There ain't no drought in California
There ain't no flames in Hell
The snow don't fall in North Dakota
His hair is free of gel.
The rain it runs into the sea
Because of Uncle Sam
It's all about some kind of fish
But Trump will build a dam!
"There can't be no climate change"
His beer is always cold
And all his lies are really great
The finest ever told.
The bear it's said, goes to the woods
When he needs to take a dump.
America goes to the polls
To vote for Donald Trump
Monday, May 30, 2016
Greed.
Greed: everyone's talking about it, but as with much of what remains of our uncommon language, everyone has his own definition and of course that's necessary, because everyone in his way, or more comfortably: everyone else in my way is greedy. In fact, one could say that life itself is greedy by nature and without that lust for more, that innate, inescapable drive to eat and reproduce, thrive and survive this would be a barren planet. Greed is a force of nature, the breath of life.
But greed is bad, and every election cycle gives us reminders that the rich are greedy, the poor are greedy, the "corporations" and "Wall Street;" the bankers, the welfare queens, "Big Pharma" and all the "takers" are greedy. That's another way we have of expressing our greedy grudge, our greedy jealousy of everyone we don't think deserves what they have when we deserve it more.
As I said, everyone has his own dictionary and many words in it are of a double entry book keeping sort. If you support Bernie Sanders for instance, you have to discount his mad lust for the White House as something other than greed. You have to use the other definition. Greed is altruism. That greed is good. The greed that produces a Bill Gates or a Larry Ellison or an Andrew Carnegie? Well I'll leave that to you because all our dictionaries are edited by our own greed and self-importance and narcissism and the words are just things to throw at straw men anyway. It's all about winners and losers and how each hates the other.
I could mention that a fundamental drive for more is the force behind Capitalism, amongst other things, and although in some circumstances, altruism, compassion and a feeling for justice can control that force, at times and in places, we need more in the way of control, just as we need to control, in our greed, the other forces of nature to benefit from them.
But we can't say that out loud, because the greedy Libertarians would say your car would be more efficient without brakes or a throttle or a steering wheel. Regulation and the law itself is the enemy of freedom as every libertarian knows. I would suggest it, but that would make me a greedy taker, a Commie, a bleeding heart eager to hand out "free stuff" at the taxpayer's expense -- or something entirely different depending on the greedy eyes of the observer It would put me in the pocket of greedy Wall Street too and Big Bad Pharma, unless you use some other dictionary or some other way of disguising your greed for power and control and dressing it up as a "vision" and selling your prejudice and jealousy as principle.
Are you a Gump for Trump? Do you wan't to pillory Hillary or are you a bully for Bernie? Does it matter. We're all a bunch of greedy bastards anyway.
But greed is bad, and every election cycle gives us reminders that the rich are greedy, the poor are greedy, the "corporations" and "Wall Street;" the bankers, the welfare queens, "Big Pharma" and all the "takers" are greedy. That's another way we have of expressing our greedy grudge, our greedy jealousy of everyone we don't think deserves what they have when we deserve it more.
As I said, everyone has his own dictionary and many words in it are of a double entry book keeping sort. If you support Bernie Sanders for instance, you have to discount his mad lust for the White House as something other than greed. You have to use the other definition. Greed is altruism. That greed is good. The greed that produces a Bill Gates or a Larry Ellison or an Andrew Carnegie? Well I'll leave that to you because all our dictionaries are edited by our own greed and self-importance and narcissism and the words are just things to throw at straw men anyway. It's all about winners and losers and how each hates the other.
I could mention that a fundamental drive for more is the force behind Capitalism, amongst other things, and although in some circumstances, altruism, compassion and a feeling for justice can control that force, at times and in places, we need more in the way of control, just as we need to control, in our greed, the other forces of nature to benefit from them.
But we can't say that out loud, because the greedy Libertarians would say your car would be more efficient without brakes or a throttle or a steering wheel. Regulation and the law itself is the enemy of freedom as every libertarian knows. I would suggest it, but that would make me a greedy taker, a Commie, a bleeding heart eager to hand out "free stuff" at the taxpayer's expense -- or something entirely different depending on the greedy eyes of the observer It would put me in the pocket of greedy Wall Street too and Big Bad Pharma, unless you use some other dictionary or some other way of disguising your greed for power and control and dressing it up as a "vision" and selling your prejudice and jealousy as principle.
Are you a Gump for Trump? Do you wan't to pillory Hillary or are you a bully for Bernie? Does it matter. We're all a bunch of greedy bastards anyway.
Sunday, May 22, 2016
I grow old
What does it feel like to be old? Of course that's far too complex a question to have a simple answer, but one of the reminders of that thing you try to forget is that so many people around you seem to know so little. I'm reading a story set in the 1950's, generally realistic until you read about how the driver of the 1955 Chevy pulls over and turns on his emergency flashers. You may be puzzled at my amusement, but they were not furnished in those days, not for another ten years.
I'm watching one of those programs where "experts" poke around in attics looking for treasures. a mid 60's table radio is discovered and the hunters marvel that it has tubes.
Go ask some thirty something what "Ethyl" is or how you dial a phone, or if he remembers the Sylvania "Halo Light TV." He won't know. Chips and transmitters indeed, it brings tears to my aging eyes.
Ever notice all those period dramas where someone turns on the 1930 Motorola "tombstone" radio ind the sound comes on instantly? Yep, it sometimes seems like everyone was born yesterday. It's because you're old jack and that's a fact.
I'm watching one of those programs where "experts" poke around in attics looking for treasures. a mid 60's table radio is discovered and the hunters marvel that it has tubes.
"Look - tooobs! That's what they had then before the chips and transmitters came in. This could be valuable"It wasn't worth more than a few bucks at most, even if it worked. Obviously he has no idea about the history of radio or what a transistor is.
Ever notice all those period dramas where someone turns on the 1930 Motorola "tombstone" radio ind the sound comes on instantly? Yep, it sometimes seems like everyone was born yesterday. It's because you're old jack and that's a fact.
Donald Trump, Gunslinger
Or Bullslinger: take your pick
He's a long time member and so are his "boys" Donald Trump told the NRA. I have no idea if that's true or whether his girls are duck hunters. I do know whether I think that's a reprehensible organization -- and I do.
Before you put the "liberaliberaliberal" disc on your Victrola, I'll continue on and say that since 1993 when The NRA began to use the the Oklahoma City bombing and the holocaust in Waco, Texas as fund raising fodder and began to justify terrorism in the name of the second amendment, it lost any credibility as an advocacy for anything but arms manufacturers and insurrectionists.
As you may recall George H.W. Bush resigned his membership because of statements about "jack booted thugs" deserving to be blown up along with their children and I'm sure you know that Quick Draw LaPierre is still at the helm of that organization. Of course the tired trope about the license to kill is also a battle flag of some allegedly left-leaning organizations, but we do live in a time of the war of all against all and war justifies all lies, or so it's said.
Picturing the young Donald at high noon on Main Street in Queens, reaching for his matched pair of Colts is worthy of a giggle, but pudgy old Don, the comb-over king isn't so cute at all and I'm not laughing. He's attempting to rally the well-regulated militia by lying about Hillary Clinton - our new national pastime.
If she's elected, he says, she'll somehow make the second amendment go away and he's "not going to let that happen," as though any president any anything like the power to amend the constitution, particularly an amendment with a huge following.
In fact she's never suggested that and has publicly supported it as fundamental, although the notion that a manufacturer of a legal product that is not defective can be sued if that product is used illegally seems like nothing less than an attempt to kick the legs out from under the concept of law itself, but I digress.
Hillary Clinton has a lot of haters on all sides and if she is to have some hope of defeating the Flushing Kid she's got to sound more moderate about guns. The Democrats, as the public sees that party, have pandered too long to the anti-gun phobics, spent too much time fudging figures and hyping up the danger despite two decades of declining gun violence. It's the main issue today in the minds of a huge number of Americans including many Democrats, and their votes hinge entirely on a candidate sharing that magic thinking that is the hallmark. She needs a big image change and she needs it now and the Trump-happy media need to cooperate.
Of course I don't want to see her duck hunting in a camo pants suit, We remember Kerry with a shotgun and Dukakis riding in a tank and it would backfire, but make no mistake this is a gun-loving country and people will vote for a megalomaniac liar with no morals or manners before it will consider Hillary the gun-grabber.
Before you put the "liberaliberaliberal" disc on your Victrola, I'll continue on and say that since 1993 when The NRA began to use the the Oklahoma City bombing and the holocaust in Waco, Texas as fund raising fodder and began to justify terrorism in the name of the second amendment, it lost any credibility as an advocacy for anything but arms manufacturers and insurrectionists.
"In Clinton's administration, if you have a badge, you have the government's go-ahead to harass, intimidate, even murder law-abiding citizens." — Wayne LaPierre, 1993 NRA fundraising letter. —
As you may recall George H.W. Bush resigned his membership because of statements about "jack booted thugs" deserving to be blown up along with their children and I'm sure you know that Quick Draw LaPierre is still at the helm of that organization. Of course the tired trope about the license to kill is also a battle flag of some allegedly left-leaning organizations, but we do live in a time of the war of all against all and war justifies all lies, or so it's said.
Picturing the young Donald at high noon on Main Street in Queens, reaching for his matched pair of Colts is worthy of a giggle, but pudgy old Don, the comb-over king isn't so cute at all and I'm not laughing. He's attempting to rally the well-regulated militia by lying about Hillary Clinton - our new national pastime.
If she's elected, he says, she'll somehow make the second amendment go away and he's "not going to let that happen," as though any president any anything like the power to amend the constitution, particularly an amendment with a huge following.
In fact she's never suggested that and has publicly supported it as fundamental, although the notion that a manufacturer of a legal product that is not defective can be sued if that product is used illegally seems like nothing less than an attempt to kick the legs out from under the concept of law itself, but I digress.
Hillary Clinton has a lot of haters on all sides and if she is to have some hope of defeating the Flushing Kid she's got to sound more moderate about guns. The Democrats, as the public sees that party, have pandered too long to the anti-gun phobics, spent too much time fudging figures and hyping up the danger despite two decades of declining gun violence. It's the main issue today in the minds of a huge number of Americans including many Democrats, and their votes hinge entirely on a candidate sharing that magic thinking that is the hallmark. She needs a big image change and she needs it now and the Trump-happy media need to cooperate.
Of course I don't want to see her duck hunting in a camo pants suit, We remember Kerry with a shotgun and Dukakis riding in a tank and it would backfire, but make no mistake this is a gun-loving country and people will vote for a megalomaniac liar with no morals or manners before it will consider Hillary the gun-grabber.
Wednesday, May 18, 2016
Brown Shirts for Bernie
By now I'm used to the trolls. I've been blogging for a long time but of late the most viciously personal ad hominem has come, not from the Republican Right but from the Bernie Boys. I blocked someone on another venue yesterday after I mentioned to a Bernie Bully that by hoping that a candidate Clinton would fail and thus cause the nation to fail, he was taking words out of Rush Limbaugh's prayer book.
I don't think I've seen such ugly invective since I graduated from Middle school and believe me, I've read some nasty stuff in my years on-line. I am lucky, says he, that he doesn't have my address or he would kill me.
Sanders Supporters Prepared to fight, I read this morning. Indeed they are. You can almost hear the sound of a Munich Bierstube echoing with the sound of stomping jackboots and Bernie's Brownshirts yelling Seig Heil !
Yes, they're ready to fight, because it's not about convincing the public that Big Brother B has a rational plan to address what ails us or a rational view of a complex world coupled with the ability of any president to do all those revolutionary things without an actual revolution. It's about the fight, the struggle, the Jihad, the Kampf, the Crusade. It's about how irredeemably evil the other side is.
It's all about the urge to fight, the narcissistic lack of introspection. Just close your eyes and fly right into the enemy battleship called "Wall Street" because, as Barry Goldwater supporters used to shout: "In your heart you know he's right." "The bankers are destroying our country" and where have we heard that one before? Sieg Heil indeed.
It's not about qualifications or experience or even about the possibility or even the legality of putting all that pie up into the sky, it's about BERNIE! St Bernie of the beer hall, leader of the Sanderistas - a Che Guevara for El Norte, the Donald Trump of the Democrats.
I don't think I've seen such ugly invective since I graduated from Middle school and believe me, I've read some nasty stuff in my years on-line. I am lucky, says he, that he doesn't have my address or he would kill me.
Sanders Supporters Prepared to fight, I read this morning. Indeed they are. You can almost hear the sound of a Munich Bierstube echoing with the sound of stomping jackboots and Bernie's Brownshirts yelling Seig Heil !
Yes, they're ready to fight, because it's not about convincing the public that Big Brother B has a rational plan to address what ails us or a rational view of a complex world coupled with the ability of any president to do all those revolutionary things without an actual revolution. It's about the fight, the struggle, the Jihad, the Kampf, the Crusade. It's about how irredeemably evil the other side is.
It's all about the urge to fight, the narcissistic lack of introspection. Just close your eyes and fly right into the enemy battleship called "Wall Street" because, as Barry Goldwater supporters used to shout: "In your heart you know he's right." "The bankers are destroying our country" and where have we heard that one before? Sieg Heil indeed.
It's not about qualifications or experience or even about the possibility or even the legality of putting all that pie up into the sky, it's about BERNIE! St Bernie of the beer hall, leader of the Sanderistas - a Che Guevara for El Norte, the Donald Trump of the Democrats.
Saturday, May 14, 2016
It ain't me!
So Trumpty Dumpty says it wasn't him on the phone posing as a spokesman. He says his tax returns are nobody's business either.
I hear his campaign is coming out with a song:
It ain't me, it ain't me, no, ain't my voice that's on the phone
It ain't me, it ain't me boys, blowin' on my own horn.
Some folks are born silver spoon in hand,
Lord, don't they help themselves, at all.
But when the taxman comes to the door,
Lord, the house looks like a rummage sale.
It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no millionaire's son, no.
It ain't me, it ain't me; I ain't no fortunate one, no.
I hear his campaign is coming out with a song:
It ain't me, it ain't me, no, ain't my voice that's on the phone
It ain't me, it ain't me boys, blowin' on my own horn.
Some folks are born silver spoon in hand,
Lord, don't they help themselves, at all.
But when the taxman comes to the door,
Lord, the house looks like a rummage sale.
It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no millionaire's son, no.
It ain't me, it ain't me; I ain't no fortunate one, no.
Friday, May 13, 2016
Humpty Trumpty Built a Great Wall.
"But now the big banks are back in the party, pushing for Hillary Clinton to beat Donald Trump."
Writes Bill Moyers and if you're like most people, seeking signs and marshaling facts to back up your emotionally derived and factless delusions, you'll read that as evidence that she will be controlled by that nebulous straw man "wall street."
Didn't really work all the other times financial interests contributed to other candidates, and of course no matter how much some brokerage house gave her, we don't know how much they gave to others, do we? And of course the only reason people heavily involved in managing the wealth of nations would contribute is because she's a patsy, right? It's not that highly informed and educated people don't believe Trumptastic Mister Shortfingers is going to make America Great like it was in 1862 or 1929. It's Wall Street. It's Capitalism and we all know how crooked that is until anyone mentions Socialism.
That's the news in America -- a farrago of fallacy being served even by those presumably smart enough to tell shit from shoe polish selling it to others who think it's shampoo.
Trump is trustworthy because he's rich and Hillary must be a crook because she's rich. How do we understand this? Better ask Beyonce because Prince is dead and all the while we hear them pissing themselves lest God suddenly return to kill us all because some former dude walks into the lady's room. I mean that's never happened before without at least a plague of toads ensuing.
Look, Democracy in America doesn't have a chance. It's failing fast because America is the last stronghold of stupid. We've used miraculous information technology to create and maintain ignorance, feed delusion, dress up fake arguments as news and make everyone incoherently outraged on demand. Hot and cold running Fox and that old slime religion every Sunday. What a great country and soon to be greater, or whiter if you prefer when we round up and deport 11 million people, establish a State religion and close other houses of worship. Great again, like when the Conquistadors were here and the Indian hunters and slave drivers and we all had good solid Anglo names like Drumph.
Saturday, April 30, 2016
Can I Get a Witness?
One of the contributing factors in the difficulty (I almost wrote impossibility) of that "discussion" about race in America we're constantly told we need to have is that victims in America have tended to set themselves above advice or criticism and thereby gain the right to direct any conversation in it's course or conclusions. "for are we not victims and are not our critics all evil?" I'm sure that by this sentence the gavel is already descending on the verdict that I'm a racist, But enough of that, lets talk specifics.
I read in the Daily Kos just now that African American poet Crystal Valentine was deeply offended by Megyn Kelly's assertion that Jesus was a white man. Now any statements about Jesus need to be qualified as to whether we're talking about Jesus of Nazareth, the failed Jewish revolutionary or Jesus Christ of myth. Obviously Megyn and Crystal are engaged in equivocation, or more specifically, the fallacy of equivocation. Those are two different characters. Those who come to Jesus through Sunday school or through Christian education are talking about someone either half god or entirely god or even, like Gilgamesh of Uruk, one third divine. He was a man of peace come to mysteriously erase inherited sin that without him could never otherwise be erased. He died and was resurrected, although the family of myths diverges in the details.
There's absolutely no historical evidence for this Jesus so perhaps one can call him Chinese or a Swede or African with equal authority. If I were part of that "conversation" I might have pointed out that the Jesus that might actually have been wasn't Celtic or blond, he was a Jew without any physical feature we know of to distinguish him from other Jewish men at the time.
It is this mythological Jesus Ms. Valentine refers to when she says:
I read in the Daily Kos just now that African American poet Crystal Valentine was deeply offended by Megyn Kelly's assertion that Jesus was a white man. Now any statements about Jesus need to be qualified as to whether we're talking about Jesus of Nazareth, the failed Jewish revolutionary or Jesus Christ of myth. Obviously Megyn and Crystal are engaged in equivocation, or more specifically, the fallacy of equivocation. Those are two different characters. Those who come to Jesus through Sunday school or through Christian education are talking about someone either half god or entirely god or even, like Gilgamesh of Uruk, one third divine. He was a man of peace come to mysteriously erase inherited sin that without him could never otherwise be erased. He died and was resurrected, although the family of myths diverges in the details.
There's absolutely no historical evidence for this Jesus so perhaps one can call him Chinese or a Swede or African with equal authority. If I were part of that "conversation" I might have pointed out that the Jesus that might actually have been wasn't Celtic or blond, he was a Jew without any physical feature we know of to distinguish him from other Jewish men at the time.
It is this mythological Jesus Ms. Valentine refers to when she says:
“How can she says Jesus was a white man when he died the blackest way possible? With his hands up, with his mother watching."
The answer is easy and history gives weight to her statement, all the poetry and passion, all the sound and fury notwithstanding. It's just as valid and more so to say he died in the most Jewish way possible. In fact the notion that only descendants of American slaves have ever been persecuted and oppressed and no one elses experience can be referenced or compared is a bit obnoxious. Jewish lives matter.
So I'm sorry, all poetic references to the child saint of Ferguson notwithstanding, Jesus was a Jew from the Northern Kingdom and likely from a tiny hamlet called Nazareth and came to Jerusalem to oust the Romans and their collaborators with divine help.but we really can't be sure. He may be fictional, he may be a composite of the many rebels seeking God's help by purifying the people. His ethnic background is not irrelevant, it's essential and the image of him as a persecuted ex American slave is poetic license with no power to influence objective views of history. Jesus the man belongs to the Jews, Jesus the Savior is anyone's because we make him up as we go along, whether or not you call myth as a witness, and by doing so se forfeit the right to claim that he was or was not anything at all.
Thursday, April 28, 2016
Common Sense
" No nation ought to be without a debt."
But everyone today is an Economist and everyone knows debt is bad and the secret to good government is parsimony. After all, a government is just like a business, isn't it?
"The world needs more U.S. Government debt"
wrote Narayana Kocherlakota in Bloomberg View yesterday. He is the Lionel W. McKenzie professor of economics at the University of Rochester who served as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis from 2009 through 2015.
He feels the immense earning power of the United States allows us to produce the extremely safe bonds the world wants and which are in short supply. No business would act like this, he says. A corporation with such a safe cash flow and such low borrowing costs would issue debt to pay shareholders and fund expansion. Analogously, the US government could cut taxes and build infrastructure. Instead market forces steer capital into risky investments like sub-prime mortgages and businesses and households are reluctant to spend, keeping short term rates low.
Every nation should have a debt and yet, because of political pressure from a party teaching the voters that personal debt and government debt are the same thing, artificial constraints are imposed on debt, contrary to market demand:
" constraints that punish savers, choke off economic growth and could sow the seeds of the next financial crisis."But of course the ultimate test of policy is not whether it works: whether it increases prosperity and stability, the test is whether it sells to a public kept on the edge of panic and outrage by political interests. Platitudes, and attitudes and outright deception rule and apparently we like it that way. We look for leaders with no experience, we look to those with no experience for advice on world markets, fiscal and monetary policy and sleazy, vulgar and misogynistic real estate developers for advice on social and ethical problems and we develop a debt that can't be repaid and that keeps us like a ship taking on water with a captain who doesn't believe in bilge pumps. No nation ought to be like this.
Wednesday, April 27, 2016
Fear and Loathing in Target
Are these the best or worst of times? Probably the answer is yes, but I have to argue that they are the craziest of times. Is it a symptom of this national insanity that any organization with the word Liberty or Freedom or Patriot in the title is mostly about extremist politics? Of course I have an example: it's the Liberty Counsel * which of course has nothing to do with Liberty and advocates for special powers and legal exemptions for evangelical Christians. Now, when you really think about it, it really isn't about Christianity as that family of religions usually likes to be defined, but about restricting personal liberty when it comes to matters of sex or gender or whatever language is approved by other organizations that aren't about what they're calling themselves. No, the Liberty Counsel is about restricting personal liberty and substituting a rigid code of behavior derived from. . . well from them actually.
So it's no surprise to read that the president of this august body, one Anita Staver is raving about bringing a gun into the public restrooms at Target. Target, guns, ha ha ha. And although in just about any State there's no law against doing that if you have a carry permit, Target has a 'no guns' policy in their stores, so Mrs. Liberty here is openly ignoring the Liberty of Target and private property rights in general and possibly engaging in Armed Trespass in particular. Of course the Target Crapper Patrol would have to see that gun as well as they would have to see the gonads of an alleged gender bender and neither is likely to happen as things stand in toilets everywhere. There's never been a problem except in the evil minds of the New Inquisition.
But the question isn't the legality but the alleged necessity of doing so, now that Target has made it their policy to allow transgendered people to use the loo of choice. Yes, I know, there has never been a problem with that. Department store washrooms during business hours are not a dangerous place and transgendered or androgynous or even scary people with tattoos have always used them and you never noticed. I'd worry more about Christ-Crazy gonad obsessed old women with guns and a heart full of hate.
No this grandstand play is about nothing other than a power play by Christo-Nazis who oppose equal rights under the law for people they choose to hate for religious reasons. They have gone to court to protect the right of pubic employees to get paid for a job they refuse to do because of their twisted religion. No, It's a threat of armed violence designed to create an atmosphere of fear and face it, Target has as much right to say who uses their toilets as they do to call the cops on old quick draw Staver, and Rupaul has the same right to keep and bear arms as anybody else.
So let me say this about that as Nixon used to say: I just may begin to frequent the liberty Council and the other organizations it controls: **
And when I do, I'm going to carry a concealed weapon or two. And why not? You're all about Liberty aren't you? That's right Anita, I'm coming soon to a crapper near you and no telling what I might be wearing or bearing.
* Listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group.
** Also affiliated with Liberty University Law School, which was founded by the Rev. Jerry Falwell and Liberty Counsel.
So it's no surprise to read that the president of this august body, one Anita Staver is raving about bringing a gun into the public restrooms at Target. Target, guns, ha ha ha. And although in just about any State there's no law against doing that if you have a carry permit, Target has a 'no guns' policy in their stores, so Mrs. Liberty here is openly ignoring the Liberty of Target and private property rights in general and possibly engaging in Armed Trespass in particular. Of course the Target Crapper Patrol would have to see that gun as well as they would have to see the gonads of an alleged gender bender and neither is likely to happen as things stand in toilets everywhere. There's never been a problem except in the evil minds of the New Inquisition.
But the question isn't the legality but the alleged necessity of doing so, now that Target has made it their policy to allow transgendered people to use the loo of choice. Yes, I know, there has never been a problem with that. Department store washrooms during business hours are not a dangerous place and transgendered or androgynous or even scary people with tattoos have always used them and you never noticed. I'd worry more about Christ-Crazy gonad obsessed old women with guns and a heart full of hate.
No this grandstand play is about nothing other than a power play by Christo-Nazis who oppose equal rights under the law for people they choose to hate for religious reasons. They have gone to court to protect the right of pubic employees to get paid for a job they refuse to do because of their twisted religion. No, It's a threat of armed violence designed to create an atmosphere of fear and face it, Target has as much right to say who uses their toilets as they do to call the cops on old quick draw Staver, and Rupaul has the same right to keep and bear arms as anybody else.
So let me say this about that as Nixon used to say: I just may begin to frequent the liberty Council and the other organizations it controls: **
- Luke 18:27 Foundation, Inc.
- Liberty Counsel Action, Inc.
- Liberty Counsel Action
- Freedom Federation, Inc.
- Liberty Action PAC, Inc.
- Salt and Light Council
And when I do, I'm going to carry a concealed weapon or two. And why not? You're all about Liberty aren't you? That's right Anita, I'm coming soon to a crapper near you and no telling what I might be wearing or bearing.
* Listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group.
** Also affiliated with Liberty University Law School, which was founded by the Rev. Jerry Falwell and Liberty Counsel.
Tuesday, April 26, 2016
Study This!
Seek, and ye shall find, it says in the Gospels, much to the cynical amusement of those looking for things they never seem to attain, or acquire. If it's freedom you're seeking, your not going to find it if the Gospel Growlers can help it. Freedom is dangerous and so is Democracy and we have studies to show it.
I'm sure Utah Governor Gary Herbert is going to find what he's seeking in the studies he's using taxpayer money to fund: studies to prove that pornography is a public health hazard which creates a "toxic environment." Of course it's all an attempt to preach religion from the Governor's office and nothing more. But it's good to know that there is, at last, some notice of toxic environments in Utah, even if he's not actually talking about the environment we call air or water or land or even a toxin that actually poisons anything or any one. No, those nebulous but harmful effects need to be created, hence the study. We need to start studying pornography keeping in mind that it's bad, very bad: it's
I have to wonder if the public health "impacts" they most assuredly will find will be restricted to Utah, since they don't seem to appear in places where pornography is everywhere and I wonder if the "impact" of rampant abuse of women and young girls that is ignored or tolerated or swept under the rug in Utah will come under review here. I suppose it won't yet we can be sure there will be "links" to all sorts of health risks even if we have to invent consequences to be linked to. Something will be needed if the study bothers to examine countries whe
After all we can start with the premise that "pornography is rape" thanks to extremists of another stripe and after that the only hard part is not to talk about old Mormon men with harems of little girls and other forms of Latter Day female slavery in Utah and elsewhere.
But I don't want to blame it all on Mormons. The GOP has been straightjacket-worthy for decades, ignoring the real problems threatening our health and well-being, our freedom and survival, in favor of ranting about dirty pictures. The Tampa GOP convention in 2012 was quite obsessive on getting "tough" about pornography and I'm sure we can remember Ken Starr from previous campaigns attempting to criminalize even medical terminology concerned with sex on the internet. It's the Republican disease as much as a Christian disease but of course today there isn't enough difference to make it seem constitutional.
I might suggest that Evangelicals, religious fanatics of all sorts and the Republican Party are the real public health hazards: obfuscating public health programs, opposing individual liberty, thwarting science and supporting the oppression of "gentiles."
Isn't it funny - and by funny I mean tragic - that as a free country we encourage things that have no place in a free country?
I'm sure Utah Governor Gary Herbert is going to find what he's seeking in the studies he's using taxpayer money to fund: studies to prove that pornography is a public health hazard which creates a "toxic environment." Of course it's all an attempt to preach religion from the Governor's office and nothing more. But it's good to know that there is, at last, some notice of toxic environments in Utah, even if he's not actually talking about the environment we call air or water or land or even a toxin that actually poisons anything or any one. No, those nebulous but harmful effects need to be created, hence the study. We need to start studying pornography keeping in mind that it's bad, very bad: it's
"a public health hazard leading to a broad spectrum of individual and public health impacts and societal harms."It reminds me of Richard Nixon's studies of Marijuana intended to back up the bogus claims used to criminalize it. When the studies showed no harm to the stuff, he fired the researchers. But this isn't a medical or scientific study and it assumes the conclusion that grows out of the toxic environment we call religion. Truth by assertion is unassailable. Support by evidence produced by fake studies is simply window dressing. When it comes to research; those "studies" we always hear about find only what he who pays for them is seeking. These studies tend to be the building blocks of marketing if not also the bricks paving the road to hell. You pays yer money and you gets your study, complete with an actor in a lab coat and a clipboard. If it's freedom you're seeking, your not going to find it if the Gospel Growlers can help it.
I have to wonder if the public health "impacts" they most assuredly will find will be restricted to Utah, since they don't seem to appear in places where pornography is everywhere and I wonder if the "impact" of rampant abuse of women and young girls that is ignored or tolerated or swept under the rug in Utah will come under review here. I suppose it won't yet we can be sure there will be "links" to all sorts of health risks even if we have to invent consequences to be linked to. Something will be needed if the study bothers to examine countries whe
After all we can start with the premise that "pornography is rape" thanks to extremists of another stripe and after that the only hard part is not to talk about old Mormon men with harems of little girls and other forms of Latter Day female slavery in Utah and elsewhere.
But I don't want to blame it all on Mormons. The GOP has been straightjacket-worthy for decades, ignoring the real problems threatening our health and well-being, our freedom and survival, in favor of ranting about dirty pictures. The Tampa GOP convention in 2012 was quite obsessive on getting "tough" about pornography and I'm sure we can remember Ken Starr from previous campaigns attempting to criminalize even medical terminology concerned with sex on the internet. It's the Republican disease as much as a Christian disease but of course today there isn't enough difference to make it seem constitutional.
I might suggest that Evangelicals, religious fanatics of all sorts and the Republican Party are the real public health hazards: obfuscating public health programs, opposing individual liberty, thwarting science and supporting the oppression of "gentiles."
Isn't it funny - and by funny I mean tragic - that as a free country we encourage things that have no place in a free country?
Friday, April 22, 2016
Boris the Mayor
It's good to be reminded in these trying times, that American politicians don't have a monopoly or a patent on bigotry, ignorance and plain old stupidity, much less the diplomatic incompetence to make an enemy of your best ally.
Take Boris Johnson, mayor of London, who tells the world that Barack Obama has an "ancestral dislike of the British Empire." because his father was born in Kenya. Now it may be true that there is some animosity in Kenya as there is in so many places where the British Empire viciously suppressed liberty and opportunity in a flamboyantly racist fashion, but Obama could have easily, if such a thing as "ancestral animosity" is a real phenomenon, come to dislike the British Empire from his mother's complex, but partially Irish ancestry. But do we -- and by we I mean the world -- have to remind Boris that EVERYBODY HATES THE GODDAMN BRITISH EMPIRE? The Chinese still hate your guts nor is there any lack of memory in Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent or Africa of the British scourge.
Of all the stupid excuses to insult someone trying to talk sense into the British.
Take Boris Johnson, mayor of London, who tells the world that Barack Obama has an "ancestral dislike of the British Empire." because his father was born in Kenya. Now it may be true that there is some animosity in Kenya as there is in so many places where the British Empire viciously suppressed liberty and opportunity in a flamboyantly racist fashion, but Obama could have easily, if such a thing as "ancestral animosity" is a real phenomenon, come to dislike the British Empire from his mother's complex, but partially Irish ancestry. But do we -- and by we I mean the world -- have to remind Boris that EVERYBODY HATES THE GODDAMN BRITISH EMPIRE? The Chinese still hate your guts nor is there any lack of memory in Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent or Africa of the British scourge.
Of all the stupid excuses to insult someone trying to talk sense into the British.
Boris the Mayor
It's good to be reminded in these trying times, that American politicians don't have a monopoly or a patent on bigotry, ignorance and plain old stupidity, much less the diplomatic incompetence to make an enemy of your best ally.
Take Boris Johnson, mayor of London, who tells the world that Barack Obama has an "ancestral dislike of the British Empire." because his father was born in Kenya. Now it may be true that there is some animosity in Kenya as there is in so many places where the British Empire viciously suppressed liberty and opportunity in a flamboyantly racist fashion, but Obama could have easily, if such a thing as "ancestral animosity" is a real phenomenon, come to dislike the British Empire from his mother's complex, but partially Irish ancestry. But do we -- and by we I mean the world -- have to remind Boris that EVERYBODY HATES THE GODDAMN BRITISH EMPIRE? The Chinese still hate your guts nor is there any lack of memory in China, Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent or Africa of the British scourge.
Of all the stupid excuses to insult someone trying to talk sense into the British.
Take Boris Johnson, mayor of London, who tells the world that Barack Obama has an "ancestral dislike of the British Empire." because his father was born in Kenya. Now it may be true that there is some animosity in Kenya as there is in so many places where the British Empire viciously suppressed liberty and opportunity in a flamboyantly racist fashion, but Obama could have easily, if such a thing as "ancestral animosity" is a real phenomenon, come to dislike the British Empire from his mother's complex, but partially Irish ancestry. But do we -- and by we I mean the world -- have to remind Boris that EVERYBODY HATES THE GODDAMN BRITISH EMPIRE? The Chinese still hate your guts nor is there any lack of memory in China, Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent or Africa of the British scourge.
Of all the stupid excuses to insult someone trying to talk sense into the British.
Thursday, April 21, 2016
On the Money
Sure it's time for a change. I've been commenting for years that other countries have artists, authors, poets and scholars on their money while we have government officials, symbols of authority. I've long suggested that Andrew Jackson be the first to go: a miserable racist who deported thousands of people in brutal fashion to miserable concentration camps because he simply didn't want them East of the Mississippi. Many American Indians have compared him to a certain German leader it's impolitic to name here.
I wish however that there could have been a calm, scholarly but public discussion of just who most merits becoming the face of the twenty dollar bill, that denomination that dominates the wallets of America. I know, that's naive. This is America and discussion in America sounds much like the wilds of Montana at night during a full moon.Harriet Tubman won't be the first female on our currency, that distinction has been had by mythological figures for a long time and of course Sacagawea ( and a baby boy) had a run on a now defunct dollar coin even though we have no idea what she actually looked like.
So it's mousy, plain and un-heroic looking Harriet Tubman. we have photographs to prove it. Of course real heroes hardly ever look the part and for her efforts to save people from slavery at great personal risk, she certainly is as much of one as men like Oskar Schindler and probably greater since she took so many terrible risks with her life. Good for her. She stood for something, just like George Washington even if she didn't have a white horse to ride on. She not only stood for something truly moral, she broke laws to do it and essentially went to war, which come to think of it was what our founding fathers did even though those were British laws.. I just wish it didn't feel so much like pandering because I know full well every time someone pulls out a twenty in America, there's going to be some comment, some grimace and I'm going to have to distance myself from people even further. I just don't want to listen to it - idiots demanding that we boycott the twenty. I can see the stickers on all the ATMs. I just wish it didn't absolutely have to be a woman and a black women, even though it does, doesn't it?
Friday, April 15, 2016
Firearm Derangement Syndrome
I was watching Samantha Bee gyrating on my TV the other night, dressed an a homemade Eagle costume festooned with plastic guns and made to resemble an NRA mascot. It was one of those Bones and Tambo moments.
She had just finished telling us you could now buy guns on TV and not telling us you still had to go through a Federally licensed gun dealer and complete the transaction including any waiting periods and background checks just as though you'd bought it from his stock. Guns on TV! Oh so shocking and when the demo includes using a watermelon as a target, you just know people who own or buy guns are all dreaming of mass murder. You just know and because you just know, most anything you say that furthers the cause of angry prejudice is just fine. Empty mockery, slander, malicious stereotyping -- no less revolting than a minstrel show done in blackface used to provide.
One of those moments. Do I call it an epiphany? Do I trot out the fable about straws and camels or is it just one of those cases where the weight of facts finally prompts you to admit that your sense of belonging to a group or movement has been making you lie to yourself? These people are as crazy as a Trump, I said to myself as I made the decision. These people are no more honest than Fox News.
I'm joining the NRA.
I wonder if the gun control extremists aren't becoming their best recruiters. Yes, I've been laughing at them for years for their constant twisting of every proposed morsel of regulation into a rabid attack on our God given right to own and wave any kind of firearms, but I've been long troubled by their opposition's growing use of false figures, deliberately misleading terminology and refusal to acknowledge existing law and precedent. All of a sudden, I'm beginning to see that as more than just enthusiasm. I see it as part of the escalating zealotry and extremism that is prompting what I used to call the Left to cut a swath through the law, the truth and reason to get to the demons they alone see and justify it by the sanctity of the cause. It's become so universal to identify any skepticism about the details and particulars and assumptions of anti-gun crusades with the NRA, one might just as well join them and get the magazines. They have interesting articles.
A Connecticut judged ruled Yesterday that a lawsuit directed at Bushmaster Firearms International seeking damages for the rampage shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School 5 years ago could proceed. Much has been made of the 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act that protects arms makers from liability in such cases as this, where the legal product was sold legally but subsequently stolen and used to commit murder by a third party. Much will be made of it because Bernie Sanders voted for the PLCAA and Hillary Clinton did not. This alone may be enough to shift my support to Bernie because I'm angry as hell and I'm just not going to sit still for any more furious and fatuous crusades.
Since Bushmaster broke no law or regulation culpability or "wrongfulness" in this case can only refer to some offense that has nothing to do with the law. It can only be based on some kind of moral offense involved in selling guns and that's going to be very hard to sell to a jury.
She had just finished telling us you could now buy guns on TV and not telling us you still had to go through a Federally licensed gun dealer and complete the transaction including any waiting periods and background checks just as though you'd bought it from his stock. Guns on TV! Oh so shocking and when the demo includes using a watermelon as a target, you just know people who own or buy guns are all dreaming of mass murder. You just know and because you just know, most anything you say that furthers the cause of angry prejudice is just fine. Empty mockery, slander, malicious stereotyping -- no less revolting than a minstrel show done in blackface used to provide.
One of those moments. Do I call it an epiphany? Do I trot out the fable about straws and camels or is it just one of those cases where the weight of facts finally prompts you to admit that your sense of belonging to a group or movement has been making you lie to yourself? These people are as crazy as a Trump, I said to myself as I made the decision. These people are no more honest than Fox News.
I'm joining the NRA.
I wonder if the gun control extremists aren't becoming their best recruiters. Yes, I've been laughing at them for years for their constant twisting of every proposed morsel of regulation into a rabid attack on our God given right to own and wave any kind of firearms, but I've been long troubled by their opposition's growing use of false figures, deliberately misleading terminology and refusal to acknowledge existing law and precedent. All of a sudden, I'm beginning to see that as more than just enthusiasm. I see it as part of the escalating zealotry and extremism that is prompting what I used to call the Left to cut a swath through the law, the truth and reason to get to the demons they alone see and justify it by the sanctity of the cause. It's become so universal to identify any skepticism about the details and particulars and assumptions of anti-gun crusades with the NRA, one might just as well join them and get the magazines. They have interesting articles.
A Connecticut judged ruled Yesterday that a lawsuit directed at Bushmaster Firearms International seeking damages for the rampage shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School 5 years ago could proceed. Much has been made of the 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act that protects arms makers from liability in such cases as this, where the legal product was sold legally but subsequently stolen and used to commit murder by a third party. Much will be made of it because Bernie Sanders voted for the PLCAA and Hillary Clinton did not. This alone may be enough to shift my support to Bernie because I'm angry as hell and I'm just not going to sit still for any more furious and fatuous crusades.
Since Bushmaster broke no law or regulation culpability or "wrongfulness" in this case can only refer to some offense that has nothing to do with the law. It can only be based on some kind of moral offense involved in selling guns and that's going to be very hard to sell to a jury.
“The Superior Court has subject matter jurisdiction over a wrongful death action where the injury arose out of conduct by the defendants,”
The magic is in the word "conduct." it puts all conduct into the same box thereby enabling opportunists to sue anyone for anything they had nothing to do with, much less liability for. It's new. No one sued Bruno Magli for selling OJ his shoes, much less the company who made the knife. It's a precedent not only dangerous to law and justice, but to civilization, and in this specific case it shifts blame from the adult who allowed a deranged child access to a weapon and trained him to use it.
Is this organized campaign based on passing the very real blame to someone with deep pockets but no legal culpability in order to inhibit the importation, manufacture and sales of firearms in the US? I think so. I think, as do most Americans, that this is wrong and who else agrees that has any influence? Bernie Sanders perhaps, the NRA for sure, crazy as they are about so many other things.
The lies about selling "weapons of war" are all the more poignant when one realizes that the 2nd amendment specifically references the idea that we need to keep weapons of war available to the public. The plaintiff's lawyers are going to have a hard time propping up the idea that it's immoral to sell the Bushmaster AR-15 because it''s "military" in light of the fact that it isn't. Morality is in the eye of the plaintiff in this case and the plaintiff alone if I read public sentiment accurately. One of the pitfalls of moral outrage is to think, since you tend to associate only with other zealots, that most people agree with you. We shall see.
It's appropriate to look at how a legal precedent will affect future court decisions and if it transpires that Bushmaster is held liable for wrongful death without doing anything wrong, then the manufacturer of anything can be held liable through no actual fault of commission or omission of his own. Is it appropriate to think about how giving the finger to the constitution and centuries of law might be a bad precedent when that constitution is already under assault by Christian supremacists?
It's not the only about this jihad, there are so many other crusades billing themselves as "liberal" having to do with ignoring evidence, accepting some evidence without question and ignoring other evidence based on prejudice alone, there are efforts to presume guilt when it involves certain categories of people and other complaints sufficient to cause me not to follow the noise and revel in the rage of the mob, but I'm taking it step by step. Today it's the NRA tomorrow it may be the people who want to tell me what I think because of my skin color or what I can say because of my ancestry. Small steps on a long, long ladder.
Is this organized campaign based on passing the very real blame to someone with deep pockets but no legal culpability in order to inhibit the importation, manufacture and sales of firearms in the US? I think so. I think, as do most Americans, that this is wrong and who else agrees that has any influence? Bernie Sanders perhaps, the NRA for sure, crazy as they are about so many other things.
The lies about selling "weapons of war" are all the more poignant when one realizes that the 2nd amendment specifically references the idea that we need to keep weapons of war available to the public. The plaintiff's lawyers are going to have a hard time propping up the idea that it's immoral to sell the Bushmaster AR-15 because it''s "military" in light of the fact that it isn't. Morality is in the eye of the plaintiff in this case and the plaintiff alone if I read public sentiment accurately. One of the pitfalls of moral outrage is to think, since you tend to associate only with other zealots, that most people agree with you. We shall see.
It's appropriate to look at how a legal precedent will affect future court decisions and if it transpires that Bushmaster is held liable for wrongful death without doing anything wrong, then the manufacturer of anything can be held liable through no actual fault of commission or omission of his own. Is it appropriate to think about how giving the finger to the constitution and centuries of law might be a bad precedent when that constitution is already under assault by Christian supremacists?
It's not the only about this jihad, there are so many other crusades billing themselves as "liberal" having to do with ignoring evidence, accepting some evidence without question and ignoring other evidence based on prejudice alone, there are efforts to presume guilt when it involves certain categories of people and other complaints sufficient to cause me not to follow the noise and revel in the rage of the mob, but I'm taking it step by step. Today it's the NRA tomorrow it may be the people who want to tell me what I think because of my skin color or what I can say because of my ancestry. Small steps on a long, long ladder.
Monday, April 11, 2016
Say Hello to the New Boss. . .
I hate revolutions. They almost always make things worse because they rely on zealotry and anger and revenge. The angriest, the craziest and those with serious problems always wind up as the leaders because the truly furious can't trust the pragmatic and reasonable who might just try to regulate the power they feel is needed to overthrow, to punish, to abolish and yes, even to exterminate.
There's usually fuel and fear enough to consume a culture or a civilization and of course we're constantly improving our fuel production and distribution even though our memories aren't any better than they ever were. We still hear people demanding more oil drilling as the world staggers under a glut of cheap oil. We still hear that Obama is against oil production even after he's expanded it enormously.
The world staggers under a glut of misinformation and ignorance as well. We're still howling about government "bailouts" that have been paid back with interest, saving countless jobs and strengthening the economy.. We're howling about things that are getting better as though they were getting worse, as though we feared a loss of purpose, of the self righteous glory of our anger if crime declines, economies improve, criminals are caught and justice prevails. As economies recover we have to hide it, we have to pad crime statistics, use misleading rhetoric, inflated numbers or anything else the end justifies -- even though we won't ever let it end.
Who was so angry at "wall street" when things were expanding like a soap bubble? Who was so angry at people and entities sheltering capital in tax havens until they were busted and rounded up? And again, who is paying attention to the serious problems that particular crusade is causing to law abiding "little" people. In fact I wonder who enthusiastically voted to make all those things banks and finance companies and other entities legal again and why now are they looking for scapegoats when they should be looking in the mirror?
You see, I may hate patriotism and righteousness as much as I hate revolution and for the same reason. It's the passions of people, the passions of the mob and of their leaders I'm disgusted by. It's hard to think of a good cause that isn't co-opted by zealots and turned into narrow channels that alienate rather than enlist altruism and good will toward man or beast. The agenda and the power structure of some organization is always more important and always must be protected against, for instance someone who really opposes all racism, all injustice, all discrimination, all greed and all oppression.
We just become what we hate the more we hate it, and we didn't need Nietzsche to tell us, or Orwell to remind us that the rebels become the new oppressors. So it's not enough to look for effective reform in banking and finance, we have to stuff a straw man full of everyone from the bank janitor to the bank resident. We can't just try to vote responsibly, we have to elect clowns and idiots to "punish" the government. We can't think of more rational laws, so we have to denounce all of them just because they're laws and whatever we do we have to make everything seem far, far worse than it is even when we lose support from rational people for doing so.
If GM is building and selling cars in China, we have to complain they're "exporting jobs" If a government bailout proves to have been a good investment, we still have to keep calling it bad names as long as possible. If a retired school teacher in Mexico gets her nest egg confiscated, we have to ignore it because "wall street" may be hiding money even though the massive crackdown began a decade ago and we ignored it. If innocent people have their assets confiscated without due process, we don't care because there's a chance they only have money because they're drug dealers.
I hate revolutions because they hardly ever address the real problems, they hardly produce productive change and because they always become self perpetuating: become all about the revolution itself , and because there's no fool like an angry fool.
There's usually fuel and fear enough to consume a culture or a civilization and of course we're constantly improving our fuel production and distribution even though our memories aren't any better than they ever were. We still hear people demanding more oil drilling as the world staggers under a glut of cheap oil. We still hear that Obama is against oil production even after he's expanded it enormously.
The world staggers under a glut of misinformation and ignorance as well. We're still howling about government "bailouts" that have been paid back with interest, saving countless jobs and strengthening the economy.. We're howling about things that are getting better as though they were getting worse, as though we feared a loss of purpose, of the self righteous glory of our anger if crime declines, economies improve, criminals are caught and justice prevails. As economies recover we have to hide it, we have to pad crime statistics, use misleading rhetoric, inflated numbers or anything else the end justifies -- even though we won't ever let it end.
Who was so angry at "wall street" when things were expanding like a soap bubble? Who was so angry at people and entities sheltering capital in tax havens until they were busted and rounded up? And again, who is paying attention to the serious problems that particular crusade is causing to law abiding "little" people. In fact I wonder who enthusiastically voted to make all those things banks and finance companies and other entities legal again and why now are they looking for scapegoats when they should be looking in the mirror?
You see, I may hate patriotism and righteousness as much as I hate revolution and for the same reason. It's the passions of people, the passions of the mob and of their leaders I'm disgusted by. It's hard to think of a good cause that isn't co-opted by zealots and turned into narrow channels that alienate rather than enlist altruism and good will toward man or beast. The agenda and the power structure of some organization is always more important and always must be protected against, for instance someone who really opposes all racism, all injustice, all discrimination, all greed and all oppression.
We just become what we hate the more we hate it, and we didn't need Nietzsche to tell us, or Orwell to remind us that the rebels become the new oppressors. So it's not enough to look for effective reform in banking and finance, we have to stuff a straw man full of everyone from the bank janitor to the bank resident. We can't just try to vote responsibly, we have to elect clowns and idiots to "punish" the government. We can't think of more rational laws, so we have to denounce all of them just because they're laws and whatever we do we have to make everything seem far, far worse than it is even when we lose support from rational people for doing so.
If GM is building and selling cars in China, we have to complain they're "exporting jobs" If a government bailout proves to have been a good investment, we still have to keep calling it bad names as long as possible. If a retired school teacher in Mexico gets her nest egg confiscated, we have to ignore it because "wall street" may be hiding money even though the massive crackdown began a decade ago and we ignored it. If innocent people have their assets confiscated without due process, we don't care because there's a chance they only have money because they're drug dealers.
I hate revolutions because they hardly ever address the real problems, they hardly produce productive change and because they always become self perpetuating: become all about the revolution itself , and because there's no fool like an angry fool.
Wednesday, April 06, 2016
That Berning Sensation
I think Bernie Sanders has a lot to be embarrassed about, despite another primary won, but I'm not sure that revealing his apparent lack of knowledge about just how he would retrieve all that pie from the stratosphere worries me. Just how a president makes state college tuition free I don't know nor does he, and when pressed by Bloomberg TV as to just who on "wall Street" should or would be punished for what crimes, he had no answer and when interviewed by the New York Daily News about how, among other things, he would break up big banks, he sounded very much like a schoolboy explaining why he hadn't done his homework. It's being called a disaster, but is it?
Donald Trump joked that he could shoot someone and not lose a supporter. Whether or not it's strictly true, we Americans support candidates without much reliance on objective and dispassionate arguments. We like slogans, platitudes and promises and the feeling that some buffoon loves and respects us uncritically and will attack our bogeymen and scapegoats in dramatic fashion. I don't think Sanders' lack of knowledge about economics, banking and finance hurts him one bit, sad to say, nor his equal unfamiliarity with foreign policy and current world events. Perhaps his supporters don't want to be informed about those subjects lest they lose the confidence that innocence (and anger) bring. If your concerns are mostly about tuition and loans why ask the man about a nuclear North Korea or Iran shipping weapons to Yemen and the rise of Neo-Fascism in Europe? Why care if he answers "I don't know?"
When he rails about the "bailouts" the dogs prick up their ears, because it sounds like somebody got something for free, the scenario that enrages both camps, but as I see it, the return on that "bailout" has netted a gain - a profit for the nation of nearly 70 billion dollars. No, that's not a big piece of such a huge pie, but then, remember that an economic collapse as big as the Great Depression was avoided and countless jobs and industries were kept in the United States. A once endangered General Motors is selling cars in China as fast as they can make them. What else do we sell there? Mr. Sanders has no interest in telling us that Obama's policies may have saved the country and in that he mirrors the disloyal opposition on the Right. What does that say about him?
I will of course vote for him - or nearly anyone if his opponent is one of the GOP circus clowns, but without thinking of Mrs. Clinton as being the best of all possible candidates, I worry about a 75 year old dog having to learn a whole world of new tricks in a world and a country being torn apart by wild and ignorant armies, day and night, here and abroad.
Saturday, April 02, 2016
Safety first
Everything in America is getting so scary - not more dangerous, but more scary. Parents who back in the 80's managed to fend for themselves are now hovering over their offspring now that things are substantially safer, and municipalities have tried to prosecute parents for allowing a ten year old to walk a mile unescorted. Safety. Safety above all or über alles as the song goes.
A week or month doesn't go by without some official raising of "awareness" and I believe than April is Autism Awareness month. Of course the danger in raising awareness is that it raises fear without a corresponding increase in risk and it seems that people 20 or 30 years younger than me are awfully nervous about -- well about almost everything from food to firearms and so often about things that are no longer nearly as risky as they once were.
Even children can communicate with nearly anyone in an instant should they need help, but how many had the freedom I had growing up in the 50's? Damned few I should think. It was back when the world, just out of a nightmare war felt very safe but most things were far more dangerous than they are now. But if some kid was kidnapped, someone shot by a maniac or his drivers license stolen or was run over by a drunk driver in Sandusky, Ohio, neither I nor my parents would know about it. There was no Autism awareness at all, not even by doctors, but there was epidemic Polio and childhood diseases killed far more children, as did cars and household poisons. It's much safer to be a kid and an adult for that matter.
I'm not saying, by any means, that life is worse now, but the fear factor is greater and the technology that once gave us freedom and safety is now looked at with fear; telephones, WiFi, bicycles and above all CARS! Remember that freedom you used to feel in a car? All alone on some lonely highway even if you were only commuting? You might have to learn how to change a tire, you might have to walk, you might have to exercise some initiative but the taste of freedom! Now, of course you just call the motor club and your location can be tracked if you call 911 but that's not enough. It's still possible that you make a mistake, misjudge speed and distance or misread the road surface and you'll get hurt. Too risk, we need self-driving cars and many if not all automobile makers are putting all their resources in cars that drive themselves BECAUSE IT'S SAFER.
I've lived too long. I haven't had an accident since the 1960's and it was a minor scrape, but how can you trust me now that awareness has been raised? Fortunately I have a motorcycle and a self driving bike probably isn't in the 5 year plan for Harley Davidson., but the "American Road" will soon be as safely dead as Kerouac and Dean Moriarty, and I might as well be too, because even though it gets safer every year, it's too dangerous. Will by grandchildren inherit a world without cash, with curfews and where all social interaction is on the Internet? I don't want to find out.
A week or month doesn't go by without some official raising of "awareness" and I believe than April is Autism Awareness month. Of course the danger in raising awareness is that it raises fear without a corresponding increase in risk and it seems that people 20 or 30 years younger than me are awfully nervous about -- well about almost everything from food to firearms and so often about things that are no longer nearly as risky as they once were.
Even children can communicate with nearly anyone in an instant should they need help, but how many had the freedom I had growing up in the 50's? Damned few I should think. It was back when the world, just out of a nightmare war felt very safe but most things were far more dangerous than they are now. But if some kid was kidnapped, someone shot by a maniac or his drivers license stolen or was run over by a drunk driver in Sandusky, Ohio, neither I nor my parents would know about it. There was no Autism awareness at all, not even by doctors, but there was epidemic Polio and childhood diseases killed far more children, as did cars and household poisons. It's much safer to be a kid and an adult for that matter.
I'm not saying, by any means, that life is worse now, but the fear factor is greater and the technology that once gave us freedom and safety is now looked at with fear; telephones, WiFi, bicycles and above all CARS! Remember that freedom you used to feel in a car? All alone on some lonely highway even if you were only commuting? You might have to learn how to change a tire, you might have to walk, you might have to exercise some initiative but the taste of freedom! Now, of course you just call the motor club and your location can be tracked if you call 911 but that's not enough. It's still possible that you make a mistake, misjudge speed and distance or misread the road surface and you'll get hurt. Too risk, we need self-driving cars and many if not all automobile makers are putting all their resources in cars that drive themselves BECAUSE IT'S SAFER.
I've lived too long. I haven't had an accident since the 1960's and it was a minor scrape, but how can you trust me now that awareness has been raised? Fortunately I have a motorcycle and a self driving bike probably isn't in the 5 year plan for Harley Davidson., but the "American Road" will soon be as safely dead as Kerouac and Dean Moriarty, and I might as well be too, because even though it gets safer every year, it's too dangerous. Will by grandchildren inherit a world without cash, with curfews and where all social interaction is on the Internet? I don't want to find out.
Monday, March 28, 2016
The Sashimi Solution
We've all heard the joke about the statistician who drowned in a lake with an average depth of 4 inches and we've all heard the Mark Twain quote that he attributed to Benjamin Disraeli: there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics. Is there any way other than appeals to faith used more to bolster weak arguments than a graph, a chart, a string of numbers? It's so common we don't notice and worse, we don't check facts.
I read an article the other day which began with the observation that Japan has a higher life expectancy than the United States. That's probably true, but the article went straight from there to a rhapsody about the Japanese diet and that theme, that Meme so adored by Americans: our food is poisonous and full of "artificial" ingredients which are killing us.
Being a skeptic by nature and particularly as concerns any article about health and nutrition or food chemistry I took the trouble to look at the WHO statistics by country and yes, it's true about Japan, but when you note that number 2 is Spain, followed by Andorra, Singapore, and Switzerland -- Australia, Italy, San Marino and Monaco all with essentially identical numbers, I had to ask myself just what similarity in diet there is between these and the 39 countries between Japan and the United States. Not much, I fear, so perhaps the unmentioned assumption: that the primary factor in national longevity expectations is diet, must be questioned. Something the article does not do but rather taps into our national hypochondria. Is it wrong to observe that all those countries have far greater access to health care? Are suicide rates taken into account? Accidents, homicides, numbers of people incarcerated, infant mortality, quality of health care and emergency services, elder care? How many people ask?
People who use statistics to sell things often leave large gaps in their arguments which are filled with unsupported assumptions, as does this one. Is a fish based diet good for you? Quite possibly if you don't have allergies to sea food, but you can't get to that conclusion with this argument, which in fact starts with that assumption. Do genetics play a part in longevity? From what I read they do and the US is far, for more genetically diverse than Japan or Andorra and in fact so is the American diet. So should I seek salvation in Sushi or is there more to it than that?
Everybody does it, and particularly those bodies that have elected themselves to speak for causes, from product safety to immigration to gun control. Facts are easy to fudge, to select from, to edit and redact. It's easy to confuse "linked to' and "caused by." Is the fact that there is a link between marijuana and crime the result of marijuana being illegal in teh first place? The argument for it being a "gateway drug" depends on not looking at the "link' between alcohol, cigarettes and in fact almost anything we all do and drug usage.
Complex causes and simple or single causes. Who likes to confuse them fallaciously more than activists who aren't often quite as rational or honest as you might expect. As I said, there are more ways to increase life span than to eat Sashimi and sea weed. Want to cut the US gun related "murder" rate? Stop lumping suicides in with murder. According to the New York Times 60% of what we call murders are suicides. Would the corrected number still be too great? sure, but making things seem worse than they are is the practice of every political organization on Earth. Is Trump lying about swarms of Mexicans crossing the Southern border? Sure, there are more going the other direction? Is there an Autism epidemic? Real statistics seem to refute it, anti-vaccine people counter with anecdotes and anger. It's endless, it's pervasive, even ubiquitous. It's lies, Damned lies and statistics.
I read an article the other day which began with the observation that Japan has a higher life expectancy than the United States. That's probably true, but the article went straight from there to a rhapsody about the Japanese diet and that theme, that Meme so adored by Americans: our food is poisonous and full of "artificial" ingredients which are killing us.
Being a skeptic by nature and particularly as concerns any article about health and nutrition or food chemistry I took the trouble to look at the WHO statistics by country and yes, it's true about Japan, but when you note that number 2 is Spain, followed by Andorra, Singapore, and Switzerland -- Australia, Italy, San Marino and Monaco all with essentially identical numbers, I had to ask myself just what similarity in diet there is between these and the 39 countries between Japan and the United States. Not much, I fear, so perhaps the unmentioned assumption: that the primary factor in national longevity expectations is diet, must be questioned. Something the article does not do but rather taps into our national hypochondria. Is it wrong to observe that all those countries have far greater access to health care? Are suicide rates taken into account? Accidents, homicides, numbers of people incarcerated, infant mortality, quality of health care and emergency services, elder care? How many people ask?
People who use statistics to sell things often leave large gaps in their arguments which are filled with unsupported assumptions, as does this one. Is a fish based diet good for you? Quite possibly if you don't have allergies to sea food, but you can't get to that conclusion with this argument, which in fact starts with that assumption. Do genetics play a part in longevity? From what I read they do and the US is far, for more genetically diverse than Japan or Andorra and in fact so is the American diet. So should I seek salvation in Sushi or is there more to it than that?
Everybody does it, and particularly those bodies that have elected themselves to speak for causes, from product safety to immigration to gun control. Facts are easy to fudge, to select from, to edit and redact. It's easy to confuse "linked to' and "caused by." Is the fact that there is a link between marijuana and crime the result of marijuana being illegal in teh first place? The argument for it being a "gateway drug" depends on not looking at the "link' between alcohol, cigarettes and in fact almost anything we all do and drug usage.
Complex causes and simple or single causes. Who likes to confuse them fallaciously more than activists who aren't often quite as rational or honest as you might expect. As I said, there are more ways to increase life span than to eat Sashimi and sea weed. Want to cut the US gun related "murder" rate? Stop lumping suicides in with murder. According to the New York Times 60% of what we call murders are suicides. Would the corrected number still be too great? sure, but making things seem worse than they are is the practice of every political organization on Earth. Is Trump lying about swarms of Mexicans crossing the Southern border? Sure, there are more going the other direction? Is there an Autism epidemic? Real statistics seem to refute it, anti-vaccine people counter with anecdotes and anger. It's endless, it's pervasive, even ubiquitous. It's lies, Damned lies and statistics.
Friday, March 25, 2016
It's Only Natural
I don't feel safe in this world no more,
I don't want to die in a nuclear war.
I want to sail away to a distant shore and make like an apeman.
The allure of nature, the yearning to get back to some other time and place when things were natural.
It's part of our American revulsion for technology and science and the way they interfere with our animal emotionalism and recreational anger.
In man's evolution he's created the city
And the motor traffic rumble.
But give me half a chance and I'd be taking off my clothes
And living in the jungle.
Cause the only time that I feel at ease
Is swinging up and down in the coconut trees.
in some other time and place when things were natural. It's a thing of our time and yet it seems almost a feature of the way we are built and the way we think. We want to go back and we always have.
I'm no more immune to nostalgia than you are, but having been a nostalgic person since childhood I've learned much about how life was without the romanticized view that commerce and politics use to make us spend and vote and sing about. Yes, indeed we have lost a great deal of both beautiful and ugly things over time, but we have gained far more than we're aware of. Your favorite Tiki Hut restaurant on the beach becomes a soulless chain restaurant serving fish from New Zealand, that peaceful country road triples in width, sprouts ten thousand traffic lights and strip malls. The little seaside fishing community sprouts "shoppes" for people from New Jersey. I hate it more than you do and yes it does feel like all those artisanal and natural, organic and authentic things are something devoutly to be wished for, but Capitalism has the ability to mass produce romantic ideas and sell them to us as the real thing We can't tell the difference any more. Even Starbucks seems real to some of us.
How many TV "reality" shows are there about surviving without technology, living "off the grid" and how many "lifestyles" do we buy into that include the pretense of living like a "caveman" and eating a "paleo" diet as though all our ancestors lived in caves or ate the same things. I fear that most of it is only theater and most of the science adhering to it isn't much different than Dr. Bonkers' elixir. But we can't get away from it. The modern world is scary, complex and lacking in some ineffable quality we think we want.
We want things that are "Natural" and we are afraid of anything that smacks of the lab coat whether the distinction is real or not. We'll spend more for something "artisanal" a word that's hard to define and you never used to see and we love the word so much you'll spend more for the product of a 'bread artisan' than of a baker although there's no difference. We just know that preservatives are poison even when they're not. We just know that Ammonium Nitrate is "artificial" unless you extract it from manure and that "organic" food is healthier and tastes better even though all evidence is to the contrary. We're afraid and looking for the soothing lap of mother nature to comfort us and commerce is happy to dress up in a mommy costume and charge us a fee.
I once had a heated argument about milk with some quite intelligent friend who assured me it was bad because only humans drank milk as an adult which shows it's not natural. Now of course that definition of natural as something which our species is not involved in is contrived. We are,, as all things are part of nature, but as we're the only species that brushes our teeth, removes the offal from our prey, boils water and millions of other things, it doesn't follow that all such things are harmful. Yet the urge is to deny all the science that proves milk does not make you phlegmatic, because science isn't natural and fear is.
But it's an old argument, used frequently by religious bigots. Homosexuality isn't "natural" there are crimes against nature that must be punished. Ben Franklin was vilified because lightning rods are an unnatural interference with nature, just as Dr. Frankenstein was punished (in the movie version) for learning and doing things man was never meant to know or do. Yes, it's an old story and older than the Bible which tells us that knowledge is sinful to acquire.
Man made is bad, technology is bad and frightening, and so science is not trustworthy or wholesome.
In man's evolution he's created the city
And the motor traffic rumble.
But give me half a chance and I'd be taking off my clothes
And living in the jungle. Cause the only time that I feel at ease
Is swinging up and down in the coconut trees.
But the naive and the fearful and the nostalgic are the prey of bad people and bad science and the sellers of "lifestyles." Billions are made by telling you to fear radios and anything not found lying on the ground because it's not natural. An anti-oxidant is bad if it's used as a preservative. Nothing artificial is good even if identical to the "natural" version. Pesticides are bad unless you get them from a plant or mineral even though they may be quite deadly. We're convinced because we hear this on the Internet or from some TV pitch man or read some charlatan's book. We have to worry about hormones from chicken and phlegm from milk and about the antibiotics in the pig food getting into our bloodstreams, even if we can't assimilate DNA and all those "toxins' are destroyed by cooking if they exist at all.. We have to worry about grain brain and wheat belly and the equally non-existent danger of gluten or bananas or any of the "seven foods you should never eat." We don't care how much evidence refutes it.
We don't care that Autism isn't expanding and that vaccination doesn't cause it. We don't care that all our food sources are things that don't exist in the wild and that we are the only animal on earth that cannot survive without technology and that our dominance is entirely due to technology -- like cooking your food or brushing your teeth or wearing clothes or reading a book or making music -- like human inability to tell reason from emotion -- it's not natural.
I don't want to die in a nuclear war.
I want to sail away to a distant shore and make like an apeman.
-The Kinks-
It's part of our American revulsion for technology and science and the way they interfere with our animal emotionalism and recreational anger.
In man's evolution he's created the city
And the motor traffic rumble.
But give me half a chance and I'd be taking off my clothes
And living in the jungle.
Cause the only time that I feel at ease
Is swinging up and down in the coconut trees.
in some other time and place when things were natural. It's a thing of our time and yet it seems almost a feature of the way we are built and the way we think. We want to go back and we always have.
I'm no more immune to nostalgia than you are, but having been a nostalgic person since childhood I've learned much about how life was without the romanticized view that commerce and politics use to make us spend and vote and sing about. Yes, indeed we have lost a great deal of both beautiful and ugly things over time, but we have gained far more than we're aware of. Your favorite Tiki Hut restaurant on the beach becomes a soulless chain restaurant serving fish from New Zealand, that peaceful country road triples in width, sprouts ten thousand traffic lights and strip malls. The little seaside fishing community sprouts "shoppes" for people from New Jersey. I hate it more than you do and yes it does feel like all those artisanal and natural, organic and authentic things are something devoutly to be wished for, but Capitalism has the ability to mass produce romantic ideas and sell them to us as the real thing We can't tell the difference any more. Even Starbucks seems real to some of us.
How many TV "reality" shows are there about surviving without technology, living "off the grid" and how many "lifestyles" do we buy into that include the pretense of living like a "caveman" and eating a "paleo" diet as though all our ancestors lived in caves or ate the same things. I fear that most of it is only theater and most of the science adhering to it isn't much different than Dr. Bonkers' elixir. But we can't get away from it. The modern world is scary, complex and lacking in some ineffable quality we think we want.
We want things that are "Natural" and we are afraid of anything that smacks of the lab coat whether the distinction is real or not. We'll spend more for something "artisanal" a word that's hard to define and you never used to see and we love the word so much you'll spend more for the product of a 'bread artisan' than of a baker although there's no difference. We just know that preservatives are poison even when they're not. We just know that Ammonium Nitrate is "artificial" unless you extract it from manure and that "organic" food is healthier and tastes better even though all evidence is to the contrary. We're afraid and looking for the soothing lap of mother nature to comfort us and commerce is happy to dress up in a mommy costume and charge us a fee.
I once had a heated argument about milk with some quite intelligent friend who assured me it was bad because only humans drank milk as an adult which shows it's not natural. Now of course that definition of natural as something which our species is not involved in is contrived. We are,, as all things are part of nature, but as we're the only species that brushes our teeth, removes the offal from our prey, boils water and millions of other things, it doesn't follow that all such things are harmful. Yet the urge is to deny all the science that proves milk does not make you phlegmatic, because science isn't natural and fear is.
But it's an old argument, used frequently by religious bigots. Homosexuality isn't "natural" there are crimes against nature that must be punished. Ben Franklin was vilified because lightning rods are an unnatural interference with nature, just as Dr. Frankenstein was punished (in the movie version) for learning and doing things man was never meant to know or do. Yes, it's an old story and older than the Bible which tells us that knowledge is sinful to acquire.
Man made is bad, technology is bad and frightening, and so science is not trustworthy or wholesome.
In man's evolution he's created the city
And the motor traffic rumble.
But give me half a chance and I'd be taking off my clothes
And living in the jungle. Cause the only time that I feel at ease
Is swinging up and down in the coconut trees.
But the naive and the fearful and the nostalgic are the prey of bad people and bad science and the sellers of "lifestyles." Billions are made by telling you to fear radios and anything not found lying on the ground because it's not natural. An anti-oxidant is bad if it's used as a preservative. Nothing artificial is good even if identical to the "natural" version. Pesticides are bad unless you get them from a plant or mineral even though they may be quite deadly. We're convinced because we hear this on the Internet or from some TV pitch man or read some charlatan's book. We have to worry about hormones from chicken and phlegm from milk and about the antibiotics in the pig food getting into our bloodstreams, even if we can't assimilate DNA and all those "toxins' are destroyed by cooking if they exist at all.. We have to worry about grain brain and wheat belly and the equally non-existent danger of gluten or bananas or any of the "seven foods you should never eat." We don't care how much evidence refutes it.
We don't care that Autism isn't expanding and that vaccination doesn't cause it. We don't care that all our food sources are things that don't exist in the wild and that we are the only animal on earth that cannot survive without technology and that our dominance is entirely due to technology -- like cooking your food or brushing your teeth or wearing clothes or reading a book or making music -- like human inability to tell reason from emotion -- it's not natural.
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