NO real journalists who get inside these organizations and decide to expose the truth? Not one liberal makes it through the cracks, even as low level production staff or admin assistant; and they're able to keep them ALL tight lipped about this grand conspiracy that every corporate media outlet is a part of? That seems highly unlikely.

When All Else Fails, It's Probably Incompetence

Because yeah, it's a plausible theory. But there are LOTS of plausible theories, and just because a theory is plausible doesn't mean it's true. And in this case, not all the facts match the theory. Some facts fall WAAAAY outside the theory, and so the people who espouse this theory simply ignore those facts or rationalize them away.

And what's my theory on the subject? What else: Incompetence. When something screwy's going on, the most likely explanation is that incompetent people are involved. And in the case of the media, that's almost definitely the best explanation.

And here's a test case for you: Watch the video below and tell me whether it's more likely that these people are in the pocket of corporate masters, or if they're complete airheads who wouldn't know real news if it bit them in their plastic faces.

And first off, I'm sorry, but I doubt these people are sophisticated enough to pull off anything more complex than a surprise party; and certainly aren't part of some cabal keeping us misinformed. These people aren't just playing dumb. That's how they really are.

The Real Media

While there are intelligent people within the field, the media as a whole are just simple-minded pack animals that follow the herd. When they breathlessly await Palin's emails while following her vacation bus; they truly believe that's where the "real" story is. The reason they're not exposing Wall Street isn't because they're under orders not to do so. It's that they don't even understand what the problem is. And the reason they support tax cuts for the rich is because they are the rich, and they don't think they should pay more taxes.

These people are celebrities posing as journalists, working in part of the entertainment industry in order to sell commercials which pay their salaries. And if they believed they could make more money by selling liberal policies and explaining complicated issues to their viewers, they'd do so. But that's boring as hell and doesn't sell commercials, so that's why they won't do it.

Besides, these people aren't intelligent enough to understand the truth; let alone attempt to explain it to anyone. But they get better ratings than the vast majority of liberals complaining about them, which is why you'll see the airheads and not the intellects. If you haven't learned that sad truth by now, then it's about time you did.

And it's important for us to get this straight. As it always is in life, you can't solve your problems until you properly identify them. And the longer we believe that there's some conspiracy keeping the media from telling our story, the longer it'll be until we understand how to work them to our advantage.

If a Liberal President Gives a Speech in the Woods...

2011-06-14T16:41:00.000-05:00

WaMo has a post about how Obama held a meeting for his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness in North Carolina and gave a speech at Cree, Inc. in which he talked about the need for jobs; particularly high-skill jobs in math and science.

In the speech, he once again reaffirmed his commitment to investing in research, education, infrastructure, and clean energy. He even highlighted how Cree received a tax credit to help them invent clean energy products, as well as getting a grant from the Department of Energy. And he mentioned the Better Buildings Initiative, giving $40 billion to help upgrade existing buildings to make them more energy efficient; which has the added benefit of putting more people to work.

In other words, Obama gave yet another liberal speech that didn't exist to his critics on the left, because they "know" he doesn't give liberal speeches. Or at least it was so for all the commenters criticizing him without having read what they were criticizing him for.

Hearing the Obama in Their Head

Now mind you, this was on a post titled Obama Stresses ‘Need to Accelerate the Recovery’ which mentioned his Jobs Council in the first paragraph. It also mentioned that Obama was looking into extending the 2% payroll tax cut he got for workers last December as part of the deficit ceiling negotiations. And nothing in this suggested he was talking about spending cuts, as he was quoted in the post saying that "day-to-day spending" wasn't the problem.

But because they saw the words "tax cuts" and "deficit" and Benen didn't quote Obama saying the word "jobs," his liberal critics pounced; so certain he had given a conservative speech about deficit reduction that they didn't bother reading the thing.

And sure, talk is cheap and maybe Obama's trying to trick us liberals by hyping liberalism in every speech he gives, but...you can't say he doesn't talk like a liberal. As they say, you can disagree about opinions, but you're not entitled to your own facts.

Can't Hear Jobs for the Jobs

Here's the worst of the comments, though there are several along these lines (emphasis added):

It doesn't really require much processing power to realize Obama's rhetoric hasn't changed one iota. He actually thinks the way to a better economy is by strangling it first with deficit reduction. Not one word about jobs, since he believes "the gumint don't produce no jobs." Of course, job creation is the only real way out of the deficit in the first place.

Naturally, before someone would claim that Obama didn't say one word about jobs, they should have, ya know, read the speech and checked to see if Obama said anything about jobs. And if he had, he would have seen that Obama repeated the word thirty-three times. And in the short speech he gave to his Jobs Committee that same day, he said the word fifteen times. But, besides the forty-eight times he said "job" in speeches that day, he didn't say it once!

And you know what Obama didn't say? He didn't say that the government doesn't produce jobs or that we need to improve the economy by reducing the deficit. In fact, he said the opposite. Just as he continues to say in every damn speech he gives. And of course, Obama said the exact stuff this guy said about needing jobs to boost the economy, but much much better.

So...which Obama are they listening to, and is there any way we can get them to listen to the real one?

Obama Highlights

At this point in the post, I gave highlights of the best parts of Obama's speech. But I found myself quoting so much that I decided it wasn't worth it and you can read the damn thing yourself. And if you go through his collection of speeches, you'll find this wasn't the outlier. Obama talks like a liberal all the time and this is just one of his everyday speeches.

And hell, I'll just close with his ending:

So I am optimistic about our future. We can’t be complacent. We shouldn’t pretend that a lot of folks out there are not still struggling. But I am absolutely optimistic that we’ve got everything it takes for us to succeed in the 21st century. Americans do not respond to trials by lowering our sights, or downscaling our dreams, or settling for something less. We are a people who dream big, even when times are tough -- especially when times are tough. We’re a people who reach forward, who look out to the horizon and remember that, together, there’s nothing we can’t do.

And as long as I have the privilege of being your President, I’m going to be right there with you, every step of the way, fighting for a brighter future in this community, in North Carolina, and across the United States of America.

Why the Economic Sabotage Attack Won't Work

2011-06-13T17:04:00.001-05:00

Washington Monthly has another post suggesting that Republicans might be intentionally sabotaging the economy in order to hurt Obama politically, which is why they oppose any stimulus spending. I definitely disagree, as modern Republicans have been consistently against government spending of this sort for two decades; and they've made it a cornerstone of their party. They've staked their political fortunes on tax cuts and deregulation; and it's one of the very few things they're consistent about.

After all, they didn't support stimulus spending during Bush's second term, yet the economy was in freefall and certainly needed a boast. Unless we're trying to suggest that Republicans were sabotaging Bush too, it's more likely that they're just morons who don't know what they're doing. Sure, they'll hype government projects in their own districts, but they remain steadfast in their general opposition to stimulus spending.

But of course, the majority of the comments there reflect the idea that Democrats are wimps and/or fools for not accusing Republicans of sabotage, as if this is some easy way for us to put Republicans on the defensive.

As one commenter wrote:

If the Republicans are put on the defensive and have to explain why they aren't sabotaging the economy for electoral gain, along the way they have to amplify the message that in fact they might be sabotaging the economy for electoral gain.

But knowing what we know about how Washington works, why should we assume that Republicans would be on the defensive at all. In fact, I'm often ashamed to see the sorts of questions that some liberals imagine would put Republicans on the defensive, unaware that Republicans are fully capable of responding to such questions in the same manner they always do.

I suppose that's why they imagine Obama never supports liberal policies or derides conservative ones, as they somehow imagine we'd always win if we did these things. As if getting what you want is as simple as talking about it.

Beat the Press

To highlight this, I'll write two hypothetical interviews of Mitch McConnell on Meet the Press, and you tell me which of these two seem more realistic. And remember, these are fake, so don't go looking for the transcripts.

MTP: What do you say to Democrats who claim Republicans are trying to sabotage the economy in order to hurt President Obama's electoral prospects in 2012?

McConnell: What? Sabotage? We're not trying to sabotage the president. We just want to cut taxes for the rich and services for the poor.

MTP: But won't it, in fact, hurt the economy if we remove billions of dollars from it while firing workers, as you're proposing?

McConnell: But...but...but...

MTP: And what about in October 2010 when you said "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."

McConnell: That was taken out of context! I wasn't talking about sabotage!

MTP: Yet you DID say making Obama a one-term president was your most important goal.

McConnell: That's it! This interview is over!

But of course, as stirring of an interview as that would be, there's a reason you've never seen anything like it: Because Republicans aren't so stupid that they couldn't evade factless accusations like this. It'd be one thing if we had a quote of Republicans saying they're intentionally sabotaging the economy, but we don't.

And no, McConnell's "one-term president" line isn't any more damning than liberals who said the same thing about Bush. Or were we trying to sabotage the economy, too?

Here's the interview you're more likely to see:

MTP: What do you say to Democrats who claim Republicans are trying to sabotage the economy in order to hurt President Obama's electoral prospects in 2012?

McConnell: I say that the only thing sabotaging our economy is Obama and his failed economic policies. Rather than growing the government to unprecedented size, he needs to be helping small businesses by cutting taxes and burdensome regulations. We need to be helping the ECONOMY grow, not the government.

MTP: So you're saying that Obama is to blame for the sluggish economy.

McConnell: Absolutely. No doubt about it. The sooner we can get government out of the way, the sooner we can get our country back on the right track. Yada, yada, yada. Ronald Reagan.

Doesn't that look a little more like what you've seen, and why you probably don't watch Sunday morning talkshows?

Like Attacking a Fish with Water

I mean, hell, the only way a guy like McConnell could get put on the defensive about this is if he suffered a major head trauma. Not that he's the brightest bulb, but experienced politicians can deflect these sort of attacks in their sleep; especially if they're Republican and have a fawning media trying to impress them.

If you want to watch them suffer, get them on record supporting Paul Ryan's plan to destroy America, or Tim Pawlenty's Unicorn in Every Garage plan. Those are doozies that will throw any Republican for a loop, as they're either stuck supporting craziness or opposing it and getting attacked by the crazies. It's all about getting Republicans to hang themselves with their own agenda. Similarly, a Republican attacking Obama isn't nearly as damning as a Democrat doing so. Like it or not, that's just how it works.

By comparison, I'm sure they'd LOVE to field an attack about sabotage, as it'd give them another chance to highlight fiscal conservativism and cast Obama as a Big Government Liberal. And Fox News would have a field day with it, as they'd trot out every conservative Democrat they can find to backpedal and denounce liberals for suggesting that Republicans are trying to hurt the economy. The idea that Republicans would be put on the defensive by this is ludicrous.

And overall, this all fits in with the error Obama's leftwing critics make, as they really do imagine that all we have to do is attack Republicans and defend liberalism and we'd win. They're so confident that there are easy answers to our problems that they completely gloss over those problems all together, and we're to imagine that it's Obama's fault that the media likes conservatives more than liberals.

Of course, we still have liberals insisting that Obama doesn't make liberal speeches, all evidence to the contrary. So I suppose this isn't the only area that they're unclear about.

Breaking News: Obama Gives Liberal Speeches All the Time

2011-06-12T00:37:00.005-05:00

In my last post, I discussed how there really aren't any good options for getting a jobs or stimulus bill passed, because Republicans can still filibuster anything in the Senate and have complete control of the House. Wish all you want, but it ain't gonna happen. This isn't Obama's fault and anyone blaming him for this is living in a fantasy world of fairies and unicorns.

And as I also discussed, there's little point in even pretending to try to pass one to score political points, unless we've got some great strategy for making it work to our advantage. Doing something just to do something is worse than doing nothing at all. And that's generally the case in life, as you shouldn't do anything unless you know why you're doing it.

And as could be expected, a leftwing critic of Obama left a comment which ignored everything I wrote and pretended as if Obama has lots of great options he's choosing to ignore. Here's the entire comment, and please note the lack of any clue as to what Obama should do:

Hell, you may even be right. But it doesn't matter. Unemployment is 9.1%, the economy is stagnating, the stimulus that he was able to get was underfunded and insufficient (though, of course, it was better than nothing) -- we have desperate need for more jobs, better infrastructure, a better energy policy and vast amount of public investment.

We have none of it.

I'm sure the strategy to ignore this and not upset the most-easily upset people in the world is savvy and utterly correct. But it doesn't matter. It doesn't change the fact that he is a President that is presiding over a terrible economy, economic uncertainty and he keeps talking about the importance of getting the deficit under control.

Sure the Republicans are gargoyles, but the Democrats in Congress and in the White House are also doing jack shit and Americans are still suffering and no one really seems to care.

Ok, yes. That's a good recap of the problem. But where's the solution? The problem is obvious. The solution doesn't exist. Yet the best this guy can do is to continue to blame Obama for not being able to pull miracles out of his butt.

Apparently, this guy lives in a fantasy world in which every problem has a solution. Well sorry, but that's not always the case. Sometimes, you're just screwed. And if this guy has the secret solution, I would imagine he'd have explained it, rather than restating the same damn problems that everyone already knows about. It's as if we're to imagine that we can solve problems merely by stating them.

And if I sound a bit disgruntled about that, it's because I am. I understand why Republicans attack Obama, because he scares the shit out of them. It's when liberals attack him that I'm left scratching my head and wondering about the sanity of people who agree with Obama on almost every issue.

How a Real Liberal Sounds

See if these remarks sound familiar:

The fact is, we understand what it takes to build a stronger economy. We know it’s going to require investing in research and technology that will lead to new ideas and new industries. We know it means building the infrastructure, the roads and bridges, and manufacturing the new products here in the United States of America that create good jobs. Above all, it requires training and educating our citizens to out-compete workers from other countries.

If you guessed that I was quoting the president, you'd have guessed correctly. That was from a speech he gave at a Community College in North Virginia three days ago.

Needing jobs, infrastructure, and investment, huh. Where, oh where might I have heard someone else say we needed the same things? Oh yeah, from my liberal commenter who insisted that Obama is ignoring these issues. Oooh, that president! Stealing this guy's best ideas two days before the guy said it!

Obama went on to say Congress needed to pass the "Workforce Investment Act," though I can't find anything on that; even on the Whitehouse website. I get the impression that's something they're still working on.

Investing in a Better America

We saw the same thing when Obama talked to auto workers in Toledo last week to hype the auto bailout which helped prevent an economic disaster and saved thousands of jobs; in accordance with core liberal principles.

And in this one, you can see how someone cherry-picking Obama's speeches might be confused, as he begins with conservative rhetoric. Yet the point is to take those arguments and twist them around to show why we need liberal policies. Yes, he starts by talking about the deficit, but watch how he works it back to our side with full-throated liberalism (emphasis added):

These are tight fiscal times. You guys have all heard about the deficit and the debt, and that demands that we spend wisely, cut everywhere that we can. We’ve got to live within our means. Everybody’s got to do their part. Middle-class workers like you, though, shouldn’t be bearing all the burden. You work too hard for someone to ask you to pay more so that somebody who’s making millions or billions of dollars can pay less. That’s not right. (Applause.)

And even though we’re in tough times, there are still some things that we’ve got to keep on doing if we’re going to win the future. We can’t just sit back and stop. We got business we got to do. We got to make sure that our schools are educating our kids so that they can succeed. I was looking at all the gizmos and gadgets you got in this plant here -- it’s a lot more complicated working on a plant than it used to be. Kids have to know math and science.

We got to have a transportation and communications network that allows our businesses to compete. We used to have the best roads, the best bridges, the best airports. In a lot of places we don’t have that anymore. If you go to China, Beijing, they’ve got a fancier airport. You go to Europe, they got fancier trains, better roads. We can’t let our infrastructure just crumble and fall apart. We’re American. We’ve got to make that investment. (Applause.)

We’ve got to invest in innovation that will pave the way for future prosperity. We invented stuff that the world now uses and the world now makes. We’ve got to keep on inventing stuff and make sure it’s made right here in America. And that requires investments. (Applause.) That requires investments in basic research and basic science.

So these are all things that will help America out-innovate, out-educate, out-compete, out-hustle everybody else in the world. I want America to win the future, and I want our future to be big and optimistic, not small and fearful.

Now, show me the liberal who can disagree with this. This sounds like the exact sort of thing liberals should want Obama to say...but better.

Obama's Strategy

Because this is the strategy I mentioned in my last post. Republicans wanted to hit Obama with phony talk of fighting the deficit, believing he'd fight against them and make them look like fiscal heroes battling a Big Spender Liberal.

Instead, he stole their platform and turned it on its head by agreeing that the deficit is a problem, yet still insisting that we need to tax the rich and pump up infrastructure and other needed improvements. And rather than arguing Big Spender v. Fiscal Conservatives, like Republicans wanted; Republicans are forced to explain why they want to cut education and our safety net while the rich get tax cuts. These bozos went back to the playbook of the 80's and 90's, while Obama kept them clueless by using a 21st Century playbook. Did he win? Not yet. But at least he's fighting and has a good chance of coming out ahead.

His liberal critics, on the other hand, demand that he refight all the old battles, walk into all the old traps, and are so clueless as to what his strategy is that they imagine he doesn't have one; as if Obama's some fool just guessing his way through life and lucking into winning situations. Republicans have shown again and again how their rhetoric beats what these liberals want Obama to use, but insist that he can't possibly have a strategy because he's not using the playbook that FDR crafted in the 30's and was already looking haggard by the time LBJ used it in the 60's.

And even when I EXPLAIN the strategy to them, they insist that there is no strategy and Obama is ignoring our problems. Why? Because he's not using a strategy that the Republican playbook was specifically designed to destroy. Oh, no! Obama's not running into a buzzsaw! What a traitor! Meanwhile, Obama remains the most popular politician in America while staying true to liberalism, and his Republican foes see their political prospects dimming all the time.

And hey, maybe I'm wrong and maybe Obama's strategy is a blunder; but you at least have to explain why. And if the best you can do is to insist that Obama doesn't have a strategy, then you obviously don't know what you're talking about. And again, trying to pass legislation solely for the sake of passing legislation is worse than doing nothing at all; so if that's your advice to Obama, save it.

My Challenge to Leftwing Obama Critics

And what I quoted before wasn't just a one-time thing intended to impress a liberal audience. He's saying this stuff to auto workers in Ohio, and community colleges in Virginia, and the British Parliament, and a Women's Leadership group in DC, and at a DNC Fundraiser. And he used consecutive Weekly Addresses in April and May to talk about Oil Market Fraud, Ending Oil Subsidies, Clean Energy, and Responsible Oil Production. He consistently uses liberal rhetoric to support liberal policies in almost every speech he gives. Whoever claims he's not using the Bully Pulpit to promote liberalism just isn't paying attention.

Please, find me the speech where Obama isn't talking about this stuff. Find me the speech where Obama says that everything's ok and budget cuts are more important than infrastructure. Because I'm reading through all his material and I'm not seeing it. As I've highlighted before, you read his speeches and he sounds like a liberal. Not just on a superficial level, but on the most fundamental deepdown level, Obama explains his liberal policies using liberal rhetoric; both in his prepared remarks and his impromptu answers.

Naturally, people can believe what they want, but anyone who believes that Obama uses rightwing rhetoric or is ignoring our problems simply don't know what they're talking about. And again, I expect that from Republicans, as they've been delusional for a long time and Obama is really driving them bonkers. But I fail to understand how a liberal could possibly hear an Obama speech and conclude that he's not saying the right things.

More likely than not, they're not even reading his speeches at all, and simply imagine he's not making them. Why? Because the progressives complaining about him only cherry-pick the negative stuff and never quote his speeches.

Actions Speak Louder

And so that just leaves us with his deeds, yet there's no credible evidence to suggest that Obama could have done much better than he did. I'm sorry, but the president isn't omnipotent and even Bush's supposed success at strong-arming congress was vastly exaggerated; as he got almost nothing unpopular through Republican Congresses and his entire second-term was a lame-duck as Democrats continually stuffed him.

By comparison with Bush, Obama was a legislation machine in his first two years. But of course, Obama's legislative accomplishments rival that of any modern president.

Could Obama have gotten us more? Yeah, maybe. I'm not about to suggest that his record was perfect. But whose is? Are we really to fault the man for being less than perfect? But anyone using the premise that Obama definitely could have gotten more is full of shit; if only because life doesn't involve certainties like that. And any respectable review of the facts shows that Obama's biggest "betrayals" of liberalism were forced upon him by Congress; in accordance with our system of government.

Obama didn't give up on the public option, Congress did. Obama doesn't want Gitmo open. Congress does. And you can call those excuses if you want, but it happens to be the truth. Our system of government doesn't give Obama unlimited powers and that's generally considered a good thing. Like it or not, if you want a president who strong-arms Congress into rubber-stamping his agenda against their will, that's a dictatorship. And if you don't like that word, then you shouldn't try to force us into one.

Because no, a President Kucinich or President Grayson wouldn't have gotten a damn thing through the 2009-2010 Senate unless they cajoled a few moderate Republicans to support it; and that wouldn't have happened with insults and angry speeches. And had they pushed for a trial against Bush and Cheney for torture or war crimes, the country would have blown up on them and they definitely wouldn't have gotten anything through Congress. And they most definitely couldn't get a jobs bill through the current Congress. That's simply impossible until after 2012.

The Reality of Politics

As I've said before, politics are real and if you believe that a president can pass legislation while ignoring the political implications of his actions, then you don't know what you're talking about. Boldness is rarely rewarded in politics and if you don't play your cards right, you get what Clinton got in 1993, when he was not only under siege by Republicans, but by his own party.

Skittish Democrats are always looking for a chance to push against a Democratic President (eg, Clinton & Carter) and if you push them too hard, you'll lose them completely. History shows that again and again, and there are no examples showing the contrary. Republican Congressmen follow orders and Democratic Congressmen look for excuses to buck authority; and that's just the way it is. And if your strategy is to break Republican obedience while strong-arming Democrats into obeying the president, then you haven't been paying attention.

Yeah, yeah. I know. That's not what you've heard from Obama's critics. But those people don't know what they're talking about. Sorry to say, but there are no heroes in the world, unicorns don't grow on trees, and the president isn't omnipotent. We live in reality, and that means we take our liberal presidents as they come; not as we wish them to be. And by that standard, Obama is a fantastic liberal president.

And as your reward for reading to the end (and yeah, I know you did), here's what an intelligent liberal president sounds like. Enjoy!

The Perils of Political Stimulus

2011-06-10T16:33:00.000-05:00

Over at Washington Monthly, I'm reading comments about how Obama needs to learn that Republicans don't like him and should push for his agenda in spite of what they might say about him. And like, come fricking on! This was a silly argument in 2008 and after two and a half years in the Whitehouse, I'm pretty damn sure Obama's aware that Republicans are out to get him. No, he can't say that publicly, but let's give the man some credit for not being a complete moron.

As a clue to you naifs out there, just because someone is nice to you doesn't mean they're your friend. We don't all wear our emotions on our sleeves and Obama has a proven track record of sticking it to Republicans when it counts. As always, he avoids needless battles, never burns a bridge he might need later, and keeps his ammo ready for when he needs it. And that's why he's the most popular politician in America and we're not.

And as silly as it was in 2009 to act as if Obama could strong-arm Congress into doing his bidding without Republican support; since the mid-terms, that's utterly impossible. Yes, yes, I know. We were assured by progressives that a loss in November would bring a sea change of liberalism back to Washington; if only we punished Democrats for not being liberal enough. But alas, those seeds have yet to come to fruition; assuming they ever do.

Fighting to Fight

And so, what exactly is Obama expected to do? Disband Congress? Enlarge Cheney's Fourth Branch of Government to include a Jobs & Stimulus division that can pass and execute legislation on its own? We couldn't pass a bill in 2009-2010 without a few Senate Republicans joining us, and since the mid-terms, it's entirely impossible.

And sure, we could push for a symbolic jobs and stimulus bill to score points politically. But you can't just rush into that sort of thing, as it's a political minefield with more peril than pearls, and if you end up with Obama being labeled as a Tax & Spend Failure by the general population, then we're worse off than how we started. Just look at Republicans who rushed into supporting Paul Ryan's budget, just to see it drag them down like a lead weight. As it turns out, expressing your convictions and pushing bold actions can be worse than doing nothing at all.

As a reminder, Obama pushed various jobs and stimulus bills which actually succeeded, both politically and in reality; yet Republicans weren't punished for opposing them. In fact, they've used this stimulus to hit Obama repeatedly, and many people who benefited from the policies are so confused they actually think these policies made things worse.

And as much as people say a stimulus bill will shore up Obama's leftwing flank, history shows that his liberal critics dismissed his previous efforts entirely. As they say, your critics will always attack you no matter what you do.

Winning to Lose

So...if these real bills were political winners for Republicans and losers for us, why does anyone imagine that another round will help us politically? Sure, they're good policy; but they won't pass Congress so they won't be policy. We'd only be doing this for political purposes; yet the politics don't necessarily favor us and might work heavily against us.

We've got Republicans on the ropes thanks to Paul Ryan, while a fight over spending might be the thing they need to get back on the attack. That's the fight Republicans wanted all along when they started emphasizing the deficit again, and Obama foiled them by agreeing that the deficit is a problem and then pivoting it into limited cuts, infrastructure improvements, and tax increases.

That battle is still being waged, but Obama would lose it completely if he tries to push for more spending right now; even if it's just symbolic. That's the exact trap Republicans set for him, as their push for deficit reduction is useless politically unless Obama opposes them by increasing spending; and seeing as how Republicans have no real spending cuts in mind, it's obvious it was only intended as a political trap. I see no benefit to have Obama walk into it now.

As it turns out, politics is extremely complicated. Just as you can't get to the moon simply by aiming your spaceship towards it and firing the rockets, if you try to take a straight path to your political goals, you'll end up chasing it forever; if not defeated entirely. And if the only reason we're trying to do something is just to do something; then we definitely shouldn't bother at all.

As with everything in life, if you don't know why you're doing something, you probably shouldn't be doing it. That goes doubly so in politics.

The Impotence of Words

2011-06-10T12:52:00.001-05:00

Conservatives "know" that America is a conservative nation. They can feel it in their bones and they hear it from other conservatives all the time, and as we all know, conservatives are the only people who know what they're talking about. That's what makes them Real Americans, while the majority of us are schlubs and beggars screwing up their once great nation.

And yet...they're constantly perplexed as to why supposedly conservative America continues to support liberal policies, like Social Security, Medicare, and the whole host of Big Government intrusion that denies us our freedom to get screwed at work, poisoned at home, and ripped off in the marketplace. Surely, a rightwing nation would abhor leftwing government, right? Right?

And so they've convinced themselves that it's all about the words. As if the phrase "Social Security" is some magical incantation, and that if they had discovered those magic words first and used them to describe a policy they liked, everyone would love that policy. Meanwhile, they've somehow been saddled with bad words, like "voucher" and "privatize" that people don't like; and no matter how much they protest, people still use those words to describe what they're doing.

For Republicans, focus groups aren't to find out what people want. They're to figure out what words people want to hear. After all, they already "know" what people want, even if the people don't know they want it yet.

Crap By Any Other Name Is Still Crap

But despite Orwell's teachings, that's just not how words work and you CANNOT trick people into enjoying shit even if you call it a "rose." Because it's not the words that people like or dislike, it's what the words mean. Sure, proper phraseology can help open the door to getting people to accept or hate something, but eventually, their opinion will be based upon what they think of the actual thing; not the label used to describe it.

Because it's not the word "Medicare" people like, but the program. If you called it Senior Death Program while explaining it was the same as Medicare, people will support the Senior Death Program and keep calling it Medicare. Similarly, you can use the word "Medicare" to describe the sick joke of a voucher program conservatives are trying to screw us with, and people will know that it's not Medicare, even if they call it that.

Yet Republicans continue to struggle with their plans to destroy our liberal nation, and rather than admit that they're wrong, continue their search for new words to describe the same old crap they've been foisting upon us for decades. And if conservatives were more explicit about their plans, no one would vote for them; not because of the words they use, but the policies they support.

Even as it is, they have to lie and distort to get anyone to vote for them. That would be entirely unnecessary if we were the conservative nation they imagine we are.

Doing It in the John

And that's the way it is with language: It only has the power we grant to it. We have all sorts of euphemisms to describe toilets, poop, and sex; yet the moment these words are associated with these dirty things, the words become dirty and gentlepeople search out in vain to find yet another euphemism to use when discussing such them. After all, even the word "toilet" was the fancy euphemism used to describe the place we shit.

And so words like ass, bitch, and retarded become off-limits, not because they're inherently offensive, but because they get tainted with usage. That's why a racist can refer to a minority race using any word you like, including nonsensical invented words, and it'll still sound offensive. Proper words like "Mexican" and "Black" sound like insults coming from the mouth of a bigot, so much so that non-bigots become cautious when using them, for fear of being mistaken for a bigot. It's not the PC Police doing this, but the nature of language itself.

If there isn't a word for something, people will invent one; which is how slang is created and why words change meanings so often. That's what language is for, and it's easier to guide gushing water with your hands than try to force vocabulary on people that doesn't communicate what they're trying to say. People like the Arizona shooter who insist that words can be manipulated into controlling our thoughts are simply wrong. Yes, a good argument goes for towards selling a policy, but the specific terminology isn't going to sell crap, no matter how pretty it sounds.

New Study from Duh Magazine: Pot Affects Your Brain

2011-06-09T00:27:00.001-05:00

I don't have a problem with pure research. You know, the stuff they do that doesn't have a specific goal, but can be added to our general knowledge and hopefully be of great value some day. In fact, I'm of the general opinion that the best answers are the ones you weren't even looking for, and I would definitely like to see more pure research done in this country. Truth isn't always profitable, but that doesn't mean we should neglect it.

And so I'm always a little bothered whenever I read of a general research study and see commenters dogging the study; insisting that there are many "real" problems in this world we need to solve before tackling the theoretical stuff. I mean, yeah, solving "real" problems is nice, but there are lots of worthy studies we should be doing even if we have other issues to worry about.

And then there are studies like this one:

Chronic Pot Smoking Affects Brain Chemistry, Scans Show

And first off, any study involving research on "chronic" pot smokers is bound to be a doozy; like one I covered before, which warned of the dangers of pot-smoking based upon people who said they smoked between 75 to 350 joints a week. And yeah, that's typical usage...if you're the prop man for a Cheech & Chong movie. I mean jesus, smoking fifty joints in a week would be quite high; forget about fifty every day.

Novel Treatment for Cannabis Abuse: Stop Smoking Cannabis

But this new study is possibly worse, as it sounds scary, until you read the article. Basically, they scanned the brains of 30 people who smoke pot every day and found that over a month's time their cannabinoid CB1 receptors decreased by 20% compared with people who don't smoke at all. And after they quit smoking for a month, they got better. That's it. That's the whole story. Marijuana affects your brain, and when you quit using it, you get better. That's not my take on it, that's what the researchers claim.

Here's the money quote, from the second to the last paragraph:

"This information may prove critical for the development of novel treatments for cannabis abuse. Furthermore, this research shows that the decreased receptors in people who abuse cannabis return to normal when they stop smoking the drug," Hirvonen added.

And what? I mean, I had assumed from the headline and most of the article that they were trying to warn us of permanent damage. But no. Temporary damage, even to people who smoke every day for a month, and then you go back to normal. Oooh, scary.

And seriously, who's to say this temporary damage is a bad thing? Permanently feeling stupid, crazy, or wacko is a bad thing. Temporarily, can be a learning experience. Because sometimes it's a good idea to be a little stupid. To see things how they aren't necessarily. To experience something out of the norm and see things from a perspective you wouldn't otherwise have experienced. Just as long as it's not permanent, what's the problem?

And really, my headline got it just about right. Because we know that pot affects your brain. I mean, that's kind of the point, isn't it? And again, as long as you're not permanently damaging yourself, like the way people do when they drink too much or smoke cigarettes or over eat, what's the problem? I mean, you do heroin once or twice and you're screwed for life. But apparently, the "cure" for cannabis abuse is to stop smoking cannabis. Thanks for the tip, Dr. Hirvonen. I could never have figured that one out on my own.

And for as much as they're trying to present this story as being a warning to pot smokers, it seems obvious that the correct message is: It's ok to smoke pot, just don't make a habit of it. And that's the sort of advice people really need to hear. Just as it is with everything else in life, it's all about moderation. No one ever died from smoking too much pot, but that doesn't mean you should live that way.

Obama to Steal Tea Party Thoughts; Comes Up Empty

2011-06-06T09:57:00.000-05:00

Here's a scary, scary video about how the Department of Homeland Security is secretly working to create Thought Crime Detection technology, which they try to flim-flam us about by covering the whole thing on Fox News. Because if there's one way to hide a government secret, it's to have the most watched news network in America do a story on it..

And the thing is, what they're working on is kinda cool, particularly if it could also be used in hospitals; to give people instant physicals. But there's nothing really scary about it, as it's really no different than what security guards and cops do anyway. The only difference is that instead of solely relying on our observations and instincts, we'd also be using technology to help us do it better. If anything, it would improve detection, as it'd make it more objective and reliable.

But to people who fear government, this can only mean one thing: The government is out to get us. After all, everything means the government is out to get us. You can have a story about police officers giving presents to poor children at Christmastime and see it warp into something involving child armies, welfare orphanages, and fixed elections. You'd be a fool to doubt it.

For them, it's not a question of if the government's going to enslave us; but when; and that answer is invariably, soon or sooner. And that's exactly what these guys imagine they want. Life is boring and complicated. Much easier to just grab a gun and take aim. They have no doubts that this will all work out for them in the end.

Hitler Obama and the Serpent Jews

And if you want a good laugh, go to the YouTube link and read the crazy comments.

Like these:

"they can go too hell they are the bad people test it on there selves. can they detect how much gas i got in my butt before i blow it ouit on them"

"ITS REALLY NAZI GERMANY !!! Where the fuck is HILTER when u need him ? No wait hes here Barry Soetoro aka OBAMA"

"satan always wanted to be as The Most High; now he's going for another power grab.But he will not hold on to it that long..

This is what happens when you let a bunch of European Khazarian Ashkenazim Jew religion converts steal the holy land in 1948; to pretend be the lost 12 chosen tribes of beta Ysrael.. They were once known as serpent people; now are"politically" considered holy people..Therefore let nothing surprise you..

This is all just protocols of zion(synagogue of satan)"

"u have bush to thank, war on terror, " either your with us, or with the terrorists" and still, americans stand idle letting now obama get away with anything. problem is tho, what happens in usa, happens in the rest of the western world. spreads like cancer. fucken dictators. kill em all, let God sort em out"

When all else fails, blame the Zionists and the blacks. And no, I didn't cherrypick those or alter them in away way. Those were the first four responses I saw in the comments section. And there are lots of comments like those. My favorite of these four was the guy who called Obama "Barry Soetoro." Look, we KNOW what his name is. It's Barack Hussein Obama II And there is NOTHING to suggest that that's not his real name.

So why on earth do these people insist upon implying that Barack Obama is REALLY Barry Soetoro? That can't possibly make any sense, unless we're to imagine that his parents gave him the last name of his future step-father, rather than his own father's name. That's ridiculous. And seriously, what the hell difference could it possibly make? As if the name "Barack Obama" is sooooo much better for taking over the world than "Barry Soetoro."

So we've got a section of our government engaging in a massive cover-up of Obama's real last name; including a fake birth certificate, fake birth announcements, and fake entire lifestory for reasons that don't even make sense to the idiots making these claims. But to these whackjobs, this is all just more proof that Obama isn't the nice guy he seems to be to everyone who's ever seen him.

After all, why would he go through all the trouble of faking his birth certificate, birth announcement, and life story, while defending it in court; unless it was lying? To think otherwise would imply that the most obvious explanation is the right one. Apparently, it's much easier to believe in nonsensical conspiracies than acknowledge the obvious.

Up Next: The Dream Police

And the whole idea that this could be a "Thought Crime Detection" system is ludicrous. I suspect that the real problem was Fox News' references to Minority Report, which set the seeds of fear into the hearts of these anti-government fear-mongers. Because this system CAN'T predict what you're thinking or what you're going to do. That's impossible. This thing is reading your heart rate and eye movements, not scanning your brain for pictures of porn. Jesus christ, it's people like this who get eaten by bears.

Besides, we don't use metal detectors to decide who to arrest either. You get arrested if they find evidence you're doing something wrong. But we've all been flagged by metal detectors, and sometimes searched, and we didn't go to jail for it. It'd be the same thing with these nervous detectors. Yet the commenters there were acting as if this made Obama the next Hitler; as if Hitler's big crime was trying to monitor his people; rather than, say...starting a world war while exterminating millions of people. Maybe I'm the crazy one, but I fail to see how these are equivalents.

And it's as if we're to imagine Obama's really behind all this, plotting the whole thing from the Oval Office.

Obama: So, how are our thought crime detection booths coming along?

Biden: They're coming along great, O. Just like you thought. I tried it out on Ayers today and knew exactly what he was thinking. It was cool beans.

Obama: Excellent, excellent. I really can't wait to start using them to find all the Real Americans so we can lock them up in our FEMA Concentration Camps and re-educate them, just like Glenn Beck said we would.

Biden: Sure is a good thing nobody listened to him.

Obama: Tell me about it.

Because in reality, Obama doesn't know anything about this. This is a research project within DHS and isn't the sort of thing Obama is pushing.. Yet these people seem to imagine Obama as some super-villain, as if he has nearly the time for such silly activities. It's much more comforting to imagine that someone really is in charge of everything, rather than admit that we're all just making it up as we go along. Even our presidents.

The Republican Pander

2011-06-03T03:34:00.000-05:00

I recently made the mistake of engaging in debate with a "friend" on Facebook, after seeing his wall post of an interview with former Louisiana Governor Buddy Roemer, writing:

I never thought I'd be saying anything like this, but it seems like the most pro-science candidate among the potential ones for the 2012 presidency is a republican!

And I thought that was a bit odd, as I couldn't see how any Republican could be more pro-science than Obama. But apparently, he didn't include Obama in that. In fact, he was basically only including Republicans; which means that he was expressing his surprise that the most pro-science Republican was a Republican.

I wrote a comment slightly teasing him about that, which quickly devolved into a very embarrassing debate in which the guy kept burying himself while using big words that didn't really mean anything. But his point wasn't to express surprise that a Republican was the most pro-science, but rather, to show a little support for a pro-science Republican, in hopes that it might somehow encourage other Republicans to be pro-science; which would in turn make Obama want to be more pro-science.

And I'm sorry, but that's simply delusional thinking. There is NOTHING that will make a Republican be pro-science. Yeah, when being interviewed by a scientist, they might pay it lip service. But when every Republican is forced to pretend to not understand evolution and insists that we can't afford education because the rich shouldn't pay more taxes...there is no pro-science to be had.

And there's nothing that can change that, at least not in the next ten years. The Republican Party has lost so many moderates and realists that the loony fringe has taken over; and that means that if you want to win in the Republican Party, you have to appease that fringe. It's a race to the bottom and no Republican is immune to it.

Lugar Sells Out

And I was thinking about this when reading that Sen. Dick Lugar (R-Panderville) has decided to throw his support to the Fair Tax; apparently in an attempt to show Republicans that he's crazy enough to deserve their support. Sure, he's got a longtime record as a true conservative, but his Crazy Cred is fairly low, so he's suddenly finding the need to bolster it with talk of radical tax schemes that any serious person should laugh at.

And what's saddest about the Fair Tax sham is how its own supporters can't even agree as to what it does. Two-thirds of the time, they'll insist that it's a much better way to raise revenues...while the rest of the time they're admitting that they support it because it will greatly cut government spending, which is a key goal of theirs. Two-thirds of the time they'll insist that it'll finally make the rich pay more taxes...while the rest of the time they're admitting that it's about getting the poor to pay their fair share and remove the burden from the rich.

And really, I just wish we could get these two sides to argue amongst themselves, to finally hash out what it is they think this is going to do. Because the third that's being honest are saying the EXACT SAME STUFF the liberals are, yet when the liberals say it, we get attacked. If a liberal correctly states that the Fair Tax rate would have to be extremely high to be revenue neutral, or mention how it'll mean the rich pay less taxes, we're attacked for it.

We'll be told that this is all a conspiracy by elitist economists and their wealthy paymasters to keep us down. But then on the very same message board, you'll hear about how great it'll be to use this to cut spending and finally let the poor pay their fair share, while showing everyone how much they're truly paying in taxes...which the rich pay far more of.

Seriously, here's a messageboard I happened to see that crap on, and never once did they think to argue amongst themselves. Both sides were making mutually exclusive arguments, and they didn't even seem to notice. Because of course, what all these people REALLY want is for their personal taxes to go down. They've convinced themselves that they're getting screwed by the IRS, and see the Fair Tax as a way of sticking it back at them; regardless of whether they understand what this will really do to them.

Argumentem ad Idiotem

I think my two favorite comments are by guys who dispute the claim by Congress' Joint Committee of Taxation that a revenue-neutral Fair Tax might have to be 57%, by essentially arguing "Come on!"

Here they are:

We have a very hard time estimating the impact on tax revenue with a percentage change in the current system; how can we pretend to know the revenue-neutral level of a consumption tax? You have to be pretty arrogant to come out with 57%. It just shows that we'll be analyzing this for the next 100 years

Yes, how arrogant of Congress' Joint Committee of Taxation to come up with that number. This guy geniuenly seems to be arguing that because it's too complex for us to figure out what the proper rate should be, that we should just go ahead and do it. I mean, how dare we be so arrogant that we attempt to understand what we're doing before we do it?

And then there's this genius:

Some would have us believe that the tax would have to be 57% or higher to be revenue neutral. Perhaps 145%!!! 100% of our income would have to go to paying this tax leaving us nothing to buy food with. We would all starve!

Or just maybe if it is revenue neutral, it will be revenue neutral. And it can easily be adjusted up or down to make it revenue neutral. Good Lord, people, that is a simple, simple issue to fix. The only question is its incidence.

Somehow, for as much huff and puff this guy gives, he kinda failed to make any point at all. It's like he doesn't even understand what revenue neutral means. He goes on to gripe that economists are "rich kids and have no direct knowledge of anyone who actually works for a living."

Because yes, the best way to understand how to structure our tax code is to know people who work for a living. That's it. You can study for years and years and crunch all kinds of silly numbers with the other rich kids, but unless you know a mechanic, you'll be too elitist to know that a 30% national sales tax is enough to raise as much money as all our current Federal Taxes combined; including payroll taxes.

I mean, cuz hey, if the initial 30% rate isn't neutral, we'll just adjust it up and down until it IS enough. Surely, the rate won't be so arrogant as to be 57% or 100%; otherwise, we'd starve. And we all know why that wouldn't happen, so it doesn't even need to be said.

As was to be expected, the people who support lamebrained tax xchemes are, in fact, lamebrained. And somehow, the vast majority of these people are conservatives.