In an interview during a break in his Nuremberg trial, Hermann Goering explained, "Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece.
"Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship."
Goering's interviewer, German-speaking intelligence officer and psychologist Gustave Gilbert, naively argued, "There is one difference. In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."
Goering answered, "Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."
Repeatedly, we are suckers for these lame arguments. At the beginning of the Iraq invasion, I argued that this was Tonkin Gulf and Vietnam all over again. I was told there was no similarity between the two wars and Vietnam was much more complicated than Iraq would be because of the terrain. Unless you are willing to kill everyone in the country you invade, terrain makes no difference. Of course, some of the crazy convinced poor slobs on farms can't see any reason not to kill everyone in the country, in an effort to "save" those people from whatever awful situation we've been convinced they are in.
Nothing changes, unless humans become dumber every generation. Eugene Debs said, "“The people can have anything they want, the only problem is they do not want anything.” The trinkets that most Americans consider the important "production" of our so-called capitalist society amount to nothing in more brief intervals as we wind down our civilization. Today's $700 Apple iPad will become tomorrow's near-useless $25 eBay auction item by the end of the year. The most important entertainment tidbit will be forgotten and no more than a SNL laughable moment three months later. The useless drug promoted by Big Pharma on prime time television will turn out to have known side-effects far worse than the imaginary mental or physical disease the drug was advertised to cure. Today's Gulf oil spill will seem as minor as the Exxon Valdez tomorrow.
Mr. Debs also said, “I am not a labor leader. I don't want you to follow me or anyone else. If you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of the capitalist wilderness you will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into this promised land if I could, because if I could lead you in, someone else could lead you out.”
Every tiny step forward humanity has taken has been followed by a race backwards. John Kennedy was followed by Johnson, Nixon, and Ford. Carter, as lame but well-intended as he was, was followed by Reagan and Bush; two people who never had a good intention in their lives. Clinton, a man who was equal parts progressive and regressive, was followed by Bush-Cheney; two men who make the word "regressive" sound impotent. Obama is probably more in the Carter mold than Clinton, so we can count on the follow-up to Obama to be something along the line of another Bush; probably Jeb. Humans can always be counted on to do the dumbest thing possible.
Mark Twain probably wrapped it all when he said, "Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion-- several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven.
"The higher animals have no religion. And we are told that they are going to be left out in the Hereafter. I wonder why? It seems questionable taste" [The Lowest Animal essay, 1897]
Obviously, religion is a human invention designed to keep "some poor slob on a farm" distracted while he is being sent to some idiot war and being sold a pile of useless toys. The real question is, "What could possibly convince humans that a god would be interested in an animal as idiotic as that?" The reason we believe them is because we are dumb enough to fall for the same stupid trick ad infinitum.
8/14/2010
8/13/2010
Impossible Missions
The United States has long been addicted to the idea of impossible missions; crusades and causes and impossible ideals. The Revolutionary War was our first national impossible mission. The Revolutionaries hoped to build a nation where "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness," but where some men could own other men and where a very few men could live outside of the boundaries of decency and community. Maybe the idealists who wrote those words in the Declaration of Independence had nothing but the best of intentions, but there were men among those who saw opportunity in the misfortune of the many. The more I learn about the origins of this nation, the more I come to believe that something other than democracy was a principal creation with the United States of America. So many things stayed the same, or became worse, after our revolution but one thing that came to be and only grew stronger during the next 235 years; marketing mythology.
Since then, the American public has been sold a succession of wars and invasions that have been, primarily, intended to make that original group of marketeers, and the few who joined them in the last century, rich and powerful. In our nation's short history, we have been at war with some other nation, or nations, for a minimum of 76 of our 235 years; at least 32% of our life. Many of those "wars' have been simple invasions for profit: from the Barbary Invasion of 1801 to the Mexican-American War of 1846 to today's incursions into Iraq and Afghanistan. Many of the invasions haven't even been declared and are not part of that 76 year total. Since 1950, we've been at war for 65% of those years. Again, that does not include CIA and undeclared military activities.
In his famous War Is A Racket speech and the book that grew from public appearances, General Smedley Butler, a former USMC Commandant who was twice awarded the Medal of Honor said, "War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes . . .
"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."
The nation has been conned into at least a dozen wars since Butler's time, not including the CIA's violent and illegal interventions in practically every nation in the world. Now, we're wrapped up in a War on Terror, which from the start sounded oxymoronic to me. War, by nature, is terrorism. You can not drop bombs on civilian populations and be anything but a terrorist.
That wasn't the first instance of wars conducted on imaginary "enemies." We've had a War on Poverty, which lasted until Republicans distracted the American public with a variety of delusions from the early 70's until today. At least that "war" had some good intent. What followed was purely profit-motivated.
That might have introduced the outrageous idea that you can declare war on a noun; let alone a pronoun. Seriously? We're going to launch an invasion against everyone who causes terror in the mind of Americans? I'm pretty sure that isn't possible. Even more unlikely is the possibility that our government--which was well-stocked with rich men who counted on the sources of terrorism (Saudi Arabia, in particular) for much of their wealth--would wage war on the actual source of our particular terror of the moment; the people who attacked New York City on September 11, 2001. Obviously, they picked a place semi-close to the actual source of terrorism and fired away with the nation's treasure and youth. Today, they are much richer and we are nearly a nation in poverty. Fortunately for the rich, "money knows no borders" and after they've bankrupted and demoralized this country, they'll move to some other country and ruin it. It's what they do.
77 years ago, the nation ended its first experiment in prohibition; our War on Alcohol or The Noble Experiment. 1917's 18th Amendment and its enforcement legislation, the Volstead Act, created one of the most violent, destructive periods in the nation's history. This government effort to legislate and enforce morality resulted in 16 years of all out war (at a cost of $500 million/year) against the working class by several branches of government. It also created the US version of the Mob and strengthened their grip on several government agencies, including the FBI and state law enforcement. In the end, prohibition was ended with a gentleman's agreement between government and the Mafia called "Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act of 1938" and "Marihuana Tax Act of 1937." These gifts from our government to the Mob provided extensive territory of illegal markets and activity so that the underworld economy could continue and prosper.
We've waged an incredibly unsuccessful and expensive War on Drugs ($20 billion for this year, so far) since Nixon first coined the phrase in 1971. The Alzheimer's Candidate, Ronnie Rayguns, made this war on a noun his personal platform, created the Office of National Drug Control Policy in 1988, and appointed our first Drug Czar that year. He and his nutty wife consulted tea leaves and Gypsy fortune tellers for advice on waging this war (and other policy decisions) and the result is trillions of dollars wasted and millions of lives ruined or destroyed. Supposedly, the Obama Administration will stop using the War on Drugs mantra because they believe it is "counterproductive." You have to love their love of understatement. This has been the longest, most expensive, least successful war in the nation's history. The history of this make-believe war has been vicious, dishonest, and destructive. There is no end in sight.
In October of 2001, Congress passed the War on American Civil Rights and Liberties Act, also known as the Patriot Act. This amazing 56,800 word incursion into the Bill of Rights and the Constitution couldn't have been nicknamed more poorly. Like most of our wars, this war eliminates basic rights that were once thought to be central to our democracy.
A Small Sample of our Long Wartime History (major events only):
It's worth noting that practically none of the "wars" that General Butler mentioned in War Is A Racket are on this list. Most of our war-like activities in South and Central America and Africa are unlisted, also. Obviously, the many wars against native Americans are also unlisted. If those were included, it's possible the United States might be the most warlike nation in the history of the world. We might be more warlike than the Romans or the British. It is easy to imagine that our country has been at war with someone for more than half and, possibly, nearly every year of its existence. If we really wanted to wage a battle against terrorism, we'd probably be tearing ourselves to pieces. As Pogo said, "We have met the enemy and he is us."
After describing these depressing statistics to my wife, she asked, "Well what do you want to do about it?"
Obviously, there is nothing I can do about it but my answer is, "Restrict the President to the very limited military powers the Constitution gives to that office and grow a pair of testicles on Congress." Before that will happen, the country will have to purge itself of the interests the Republican Party represents and create some political alternatives for the tiny number of people who actually are "conservative" and "liberal." What I expect will happen is that we'll keep following this nutty militaristic path until the rest of the world rises up and beats us down, the same way every other violent empire has died in human history.
Since then, the American public has been sold a succession of wars and invasions that have been, primarily, intended to make that original group of marketeers, and the few who joined them in the last century, rich and powerful. In our nation's short history, we have been at war with some other nation, or nations, for a minimum of 76 of our 235 years; at least 32% of our life. Many of those "wars' have been simple invasions for profit: from the Barbary Invasion of 1801 to the Mexican-American War of 1846 to today's incursions into Iraq and Afghanistan. Many of the invasions haven't even been declared and are not part of that 76 year total. Since 1950, we've been at war for 65% of those years. Again, that does not include CIA and undeclared military activities.
In his famous War Is A Racket speech and the book that grew from public appearances, General Smedley Butler, a former USMC Commandant who was twice awarded the Medal of Honor said, "War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes . . .
"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."
The nation has been conned into at least a dozen wars since Butler's time, not including the CIA's violent and illegal interventions in practically every nation in the world. Now, we're wrapped up in a War on Terror, which from the start sounded oxymoronic to me. War, by nature, is terrorism. You can not drop bombs on civilian populations and be anything but a terrorist.
That wasn't the first instance of wars conducted on imaginary "enemies." We've had a War on Poverty, which lasted until Republicans distracted the American public with a variety of delusions from the early 70's until today. At least that "war" had some good intent. What followed was purely profit-motivated.
That might have introduced the outrageous idea that you can declare war on a noun; let alone a pronoun. Seriously? We're going to launch an invasion against everyone who causes terror in the mind of Americans? I'm pretty sure that isn't possible. Even more unlikely is the possibility that our government--which was well-stocked with rich men who counted on the sources of terrorism (Saudi Arabia, in particular) for much of their wealth--would wage war on the actual source of our particular terror of the moment; the people who attacked New York City on September 11, 2001. Obviously, they picked a place semi-close to the actual source of terrorism and fired away with the nation's treasure and youth. Today, they are much richer and we are nearly a nation in poverty. Fortunately for the rich, "money knows no borders" and after they've bankrupted and demoralized this country, they'll move to some other country and ruin it. It's what they do.
77 years ago, the nation ended its first experiment in prohibition; our War on Alcohol or The Noble Experiment. 1917's 18th Amendment and its enforcement legislation, the Volstead Act, created one of the most violent, destructive periods in the nation's history. This government effort to legislate and enforce morality resulted in 16 years of all out war (at a cost of $500 million/year) against the working class by several branches of government. It also created the US version of the Mob and strengthened their grip on several government agencies, including the FBI and state law enforcement. In the end, prohibition was ended with a gentleman's agreement between government and the Mafia called "Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act of 1938" and "Marihuana Tax Act of 1937." These gifts from our government to the Mob provided extensive territory of illegal markets and activity so that the underworld economy could continue and prosper.
We've waged an incredibly unsuccessful and expensive War on Drugs ($20 billion for this year, so far) since Nixon first coined the phrase in 1971. The Alzheimer's Candidate, Ronnie Rayguns, made this war on a noun his personal platform, created the Office of National Drug Control Policy in 1988, and appointed our first Drug Czar that year. He and his nutty wife consulted tea leaves and Gypsy fortune tellers for advice on waging this war (and other policy decisions) and the result is trillions of dollars wasted and millions of lives ruined or destroyed. Supposedly, the Obama Administration will stop using the War on Drugs mantra because they believe it is "counterproductive." You have to love their love of understatement. This has been the longest, most expensive, least successful war in the nation's history. The history of this make-believe war has been vicious, dishonest, and destructive. There is no end in sight.
In October of 2001, Congress passed the War on American Civil Rights and Liberties Act, also known as the Patriot Act. This amazing 56,800 word incursion into the Bill of Rights and the Constitution couldn't have been nicknamed more poorly. Like most of our wars, this war eliminates basic rights that were once thought to be central to our democracy.
A Small Sample of our Long Wartime History (major events only):
| Began | Ended | Years at War | Formal Name | Who and Where |
| 1775 | 1783 | 8 | American Revolution | English Colonists vs. Great Britain |
| 1798 | 1800 | 2 | Franco-American Naval War | United States vs. France |
| 1801 | 1805; 1815 | 5 | Barbary Wars | United States vs. Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli |
| 1812 | 1815 | 3 | War of 1812 | United States vs. Great Britain |
| 1813 | 1814 | 1 | Creek War | United States vs. Creek Indians |
| 1836 | 1 | War of Texas Independence | Texas vs. Mexico | |
| 1846 | 1848 | 2 | Mexican-American War | United States vs. Mexico |
| 1861 | 1865 | 4 | U.S. Civil War | Union vs. Confederacy |
| 1898 | 1 | Spanish-American War | United States vs. Spain | |
| 1914 | 1918 | 4 | World War I | Triple Alliance: Germany, Italy, and Austria-Hungary vs. Triple Entente: Britain, France, and Russia. The United States joined on the side of the Triple Entente in 1917. |
| 1939 | 1945 | 6 | World War II | Axis Powers: Germany, Italy, Japan vs. Major Allied Powers: United States, Great Britain, France, and Russia |
| 1950 | 1953 | 3 | Korean War | United States (as part of the United Nations) and South Korea vs. North Korea and Communist China |
| 1960 | 1975 | 15 | Vietnam War | United States and South Vietnam vs. North Vietnam |
| 1961 | 1 | Bay of Pigs Invasion | United States vs. Cuba | |
| 1983 | 1 | Grenada | United States Intervention | |
| 1989 | 1 | US Invasion of Panama | United States vs. Panama | |
| 1990 | 1991 | 1 | Persian Gulf War | United States vs. Iraq |
| 1995 | 1996 | 1 | Intervention in Bosnia and Herzegovina | United States as part of NATO acted peacekeepers in former Yugoslavia |
| 2001 | 2010 | 9 | Invasion of Afghanistan | United States vs. the Taliban regime in Afghanistan to fight terrorism. |
| 2003 | 2010 | 7 | Invasion of Iraq | United States vs. Iraq |
| 235 | 76 | |||
| 32% |
It's worth noting that practically none of the "wars" that General Butler mentioned in War Is A Racket are on this list. Most of our war-like activities in South and Central America and Africa are unlisted, also. Obviously, the many wars against native Americans are also unlisted. If those were included, it's possible the United States might be the most warlike nation in the history of the world. We might be more warlike than the Romans or the British. It is easy to imagine that our country has been at war with someone for more than half and, possibly, nearly every year of its existence. If we really wanted to wage a battle against terrorism, we'd probably be tearing ourselves to pieces. As Pogo said, "We have met the enemy and he is us."
After describing these depressing statistics to my wife, she asked, "Well what do you want to do about it?"
Obviously, there is nothing I can do about it but my answer is, "Restrict the President to the very limited military powers the Constitution gives to that office and grow a pair of testicles on Congress." Before that will happen, the country will have to purge itself of the interests the Republican Party represents and create some political alternatives for the tiny number of people who actually are "conservative" and "liberal." What I expect will happen is that we'll keep following this nutty militaristic path until the rest of the world rises up and beats us down, the same way every other violent empire has died in human history.
7/06/2010
Miss Me Yet?
The disreputable descendants of apes in Wyoming, MN have posted this brilliant political statement near I35 just outside of town. This moronic question has raised its idiot head on bumper stickers and rear windows all over the country, since.Yeah, we all miss this kind of international embarrassment over the crassness and arrogance of our Commander in Thief. We miss having to hang our heads in shame as the premier representative of our country puts both feet in his mouth and talks out of his ass. We miss being represented by someone so stupid that he inspires automatic references to Mad Magazine's Alfred E. Neuman. We miss being lied to, stolen from, and laughed at by "conservatives" who would be welcomed as leaders in the old Soviet Union. We miss levels of incompetence at the highest levels of government that would embarrass any 3rd world nation. We miss the instant and total access to the White House that the worst, most corrupt corporations of the world once had. We miss the certainty we once had that, as our economy collapsed from corruption and incompetence, that nothing could ever get better as long as that gang of idiots held office.
Yep, we miss all of those wonderful things that Republicans bring to the table. Mostly, we miss our reputation as being the world's idiot, violent children. I feel confident that conservatives will restore that reputation as soon as they install Palin or some other conservative bimbo in the White House. We Americans are proud of our inability to learn anything from history.
6/02/2010
Subway Sticks a Footlong up Its Ass
An open letter to the geniuses at Subway Restaurants:
Sometimes I wonder if competitors plant lawyers and marketing idiots in the employment of their competition. For example, whatever idiot decided it was in McDonald's best interest to sue a pair of British protesters, Helen Steel and David Morris, for libel in 1989 almost had to be working for Burger King. After seeing a documentary made about that legal action, McLibel, I took my already skimpy fast food business to anyone but McDonald's ever since. In the long run, McDonald's didn't win any money from the suit, engendered a shit-load of bad will from anyone interested in corporate fairness, safe and healthy food, or good government. The idiot judge who settled the case in McDonald's favor ended up costing the British government a load of money ( £57,000) in the European Court of Human Rights where the case was overturned and England found itself owing that court money for violating Article 6 (right to a fair trial).
In all, the moron who advised McDonald's to sue these people produced a lot of customers for everybody but McDonald's. I'm not kidding. I haven't eaten a crumb produced by that miserable company since sometime in 1990 and I never will. In my opinion, the best thing that could happen to McDonald's is bankruptcy. I do my best to direct people to McLibel and every bad word I can think of to say about McDonald's gets said as often as possible.
One of the companies that benefited from my deflected business was Subway. That all ended in late May, 2010. Subway sent a letter to Coney Island Drive Inn stating, ""You must immediately remove all references to FOOTLONG (tm) in association with sandwiches."In the crazy mind of Subway's doofus legal and marketing departments, they imagine they invented the word "footlong" in regards to sandwiches. Good for them. Going crazy is a symptom of getting too big for yourself and this is obviously nuts. I would imagine that many businesses, like Coney Island Drive Inn have been making sandwiches called "footlongs" for longer than the morons at Subway have been alive.
So, this is my notice that I'm done with Subway; one of my wife's favorite food franchises. We're done. No matter how hungry we get, how poor the rest of the choices might be, we don't do business with corporate bullies. So, fuck you McDonald's and Subway. We're gone.
Sometimes I wonder if competitors plant lawyers and marketing idiots in the employment of their competition. For example, whatever idiot decided it was in McDonald's best interest to sue a pair of British protesters, Helen Steel and David Morris, for libel in 1989 almost had to be working for Burger King. After seeing a documentary made about that legal action, McLibel, I took my already skimpy fast food business to anyone but McDonald's ever since. In the long run, McDonald's didn't win any money from the suit, engendered a shit-load of bad will from anyone interested in corporate fairness, safe and healthy food, or good government. The idiot judge who settled the case in McDonald's favor ended up costing the British government a load of money ( £57,000) in the European Court of Human Rights where the case was overturned and England found itself owing that court money for violating Article 6 (right to a fair trial).
In all, the moron who advised McDonald's to sue these people produced a lot of customers for everybody but McDonald's. I'm not kidding. I haven't eaten a crumb produced by that miserable company since sometime in 1990 and I never will. In my opinion, the best thing that could happen to McDonald's is bankruptcy. I do my best to direct people to McLibel and every bad word I can think of to say about McDonald's gets said as often as possible.
One of the companies that benefited from my deflected business was Subway. That all ended in late May, 2010. Subway sent a letter to Coney Island Drive Inn stating, ""You must immediately remove all references to FOOTLONG (tm) in association with sandwiches."In the crazy mind of Subway's doofus legal and marketing departments, they imagine they invented the word "footlong" in regards to sandwiches. Good for them. Going crazy is a symptom of getting too big for yourself and this is obviously nuts. I would imagine that many businesses, like Coney Island Drive Inn have been making sandwiches called "footlongs" for longer than the morons at Subway have been alive.
So, this is my notice that I'm done with Subway; one of my wife's favorite food franchises. We're done. No matter how hungry we get, how poor the rest of the choices might be, we don't do business with corporate bullies. So, fuck you McDonald's and Subway. We're gone.
5/30/2010
Whose Country Is This?
Just so you are clear on where you are living, I strongly recommend you watch this recording of storm troupers invading a residence, killing a family dog for recreational purposes, and arresting two adults on trumped-up charges (possession of a minuscule amount of marijuana and a CYA charge of "child endangerment"). Obviously, what endangered the child was idiots in uniforms carrying weapons.
A short article discussing the case is included here http://reason.com/blog/2010/05/05/video-of-swat-raid-on-missouri and http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/2010/feb/23/family-questions-swat-drug-search-that-led-to/.
A few weeks ago, I worked with a kid on a video shoot who was once on track to become an engineer before he decided he wanted to take the easy way into life by becoming a cop. Like many nerds, this kid barely qualifies as "socialized." He's got a superiority complex, is often a bully (mentally, since he doesn't have the skills or the weapons to physically push anyone around), and is superstitious and a wingnut. Other than having had experience as a high school bully or an actual criminal (as best I know), he's perfectly qualified to join the US version of Nazi Germany's SS.
At one point during the show we were taping, he made the comment, "I don't know why people hate cops. We're professionals like doctors or lawyers." He claim to professionalism was based on the fact that to get their lifetime guaranteed employment jobs, cops have to "earn a college degree." Of course, unlike doctors and lawyers, a grossly misnamed "Criminal Justice" bachelor's degree is a minimal education with grade school difficultly courses offered by every fly-by-night correspondence program on the planet. You can get your Criminal Justice piece of toilet paper from the same fine people who bring us degrees in Court Reporting, Culinary Arts, Health Insurance Customer Service, Paralegal, and Video Game design training. Some of these degree mills have the gall to call their programs "Public Safety Administration." Watching the video above sure makes this member of the public feel safer.
For laughs, here are some of the course names from a typical criminal justice program:
The kid who inspired this rant dropped out of his EE program because it was too hard. He figured if all he was going to do with his life was issue traffic tickets and break down residential doors, shoot household pets, and terrorize unarmed citizens, why learn anything useful? The next time you watch one of those idiotic television programs that has a highly-skilled geek whipping through loads of information, chasing down criminals using beyond state-of-the-art tools, remember this kid. He will probably end up being some police department's "genius," but he wasn't near bright enough to complete a real engineering program or diligent enough to work his way through a real college degree program. The fact is, all our police can do is break into ordinary citizens' homes and terrorize the family next door. They don't have the skills necessary to protect society from real menaces. They have a degree in Criminal Justice.
As for why people hate and fear cops, I'd bet the 8-year old who saw his parents treated like dangerous criminals and his family pets shot down because men in armour felt like killing something could answer that question. I'd imagine that Jonathan Whitworth could give you a pretty good explaination of why he is afraid of his local nutcases with guns. Anyone with a lick of sense ought to be afraid for their lives after watching this video, especially with the knowledge that teams like this exist in every mid-sized city and they are itching to pretend to be tough.
Ideally, they can exercise their bullying instincts in safe environments like the bust shown in this video. If they were busting bikers cooking meth, they'd have to worry about getting shot at. Busting a recreational marijuana user and his family is about as dangerous as beating up kids at the local Dairy Queen. Let's face it, if these bozos weren't employed by the local cops, they'd be doing exactly that, beating up kids and hanging out in bars. It's not like they have real skills, a useful education, or any social value.
A short article discussing the case is included here http://reason.com/blog/2010/05/05/video-of-swat-raid-on-missouri and http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/2010/feb/23/family-questions-swat-drug-search-that-led-to/.
A few weeks ago, I worked with a kid on a video shoot who was once on track to become an engineer before he decided he wanted to take the easy way into life by becoming a cop. Like many nerds, this kid barely qualifies as "socialized." He's got a superiority complex, is often a bully (mentally, since he doesn't have the skills or the weapons to physically push anyone around), and is superstitious and a wingnut. Other than having had experience as a high school bully or an actual criminal (as best I know), he's perfectly qualified to join the US version of Nazi Germany's SS.
At one point during the show we were taping, he made the comment, "I don't know why people hate cops. We're professionals like doctors or lawyers." He claim to professionalism was based on the fact that to get their lifetime guaranteed employment jobs, cops have to "earn a college degree." Of course, unlike doctors and lawyers, a grossly misnamed "Criminal Justice" bachelor's degree is a minimal education with grade school difficultly courses offered by every fly-by-night correspondence program on the planet. You can get your Criminal Justice piece of toilet paper from the same fine people who bring us degrees in Court Reporting, Culinary Arts, Health Insurance Customer Service, Paralegal, and Video Game design training. Some of these degree mills have the gall to call their programs "Public Safety Administration." Watching the video above sure makes this member of the public feel safer.
For laughs, here are some of the course names from a typical criminal justice program:
- Ethical Issues in Criminal Justice,
- Police Report Writing,
- Precision Driving,
- Firearms,
- Current Issues in Criminal Justice,
- Criminal Justice Internship,
- Physical Fitness Conditioning,
- Physical-Defensive Tactics,
- Conflict Management in Criminal Justice,
- State Criminal Law,
- State Criminal Procedures,
- Criminal Investigation,
- Patrol Problems,
- Traffic Management,
- Law Enforcement Assessment,
- Advanced First Aid,
- and Crime-Violence in Literature.
The kid who inspired this rant dropped out of his EE program because it was too hard. He figured if all he was going to do with his life was issue traffic tickets and break down residential doors, shoot household pets, and terrorize unarmed citizens, why learn anything useful? The next time you watch one of those idiotic television programs that has a highly-skilled geek whipping through loads of information, chasing down criminals using beyond state-of-the-art tools, remember this kid. He will probably end up being some police department's "genius," but he wasn't near bright enough to complete a real engineering program or diligent enough to work his way through a real college degree program. The fact is, all our police can do is break into ordinary citizens' homes and terrorize the family next door. They don't have the skills necessary to protect society from real menaces. They have a degree in Criminal Justice.
As for why people hate and fear cops, I'd bet the 8-year old who saw his parents treated like dangerous criminals and his family pets shot down because men in armour felt like killing something could answer that question. I'd imagine that Jonathan Whitworth could give you a pretty good explaination of why he is afraid of his local nutcases with guns. Anyone with a lick of sense ought to be afraid for their lives after watching this video, especially with the knowledge that teams like this exist in every mid-sized city and they are itching to pretend to be tough.
Ideally, they can exercise their bullying instincts in safe environments like the bust shown in this video. If they were busting bikers cooking meth, they'd have to worry about getting shot at. Busting a recreational marijuana user and his family is about as dangerous as beating up kids at the local Dairy Queen. Let's face it, if these bozos weren't employed by the local cops, they'd be doing exactly that, beating up kids and hanging out in bars. It's not like they have real skills, a useful education, or any social value.
5/13/2010
Imaginary Alternatives: Reagan's $50
In one of his most quoted statements, Reagan said, "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. " And then, in true Republican fashion, he went on to deregulate a hoard of industries that had a long, well-documented history of desperately needing regulating and he created one of the longest periods of unemployment and wild government spending in US history. In the end, he left a shattered economy and massive debt as his legacy. The Republican history revisionists want to recreate his legacy as one of moderation and economic opportunity. There was opportunity alright, but it was for mobsters who took over S&Ls, the military-industrial complex who had a field decade with taxpayer "investment," and Wall Street's gamblers.
What was lost was the opportunity to fix America's real problems: taking on alternative energy solutions, converting to international metric standards, downsizing the post-Cold War military, modernizing our education system, facing the end-of-the-Industrial-Period and American Century facts and realigning the country for those reduced resources, and the rest of the unaddressed list of real problems. Instead, Reagan put on his happy face and set the country back two decades or more. He deregulated the media, giving us Faux News and the rest of the right wing corporate spokesperson networks. He busted unions, shipping the working class out of the middle class and into debtor slavery. He set Wall Street free of its post-Depression shackles setting the economy up a half-dozen boom-and-bust cycles since he took office and turning our economy from one that produces goods and services to one that produces con games on an international scale.
In a complete flight of imagination, Republicans are promoting a change to the $50 bill. They want to replace U.S. Grant with Reagan's mug. There is some historical connection between the two: 1) they both headed supremely corrupt administrations providing federal and state prosecutors with working material for a decade after they left office, 2) they were both hands-off Presidents (Grant was drunk for his two terms, Reagan was senile and asleep through most of his administration), 3) they both presided over substantial periods of economic recession, and, least likely, 4) they both supported Civil Rights. Grant was a strong advocate for the 15th Amendment (before the Supreme Court turned it to crap) and Reagan once said, "I favor the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and it must be enforced at gunpoint if necessary." Who would have thought that the man who took best advantage of the southern flight from the Democratic Party because of the Civil Rights Act actually believed in its principles? Of course, Ulysses Grant actually provided a service to his country, leading the nation's military against the hillbillies of the Old South and saving democracy, the Union, and ending slavery in North America (until the 20th Century revived slavery in a variety of forms, something R Reagan had a hand in).
Since Reagan never actually accomplished anything useful in the defense of the nation or in any other useful area, I think dumping Grant for Reagan would be a foolish mistake. However, Reagan and G.W. Bush did an awful lot toward burying the country in debt and I would strongly recommend that their likenesses be put on an instrument of debt; the $100 savings bond, for example. I am in no way a graphic artist, but the included example is along the lines of what I would recommend. A legend such as, "I need your money to burn" or "Buy U.S. Bonds so Democrats can pay off our bad debts" or something equally quaint could go a long way toward truth in advertising our national savings bonds.
It looks like the $50 Reagan bill is doomed to failure. Something like 80% of Americans favor Grant over Reagan. Apprarently, the repackaging of Sleepy Ronny hasn't gone as well as the promoters hoped. Republicans always want to take the easy way out of work, representing the idle rich as they do. It's going to take a lot more Faux News propaganda before Boomers forget their losses from Reaganonmics. Of course, the quote Reagan should have been remembered for is, "It's true hard work never killed anybody, but I figure, why take the chance?" He never did.
What was lost was the opportunity to fix America's real problems: taking on alternative energy solutions, converting to international metric standards, downsizing the post-Cold War military, modernizing our education system, facing the end-of-the-Industrial-Period and American Century facts and realigning the country for those reduced resources, and the rest of the unaddressed list of real problems. Instead, Reagan put on his happy face and set the country back two decades or more. He deregulated the media, giving us Faux News and the rest of the right wing corporate spokesperson networks. He busted unions, shipping the working class out of the middle class and into debtor slavery. He set Wall Street free of its post-Depression shackles setting the economy up a half-dozen boom-and-bust cycles since he took office and turning our economy from one that produces goods and services to one that produces con games on an international scale.
In a complete flight of imagination, Republicans are promoting a change to the $50 bill. They want to replace U.S. Grant with Reagan's mug. There is some historical connection between the two: 1) they both headed supremely corrupt administrations providing federal and state prosecutors with working material for a decade after they left office, 2) they were both hands-off Presidents (Grant was drunk for his two terms, Reagan was senile and asleep through most of his administration), 3) they both presided over substantial periods of economic recession, and, least likely, 4) they both supported Civil Rights. Grant was a strong advocate for the 15th Amendment (before the Supreme Court turned it to crap) and Reagan once said, "I favor the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and it must be enforced at gunpoint if necessary." Who would have thought that the man who took best advantage of the southern flight from the Democratic Party because of the Civil Rights Act actually believed in its principles? Of course, Ulysses Grant actually provided a service to his country, leading the nation's military against the hillbillies of the Old South and saving democracy, the Union, and ending slavery in North America (until the 20th Century revived slavery in a variety of forms, something R Reagan had a hand in).
Since Reagan never actually accomplished anything useful in the defense of the nation or in any other useful area, I think dumping Grant for Reagan would be a foolish mistake. However, Reagan and G.W. Bush did an awful lot toward burying the country in debt and I would strongly recommend that their likenesses be put on an instrument of debt; the $100 savings bond, for example. I am in no way a graphic artist, but the included example is along the lines of what I would recommend. A legend such as, "I need your money to burn" or "Buy U.S. Bonds so Democrats can pay off our bad debts" or something equally quaint could go a long way toward truth in advertising our national savings bonds.It looks like the $50 Reagan bill is doomed to failure. Something like 80% of Americans favor Grant over Reagan. Apprarently, the repackaging of Sleepy Ronny hasn't gone as well as the promoters hoped. Republicans always want to take the easy way out of work, representing the idle rich as they do. It's going to take a lot more Faux News propaganda before Boomers forget their losses from Reaganonmics. Of course, the quote Reagan should have been remembered for is, "It's true hard work never killed anybody, but I figure, why take the chance?" He never did.
4/15/2010
How to Fix Kansas
The subtitle for this rant ought to be "And Why Kansas will Never be Fixed."
Kansas, like most of the Midwest, is and has been in economic depression since Jerry Ford and the end of the Vietnam War. Outside of federal welfare, the state's economic base has been steadily shrinking since the end of the industrial period in the 70's. The population is aging, the replacements are unskilled, uneducated immigrant minimum wage labor (when they aren't illegal). The school system, which was never particularly good, is now reduced to the blind leading the blind. The quality of life is so pitiful that the state resorts to generating its own standards for QoL measurements to avoid the obvious conclusion that only someone who is desperate and out of options would life in the state.
So, what are the state and local community solutions for this catastrophic situation? The usual culprits: hillbilly recreation and gambling. In my hometown, Dodge City, the city has proudly built a "$33.7 million multi-purpose events center" that is supposed to attract pro hockey, rodeo, and music acts to the city. Supposedly, Dodge has a population of 33,000, but most of that population is barely surviving, with next-to-no income available for high-priced recreation. A substantial portion of the population is retired or approaching retirement.
Dodge City has a long history of being conned into idiot development by city mismanagers and crooked city council members, only to find that the mismanagers skip town leaving the city with the smell of rendering and packing plants and feedlots surrounding the city and a continuing decline in average incomes and quality of life. This new "events center" has the stench of déjà vu.
Another proposed "solution" to the city's economic woes is gambling. Supposedly, the reason Dodge's tourist business is in decline is because the city hasn't properly hyped it's quarter decade of historic importance into a commodity. The fact that the freeway bypasses the city b y almost 200 miles and the railroad is all but dead and the city has no meaningful air transportation is, apparently, unimportant. Some folks imagine that the incredibly opportunity for poor people to gamble will be a big draw to the city. "Just hold your nose and ignore the nasty taste of our air and water and yank on that one-armed bandit." Catchy, don't you think?
The obvious real solution is so far out of the grasp of this kind of community that it might as well be described as "impossible." The solution for Dodge is the solution for the rest of the country, too. The taxpaying, self-supporting states and cities of the nation all have one trait in common: they are tolerant and liberal. Innovation and creativity and tolerance are all part of the same package. The code name for this is the "‘technology, talent and tolerance formula" and it's not only well-documented, but it's obvious. The places where tolerance is at what Midwesterners would call "extreme" are the places where talent and technology thrive. Call me crazy, but it just seems obvious that a culture of tolerance would attract talented people and talented people tend to drive technology.
A place like Dodge City, Kansas would be near the far end of intolerant locations. Being gay, non-white, hip, non-conformist, or unusual in any way is a guaranteed path to discrimination and, possibly, violence in Dodge. This is the kind of community that actively hunts down "the green monkey" and exterminates him with prejudice. Dodge is exactly the kind of "real American" city that Sarah Palin extols and it is also a dead zone, creatively. The school system produces mediocrity; when it produces anything at all, since the drop-out rate is above average. (Kansas' overall dropout rate is 25%, but the Hispanic dropout rate is 45% and that is the fastest growing population in the state and overwhelmingly the fastest growing population in Dodge.)
To become an economic center, the city and state would have to reverse decades of Republican-directed discrimination and intolerance. I can not see any way that would happen. Without that reversal, however, the place is doomed to become a 3rd world, dysfunctional poverty zone and a drag on the economies of the productive parts of the country.
Kansas, like most of the Midwest, is and has been in economic depression since Jerry Ford and the end of the Vietnam War. Outside of federal welfare, the state's economic base has been steadily shrinking since the end of the industrial period in the 70's. The population is aging, the replacements are unskilled, uneducated immigrant minimum wage labor (when they aren't illegal). The school system, which was never particularly good, is now reduced to the blind leading the blind. The quality of life is so pitiful that the state resorts to generating its own standards for QoL measurements to avoid the obvious conclusion that only someone who is desperate and out of options would life in the state.
So, what are the state and local community solutions for this catastrophic situation? The usual culprits: hillbilly recreation and gambling. In my hometown, Dodge City, the city has proudly built a "$33.7 million multi-purpose events center" that is supposed to attract pro hockey, rodeo, and music acts to the city. Supposedly, Dodge has a population of 33,000, but most of that population is barely surviving, with next-to-no income available for high-priced recreation. A substantial portion of the population is retired or approaching retirement.
Dodge City has a long history of being conned into idiot development by city mismanagers and crooked city council members, only to find that the mismanagers skip town leaving the city with the smell of rendering and packing plants and feedlots surrounding the city and a continuing decline in average incomes and quality of life. This new "events center" has the stench of déjà vu.
Another proposed "solution" to the city's economic woes is gambling. Supposedly, the reason Dodge's tourist business is in decline is because the city hasn't properly hyped it's quarter decade of historic importance into a commodity. The fact that the freeway bypasses the city b y almost 200 miles and the railroad is all but dead and the city has no meaningful air transportation is, apparently, unimportant. Some folks imagine that the incredibly opportunity for poor people to gamble will be a big draw to the city. "Just hold your nose and ignore the nasty taste of our air and water and yank on that one-armed bandit." Catchy, don't you think?
The obvious real solution is so far out of the grasp of this kind of community that it might as well be described as "impossible." The solution for Dodge is the solution for the rest of the country, too. The taxpaying, self-supporting states and cities of the nation all have one trait in common: they are tolerant and liberal. Innovation and creativity and tolerance are all part of the same package. The code name for this is the "‘technology, talent and tolerance formula" and it's not only well-documented, but it's obvious. The places where tolerance is at what Midwesterners would call "extreme" are the places where talent and technology thrive. Call me crazy, but it just seems obvious that a culture of tolerance would attract talented people and talented people tend to drive technology.
A place like Dodge City, Kansas would be near the far end of intolerant locations. Being gay, non-white, hip, non-conformist, or unusual in any way is a guaranteed path to discrimination and, possibly, violence in Dodge. This is the kind of community that actively hunts down "the green monkey" and exterminates him with prejudice. Dodge is exactly the kind of "real American" city that Sarah Palin extols and it is also a dead zone, creatively. The school system produces mediocrity; when it produces anything at all, since the drop-out rate is above average. (Kansas' overall dropout rate is 25%, but the Hispanic dropout rate is 45% and that is the fastest growing population in the state and overwhelmingly the fastest growing population in Dodge.)
To become an economic center, the city and state would have to reverse decades of Republican-directed discrimination and intolerance. I can not see any way that would happen. Without that reversal, however, the place is doomed to become a 3rd world, dysfunctional poverty zone and a drag on the economies of the productive parts of the country.
4/12/2010
More of What's The Matter with Kansas
Kansas is one of the nation's welfare states, in 2005 Kansas was #22 on the list of states that receive more in federal dollars than it pays. You'd think that would make the state somewhat "liberal," but you'd be wrong. The overwhelming majority of welfare states are "red" states; which is pretty consistent with the 1950's definition of "red." The socialists are complaining about creeping socialism.With that in mind, Kansas is still as confusing as ever. On a recent trip to Kansas, I was bombarded with anti-abortion, pro-capital punishment, pro-war, pro-gun, anti-government propaganda. As always, the contradictions are endless. Thomas Frank's book on the subject pointed out how well corporations and their spokesgroup, the Republican Party, have used distractions and ignorance to confuse the hell out of this non-working class who depend on government handouts but who imagine themselves as being independent and hard-working.
My wife's relatives are a case in point. In a household of three adults, one is a "social worker" at a local prison, one is a clerk in the education system specializing in providing services to students reliant on the National School Lunch Program, and a retired public school teacher living on a pension and Social Security. The social worker made a special point of calling the President "Ohbooboo," and pretended that he was making a political statement, not a racist slur. The school clerk "hates" the President and his "liberal agenda." Only the retired school teacher refrained from any hate speech during our visit. In a state that takes in $1.22 in 2005 dollars for every $1 of taxes paid into the federal coffers, this family was not even a little unusual. Just guessing, I'd expect their productivity ratio was more like a 100:1 substidy-to-taxpayer statistic.
How does that work? How do people imagine themselves to be anything but dependent when they are totally living on the dole? Easy. Anyone who can believe in a all seeing, all knowing god who is more concerned with greedy, lazy, illiterate Midwesterners than starving Africian children is capable of self-deluding themselves into all sorts of crazy notions. Delusion is state-of-the-art in Kansas.
Consider the income the state hauls in in farm substidies, the millions of dollars in religious tax exemptions, and the fact that the only population increase the state experiences comes from illegal aliens, and you have a place that couldn't support itself under any conditions; a welfare state. I wonder if these are the folks South Carolina Republican Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer was talking about when he said “My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You’re facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don’t think too much further than that. And so what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to curtail that type of behavior. They don’t know any better.”
Judging by the size of the average Kansan, I'd say we've been feeding them way too much.
4/05/2010
Dumbing Down the State
April 7, the state of Minnesota will host a Republican Marching Morons event with former quitter-Governor Sarah Palin, Representative Michele Bachmann, Governor Tim Pawlenty, and Sean Hannity. Wow! I suspect the state will be at least 50 IQ points dumber just with that kind of moron weight in town. The Republican propaganda machine calls Palin and Bachmann "two of the most dynamic and impressive conservative leaders in the nation." As usual, when Republicans speak, I convulsively lung for a dictionary to see just how far they are from properly using the English language this week. Putting Bachmann and Palin in a sentance with the words "dynamic" and "impressive" and "leaders" is about as oxymoronic as morons can get.If there were a god, he would whip up a tornado and whisk away the dregs of the planet while they are packed together in their hive of craziness. Not likely, but a wonderful fantasy. Put these two grinning idiots on a stage and watch them stumble over words, thoughts, and cracks in the Republican platform.
Usually, the state capitol building is the center of idiocy in this state (and most states), but this weekend the mental bar is going to be lowered somewhere below ground level at the Minneapolis Convention Center. It could be years before our education system recovers from the massive quotent of stupid dragging down test scores and driving habits in downtown Minneapolis.
3/30/2010
An Open Letter to Al Franken
Dear Senator Franken,
I received your appeal for assistance regarding the changes you are recommending in student loan funding. I suspect you and I come from similar education backgrounds, so please accept this advice with the knowledge that I, too, am a liberal arts college graduate.
The country does not need any more historians, lawyers, musicians, cooks and chefs, truck drivers, writers, self-study experts, actors, dancers, psychologists or sociologists, MBAs and accountants. The nation is overstuffed with the skills provided by all of those "disciplines." The country needs to be able to sustain itself and its economy. Hobbies glorified by academia as "fields of study" aren't going to provide the talents or industry to support 300 million people. Doing actual work, providing practical value, is the only thing that can save us.
If the public is going to be asked to foot the bill to educate the generation of children who were handicapped by "No Child Left Untested," I think we should get our money's worth. Instead of shoveling money into the wasteland of worthless activity's, I'd like to see some focus to student loans. Engineering, science, and medicine are all worthwhile and practical fields of study and all of those will produce the skills necessary for the next century. Consider putting the nation's money where it's values are; where a return on the investment is likely instead of impossible. At this point, the disipline provided by a serious education is critical to the nation's success. It's time for the federal government to make value judgements and serious decisions with taxpayer's money. Stop funding hobbies and start reforming higher education in this country.
I received your appeal for assistance regarding the changes you are recommending in student loan funding. I suspect you and I come from similar education backgrounds, so please accept this advice with the knowledge that I, too, am a liberal arts college graduate.
The country does not need any more historians, lawyers, musicians, cooks and chefs, truck drivers, writers, self-study experts, actors, dancers, psychologists or sociologists, MBAs and accountants. The nation is overstuffed with the skills provided by all of those "disciplines." The country needs to be able to sustain itself and its economy. Hobbies glorified by academia as "fields of study" aren't going to provide the talents or industry to support 300 million people. Doing actual work, providing practical value, is the only thing that can save us.
If the public is going to be asked to foot the bill to educate the generation of children who were handicapped by "No Child Left Untested," I think we should get our money's worth. Instead of shoveling money into the wasteland of worthless activity's, I'd like to see some focus to student loans. Engineering, science, and medicine are all worthwhile and practical fields of study and all of those will produce the skills necessary for the next century. Consider putting the nation's money where it's values are; where a return on the investment is likely instead of impossible. At this point, the disipline provided by a serious education is critical to the nation's success. It's time for the federal government to make value judgements and serious decisions with taxpayer's money. Stop funding hobbies and start reforming higher education in this country.
3/27/2010
Who are they, really?
The more I listen to the rantings of the crazies who represent the Teabaggers, the more I worry about where this country is going. Where ever they raise their vicious heads, the wingnuts always have the world's corporations backing them. No matter how often they try to portray themselves as being the "little guy," the right is doing the bidding of the real "Powers that Be." You can't find a single Teabagger position that doesn't parrot exactly what large corporations are saying. Not a one.
Now, Palin is asking her angry band of nutcases to put their gun sights on elected officials and "target" them for elimination. "Don't Retreat, instead - RELOAD!" If you ever questioned who our government works for, that is answered when this vicious hate monger can get away with telling packs of crazies to kill elected officials without penalty. These people killed Kennedy and they will do their best to kill Obama and anyone who stands between them and their New World Order, to quote one of the Teabaggers' sponsors; George Bush.
When a war protestor can be removed from the cameras' eye for wearing a tee-shirt during Little George's rein of terror but a Teabagger can proudly strap on a pistol and shoulder-up an assault rifle and join a march of similar nutcases in front of a building where Obama is speaking, you know who the Secret Service is protecting and who it is pretending to protect. As the song said, "This is not America." This is not a democracy. This is a scary place full of crazy people.
Palin's Bush-whipped ex-running mate, McCain, said, "that rhetoric and kind of language is just part of the political lexicon." The more McCain tries to appeal to the crazies, the more he exposes himself to be about as "independent" as a cartoon commercial character. Palin and McCain are poster-children for a career in becoming a corporate shill. Their yak about "death panels" and bureaucratic medical decision terror is a distraction from the fact that our current health-care system is all about bottom-line optimization for the wrong people.
We have death panels; they are called "insurance companies." We have health-care decisions made by ignorant bureaucrats; they are called "medical directors" and they act exclusively in the interests of the corporations they serve. The Teabaggers are a racist, anti-democratic, pack of clowns who would overthrow 225 years of democracy to serve their corporate masters and we should all be afraid of them and put them on notice that we're not going to stand for their idiocy in our towns and cities. They should be labeled as what they are; corporate brown shirts. They should be ridiculed and monitored like the pack if wild dogs they represent. They are not Palin's "real America," they represent the worst of that which America has tolerated in the last two centuries: lynch mobs, corporate goons, corrupt government officials, fascists, and fools. They dishonor our democracy and the ideals for which our Constitution stands.
Now, Palin is asking her angry band of nutcases to put their gun sights on elected officials and "target" them for elimination. "Don't Retreat, instead - RELOAD!" If you ever questioned who our government works for, that is answered when this vicious hate monger can get away with telling packs of crazies to kill elected officials without penalty. These people killed Kennedy and they will do their best to kill Obama and anyone who stands between them and their New World Order, to quote one of the Teabaggers' sponsors; George Bush.
When a war protestor can be removed from the cameras' eye for wearing a tee-shirt during Little George's rein of terror but a Teabagger can proudly strap on a pistol and shoulder-up an assault rifle and join a march of similar nutcases in front of a building where Obama is speaking, you know who the Secret Service is protecting and who it is pretending to protect. As the song said, "This is not America." This is not a democracy. This is a scary place full of crazy people.
Palin's Bush-whipped ex-running mate, McCain, said, "that rhetoric and kind of language is just part of the political lexicon." The more McCain tries to appeal to the crazies, the more he exposes himself to be about as "independent" as a cartoon commercial character. Palin and McCain are poster-children for a career in becoming a corporate shill. Their yak about "death panels" and bureaucratic medical decision terror is a distraction from the fact that our current health-care system is all about bottom-line optimization for the wrong people.
We have death panels; they are called "insurance companies." We have health-care decisions made by ignorant bureaucrats; they are called "medical directors" and they act exclusively in the interests of the corporations they serve. The Teabaggers are a racist, anti-democratic, pack of clowns who would overthrow 225 years of democracy to serve their corporate masters and we should all be afraid of them and put them on notice that we're not going to stand for their idiocy in our towns and cities. They should be labeled as what they are; corporate brown shirts. They should be ridiculed and monitored like the pack if wild dogs they represent. They are not Palin's "real America," they represent the worst of that which America has tolerated in the last two centuries: lynch mobs, corporate goons, corrupt government officials, fascists, and fools. They dishonor our democracy and the ideals for which our Constitution stands.
3/21/2010
A Battle of Words, Not Ideas
Conservatives, properly named for their timidity and loyalty to the existing powers and authority, decided about 30 years ago to go on the attack to redefine their opponents. Somehow, that idiotic tactic worked, so they are sticking with it. With boatloads of crazy talk and completely idiotic "reasoning," they successfully redefined (for idiots and illiterates) the definition of "liberal."
"Conservative: of or relating to a philosophy of conservatism b capitalized : of or constituting a political party professing the principles of conservatism: as (1) : of or constituting a party of the United Kingdom advocating support of established institutions (2) : progressive conservative 3 a : tending or disposed to maintain existing views, conditions, or institutions : traditional b : marked by moderation or caution c : marked by or relating to traditional norms of taste, elegance, style, or manners"
As defined by the Merriam Webster Dictionary
Any idiot with a 3rd grade education knows that "liberal" is a complimentary term and "conservative" is another word for "coward" or "rich asshole." Not anymore. There is an entire television network, Faux News, dedicated to convincing the rest of us that being a lilly-livered, gutless wimp is a "good thing." Of course, they've done a pretty good job of it. Amazing. A political party and a network solely dedicated to protecting the interests of international corporations, trust fund babies, and corporate criminals defining their enemies and convincing people who are regularly violated by exactly these conservative interests to worry about the "rights" of their natural and constant enemies. Somewhere, "stupid" ought to be in the definition of conservative, too.
"Liberal: 1 a : of, relating to, or based on the liberal artseducation> b archaic : of or befitting a man of free birth2 a : marked by generosity : openhanded b : given or provided in a generous and openhanded way c : ample, full3 obsolete : lacking moral restraint : licentious4 : not literal or strict : loose 5 : broad-minded; especially : not bound by authoritarianism, orthodoxy, or traditional forms6 a : of, favoring, or based upon the principles of liberalism b capitalized : of or constituting a political party advocating or associated with the principles of political liberalism; especially : of or constituting a political party in the United Kingdom associated with ideals of individual especially economic freedom, greater individual participation in government, and constitutional, political, and administrative reforms designed to secure these objectives"
As defined by the Merriam Webster Dictionary
Not being satisfied with defaming "liberal," the propaganda machine is now going after the word "progressive." Again, any idiot would know the antonym of "progressive" is "regressive," which is exactly what a modern conservative typlifies as is demonstrated by the Teabaggers and every elected Republican in the nation. So, how do you get the uneducated, unwashed, unintelligent public to buy into this foolishness? Check out this synopsis from the Media Matters Institute.
"Conservative: of or relating to a philosophy of conservatism b capitalized : of or constituting a political party professing the principles of conservatism: as (1) : of or constituting a party of the United Kingdom advocating support of established institutions (2) : progressive conservative 3 a : tending or disposed to maintain existing views, conditions, or institutions : traditional b : marked by moderation or caution c : marked by or relating to traditional norms of taste, elegance, style, or manners"
As defined by the Merriam Webster Dictionary
Any idiot with a 3rd grade education knows that "liberal" is a complimentary term and "conservative" is another word for "coward" or "rich asshole." Not anymore. There is an entire television network, Faux News, dedicated to convincing the rest of us that being a lilly-livered, gutless wimp is a "good thing." Of course, they've done a pretty good job of it. Amazing. A political party and a network solely dedicated to protecting the interests of international corporations, trust fund babies, and corporate criminals defining their enemies and convincing people who are regularly violated by exactly these conservative interests to worry about the "rights" of their natural and constant enemies. Somewhere, "stupid" ought to be in the definition of conservative, too.
"Liberal: 1 a : of, relating to, or based on the liberal arts
As defined by the Merriam Webster Dictionary
Not being satisfied with defaming "liberal," the propaganda machine is now going after the word "progressive." Again, any idiot would know the antonym of "progressive" is "regressive," which is exactly what a modern conservative typlifies as is demonstrated by the Teabaggers and every elected Republican in the nation. So, how do you get the uneducated, unwashed, unintelligent public to buy into this foolishness? Check out this synopsis from the Media Matters Institute.
3/12/2010
Who Cares about Idiocracy?
For a large part of my life, I've carried around a few books and one notebook full of short stories clipped from a variety of magazines. One of those short stories is "Marching Morons" by C.M. Kornbluth. The movie Idiocracy was ripped from the pages of "Marching Morons" and dumbed-down into something a pack of marching Hollywood morons could comprehend. Still, the basic premise--the dumb keep breeding like rabbits while the best minds of our species take a pass on reproduction--held together for the first 1/4 of Idiocracy. The conclusion of the movie was that the incredibly stupid would figure out how to feed themselves. The conclusion of "Marching Morons" was that the microscopic percentage of remaining intellects would find a way to jettison the stupid. Either scenario is depressing and unrealistic.This morning, it struck me that the problem is a non-starter; unless you are under the delusion that humanity is somehow precious to the universe. Let's take it as a given that humanity will never brighten up enough to stop killing itself. Most likely we face a terrible future, regardless of what a few pitiful humans do to try and avert it. Humans will doing stupid destructive things, keep electing greedy idiots who will aggravate every problem, the incredibly corrupt will keep inventing crazy religions (ie. capitalism, communism, Christianity, Islam, etc.) that distract the foolish and waste valuable resources, and the dumbest will out reproduce the intelligent in exponentially greater numbers.
The sad part of this hurtle to oblivion is that some good people will most likely go down with the overwhelming majority of idiots. The upside, which came to me this morning, is that the number of intelligent humans on the planet will be declining exponentially over the next couple of generations and that minimizes the tragedy. In fact, after watching a few moments of Faux News, I'm sort of looking forward to an end to the species. Between the Teabagger Ladies and corporate scumbags, my tolerance for my own fauna has fallen to a new low.
3/09/2010
Creating Power, Creating Community
My wife and I attended an event at a small St. Paul Library last night. This was an old Carnegie library building in one of the older parts of the city, so it's one of the many libraries on the Ramsey Country Library Board's chopping block. This old library reminded me of the primary purpose of public libraries; creating communities.This local library has been, obviously, starved for resources, but it still keeps attracting neighbors and serving the local community. In fact, the only way to stop a library like this from being used is to close its doors.
This community-building value is a purpose that modern politicians have either forgotten or one that they oppose. It's hard to tell which. For example, our local library politicians are creating a monolith of a library that will be a monument to government excess and community consolidation. When it's finished, the new Roseville Library will suck resources from every other Ramsey County Library until the library board begins to close those small libraries to make room in the budget for the one-and-only-library the country will be able to afford to keep open. Ramsey County is following the incompetent example of Minneapolis, because that's what mismanagement does. One mistake deserves another.All of this is a good thing for the overpaid, underworked, completely useless bureaucrats who mismanage the country's resources. A giant building means giant management salaries, which means larger salaries for the politicians who mismanage the bureaucrats, which means higher taxes, which means a more stressed, less connected community, which continues the cycle of abuse and incompetence.
As in the business world, the word "leadership" has lost all meaning in government. Conservative characters like Pawlenty gabber about "responsible government" while building monuments to bureaucratic incompetence as fast as they can borrow the money to do so. Their only concern is packing the pockets of their supporters and themselves, while doing as much damage to communities as possible. The weaker, the less informed, the less educated the voters are, the easier they are to mislead. Shredding the value of public libraries to local communities is just part of this tactic.
In a few years, when the United States becomes a minor world power, broke and stagnate and paralyzed by incompetence and politics, the rest of the world will study how we came to such a low state and wonder how anyone could have not anticipated this future. The route from superpower to disaster zone is one of history's most repeated stories. Here we go again.
2/20/2010
Tea Party Mental Failure
The real problem with right wing movements like the Tea Baggers is pretty simple. Many of us sympathize with the complaints about our country's taxation, immigration, and healthcare policies. Many Americans think government has become too large, too incompetent, too invasive, and too unresponsive to be useful to working class citizens. Those are core issues for a majority of citizens.
The problem with the Tea Baggers is that they believe complicated issues can be comprehended, managed, and solved by simple-minded people. It's hard to imagine a problem simple enough for the capacities of characters like Palin, Bachmann, Limbaugh, Beck, and the Faux News doofuses. Stupid people can not solve complicated problems. That's it. There is no issue involving a country of 300 million people or a planet with 6 billion souls that a bonehead like Glenn Beck could resolve. Sarah Palin was incapable of managing a state that has a population that wouldn't fill a decent sized lower-48 city. Not only couldn't she manage that simple state, she didn't have the mental capacity, durability, or courage to stay on the job for one full term.
Like the history of banana republic revolutions, simple people desperately want simple problems. They will always be disappointed. Human history is crowded with the story of cultures looking to idiots and nutcases for solutions and the disappointment that always follows. From Julius Caesar to Napoleon to Hitler to Mao to Idi Amin to G.W. Bush, one moronic nutcase after another has drug his country down the toilet bowl of stupid fantasies.
After 8 years of brain-dead, corrupt Republican foolishness, the appeal of Obama was that the man isn't stupid. That's it. The country was desperate for a leader with an IQ greater than the number of fingers and toes he could count on. The entire Bush Administration couldn't put together as much mental capacity as the Obama family brings to the breakfast table, let alone enough synapse connections to solve simple three variable word problems. After experiencing the usual Republican "Rule by Fool" it was way past time to give up on the desperate hope that idiots might stumble upon a miracle cure for complex problems.
That is consistently the wingnut problem. Smart people don't hang out with stupid people and that leaves Republicans and the Tea Baggers with slim candidate pickings. The fact that conservatives are incapable of humor sadly describes the mental state of wingnuts in general. Not only is "conservative comedy" an oxymoron, but so is "brilliant conservative movie," "conservative think tank," and "Sarah Palin's great idea."
The allergy wingnuts have for "intellectual elites" and "college boys" is a fatal flaw. Economic elites are obvious enemies of the working class: multi-million dollar CEOs, trust fund brats, Wall Street bankers, and that ilk. Grouping economic elites with intellectual elites is so dumb that it ought to be an obvious mistake even to the uneducated. It, apparently, isn’t. “Elite” has a couple of meanings: “1) the socially superior part of society" and 2) "the best of a class.” If we chose “humanity” as the class we are speaking of, selecting “the best” of our species to make complicated decisions is only logical. The “socially superior” elites (of which Bush, Cheney, and most of that clan were perfect representatives) have almost nothing of value to contribute. They are the inbred hillbilly children of robber baron heritage and they represent the most conservative position in society: rich people who want to hang on to their wealth and power at any cost. One type of elite is expert at solving problems the other is only skilled at resisting change. Change is going to happen. Pretending the world is static is conservative and stupid.
Elites of intelligence come from a variety of backgrounds; there are PhD fools and high school dropout geniuses and everything in-between. The common ground smart people occupy is a low tolerance for fools, so it's often tough to entice them into politics. It's really hard to con them into having out with a group of non-stop idiots. As the nation's problems become more obvious and more difficult to solve, the Tea Baggers will, hopefully, become less relevant. However, in this idiocracy they may get a chance to make an even bigger mess of our complicated problems before the majority comes to its senses.
If the majority has any sense left.
The Tea Baggers are in a good position to restart our political system, but they are too well-populated with the same idiots who have created this mess. Somehow, the country needs to create a similar movement, but stock it with intelligent citizens who might offer up intelligent solutions and leadership.
Personally, I think the country needs to return to the system that picked George Washington as the first President. We need to draft the best people, even against their will if necessary. Politics is the kind of job that attracts the wrong people. Anyone who wants the job should be avoided at all costs. For the most part, the people who could best run the country would be happier doing practically anything else. For one, they’d have to hang out with politicians and their supporters and lobbyists. Anybody with a lick of sense would flee the country rather than put up with an hour suffering that crowd.
The problem with the Tea Baggers is that they believe complicated issues can be comprehended, managed, and solved by simple-minded people. It's hard to imagine a problem simple enough for the capacities of characters like Palin, Bachmann, Limbaugh, Beck, and the Faux News doofuses. Stupid people can not solve complicated problems. That's it. There is no issue involving a country of 300 million people or a planet with 6 billion souls that a bonehead like Glenn Beck could resolve. Sarah Palin was incapable of managing a state that has a population that wouldn't fill a decent sized lower-48 city. Not only couldn't she manage that simple state, she didn't have the mental capacity, durability, or courage to stay on the job for one full term.
Like the history of banana republic revolutions, simple people desperately want simple problems. They will always be disappointed. Human history is crowded with the story of cultures looking to idiots and nutcases for solutions and the disappointment that always follows. From Julius Caesar to Napoleon to Hitler to Mao to Idi Amin to G.W. Bush, one moronic nutcase after another has drug his country down the toilet bowl of stupid fantasies.
After 8 years of brain-dead, corrupt Republican foolishness, the appeal of Obama was that the man isn't stupid. That's it. The country was desperate for a leader with an IQ greater than the number of fingers and toes he could count on. The entire Bush Administration couldn't put together as much mental capacity as the Obama family brings to the breakfast table, let alone enough synapse connections to solve simple three variable word problems. After experiencing the usual Republican "Rule by Fool" it was way past time to give up on the desperate hope that idiots might stumble upon a miracle cure for complex problems.
That is consistently the wingnut problem. Smart people don't hang out with stupid people and that leaves Republicans and the Tea Baggers with slim candidate pickings. The fact that conservatives are incapable of humor sadly describes the mental state of wingnuts in general. Not only is "conservative comedy" an oxymoron, but so is "brilliant conservative movie," "conservative think tank," and "Sarah Palin's great idea."
The allergy wingnuts have for "intellectual elites" and "college boys" is a fatal flaw. Economic elites are obvious enemies of the working class: multi-million dollar CEOs, trust fund brats, Wall Street bankers, and that ilk. Grouping economic elites with intellectual elites is so dumb that it ought to be an obvious mistake even to the uneducated. It, apparently, isn’t. “Elite” has a couple of meanings: “1) the socially superior part of society" and 2) "the best of a class.” If we chose “humanity” as the class we are speaking of, selecting “the best” of our species to make complicated decisions is only logical. The “socially superior” elites (of which Bush, Cheney, and most of that clan were perfect representatives) have almost nothing of value to contribute. They are the inbred hillbilly children of robber baron heritage and they represent the most conservative position in society: rich people who want to hang on to their wealth and power at any cost. One type of elite is expert at solving problems the other is only skilled at resisting change. Change is going to happen. Pretending the world is static is conservative and stupid.
Elites of intelligence come from a variety of backgrounds; there are PhD fools and high school dropout geniuses and everything in-between. The common ground smart people occupy is a low tolerance for fools, so it's often tough to entice them into politics. It's really hard to con them into having out with a group of non-stop idiots. As the nation's problems become more obvious and more difficult to solve, the Tea Baggers will, hopefully, become less relevant. However, in this idiocracy they may get a chance to make an even bigger mess of our complicated problems before the majority comes to its senses.
If the majority has any sense left.
The Tea Baggers are in a good position to restart our political system, but they are too well-populated with the same idiots who have created this mess. Somehow, the country needs to create a similar movement, but stock it with intelligent citizens who might offer up intelligent solutions and leadership.
Personally, I think the country needs to return to the system that picked George Washington as the first President. We need to draft the best people, even against their will if necessary. Politics is the kind of job that attracts the wrong people. Anyone who wants the job should be avoided at all costs. For the most part, the people who could best run the country would be happier doing practically anything else. For one, they’d have to hang out with politicians and their supporters and lobbyists. Anybody with a lick of sense would flee the country rather than put up with an hour suffering that crowd.
#198 Our Immigration Anti-Policy
The MSM talking head goofballs are shrieking about an Afghan terrorist cell discovered in Colorado. We're all supposed to be upset about the fact that a collection of Islamic refugees from a conservative loony bin have turned out to be crazy enough to be building bombs and planning mass murder in American cities. If that surprises you, you are exactly the 8-year-old intellectual capacity market the MSM caters to.
The rest of us should be asking, "Why are we still importing Afghan immigrants?"
We're at war with Afghanistan. We didn't import German immigrants during WWI or WWII. We didn't go out of our want to welcome Russian or East German immigrants during the Cold War. Why the hell is our dumbass government even considering immigration applications from Afghans, Iraqis, Iranians, Russians, Saudis, North Koreans, most of Africa, South America, or any of the places that routinely rant about "evil Americans?" It's not like we need their unemployed, unskilled, uneducated rejects. It's not like the "diversity" they bring to the United States provides the country with anything that will even support itself.
As crazy as it may seem, the United States, like practically every other country on the planet is overpopulated. While Americans have been making something of an effort to control family size, our idiot government has been making up for the "shortage" in idiots-being-born by ramping up immigration from the underclasses of the world. Bush/Cheney saw the Mexican boards swung wide open and more than 20 million illegals poured into and through our southern states during those brain-dead 8 years. If you had the feeling that the national IQ has been dropping in recent years, you might look to the Nation of Babble conditions our school systems are dealing with as the requirements for ESL classes overwhelms those facilities. You can't spend a lot of time on math and science when half of the classroom can't read or write the common language.
For an established nation, immigration should be a tool to temporarily obtain needed skills, technology, and innovation. We don't need more Section 8 "renters" or more Food Stamp consumers. There is a surplus of unprofitable shopkeepers in the inner city. Importing more minimum wage grunts than the economy can employ or moderate-skill workers intended to keep labor prices down is treasonous. We don't need to import intelligent, motivated students to compensate for the fact that our children are drawn to menial "creative" jobs because our corporations and factories are mismanaged by a pack of idiot MBAs who couldn't properly organize a dozen eggs. Like most every other country in the world, instead of exporting discontents or importing the same we need to fix our economy, education system, democracy, and political system before we arrogantly head off to build some other nation.
Yeah, I know, isolationist. I can live with that. I'd rather be isolationist than imperialist. It's hard to create vicious enemies when you are minding your own business.
Our current tax system was designed by idiots who shouldn't be allowed near sharp pencils. A rational system would be rewarding innovation, education, ecologically and economically friendly activities and making the opposite of those activities pay its own way. Our current system rewards speculators, the worst of all economic activities, and punishes innovation. Our system has been designed to protect the least useful of our giant and inefficient corporations--banking and finance--and to repress every industry that has a fighting chance at turning an honest profit.
Where our best companies get hit the hardest is in the talent they can find from our own citizens. Eight years of "No Child Left with a Mind" has decimated the talent pool and it will take at least that long to fix that mess. Fixing the education system could be financed by revising the tax system to encourage corporations to reward employees who upgrade their skills and by removing any corporate tax deductions for salaries and other perks over $100,000. Companies that attract people who are only motivated by money are only hiring mercenaries who will rape and pillage the business as quickly as they would leave for the next company that is foolish enough to hire them. The reward for that kind of stupidity ought to be a rational tax system that discourages idiot activities.
Instead of trying to fill the holes in the workforce with untrained, unskilled, and uneducated immigrants, our policy ought to be one that aims for quality not quantity, with a core desire to improve our own citizens' lives first.
The rest of us should be asking, "Why are we still importing Afghan immigrants?"
We're at war with Afghanistan. We didn't import German immigrants during WWI or WWII. We didn't go out of our want to welcome Russian or East German immigrants during the Cold War. Why the hell is our dumbass government even considering immigration applications from Afghans, Iraqis, Iranians, Russians, Saudis, North Koreans, most of Africa, South America, or any of the places that routinely rant about "evil Americans?" It's not like we need their unemployed, unskilled, uneducated rejects. It's not like the "diversity" they bring to the United States provides the country with anything that will even support itself.
As crazy as it may seem, the United States, like practically every other country on the planet is overpopulated. While Americans have been making something of an effort to control family size, our idiot government has been making up for the "shortage" in idiots-being-born by ramping up immigration from the underclasses of the world. Bush/Cheney saw the Mexican boards swung wide open and more than 20 million illegals poured into and through our southern states during those brain-dead 8 years. If you had the feeling that the national IQ has been dropping in recent years, you might look to the Nation of Babble conditions our school systems are dealing with as the requirements for ESL classes overwhelms those facilities. You can't spend a lot of time on math and science when half of the classroom can't read or write the common language.
For an established nation, immigration should be a tool to temporarily obtain needed skills, technology, and innovation. We don't need more Section 8 "renters" or more Food Stamp consumers. There is a surplus of unprofitable shopkeepers in the inner city. Importing more minimum wage grunts than the economy can employ or moderate-skill workers intended to keep labor prices down is treasonous. We don't need to import intelligent, motivated students to compensate for the fact that our children are drawn to menial "creative" jobs because our corporations and factories are mismanaged by a pack of idiot MBAs who couldn't properly organize a dozen eggs. Like most every other country in the world, instead of exporting discontents or importing the same we need to fix our economy, education system, democracy, and political system before we arrogantly head off to build some other nation.
Yeah, I know, isolationist. I can live with that. I'd rather be isolationist than imperialist. It's hard to create vicious enemies when you are minding your own business.
Our current tax system was designed by idiots who shouldn't be allowed near sharp pencils. A rational system would be rewarding innovation, education, ecologically and economically friendly activities and making the opposite of those activities pay its own way. Our current system rewards speculators, the worst of all economic activities, and punishes innovation. Our system has been designed to protect the least useful of our giant and inefficient corporations--banking and finance--and to repress every industry that has a fighting chance at turning an honest profit.
Where our best companies get hit the hardest is in the talent they can find from our own citizens. Eight years of "No Child Left with a Mind" has decimated the talent pool and it will take at least that long to fix that mess. Fixing the education system could be financed by revising the tax system to encourage corporations to reward employees who upgrade their skills and by removing any corporate tax deductions for salaries and other perks over $100,000. Companies that attract people who are only motivated by money are only hiring mercenaries who will rape and pillage the business as quickly as they would leave for the next company that is foolish enough to hire them. The reward for that kind of stupidity ought to be a rational tax system that discourages idiot activities.
Instead of trying to fill the holes in the workforce with untrained, unskilled, and uneducated immigrants, our policy ought to be one that aims for quality not quantity, with a core desire to improve our own citizens' lives first.
2/15/2010
Customer of Size
One of the beauties of being old and poor is political incorrectness. As I write this, Southwest Airlines is taking a load of crap for not being able to seat a moderately huge Hollywood character, Kevin Smith director of Clerks, Chasing Amy, and other X-Gen drivel. Southwest issued an "apology" after Smith whined about his poor treatment on Twitter. Finally, content that is appropriate for something as lame as Twitter and Tweeting, although most of the crap I've seen on Twitter ought to be more accurately termed Whimpering.I have to admit I enjoy the politically correct phrase "customer of size." It's much nicer than lardass, hippobutt, ton of flab, walrus boy, tank, or any of the usual descriptions of those of us who can't turn down calories and never saw a meal we couldn't finish. But look at this guy. He's huge! He couldn't fit into a queen sized bed, let alone an airline seat.
The thing that bothers me the most about this episode is that someone as unimportant to the scheme of life generates any national attention at all. I mean, come on, Clerks? Isn't that like being the guy who stunk up the boy's shower with a really nasty fart? Sure, some people remember stupid stuff like that their whole lives, but people with lives and families and real jobs forget pointless junk like Clerks the moment the credits roll. I'm pretty sure I saw Chasing Amy, too. Probably on a thin Netflix night. It didn't make a mark, though. I have no idea what it was about, unless Amy was a runner and the movie was about all the girls behind her in some kind of race.
As for fat folks in airplanes, "discriminating" against people who actually cost more to haul into the air and across the planet is only logical. I have always thought that cars and people ought to be taxed for the resources they consume. Big, heavy cars and trucks ought to cost more to buy and license. Lardasses ought to pay more to ride in buses, trains, and airplanes.
Conversely, if you can fit into a normal airline seat without touching the person beside you, you should get a discount. If you can't, you should either pay the person next to you for the real estate you're stealing or the airline for extra territory. Why is that so hard to figure out?
People are fat because they eat too much and exercise too little. It's not an affliction, an unavoidable handicap, or a reason to be treated with special consideration. In the end, nature is going to be particularly ruthless with diabetes, heart failure, stroke, and a boatload of misery to go along with all those boatloads of gravy. This is another example of Americans taking the victim road too seriously. "Customer of size," my ass. The dude is a hippo. He might be able to cram his butt into a seat, but he'll be spilling into the seats on either side of him.
1/23/2010
Intended Results?
Digital television has been a catastrophe. There are hundreds of websites, many sponsored by the FCC, that give lame, useless advice on how to better receive these weak, unpredictable new television signals, but nobody seems to be getting the television they once enjoyed through antenna signals. Was it intended to be a disaster or was this just another example of American mismanagement?
The question is probably unimportant at this late date, but I suspect there are going to be a number of unintended consequences. Television, in general, is sucking wind. The 18-25 year old male audience is disappearing. A bit of that market is buying into cable or satellite television, but most of the boys are playing video games, getting their tube fix over the Internet, and renting movies through Netflix or stealing them via a variety of file-sharing Internet routes. Even the Boomer viewers are considering alternative routes.
You can tell that television execs are as clueless about what to do about the mass exodus of viewers as music business execs have been about vanishing CD customers. The blooming of moronic but cheap "reality" drivel is exactly the kind of reaction you'd expect from MBAs to a phenomena that they can not possible comprehend. "When in doubt, do the dumbest thing you can't imagine. " That is the Harvard MBA mantra. When it comes to dumb, it's hard to beat "Octomom: The Incredible Unseen Footage," "Battle of the Bods," "Busted and Disgusted," and the rest of the crap that passes for entertainment on cable and over-the-air television. Trust me, it will only get dumber. By the time the MBAs are finished, the only people cable of being entertained by the crap that will be showing on television will be the same morons who voted for G.W. Bush twice. I realize that is a fair portion of the US population, but it's a very poor and unemployable portion. You can't attract high-end advertisers when all of your viewers are on welfare.
Back to the digital television clusterFox.
The unintended consequence of screwing up over-the-air television could be way worse than the television executives imagine. Netfllix is probably counting on it. To fill all that cable space, cable companies are jamming the airwaves with space filler which is driving even more viewers away from their tubes to video games, on-line movie channels, and any other source of entertainment that gives them control of the message. We're getting our news from a host of non-traditional sources, our entertainment from even more places, and this is just the beginning. Leading users of media are probably the place to look for where entertainment and news are going in the very near future.
All those digital glitches are driving change a little faster than a competent move to high definition television would have inspired.
The question is probably unimportant at this late date, but I suspect there are going to be a number of unintended consequences. Television, in general, is sucking wind. The 18-25 year old male audience is disappearing. A bit of that market is buying into cable or satellite television, but most of the boys are playing video games, getting their tube fix over the Internet, and renting movies through Netflix or stealing them via a variety of file-sharing Internet routes. Even the Boomer viewers are considering alternative routes.
You can tell that television execs are as clueless about what to do about the mass exodus of viewers as music business execs have been about vanishing CD customers. The blooming of moronic but cheap "reality" drivel is exactly the kind of reaction you'd expect from MBAs to a phenomena that they can not possible comprehend. "When in doubt, do the dumbest thing you can't imagine. " That is the Harvard MBA mantra. When it comes to dumb, it's hard to beat "Octomom: The Incredible Unseen Footage," "Battle of the Bods," "Busted and Disgusted," and the rest of the crap that passes for entertainment on cable and over-the-air television. Trust me, it will only get dumber. By the time the MBAs are finished, the only people cable of being entertained by the crap that will be showing on television will be the same morons who voted for G.W. Bush twice. I realize that is a fair portion of the US population, but it's a very poor and unemployable portion. You can't attract high-end advertisers when all of your viewers are on welfare.
Back to the digital television clusterFox.
The unintended consequence of screwing up over-the-air television could be way worse than the television executives imagine. Netfllix is probably counting on it. To fill all that cable space, cable companies are jamming the airwaves with space filler which is driving even more viewers away from their tubes to video games, on-line movie channels, and any other source of entertainment that gives them control of the message. We're getting our news from a host of non-traditional sources, our entertainment from even more places, and this is just the beginning. Leading users of media are probably the place to look for where entertainment and news are going in the very near future.
All those digital glitches are driving change a little faster than a competent move to high definition television would have inspired.
1/21/2010
Five Scumbags Do It Again
Five low-life, activist, corporate shills shrouded in black dresses have done their best to destroy the little that is left of democracy in the United States. These Republican-appointed scumbags have decided that corporations don't have enough say in who gets elected by owning the right wing media and most of Washington. Now, that collection of superstitious, ignorant, corrupt pinheads who control the majority of the Supreme Court have decided that corporations and unions can spend all they want buying votes and representatives.1 Justice Anthony Kennedy - Republican President Ronald Reagan
2 Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. - Republican President George W. Bush
3. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. - Republican President George W. Bush
4. Justice Antonin Scalia - Republican President Ronald Reagan
5. Justice Clarence Thomas - Republican President George H. W. Bush
The five Republican z0mbies wrote, ""The First Amendment protects more than just the individual on a soapbox and the lonely pamphleteer." If it protected individuals and pamphleteers at all that would be a triumph. "The government may regulate corporate political speech through disclaimer and disclosure requirements, but it may not suppress that speech altogether." By "altogether," these illiterate, corporate communist morons mean "in any meaningful way."
The four outnumbered dissenters, represented by Justice John Paul Stevens, called this idi0t decision a "radical change" in the law and noted that "the court’s ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions around the nation." As if Republicans and integrity can ever be included in the same sentence without a disclaimer or negative.
I looks like we're in for a long, painful, lawless period until a couple of those scumbags retires, is exposed to sunlight, or strokes out. Since the good die young and evil seems to be eternal, it's safe to assume Thomas, Scalia, Alito, Roberts, and Kennedy will live forever.
12/28/2009
Only A Game
It's that time of the year, again. The time when the Minnesota Vikings are making a pass at the NFL playoffs and when their management and local politicians and our completely useless media are campaigning for $750 million of taxpayers' cash.At the beginning of the season, I was slightly sucked in because I sort of like Brett Farve. I like him because he's an old guy still competing in an young guy's game. I like him because he says what's on his mind in a sports world full of clichés and boilerplate sports jabber. Farve is more interesting than the whole pack of sports writing talking heads and our local columnists. However, leveraging my fondness for this old guy's tenacity into making me pay for a stadium for a near-worthless corporate entity that is part of a monopoly pack of gangsters is an unlikely sell.
Sports fans are idiots. Because we can be fooled into identifying with guys who have no more in common with us than our relationship to superheroes, we can be fooled into thinking we have something to do with these mutants' successes. Our shouting at the television screen or screaming in the stadium has nothing to do with their abilities. If these guys were playing on an abandoned field in outback Alaska, they'd still be competitive, beyond normal abilities, and they'd be finding a way to make more money in obscurity than the rest of us make anywhere we apply our meager skills.
Nothing any athlete can do can overcome the desperate need every city has for a superior education system, modern transportation, efficient and affordable energy, and a profitable business sector. Pro sports does practically nothing for the business sector. Pro sports take funding directly from education, transportation, and research. Pro sports decimate everything important in a city and leaves the city with massive debt, undevelopable property, and a lower urban and state IQ.The best thing a struggling economy can do is to abandon any public support to unnecessary distractions. Pro sports are several steps below unnecessary. Sorry, Brett. I’d love to see you go out on top, but I’d rather you did it in Green Bay or any other city than Minneapolis. We can’t afford your success.
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