"I Was Right! Damn."

The country is hotter than it has been in recorded history. Temperatures are high and rising, rainfall is dribbling to record lows in much of the nation, crops are failing, and Al Gore is hidden in media-obscurity somewhere saying, "I was right! Suck on it, you wingnut biaches."

I guess there is some justification to be had, knowing that the wingnut mainstream media got it wrong, as usual, but since wingnuts are still in charge of information everywhere, only the literate know about it. The majority of the Marching Morons are just as delusional, incoherent, and fucked up as they have always been. Nothing changes but the names on the mastheads.

In a country where "God is punishing them" is considered a rational argument, God seems to be punishing the Red States aggressively. If he/she is out there, it must be frustrating to see how the religious zombies mistake their own punishment for something done to others that happens to spill over on to the "righteous." The high price of poor design; Intelligent Designer, my ass. You forgot the brain, fool. Next time, create a bill of materials before you start playing in the mud. If God had been Japanese, he'd have had better quality control. Since he is, obviously, European he missed the entire manufacturing revolution and is more of a marketing guy than a manufacturing guy. That explains my crappy knees and hips and the entire Repuglican Party and the weird Romney genetics.

Humans have missed the boat so many times, you'd think we'd be better swimmers. The 2000 presidential election is going to be viewed, for a few years, as one of the most catastrophic events in human history. We allowed five senile assholes to overturn an election and stick us, and the rest of the planet, with a pair of characters who couldn't outsmart an inflatable Bozo the Clown doll and we wasted eight precious, unrecoverable years packing the pockets of the most corrupt people in human history while one hell of a lot more than Rome began to catch fire.

My advice, if you haven't reproduced yet, don't do it. If you have, start apologizing now. Unfortunately, being right means that we're all in for a nasty future.

Who Are the Job Creators?

Wingnuts want us to think the idle rich, corporate executives, military-industrial companies and the rest of the elite corporate welfare crowd are the "job creators." I don't think so. I came up with a game to test who is really economically important in the country and world. It's called "Who Can We Live Without."

First, let's play this game with the right wing crowd. If some blessed biological catastrophe were to happen to the caviar-eating crowd, everyone Romney and Bush have ever known for instance, what effect would that have on the nation's economy? All of the little rich kids who life on Daddy, Granpa, and Great-Great-Great-Granpa's money come down with a case of the mother-of-all diarrhea. The clowns to inhabit the top floors of the nation's corporate headquarters spend their last hours in the executive bathroom, emptying their money makers. The entire investment banking circus vanishes in a bubble of oily excrement. Most of the entertainment industry does what Hollywood usually does, makes shit, but this time no careers rebound from the disaster and we're left with independent artists for out diversions. Everyone who has eaten caviar (or some other rich asshole staple) in the last month is gone in a few weeks. How does that effect the nation's gross national product?

It's not like it's hard to find another CEO, so the loss of the executive class would result in a momentary burst of business productivity, until the usual assholes filtered to the top of the corporate toilet bowl and everything businesslike returned to "normal." Nobody but the people who serve the idle rich would know the rich douchebags were missing and those servants would probably find something useful to do fairly soon. The South's slaves ended up on the Detroit production lines after a few years of assimilation. George and Ann's butlers, maids, and gardeners can probably find productive work in time. Bankers just beg cheap (free today) money from the public and sell it back to us with interest. We can live without them. The difference between major stars and everyone else who plays an instrument, pretends to be someone else, or chases a ball in clown costumes is . . . not much. They will be replaced faster than we can forget their last performance.

If the right wing elite isn't mission critical to the country, who is?

How about scientists and mathematicians? If exposure to calculus and statistics caused aneurysms, how would that effect the economy? First, all of the rich people in the previous paragraph would be broke overnight if someone didn't manage their money, do their taxes, create tricky investment portfolios to maximize profits and minimize effort, and invent the products  and services that keep the 1% in control of 95% of the country's income. Without scientists and mathematicians, the idle rich would starve and have to find work asking if we "want fries with that?" The rest of us would be in trouble, too; especially if the US was the only country to have lost its scientists and mathematicians. We would go from being a shriveling first world economy to a third world disaster zone in a few months. Most of our productive industries would have seen their last new product and many wouldn't be able to continue producing their current products. The only competent federal government agency, the General Accounting Office, would become as stupid as the military and the military would be in capable of targeting anyone but Canada and Mexico and we'd have to drive the bombs to those places. Anyone but a wingnut can see scientists and mathematicians are job creators.

If we drop down the social ladder to the fastest vanishing career in the United States, farming, how does that play out if farmers and their support industries get Mad Cow and Corn disease and spend their last hours clawing at their skulls? The US food reserves are already lower than they have been for decades and fuel costs are likely to drive them lower. Doing stupid things like converting farm land to energy production (ethanol) will push this safety margin even closer to disaster. Even without killing off farmers and the ag industry, we might see the effect of these producers going away in the near future. Disregarding reality, if the food producers of the country vanished, so would most of us. With food reserves in the near-non-existent territory, most Americans would starve in a week. Grocery stores would empty on the first day and we'd eat our way through our personal reserves in a few days, those of us who have any. The streets would be on fire and the rioting would make the Civil War look like a block party. Obviously, farmers are job creators and life sustainers.

You can, hopefully, think of a few other occupations that are actually important to the country; medical providers, fire departments (especially forestry fire fighters), teachers, and the list of underpaid, overworked, unappreciated economy-critical jobs goes on. The ruling elite are not among that group. We can get along without them under any conditions.

How to Know if Your State Is an Armpit

Regardless of the wingnut slant to modern United States, there is a fairly easy and reliable way to tell if your hometown or homestate are reasonable and, at least, contains a few rational people. There is one community organization that has been a place for a "free and responsible search for truth and meaning" Since the founding of this country, this one organization has been an ethical and moral, logical and spiritual community for the best and brightest the country has produced. Political leaders such as John and Abigail Adams, John Quincy Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John Calhoun, Horace Greely, Adlai Stevenson, William Taft, Paul Douglas, Kent Conrad, Mike Gravel, Roman Hruska, and many others were and are members. More brilliant people than can be listed in a short rant are famous members. The organization I'm talking about is the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations community. They don't even call themselves "churches."

I'm not religious, superstitious, spiritual, or slightly interested in the future of humanity, but I absolutely respect the Unitarian Universalists' congregations and organization. They are consistently on the right side of every major moral and social issue. Unlike evangelistic and traditional religion which claim to speak for (and control) the mind of gods, Unitarians Universalists talk about what they know. They work to improve their communities. They are a reality-based organization and, therefore, are progressive and liberal (as were the country's founders). They support the sick, the weak, the old and anyone who needs their help. The two churches, Unitarians and Universalists, can fairly claim to have been the original American churches. They have been on the leading edge of American independence, abolition, women's rights, civil rights, world peace, science, and world-wide human rights.

For the last 50 years, Unitarians Universalists have been on the decline; along with every other positive attribute of this country. In some states, like South Dakota, the remnants of once-substantial UU communities are relegated to senior center meeting rooms. That should be all the evidence you need to know how backwards those cities and states have become. It's not necessary that everyone in an area be intelligent, progressive, and rational. But when people with those qualities have declined to the point that the community can not support a UU organization, it is a very telling sign. It means the marching morons have driven the area's intellect below self-sustaining levels (also indicated by the usual Red State's inability to live off of the federal tit) and the place is unfit for intelligent life. 


If you want to know where to live or find out if where you live is populated by idiots, use this search: http://www.uua.org/directory/congregations/results.php?state=?? (replacing the last two question marks with your state's two letter ID). Not surprisingly, red states are just as dependent on federal welfare as they are devoid of UU organizations.

"You may notice that UU's tend to take a couple of months off during the summer with some churches completely closing. Other denomination might question this practice, saying 'God never rests.'


"The right answer is that UU's are the only ones that God trusts enough to let out of his sight for a while."

Amazing Dual Standards

The coolest thing about being Repuglican is that the wingnut media can made a Democrat riding in a tank look wimpy, but a girlyman Republican clinging desperately to a parked jet ski that his wife is piloting gets no crap from anyone (except me). 

Progress as Consumption

"Why's it got to be built? It's a bypass. You've got to build bypasses . . ." And with that Douglas Adams describes all of human intelligence on the subject of "progress" and consumption. Growth and consumption and progress are all linked together in the corporate social model. You have to build, population has to grow, and all of this bulding and growing is somehow linked to the progress of humanity as a species. Nevermind the mountains of trash, the acres of abandoned buildings, or the mass of the population who can't keep up with progress and end up on welfare or homeless or living on the margins of society. That's the price of progress.

In a country where less than 1% of the population owns more of the nation's wealth than the bottom 95%, progress seems to be defined by pushing that statistic further apart. Anytime a politician questions the human and social cost of marginalizing the overwhelming majority of the population that politician will be accused of "social engineering."

Of course, social engineering is what every tax system, economic system, and government does. It is social engineering when you tax one set of activities and don't tax another. There is even more social engineering happening when you reward a set of activities with government handouts (think "oil"). In short, social engineering in a socialist society (like ours) increases taxes to restrict the activities it wants to discourage and reduces or eliminates taxes on the activites it wants to encourage. The dramatic difference between a theoretical capitalist society and a theoretical communist society (two imaginary social systems that have never been and will never be practically applied) is that Adam Smith's magical "invisible hand" or Marx's equally unlikely wisdom of the "worker state" corrects the steering of the social system. A short experience with big business will destroy any faith an intelligent person has in the brilliance of the invisible hand and any experinence in or with government employees will do equal damage to the hope that big government can do anything efficiently or intelligently.

So, we keep building bypasses, bigger and more expensive freeways, trinkets and useless gadgets, and (worst of all) adding to human population with the speed and intelligence of termites. The closest thing we have to a philosophy of population is that the population needs to increase because there need to be more young people in order to support the growing population of old people. Of course, this argument means that as the population increases and old people become more demanding and expensive even more babies have to be made to provide support. Obviously, this is an insanely selfish social system, but it's also stupid. When it comes to human reproduction, the smart multiply cautiously and the foolish reproduce like rats in a sinking ship. 

Only radical conservatives are dumb enough to believe that resources are endless. You have to be completely math-deficient to imagine that a finite planet can provide infinite resources. Fortunately for our economic system, there is no shortage of radical conseratives or math-phobes. (They are usually the same characters.) We are well-stocked with people who believe that they can possess "family values" and greedily use up all of the world's energy resources in a single generation. This is the basis of an idiocracy. 

What Can Business Do?

The wingnuts make a big deal out of the incompetence of government. Crazy Ronnie Wrinkles once said, "Government isn't the solution to the problem, government is the problem." He proceeded to prove, in that Republican fashion, that incompetent, corrupt government is definitely a problem. But Clinton proved that problem could be solved by replacing the incompetent fools with reasonably sentient human beings. We have had few such examples of competence or sentience from business.

Let's think about this uninformed, irrational claim, for a few moments. The wingnuts and little rich kids of the Republican Party want us to believe that everything should be deregulated because government does such a bad job. What do we replace government with, corporations?

Is there anyone dumb enough to want to put corporations in charge of their own water supply, planning the future and use of any of their natural resources, fire or police departments, or any nation-critical activity? Corporations have proven themselves to be over-priced, corrupt, and incompetent managers of the financial system, the military (both as fighters and as suppliers), prisons, transportation, the environment, social and healthcare services, and every other major human activity to which they've been allowed control and access. In the US, even the blame for many of government's big falures can end up pointing at the corporations the business chose to handle the task. Can you say, "Haliburton, Blackwater, General Dynamics, GE, Boeing, Lockheed, McDonald Douglas?” Feel free to insert [add-your-favorite corrupt and incompetent corporation] to that list. The reason humans invented government is because, historically, business has been an incompetent, corrupt, discriminatory, exclusionary, and expensive provider of critical services.

There is one thing corporations can do, make trinkets. Businesses can, also, manage the distribution of core consumer products efficiently without the "protection" of incorporation; food, clothing, housing, and transportation. The existence of corporations feeds the speculation economy; a useless, counterproductive cultural parasite that has been destructive since the beginning of civilization. Every time big, idle money has taken a piece of the pie, the pie has become inedible. Someone said, "I don't want to eliminate corporations. I just want to make them small enough that I can drown them in a bathtub." Exactly my sentiments. 

How Did We Get So Dumb?

The recent spate of gladiator arena construction in Minnesota (Gopher's Football stadium, Twin's stadium, Viking's stadium, and, now, a stadium for the minor league Saints and another UofM stadium for the godawful Gopher's baseball team) has made me begin to question the sanity of the traditionally staid, conservative (not neo-pseudo-conservative, but real conservative), rational Minnesotan. Our politicians are claiming these projects are "job creators," but at best those are short term jobs that will cost jobs in the long run as they will run up local taxes and distract our already-unfocused media from important issues.

That last item is a big deal, too. Sports are welfare for the media. Any idiot can babble about football, baseball, or any of the rest of boys-running-around-in-underwear activities. It takes talent, perseverance, insight, and more than a little courage to report on business and government. None of those qualities are required to jabber mindlessly about sports. (My wife's take on sports shows is, "Two drunks at a bar.") If you get everything wrong about the Vikings, it will have no effect whatsoever on anything that matters.

Even worse, we all know this and ignore it. Sports are a useful distraction, as long as we're not dedicating serious money to it. When a state or city's budget has a noticeable portion dedicated to useless distractions, that is a sign of decadence. When a substantial portion of the budget is donated to the 1% who own sports businesses, that is evidence of cultural decay. At the Minnesota level, it looks suspiciously like a complete cultural breakdown of values and we're beyond decay and into stinking sewage. As Lincoln suspected, you can fool some of the people all of the time and, today, some equals most.

In Minnesota, we're banging from one sports arena "investment" to the next while real jobs and investment are filtering out of the state and out of the country. The debt we're piling on to our children and the state's future is enormous and the value is minuscule. The non-sports economic "opportunities" presented by these stadiums are claimed to be concerts, corporate events, and a few local events. How a city the size of St. Paul/Minneapolis can support this many huge concert venues at a time when the music business is shriveling to non-existence is baffling. Obviously, this is bullshit marketing with no more basis in reality than the bond or derivative markets.

If an educated state like Minnesota is sinking itself in the mire of sports distraction, the Walmart states must be wallowing in this stupidity. As the Greek democracy was inbreeding itself into obscurity, the nation's rulers distracted the marching morons with the Olympics and various sports bullshit. When the Romans decided they had been successful for long enough, they gave their idle masses the gladiators entertainment. The Brits created "bowls" for  for bull baiting, cock fighting, amateur athletics, soccer, cricket, hockey, and polo. We are, obviously, the next empire to decay and fall and our sports distractions are every bit as idiotic as were those of our predecessors. In retrospect, professional football, baseball, basketball, golf, and the rest are going to look pretty hilarious to whoever takes our place on the international stage.

The only upside to the United States' decline will be that what's left of us will get to watch the next international superstar fail even quicker than we did. One of the key characteristics of evolution is that as resources become scarce the evolutionary process becomes more efficient. The Greek empire flourished and lasted for 400 to 600 years, depending on how you define those terms. The Roman empire had a 500 year run before being drained by human entropy. The Spanish, Portuguese, Brit, and Dutch empires were all good for about 250-300 years before they sucked the life out of themselves. We're about done at a little more than 200 years and all that's left is how we're going to draw the curtain on ourselves. Pro sports are the fungus all empires need to kick the rot into overdrive.

Patriot or Traitor?

When one of the two Facebook billionare scumbags, Eduardo Saverin, announced that he would renounce his American citizenship to save on income and unearned income (investment) taxes when the Facebook IPO made him a multibillionaire, I began to suspect that Facebook wasn't a place for me to spend time. Saverin is Brazilian-born rich kid who, like the current Repuglican candidate for President, considers himself a "world citizen" rather than an American. He was naturalized in 1998 and latched on to Zuckerberg as a "friend" (virtual and financial friends are all Zuckerberg can manage) when the two cloned the Facebook idea from the dozens of on-line social networks that were already in place in 2004. The two Harvard fratbrats unfriended each other as part of their money grubbing to control the monster Facebook became. The usual Faux News zombies heralded Saverin as a "hero" which made me think that their definition of hero has been pretty consistent over the centuries. They loved Benedict Arnold and Aaron Burr (an upper-crust ex-Vice President who tried to steal Louisiana for England) Joe McCarthy who betrayed the US government for a stiff drink and a head full of delusions and the Rat Pack of Repuglican Presidents from Tricky Dick to Little George who all considered the Constitution to be "just a goddamn piece of paper."

All of this reminded me of a man I met almost 40 years ago, Louis Dinklage. Mr. Dinklage was introduced to me by my employer as "the man who paid the most personal taxes in the United States." That did not make him the richest man in the US, but by Faux News standards it would make him the biggest sucker. Louis Dinklage was in his 70's when I met him. He was a legend in Nebraska farming and almost everyone I met in that part of Nebraska had a story about how "Old Man Dinklage" had bailed them out, financed their business or farm, or carried them in tough times. In fact, the night I met him I'd been run around the state for 14 hours and was, then, expected to be at a Wisner, Nebraska mill first thing in the morning. I left home expecting to be back by lunch, so my cash was expended and there were no ATM's (on the planet) or open businesses in that town to cash a check. Most small businesses did not take credit cards in the 1970's.

I stopped at the Wisner grain mill, because there was a light on, and found an old man sweeping up the office. I explained my predicament and asked if he knew where I might be able to get a check cashed. He asked me "How much do you need?"

I said, "Twenty bucks would get me through the night, but I'd like to have fifty so I can get something to eat and buy gas tomorrow morning."

He unrolled a wad of cash from his back pocket and said, "I think I can do that. I know who you work for."

I later learned I had met Louis Dinklage.

Mr. Dinklage was a first generation American, the son of German immigrants, who knew that all of his success and wealth came from the community and the country where he lived. He poured back into that community and tried to give as much as he got. He created charitable foundations that still finance his old community. He built the town a city swimming pool in 1982 and they named the park after him and his wife. Thirty years ago, I knew more of his story that I remember today, but I suspect I know what he'd think of a man who hid his cash in foreign banks to avoid paying taxes on his millions of speculative income. I know what I think of a boy who lucked into a fad made possible by the investment of the US government and who would leave the country rather than help support the community that made him rich.

This all further cements my opinion of rich people. I do not care what happens to them, under any circumstances. If they all contract syphilis from too much contact with $1,000 bills I will hope for an antibiotic shortage. If their children are born with two empty heads and dysfunctional organs, I'll cheer for the extinction of their linage. There is, literally, no bad thing that can happen to any rich asshole that will cause a moment of sympathy from me. One of the obvious qualities of being the 0.1% is that no one will miss them when they are gone. They are dead weight.

A Minor Revolution

The existence of Bernie Sanders ought to be an inspiration to some state. He's on his second term, so I'm not holding my breath. If one state were to reach critical mass of intelligent voters, and all it takes is one measly state, the rest of the country could be shamed into reconsidering the regular down-breeding of politicians and political discourse that has continued since Republicans purged Teddy Roosevelt and progressives from the Greedy Old Party early in the last century. All it takes if for one state to attract a slight (50.0000000 . . . 1%) majority of intellectuals ("elites," according to Repuglican dogma) who consistently vote and are unfazed by conservative political correctness and other girlyman mass media crap and the New American Revolution would be begin. That's all it would take. One freakin' liberal state with balls.

It won't be California, as disappointing as that is, because southern California is the home of redneck retards and conservative bullshit and the average SoCal IQ is something below a toad. As much intelligence and mental horsepower as central and northern California contains is completely offset by the Reagan marching morons and that is all there is to say about and hope for from the once-innovative, nation-leading California Dream. Oregon, Washington, Vermont, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Wisconsin, and (a long-shot might be) Michigan are the only hope the nation has for this revolt. All of those states are taxpayers, instead of welfare-dependent red states. (Funny how that worked out, isn't it? "Red" used to be socialist/commie and now it means redneck, welfare-sucking conservative deadbeats. Nothing really changes.)

In my delusional democracy-regenerating wetdream, this revolution would begin with a liberal majority getting its act together and electing nothing but liberal politicians from national to local levels and the voting majority standing behind the people they elected. When that happens, the gentleman's agreement in Washington would instantly collapse when those representatives consistently stood up and said "You assholes are a pack of crooks and we're not putting up with this shit any more." Characters like Larry Summers, Timmy Geithner, Harry Paulson, Milton Friedman and his band of Chicago School of Economics morons, Wall Street's shills and crooks, and everyone who ever exposed and promoted their ignorance and corruption on Faux News would be terrified to raise their gnarly heads in this educated liberal stronghold.

Moments after this lone state stands on its hind legs, the migration begins. Intellectuals from all over the country pack up and move to this liberal, tolerant, educated place, which repulses the remaining redneck population who move to a red state where they will be more comfortable taking welfare and complaining about how insensitive the liberals are toward their superstitions, laziness, and general genetically damaged stupidity.

I've been waiting for this place to emerge for more than 30 years. I was enticed to move to Minnesota on the state's deteriorating reputation as a liberal stronghold. Minnesota has dropped that ball so many times in the post-Reagan decades that it may be a lost cause. Bachmann territory is notoriously uneducated, simple-minded and . . .  old, so that demographic may just die off naturally. While she made it to the dismal U.S. House, our Senate representation is considerably more enlightened by Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar. We have some pretty substantial people in the House with Betty McCollum (D), Keith Ellison (D), and Tim Waltz (D). The rest of the MN House pack are somewhere between hopeless and too-dumb-to-have-a-drivers'-license. I'm not putting a lot of hope in Minnesota's return to sanity. For me, all it will take is for one state's representatives to make a statement and for that state's voters to stand behind them,  and I'm moving. I'll take my real estate losses, sell all of my crap, and we're on the road within a week. I expect a lot of people to do the same, in one direction or the other.

Book Review: American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History

Almost every word in this book is an explanation of why our mercenary military is doing to be the death of democracy. If "American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History" had been written 236 years ago, Chris Kyle would have been British and he would have been saying exactly the same things about the American "insurgents" he had slaughtered. His lack of empathy for the country he invaded and the people who fought to regain control of their country is embarrassing. The fact that he considers himself a great patriot and brags about decorating his vehicles with a Texas flag is telling.

When you read a book like this, you hope that there will be some sign of personal growth in the journey the author makes. The biggest disappointment was that Kyle is exactly the same amoral, bloodthirsty corporate tool at the end that he was in the beginning. He is the kind of guy you won't be surprised to hear assassinated a president, blew up a government building, or fell in with white supremacists and died in a gun battle with the ATF in some cultist whacko's suicide war. He loves to kill people and can find justification in the smallest ways. The most informative quote I found in the book was, "After the first kill, the others were easy." Scary stuff. Characters from these two irrational wars will be biting back on this country for decades.

Kyle appears to believe he has done something patriotic in his part of the Iraq invasion. He seems to have nothing resembling an analytical capacity regarding the reasons for that invasion, the feelings or motivations of the invaded, or a rational ability to see the inconsistencies in his own statements. In one paragraph, he calls the Iraqis "cowards" and "evil" and the next he is disgusted by their "courage" or "stupidity" as they try to fight an overwhelming enemy with primitive weapons. He is unable to assume responsibility for his part in the slaughter. When he witnesses war protesters, he contests their patriotism or courage because they don't properly honor his half-witted understanding of a citizen's personal responsibility. If Kyle were typical of the kind of people who volunteer for our military, it would be pointless for war protesters to try to provide insight, moral encouragement, or context to the volunteers. Fortunately, he is just one kind of poverty draft victim and I have known soldiers who were moved and informed by war protests aimed at the warriors.

On the best pages, this book is barely a soldier's diary; a recounting of the tools, days, and shallow mind of a man who lives to kill other men, women, and children. You'd like to believe that this kind of man would grow to recognize how much of a tool he had been, but that is as likely as Chris Kyle is to discover make useful scientific breakthrough. The day he and his fellow soldiers storm through a Wall Street bank's doors and "liberate" that company's assets for America will be the first day Chris Kyle performs a real patriotic act. Until then, he will cover himself in the Texas flag and chant the slogans he has been trained to repeat and his "service" to the country will be one of many acts that destroys the United States of America.

Who's in Charge?

A while back, I was talking to a friend about the general level of uselessness typified by CEOs that that scum-sucking, pond-muck sub-species of almost-humans. He argued that in the company he'd just left, the CEO was a "great guy," but all the middle managers were idiots and backstabbers. After arguing about business life in general, we left it at "we're going to have to agree to disagree."

A few moments after I hung up the phone, it struck me that it should have been obvious that the good guy CEO hired idiots and backstabbers to do the dirty work so he could pretend to be half-human. After all, what does upper management do except select and direct middle management? Middle management usually reflects the best intentions of the corner office crowd, not the worst. As the Temptations said,

 Smiling faces, sometimes pretend to be your friend
Smiling faces show no traces of the evil that lurks within(can you dig it?)
Smiling faces, smiling faces sometimes, They don't tell the truth
Smiling faces, smiling faces tell lies and I got proof  I can dig it.

Why Health Care Costs So Much

Pretty funny topic, right? I just received the bill for my hip replacement (for about $50k, by the way). Since I have a "Health Care Account" to pay for some of the bill, I called the hospital's accounting office to ask them to flag my account so that I would know when the account had paid out and I would know what my share of that expense would be.

"We don't have anyway to flag an account for notification. We service at least 100 accounts in this office."

"I didn't mean you, personally. I assumed you had a computer system that you could access and that system might have a way to note when money had been credited to an account." (Yep, I was being sarcastic.)

"No, we don't have anything like that." (Yep, he was being too dumb to recognized sarcasm.)

Oh boy. It's hard to imagine that long bill was hand typed, but I guess it's possible. There were a lot of people typing shit into computers while I was in the hospital, but maybe all that stuff just ended up on a piece of paper for the accounting department to copy into their ledgers. Then, the accountants handed off their papers to the customer service characters and they will toss paper back and forth until someone realizes the bill is paid (or not).

Heard this Before?

When Rick Perry endorsed Newt Gingrich, he had this overwhelming recommendation for Newt, "Newt is not perfect, but who among us is?” I wonder how many times that has been said before?For a character who fashioned himself as the representative for traditional family values, Perry has gone off the deep end with Newt. The only family value tradition Newt has is that he trades in his wife for a new model every 4-5 years. The boy is Penthouse Magazine's dream President.

Perry justified this ethical flip-flop by saying, "I believe in the power of redemption.” Really? Newt Gingrich is born again? Somebody really believes that? I can't decide if I want to sell Perry the Brooklyn Bridge or my own real estate for 500% of current value.

Short Memories, Tiny Minds

The poofs at Faux News are upset that the Muppets are waging class war on the 1% and the poor oil billionaires. Obviously, they've missed the last couple hundred years of American life and literature. The basic theme of practically every story in our history is about the battle between the rich and powerful and the rest of us. If you can find a western, even a Ronald Reagan or John Wayne western, that isn't about some powerful rancher, mine owner, crooked sheriff or marshal, or some other rich gangster who has taken over the town, corrupted the characters who usually work as enforcers, cops, or gangbangers for the interests of the ruling powers, and bought the town with money and guns. It has to be the oldest story in the US.

Face it, girls. It isn't a story unless it's about the rich and powerful against the rest of us. Call it "class warfare" or call it reality. Either way, it's an American story. If we aren't fighting our side of the battle, it's just class slaughter.

Customer Service (with the agricultural definition)

I just bought a laptop that came with Windows 7 Lite (or whatever POS name Microsquash put on the cheapest, most limited version of their lame new OS). I thought I'd use it for a while and see if I found a reason to put up with a new interface and learning curve. A week later, I'm stumped. I can't find a thing to like about the new system.

I admit, I lived with my old Dell laptop for more than 10 years and the only reason I'm replacing it is because the keys are coming off when I type. Nothing about the system is slow, cumbersome, or inconvenient. While I worked at finding a reason to like the new OS, I stumbled on this website, "I don't like Windows 7 and I want to go back to Windows XP. Is this possible and if so how can I do this?" on the Microsoft "Answers" webpage. An older user asked how to turn back the software clock on a new laptop similar to mine. What she got was attitude and arrogance from Microsoft's "help desk" (a business oxymoron if there ever was one). I am amazed (a little) that Microsoft's management has left the condescending replies on the site for old users to see, but it's a little enlightening.In my case, I bought a reconditioned Dell that originally had an XP/7 OS option, so I don't have to worry about having drivers for XP. Other users are less fortunate.

The question the Microsoft characters completely avoided answering was in providing some reason for "upgrading." Since most of the new OS features are only visible to IS dweebs, that makes for a lame sales pitch. Without a practical justification for changing, most computer users don't care one way or another how the work gets done, let alone what the OS number might be. And that's, apparently, all that changed for Win 7.

Mac users have put up with this crap forever. Apple could care less about legacy users. The company regularly blasts out "upgrades" that disable older computers and, sometimes, does serious damage to customers' data. I have often found myself in the position of needing a computer to fix one of my Apple computers, when an OS X update disabled my machine. Since I have a fully functioning audio/video Mac and haven't seen a reason on the planet to change what works, I expect my current Mac tower rig to outlive me. If it doesn't, it will most likely outlive my career and that is good enough.

Corporations have grown past the point of considering customers to be the people their products serve to imagining customers obligated to buy the crap they build. As a society, we're no longer "citizens" but "consumers." As individuals, our rights are subservient to corporate profits. As a nation, we're far past the point of no return on the path to when greed and power are the sole motivations of those who imagine themselves to be the "job providers" and when citizens are left with no democratic method to regain control of government and our lives. Microsoft and Apple are perfect examples of how indebted crass corporations imagine citizens to be and they are equally powerful examples of confused businesses that are likely to fall hard when they fall.

(Postscript: I did replace Win7 with WinXP and experienced a dramatic improvement in performance. Things my computer was unable to do with Win7 in charge, the computer did easily with WinXP. That settles it for me, I don't need Win7's features and can't tolerate the lack of performance.)

Occupy Wall Street, the right message

http://occupywallst.org/

https://www.wepay.com/donate/ows

https://www.facebook.com/#!/OccupyWallSt

Contradicting Yourself

NASA and other astronomers have identified a large (aircraft carrier large) asteroid that will be passing between the moon and the earth Tuesday, November 8. There appears to be no sign of panic from the global warming deniers or the usual panicked crowd of conservatives and religious nuts. This thing is going to be close, an estimated 202k miles from the earth and about 150k miles from the moon. Still, no panic.

Explain this to me. According to conservatives, these same scientists are incapable of accurately measuring the temperature of the earth or calculating the extremely predictable expected increase in temperature based on the last 100 years of measurements and experience, but we're all supposed to be warm and cuddly since these same people say the asteroid is going to miss us "this time?":  How do they hold these two conflicting opinions in their tiny little minds?

Even more comforting, the scientists say we're safe, "this time." For at least the next 100 years, we don't have to worry about this thing hitting the earth, causing "a magnitude-7 earthquake and 70-foot-high tsunami waves." At my age, that is comforting; sort of. For my grandkids, that will certainly have impact (no pun intended) on their children's lives. Being the short-sighted animal we are, I'm sure planning for the actual impact will begin a week before the expected hit.

Apple's Inventions

What wouldn't exist without Apple and Steve Jobs? 

Personal Computers
1976 - Steve Wozniak was selling a 30-chip circuit board, the Apple I computer.
1977 - The Commodore PET was the first commercially available personal computer.
1978 - The Tandy TRS-80 computers and the Apple II began shipping.
1980 - The  Commodore 64 sold 17 million units and was the best-selling single personal computer model in history.
By 1980 there were dozens of personal computer companies in the US, making a variety of computers using a collection of operating systems.

Graphical User Interface
1973 - Xerox developed the Alto personal computer with a bitmapped screen and a graphical user interface (GUI), but didn't use it in a commercial product until 1981 with the Star personal computer.
1982 - Tandy pasted the Deskmate GUI over MSDOS and made it available on their  TRS1000 machines and for other PC's.
1984 - Digital Research Inc. offered the GEM GUI operating system for Intel machines and the OS came standard on the Atari ST personal computers.
1984 - Apple introduced the Mac computers.
1985 - Windows 1.0 was introduced, the GUI-based operating system for the IBM and clone computer market.
1985 - Commodore introduced the Amiga with its Workbench GUI that introduced widgets, graphics library, multi-tasking capability, keyboard, mouse, and and other input devices.
1985 - Sun Microsystems introduced PostScript-based NeWs OS. Sun's systems ran both NeWs and X-Windows concurrently. 
1986 - X-Windows or the early version of UNIX was introduced by MIT engineers, this has become the standard layer for GUI systems, including Apple's OS X, since its introduction.
1986 - Apple released the Apple IIgs, an upgraded Apple II that ran Apple GS/OS with the introduction of the4 "folder" concept (instead of the more technically correct "directory" terminology) and a new video graphics chip.

Laptop Computers
1968 - Alan Kay began to work on his Dynabook concept at Xerox PARC facility and demonstrated the first concept portable personal computer in 1972.
1975 - IBM introduced the first commercially available laptop, the IBM 5100.
1981 - Epson introduced the HX-20 portable computer, with an LCD screen, a rechargeable battery, and a small printer. HP and Tandy also offered portable computers with similar features that year.
1982 - The GRID Compass, followed by the GRID Gavilan, portable laptops were used by NASA and the military. The GRID products were commercially available, but at an $8,000 price tag they were rare.
1991 - Apple introduced the Mac Portable to slight notice from consumers. By 1991, IBM, Compaq, HP, Epson, and several other companies were on their 3rd and 4th generation laptop product lines.

MP3 Players
1979 - Kane Kramer designed a digital audio players, the IXI, which managed about 3 minutes of playing time and never became a commercial product. but it did not enter commercial production. Apple hired Kramer as a consultant and used his work to claim "prior art" when Apple tried to take ownership of personal players.
1996 - Audio Highway announced the Listen Up player, but only a few were sold.
1998 - SaeHan Information Systems marketed the  “MPMan” player sold as the "Eiger MPMan" in the US. The MPMan had 32M of flashRAM and could manage about 20 minutes of playing time.
1998 - Diamond Multimedia introduced the Rio PMP300, another 32M player.
2000 - Creative released the 6GB micro-drive based Creative NOMAD Jukebox.
2001 - Apple introduced the first generation 5G iPOD. 

 Smartphones
1992 - The IBM Simon is demonstrated as a concept product at COMDEX.
1996 - Nokia introduces the Nokia 9000, which combined a cell phone with HP's personal digital assistant (PDA) features.
1997 -  Ericsson coined the name "smartphone" when the company displayed the concept phone GS88
2000 The touchscreen Ericsson R380 Smartphone was the first device to use an open operating system, the Symbian OS.
2000 -  Nokia 9210 communicator was the first color screen smartphone.
2001 - Palm  introduced the Kyocera 6035, the first widely used smartphone in the US.
2007 - Apple release the company's first iPhone.


Graphical Pads
1968 - Kay's Dynabook was the first concept for a graphical pad.
1991 - GO Corporation, Pencept, and Linus introduced a variety of tablet computers to little consumer success.
1993 - Apple introduces the Newton to minimal customer notice.
2000 - Microsoft attempted to market a line of Windows-based Tablet PC  touchscreen pads to little consumer interest. The Windows CE operating system was used by several Japanese and US mini-computer companies, including the NEC MobilePro product line that used touch screen operation, a drawing pad feature, and communications. Compaq, Acer, and other computer companies introduced and attempted to market a variety of touch-screen computer devices.
2010 - Apple introduces the iPad and the iOS interface.

A New PC Code Word

Foreign Policy recently published an article by Phillip Longman claiming that Darwinism was going to make this a "conservative world." Because, as he explains, "conservatives" in places like Salt Lake City are reproducing at the highest rate in the nation, he says "conservatives" are going to rule the future. He quotes statistics that proves Vermont (one of the most liberal states) and other liberal states have a dramatically lower birth rate than Utah, Alabama, and other hot best of "conservative" ideology. He notes that states that voted for G.W. Bush spewed out at least 10% more children than those states that voted for Kerry and Gore. He concluded the article by claiming we in for "a far more conservative future, one in which patriarch and other traditional values make a comeback, if only by default."

All through the article, I couldn't help substitute the word "conservative" for "stupid." C.M. Kornbluth told this story in his classic, The Marching Morons, in the 50's, but who would have believed it would come true so quickly?

Ponzi Schemes

Texas lunatic, Ricky Perry, claims that Social Security is a Ponzi Scheme. That's cute, isn't it? An ex-cheerleader Texas governor who claims to be a "conservative" and who brags about running a state with a balanced budget (and who "balanced" that budget by paying of an $18 billion deficit with federal TARP funds) and who barely passed his college Economics class at Texas A&M (not a rocket science university) pretending to understand multi-syllable words and criticizing a 75-year-old federal institution that has provided stability and security for three generations of Americans.

Even funnier, the bozos on Wall Street and the Wall Street Journal are joining in with Perry in trying to tear down what's left of the US economy to enrich themselves as they scavenge what's left of the nation's bank accounts. Normal humans would be embarrassed to be so wrong, so often; which is why the Extreme Court has given more rights and privileges to corporations than to real people. As Andy Borowitz said, "“Rick Perry is qualified to be President in the same way that Olive Garden is qualified to be Italy.” That fact, unfortunately, doesn't stop Repuglicans from running raving lunatics, complete idiots, vicious criminals, and sociopathic corporate executives for office.

All this is distracting the voting, taxpaying public from the fact that the real Ponzi scheme is all of Wall Street. Any idiot who managed to remember the news of the last 20 years would know that the SEC has been cut down to a fraction of the police force required to keep Wall Street and international corporations from running wild in the streets, setting fire to every corner of the country. The number of companies that have crashed and burned after years of filing quarterly profit reports without a glitch in the pretty picture painted by their "accountants" until the trail of lies started crashing around the CFOs' heads ought to stretch the credibility of any numbers posted on the stock market.

Until Americans wise up and realize that "regulation" means the country is policing the biggest crooks in the nation, we're going to keep trashing our future to enrich the Wall Street sleazebags at the expense of everything worth protecting and preserving. "Amoral" is an insufficient word to describe their character, but it's the best English has to offer. Perry, on the other hand, isn't smart enough to warrant any adjective more complicated than "idiot."

Crazy People

One of Michelle Bachmann's constituents, Nancy Bjorkman was quoted in an MPR article saying,  "I think she's willing to take a stand and stick to her guns, even when the guns are against her. And I appreciate that." I think that says it all. Minnesota District 6 is clearly one of the places we put the tube when the world gets an enema.

For some reason, my wife and I watched the July 4th show in Bachmann's eastern territory last night. Three things were apparent:

1. There is a lot of money in that place
2. Musical taste is not a right wing quality
3. The people in Bachmann's world can't drive for shit. 

Damn! There are a lot of dumb folks in Stillwater. Escaping that silly town after the fireworks show was like getting out of Stillwater Prison. It reminded me of driving through a small Midwestern town at noon, when all of the churches let out their inmates. Traffic resembles random motion.

Why Do They Hate Us?

"Why do they hate us?" I heard this question a year ago from a young man who had just dropped out of a state university engineering program because it was "too hard" and was pursuing one of the most remedial and disgraceful programs offered by any educational facility: criminal justice (talk about an oxymoron!), police science or law enforcement. Pick a program name, they are all the same and they are all equally simple.

My response was lame, at best. "You're kidding?"

The kid was, of course, excelling at the idiot program because he is of normal intelligence and moderately conscious. If you are unable to pull an "A" in classes like:

• CPS 103 Particular Forms of Crime - Analysis of conventional property crime, criminal markets, criminal organizations, white collar crimes, and corporate crimes. Consensual and non-consensual delinquency, and "victimless" crimes. Factors that can be used to differentiate several dimensions of forms of crimes. (4 credits)
• CPS 105 Deviance and Social Control - Competing theories of deviance, deterrence and control, relations between deviant actors and reacting audiences, and how deviant individuals explain or justify their behavior. 
• CPS 170 Domestic Violence - Comparative approach to power and violence in family systems including detailed and in-depth analysis of the devaluation of family relations. 
• CPS 171 The Criminal Mind - Psychological aspects of criminal behavior, personality of criminals, the psychological processes affecting behavior, and the violence that is often associated with criminal behavior. Dealing with fear and anger, offering and counter-offering, and negotiating in high-risk situations.
• CPS 172 Comparative Police Systems - Selected police systems in the United States compared with a variety of police systems in other countries. 

Honestly, I can't go on. The titles of these classes sound like exactly the kind sociology program titles that would study the anti-social behavior of police officers around the world.

This goofy kid appeared to be completely clueless about why ordinary citizens hate the police. Even in St. Paul, where the local police and country sheriff's deputies went 1968 Chicago-style on local and visiting protesters during the 2008 RNC debacle, it appears that a police candidate can remain ignorant of the history of the occupation he desperately wants to join. He asked me, repeatedly, to cite reasons why so many citizens "hate cops." As you might expect, he had excuses for every abuse and every anti-social police act committed in modern history. As I should have expected from someone so disconnected from human history, he imagined none of this violence applied to his possible future.

It's hard to imagine this level of avoidance, but it's critical if what's left of our society expects to create "order" from the chaos of corporate socialism and pusedo-capitalism. The fact is, fear is not respect. Fear is a close emotional relation to hate and as far from respect as love is to hate. While there are cops who deserve respect for trying to do the right job in a system designed to repress human dignity and freedom, most are exactly the vicious characters pictured in these video links and the photos on this page. For example, any animal capable of intentionally smearing pepper spray in the eyes of environmental or political protesters is unfit for socialization. Any society decadent enough to instruct its stormtroopers to commit such a crime is undeserving of history's charity. Cops have been used to break up legal protests, as strikebreakers, as an armed force dispossessing citizens of their legal property, and as a protection force for corporate criminals and other organized crime figures since the middle of the 1800's.

The fact is, most of us don't hate cops. We do fear them, however. They represent us in our national decay and "we have met the enemy and he is us."

Cops serve the worst of our society and repress the best. Regardless of the deranged fairy tails Hollywood and television create of hard-working, dedicated, clever police protecting society from terrible criminals and solving complicated crimes, many cops are nothing more than lazy, cowardly, tenured, over-armed, arrogant, brownshirt terrorists who repress any attempt of the public to regain control of their nation. (Not just true in the US, but in many corporately controlled nations.) What kind of person wouldn't fear that kind of police force? When some citizens get past fear and hate, and act accordingly, we call that "revolution." Remember that when you finally get your corporate welfare job and are asked to remove your badge and any other form of identification before committing a psychopathic act of brutality. Being ignorant of your own motivations and the history of your chosen occupation is no defense. When you are the fist of repression and the weapon of fear, you will have to get used to being the object of fear and hate.

Why Say It Then?

". . . it is important to recognize that profession of noble intent is predictable, and therefore carries no information, even in the technical sense of the term." [Noam Chomsky, Hedgemony or Survival]. Chomsky was making a technical and detailed explanation of the old saying, or "actions speak louder than words."

If claiming patriotism, nationalism, the moral high ground is exactly and predictably the "last refuge of a coward" or a criminal or a con artist, why does anyone listen? "Why" is the right question. The fact is the majority of the thundering herd (or the "beast" as Alexander Hamilton called us) are primed and ready to stampede off of the nearest cliff like lemmings chasing a change in weather and overpopulation. Why are humans so inclined? Why doesn't our education system provide some immunity to our idiot natural inclinations?

I'm sorry to say that it appears to be because we, as a species, are freaking morons. Someone with a far better grasp of the history of human societies said, in the middle of this past decade, that America is on the cusp of the point of no return. If we continue to waste our wealth and talent on the military, the military-industrial complex, phony finance schemes, our inclination to provide military assistance to any international corporation's demand for other nations' natural resources, and the rest of the perverse fascism that is in the long list of failed world powers playbooks, we're going to become the next fallen empire.

Obviously, the real downside to our failure is that we are likely to be inclined to take the rest of the world with us in our demise. It's a terrible truth, but the current random proliferation of nuclear weapons in the 3rd world may be a good thing, since nuclear retaliation is the only thing that appears to stand between an attempt by the corporations (represented by our government and its military) to take over the world's resources and to destroy all forms of democracy. If those psychopathic CEOs and CFOs weren't worried about a terrorist lugging a suitcase nuke into their palaces, they would order the forcible takeover of every asset on the planet.

Of course, that's a double-edged sword.

As we found in 2003, any hope that we can defeat the rest of the world's crazies by employing our own crazies in that battle is probably a defend-able definition of insanity. Arming all of the Bin Ladens, Kim Il Sungs, Moammar Gadhafis, and Dick Cheneys of the world is not a formula for world security. Sooner or later, one of these idiots is going to say "to hell with all of you" and start launching bombs for the fun of it. And they will do so claiming "defense of the motherland, fatherland, little brotherland" or whatever. As we're all going up in nuclear smoke, the last words we'll hear will be G.W. Bush babbling, "I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace."1


1 G.W. Bush, being his usual irrational self.

Dumbing Down the Nation

A recent poll found that 26% of the country doesn't know that the American Revolution was a revolt from British rule. Fox News has 3.3 viewers every day. Americans listen to the voices of fools and corporate shills and ignore pretty much any information that comes from sources with above sub-human intelligence. I actually had an acquaintance recommend that I listen to Limbaugh and Beck to "learn something."As George Carlin said, "."

NOTE: When I want to learn something I look for intelligent sources. I have absolutely no interest in what the fools of the world are thinking and saying; if you are willing to give them credit for the capacity to think.Listening to Glenn Beck in the hopes off "learning something" would be as stupid as asking G.W. Bush to explain quantum physics.

In 1950, the country listened to the inane babbling of Joe McCarthy and voted for Ike because the conservative majority was terrified of an intellectual President: Stevenson. Nearly half of the country voted for Nixon in 1968 out of the same fear of Kennedy's intellect. Nixon won two elections, even when there was every expectation (and hope) that his criminal regime would end in a huge collection of jail terms (for folks who ended up in the Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II regimes) . A look at the interesting and informative list of those pardoned by past Presidents says a lot about the ethics of those people.

The conservative majority has little respect for law and even less respect for our Constitution or our history. Reagan, Bush I, Bush II, and all of their cronies and fellow mobsters are all working for purposes that serve a collection of masters who are disinterested in the best interests of the United States and its citizens. The Republican congress is working for those same un-American, un-democratic, regressive wealthy interests. Unfortunately, those interests are not in sync with the interests of the nation as a whole.

Desecrating the nation's education system is a terrific way to convince the public that "four legs are better than two" or "two legs are better than four," depending on the propaganda of the moment. Even a conservative as wingnutty as Phyllis Schlafly is worried about the quality of the US education at the college level. Of course, she wants the world rewritten to reflect her nutty view, but that's nothing new for the far right. The problem with providing a scientific, mathematical education is that knowledge goes in all directions at once. That was the reason the religious right dumbed down public science education in the 1950's, to suppress all discussion of evolution. At best, I suspect today's idiot public education system motivations are to create more gullible consumers.

One of the nation's founding fathers, Roger Sherman, suspected we'd end up in this condition if the country opted for "one man, one vote" democracy. He said, "the people . . . should have as little to do as may be about the government. They want information and are constantly liable to be misled." The gross ignorance of much of the media's audience proves Sherman's fear that the public would lack ("want") information. Their willingness to follow the advice of fools and criminals proves the are easily "misled." The dumber we get, the more likely this advice will be prophetic and accurate. Without an active, focused attempt to rein in the media's corporate propaganda, the idiots will rule and the criminals will profit from the fall of this nation. 

A Nation of Assholes

This weekend, I'm polishing off a book titled, The No Asshole Rule by Robert Sutton. The book reinforces a lot of the arguments I've made in the past on my old Rat's Eye View website from the days when that collection of essays was mostly about business practices and management/mismanagement.

However, toward the end Sutton has a chapter titled "The Virtues of Assholes" where he attempts to explain the success of so many certifiable assholes (one prime asshole he constantly returns to is Apple's Steve Jobs). After describing how some assholes manage to become rich and powerful, he lists three "blind spots" successful assholes often have. One of those blind spots is that "experienced victims use [defensive measures) to protect themselves from cruel and vindictive actions, measures that have the side effect of shielding assholes from realizing the damage they inflict . . . victims avoid their oppressor's wrath by reporting only good news and remaining silent about, and even hiding, bad news." Sound familiar?

In 1816, the north eastern United States went through a catastrophic "year without a summer." The prevailing theory describing the reasons for that "last great subsistence crisis in the Western world" is that a record low solar activity and the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora caused record world-wide crop failures at least 200,000 deaths in Europe and similar devastation in North America and China. 200 years later, science is in a position to be able to predict the results of this kind of event and, even, allow for planning that could moderate the effects.

The real question is, are scientists likely to provide that information? I'm betting the answer is no.

The hostility aimed at scientists who have made predictions about global ocean and climate changes most likely has an effect similar to the distortion of reality created by asshole bosses. First, scientists will be inclined to keep their cultural heads low to prevent the anti-scientific "community" (read "Republicans" and pseudo-conservatives) from going ballistic with their loony counter-arguments. Unfortunately, going loony isn't all that the Republican drone crowd does. They attack scientific institution funding, eliminate critical national and state research facilities, and go after state university research funding. Since they can't understand the data, they attack the messengers. Our primitive citizens aren't the first monkey-people to use these tactics, failed empires liter history with their foolish ancestors. However, it's possible that the costs of allowing these idiots to speak in public might be a lot higher than it was in pre-industrial times.

Imagine yourself as a climate scientist, an astrophysicist, or a biologist. Your research finds that something international corporations is doing is likely to cause a worldwide disaster. Or your data tells you that our society's inability to wean itself from its excesses will cause climate change, famine, and war. Or your observations spotted a fast moving asteroid heading in our direction. The problem is, you're doing science not something simple like banking or something idiotic like pretending to know the minds of the gods. Science allows for predictions with tolerances. In the case of the asteroid, maybe the odds are 2:1 that the asteroid will strike the planet somewhere and the odds are, if the strike occurs, the same 2:1 odds exist that the strike will cause a world-wide disaster. What do you do, if you're one of those scientists? Do you tell an ignorant, superstitious world about the problem and the cure or do you keep it to yourself knowing that your fellow humans are too stupid to do the right thing even with the right information?

Based on what we've seen over the last 25 years of the global warming crisis, I'd suspect that any scientist with a lick of sense would keep quiet and let nature (human and global) take its course. Especially in the superstitious US, we're too dumb to care about our children or their planet. We're too greedy to be concerned with the welfare of any generation beyond our own. We're willing to burn up the world's natural resources in a single generation, leaving future generations to suffer for our greed. Who would step into the political cesspool for a species as foolish as that? A nation of assholes, led by a pack of corrupt and vicious corporate assholes who are as psychopathic as the worst serial killers in history.