#170 Really, Really Dumb Ideas

What does it take to beat down a really stupid idea? Apparently, the dumber the idea, the harder it is to kill. The "benevolent dictator" fantasy appears to be a suicidal concept that is founded in charisma and fairy tales and doesn't seem to be any less popular today than it was 2,000 years ago. Conservatives and libertarians are incapable of getting more than a few feet from that wet dream every time democracy shows the slightest sign of stumbling. Religion is another example of humanity's love for stupid ideas.. The more fantastic the concepts behind a religion, the harder it is to defeat.

When my kids were infants, one of the first arguments my wife and I had about child raising was about the inclusion of traditional holiday fantasies in our nuclear family celebrations. Obviously, I opposed this indoctrination into stretched credibility. Easter Bunnies, Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, ghost stories, the Boogie  Man, and honest politicians all belong in the history books that chronicle variations of child-abuse activities. We compromised. She brought these fantastic tales into our home, I ridiculed them. I'm doing the same routines with my grandchildren, much to my daughter's mother-in-law's disgust. She's Catholic and the rest of us are agnostic, including the grandkids.

I suspect that much of human gullibility is rooted in these pre-religious rituals. I'm not even in the running to be considered an early discoverer of the link childhood fantastic characters and rituals to the foundations of religion and conservative thinking in adults. If you can convince a kid to believe that a fat man and a dozen reindeer can deliver thousands of tons of gifts to rich little kids of the industrialized nations, introducing that same kid to gods and angels is a small step into irrational "faith." Still, it's amazing how strongly people cling to these incredibly stupid ideas and how well they defend the most unbelievable of their strange fantasies.

Let's be honest, if we can manage that for a moment. The best argument that followers of the god fantasies can provide is "you can't prove he doesn't exist." Science is all about disproving theories, but some theories are simply too dumb to bother with. This is one of them. To disprove the existence of the several dozen variations of god descriptions roaming around this earth with approximately 4 billion unevenly distributed subscribers to those variations, all of science could be tasked to invalidate these whacko fantasies until life on the planet vanished and we'd still be without absolute proof.

We can't disprove the existence of the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, or the Boogie Man, either. Hollywood constantly reminds us of that inability by repeating the same tired cartoon plots every generation. However, almost no one asks scientists to dedicate time to that foolish pursuit. The violent, fantastic, irrational accomplishments credited to gods and goddesses are no less impossible than the Santa Claus or Easter Bunny stories, but some folks appear to swallow those more somber fantasies without a moment of reflection or the slightest application of logic. Childhood conditioning must play some part in that inability to apply common sense to religious stories.

There is no more primitive urge than the tendency to suspect that magic is involved in the things we don't understand. The earliest cultures sacrificed animals and each other to a huge variety of gods and goddesses. Practically from the start of our species, we've created idols and other artworks, sang songs, burned, drowned, and skewered disbelievers, and paid witchdoctors and priests to interpret bones, tea leaves, weather signs, and literature. You'd think that we'd have grown out of this silliness by now, but I've recently read that as many as 90% of the world's population believes in some kind of afterlife or supreme being. Of course, many of those folks are so dumb that they ask their priests to find a page, in whatever holy book they subscribe to, describing ailments similar to those they suffer so they can tear out the pages and boil them for medicinal tea. "Faith" of that sort is comical and irrational, but I don't see anything in that to be particularly admirable or evidential. The overabundance of stupid, ignorant, superstitious people is not proof of a supreme being. It's certainly not evidence that evolution was guided by some clever, divine engineer. It is proof that the human animal is exceptionally gullible.

Otherwise seemingly rational people appear to believe in incredibly irrational fantasies. That seems to require many non-believers to ask for tolerance and accommodation of these beliefs. Now that is clearly a non-scientific response. If I tell you that I think the Tooth Fairy is the Lord Almighty and that losing baby teeth before the age of three is a sign that a child is a non-believer and a heretic, would you allow me to sacrifice your early-tooth-maturing child? If I decide that L. Ron Hubbard was the second coming of the Son of God and that his Dianetics drivel is the "new word of God," requiring me to strap on explosives and blow up the nearest Catholic (non-believer) grade school, would you think I might be insane? No? If so, you might be too tolerant to survive.

If not, why, then, is similarly insane belief, action, and sermonizing in the name of Christ, Mohammad, or Abraham more respectable? Clearly, it's not. Not that many years ago, it was considered poor manners to discuss any aspect of religious belief in polite company. People weren't less insane during that brief period of American civility, we just weren't as proud of our insanity as we are today. The fantasy and fiction of 2,000 year old sheepherders and priests is no more believable or holy than today's Harry Potter books and movies. They are just stories, some good, some godawful. Some of those stories are interesting enough to be considered valuable moral guidance, some are so violent, evil, and inhuman that they should be all the evidence a sane person needs to know these books are absolutely not the word of a supreme being. They aren't even up the literature standards established at the founding of this once-democratic nation.

February  2007

#169 Moderating the Moderates

Being a "moderate" has always been a relative thing in the history of humanity. "A one-eyed man among a nation of the blind" is a long, sad tradition for our species. A constant reminder of this sorry fact is shown to us every time an atheist is interviewed on radio or television. The overwhelming majority of "unbelievers" are rational, scientific, humanistic, and well-spoken examples of the best from our species. However, every time a statement of doubt is expressed by someone not possessed by delusions of grandeur, that statement must be "modified" by a representative of the much more typical insane breed of "believers." In fact, in a recent collection of programs on "the new atheists" more time was given to rebuttal statements from the religious insanity crowd than was provided to the topic of the program. The supposed "liberal" NPR, PBS, and major media all committed this sin of cowardice within the last few weeks.

The reason for this spate of self-flagellation is a collection of books on "faith" that are so well written, so brilliantly considered, that even the occasional religious nut might reconsider his fantastic beliefs if exposed to the thoughts of these writers. Sam Harris' The End of Faith is one of these books. Harris' book is, if anything, a 237 page text that could be used in a philosophy logic course. Instead of taking the Rat Road, also known as the Sam Kinison Screaming in Your Face Tactic. In his rational but inspired approach, Harris uses basic logical argument, page after page, to point out the inconsistencies in the "god myth."

For his efforts, Harris was described as "the most shrill of the New Atheists" in a CBS program on the subject. Although, in the brief moment he was portrayed in this hack job, Harris was as calm, well-spoken, and rational as is the text in his book, the "moderate" religious nut CBS used to rebut the statements of the New Atheists claimed that Harris was the most extreme of the new class of non-believers. Apparently, logical thinking is "shrill" compared to the ranting, hillbilly-raving, tongue-speaking, wild man talk presented on almost every television channel every Sunday morning? I guess the MSM likes its crazies to be consistently and completely crazy.

One of the best, most rational pair of sentences ever written by a human is in the introduction chapter ("Reason in Exile") of Sam Harris' The End of Faith: "Our situation is this: most of the people in this world believe that the Creator of the universe has written a book. We have the misfortune of having many such books on hand, each making an exclusive claim as to its infallibility." From there, Harris spends most of his time discussing how people of "faith" use irrational self-delusion to protect themselves from having to evaluate the nutty things they say in the same way they'd evaluate crazy talk in areas outside of religion. It's a logical, well-considered approach that is as likely to convert religious whack-jobs as it was possible that Dubya actually earned a college degree by studying.

What I'd like to know, however, is why the media has made a habit of rebutting every rational discussion of religion with a collection of superstitious crazies? Sunday morning is dedicated to non-stop pontificating by all sorts of strange and ridiculous religious nut-jobs, without a moment of rational rebuttal. The public airwaves are jammed with hallucinating "faith-based" believers without a brief moment of equal time given to "reality-based" thinkers and no one seems to consider the possibility that this violates the First Amendment. Give a scientist ten seconds to describe how the universe might have been born without the involvement of magic and that must be followed by an hour of praying and apologizing to the myriad of gods and goddesses and Easter Bunnies that might be offended (if they existed) by humans partaking of the "fruit of knowledge." Why is that?

Every week or so, I receive a chunk of spam by my hysterical Midwestern relatives who are terrified that "da govamunt" is at war with religion, usually Christianity or some weird cultish offshoot of that powerful political organization. Religious folks have always been terrified by science, logic, and nature, but the more conservative we become the more timid we are. These days an expression of  doubt is enough to send Pat Robertson, Billy Graham, and Dubya into a hysteria of fear and oppression. We've been here before as humans and, unhappily, as Americans. Witch burning is founded in that same faith-based cowardice.

I've argued, often, that every attempt to install religion in government is based on the fear that "if you don't at least pretend to believe what I believe, I may lose faith." Like gangsters everywhere, theocracies all discount the difference between respect and fear. If they can't earn respect, they will settle for terrorizing into silence anyone who might express a difference of opinion regarding any aspect of their slight grip on "faith." The overwhelming majority of the world's spiritual leaders have advocated a solitary spiritual journey, but the bulk of humanity needs the reinforcement of a like-minded crowd to maintain a delusion of magic and faith. Producing a spiritual crowd through laws and the threat of government violence is the easiest way to make-believe "everyone" is on the same spiritual page.

Humans have been doing this song and dance since the days of caves, clubs, and witchdoctors. The long, slow, sad history of humanity is littered with the debris of collapsed dynasties, discredited gods, scientifically displaced delusions of how the universe really works, and disappointed believers who have found that "god" wasn't on their side. This is the reason that the authors of the Constitution argued for a clear "separation of Church and State," as Jefferson explained. Religion has too often picked the wrong horses, historically. Conservatives, usually with the moral guidance of their religions, have backed corrupt nepotism and aristocracies, vicious and perverted theocracies, dictators of all sorts, self-destructive corporations and insane robber barons, slavery and racial discrimination, short-sighted and nationally-destructive economic policies, cruel and unusual punishments, regional and worldwide wars, and every known evil committed by humanity.

I'd say that evidence proves that every expression of faith should be counteracted by equal time provided to rational analysis. The history of religion is bloody, oppressive, and evil and something that consistently nasty ought to be given careful analysis anytime it rears it's predictably conservative head.

January  2007

Rat Links

When I started The Rat’s Eye View in 1, I had a mission. That mission shifted on me more than a few times. Looking through the pages of that seldom read website, I found a few things I decided I want to continue in some fashion, like my Links:

Business Stuff

• Don Lancaster's Incredible Secret Money Machine Lancaster and his book, The Incredible Secret Money Machine, are benchmarks in the available information for small business owners.  Lancaster was a hero of mine at the beginning of my technical career for his Cookbook Series with Sam's Electronic Books.  The Secret Money Machine just solidified his value to me. Harvard and the other MBA-clone manufacturing sites are decades behind what Lancaster told us 30 years ago. 
• Dr. Zimmerman's Tuesday Tips Not always useful, but often, at least, interesting. 

Political Stuff

• BBC NEWS | Programmes/Newsnight For what's left of English-speaking MSM news, the BBC is it. This international news source is not available anywhere in the US, other than through the Internet. Not on a cable channel, not anywhere. That is freakin' scary, since the Brits are supposed to be one of our few actual remaining allies.
• Arabesque: 9/11 Truth It's hard to find anything remotely honest about the events leading to the Saudi attacks on New York and Washington D.C. and even harder to find real information about the cover-up that followed, but this site provides the kind of information that a real national media would be all over if the media wasn't part of the problem.
• Brill's Content (commentary and criticism on the media, this is a lot more interesting than it sounds)
• Capital Hill Blue Doug is inconsistently good, but always informative. This website has probably broken more major Washington stories than all of the other news sources in the nation.
• Common Dreams - "Breaking News and Views for the Progressive Community"; enough said.
• Jim Hightower - America's #1 Populist One of G.W.'s first political victims. Hightower is, possibly, the sole reason why Texas should be allowed to remain in the Union when the revolution comes.
• Michael Moore Yeah, that Michael Moore. Inconsistent, but often courageous. What more do you expect from your news?
• t r u t h o u t News Politics One of the only actual news sources left in these United States. t r u t h o u t is an incredible source of news, opinion, and facts that the MSM chooses to ignore because they don't promote the corporate fascist point of view. The fact that so much of what is found on this website never makes it to the news is a national embarassment.
• Think Progress Another great investigative news source.
• Yahoo/IOpEd Richard Reeves Editorials (Richard is a radical progressive who writes what he sees.)
• Yahoo/IOpEd Ted Rall Editorials (Rall is another radical progressive who's mother must be really concerned for his health in this "conservative," right-wing, neo-Nazi political environment.)
• Beyond Oil It isn't being regularly maintained, but Kenneth Deffeyes' website (intended to promote his book, Beyond Oil) is often a source of useful insight regarding current events and their relationship to energy.

Cool Stuff

• Craig's Minneapolis List Craig's List is destroying the profit margins of MSM newspapers all across the nation. Good for them.
• H. L. Mencken - Quotes and Quotations This is a fine source of what never fails to be ageless wisdom.
• Mr. Cranky, the ultimate movie reviewer (a man after my own heart)
• The Frank Church Papers The man who actually ended the Vietnam War by removing Nixon's access to money. An American hero.
• The Recycler (a Southern California classic, a place to buy anything)
• Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Everything you need to know about most things.

#168 Just Lucky, I Guess

To start the new year off, the goofy head of the University of Minnesota's Athletic Department, Joel Maturi, fired football coach Glen Mason. I suspect that most college football fans outside of Minnesota don't even know that Minnesota had a University of Minnesota football team. Mason's overall record was 64-57. His conference record was 32-47. Even more hilarious was his record against Top 25 teams: 5-27.

The chances are pretty good that any half-decent high school coach could drop into the Minnesota program and do as well as Mason, at a tiny fraction of the cost. The cost is the issue, here. Mason was grossly overpaid, $1.65 million a year, and will continue to be a cash drain to the state, $4 million in other payouts after being fired for incompetence. Minnesota's state college system, like most state college systems, has become unaffordable to anyone but little rich kids, who only go to schools

I guess this is more of academia following in the foolish footsteps of business. Executives regularly get rewarded for incompetence. In fact, there is no way to connect business success to any action or activities of executives. Corporations pay the giant, wasteful salaries of CEOs and other white collar criminals because nobody tells them they shouldn't, can't, or will go to jail if they do. Jail is exactly where a board of directors should be sent when they sign off on a huge paycheck for non-producing executives. "Non-producing" means non-inventing, non-manufacturing, or non-sales producing. A manufacturing company that pays an accountant or lawyer CEO millions of dollars is wasting money on a non-producing executive. A technology company that does the same is pretending that bean counters inspire innovation. That is simply bullshit and everyone in these companies knows it is bullshit.

Glen Mason was a boring, predictable coach who inspired mediocre performances from his organization. Anyone who watched more than two Minnesota games could guess what play Mason would call in a given situation. Most of his opponents were able to anticipate his habits, which resulted in his mediocre record. Mason's only saving grace was that many of his opponents were the same kind of overpaid, underachievers.

My wife, upon hearing the morning news of Mason's firing and the money waterfall that he would enjoy as a result of his failure, asked "what do you have to do to get one of these jobs?"

That's one hell of a question. I've sat in board meetings, surrounded by million dollar salaries and powerful men, and wondered exactly the same thing. I saw no evidence of superior intelligence, exceptional management abilities, brilliant intuition, or incredible math skills. I mostly heard middle aged men worry about how various business problems would affect their stock options and bonuses. The intellectual level of the discussion was depressingly low. Business or technical insight was totally absent. Simple, base self-interest ruled the meetings and I have a hard time imagining that many companies are different than the companies I experienced. The people are the same, sometimes exactly the same people who crush one company move on to destroy another, so why would their motivations change?

Luck has a lot to do with who gets the big bucks and who is paid less generously. The best thing a corporate exec can do is to avoid work. Real work (research, invention, design, manufacturing, project management, and, even, sales) involves risk and failure. Fake work (accounting, legal council, marketing, sales management, and administration) appears to be accomplishing something practical, while avoiding risk and failure. Accountants simply count the beans others grow. Lawyers forever "practice law," so any mistake they make they can blame on the ambiguous character of the legal system, while claiming any accidental successes to their own brilliance. Marketing departments are often a simple waste of air. Watch television for a couple of hours for all the evidence you'll need to prove this argument. Sales management and administration are non-service providing organizations that expand to fill the available space, but they rarely provide value to the people they pretend to serve and never take the blame for organizational failures, since they don't produce anything that is directly related to the organization's success. Characters from these areas of an organization often rise to the top, simply because they've been lucky. They've never been identified with a project failure, they've never directly lost the company money, and they take credit for every project that has succeeded in their general area.

In a rational world (business, political, or academic), big mistakes would carry big penalties. If a professor at the UofM lost the college a few thousand dollars, he would surely be fired almost instantly. Joel Maturi made mistake after mistake with Mason, including upping the scumbag's contract when Mason shopped himself to other institutions while still under contract with the UofM. In the end, Maturi spent $5.6 million of the state and university's money on a non-performing, then fired, coach and there is no sign that Maturi will pay any price for his incompetence. This kind of irrational behavior happens all the time in business, which probably explains why an MBA isn't ridiculed as being a "gimme degree" like FizzEd or Communications.

Money, like water, apparently flows downhill. The lower the institutional value a person represents, the more money is attracted to that person. The key to becoming grossly overpaid, and rewarded for gross failure, is to begin your career being useless and to perfect that quality. And be very, very lucky.

January  2007

#167 Three Dead Guys, One Long Year

In the past eight years that I've been writing Rat Rants, I haven't once bothered with an "end of year wrapup." I'm not sure this will be such a conclusive document, but all the hand-wringing about Jerry Ford and Saddam Hussein's death this week brought out the rant motivation this morning. Listening to eulogies from characters like Dick Cheney, Bob Dole, Donny Rumsfeld, and the like approached ruining my New Year's eve morning coffee.

Everyone who was a conscious adult in the 1970s knew that Jerry Ford made a deal with the Nixon Administration to pardon the head criminal and create a distraction that would allow the legal escape of a long list of Nixonian criminals. The almost universal disgust regarding Ford's pardon of Nixon was evidence of that knowledge when Ford was solidly trounced by a Georgia peanut farmer who was, four years later, trounced by a b-movie acting, failed California politician. Ford's attempt to "end our long nightmare," was just beginning of a much longer nightmare. The nation has not recovered from the cynicism and radical distrust of our institutions that was began by Nixon's criminal behavior and has been continued since, because Gerald Ford established a precedent that demonstrated that criminals do not have to pay for their crimes, if those crimes are big enough. The Bush Administration's huge collection of criminals are counting on this precedent, which is why Cheney spoke so emotionally (for a zombie) at Ford's funeral. If Nixon didn't have to pay for his wide array of crimes against humanity and the nation, surely Bush and Cheney will escape their criminal activity equally unscathed.

Ford's legacy includes allowing some really vicious Nixonian characters to remain in the Republican national party; Rumsfeld, Cheney, Casper Weinberger, and many of the Rat Pack who have made up the past 30 years of Republican incompetence. As for his redemption in the short attention span of the American media, the New York Times stated that his pardon of Nixon was "a profoundly unwise, divisive and unjust act" which wreaked Ford's "credibility as a man of judgment, candor and competence." Nothing in the last 30 years has changed to restore any of those qualities to Jerry Ford. Much in that amoral action has contributed to the long nightmare that was continued by Reagan, Bush I, Clinton (the "Eisenhower Republicans") and Bush II. A public trial, conviction, and new laws to protect the nation from a despot President would have followed Nixon's escape from Washington. We could be a massively improved nation if that had happened, Ford made sure it did not.

Thanks for the legacy and the endless nightmares, Jerry.

Another legacy was created Saturday, two days before the New Year, the hanging of Saddam Hussein on the first day of the Muslim Eid al-Adha festival. Just to be certain that portion of the world understood how insensitive the United States and our microscopic "coalition" is to Islamic feelings, Traditionally, Muslims execute an animal on this day, in remembrance of Abraham's willingness to slaughter his own son on God's command. Only the least informed citizen could believe there was anything legitimate about Hussein's trial, conducted by hand-selected judges while the nation is occupied by American troops, so the symbolism is pretty clear to the Mideast. Hussein has probably been elevated to the unlikely stature of "hero" in the eyes of many Islamic fundamentalists. No one ever (intelligently) accused the Bush cronies of being sophisticated or having a sense of timing. I don't know where you'd find better evidence of their incompetence than this incident.

Finally, someone for whom I actually cared died Xmas Day, 2006. James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, the true Kind of Rock and Roll, and a revolutionary of the best sort, died at 73. James wrote and performed the song that should be the modern national anthem, "Living in America," in 1987. He lived it as he played it, too. The multicolored band that performed that song in the movie and music video from Rocky IV was as American as a professional basketball team; representatives of every race, clothing designer, and popular musical instrument rocked out to a cowed and boring Russian crowd. James shouting, "I'm an American, eat your heart out!" to that audience was the only highpoint to an otherwise mindless, worthless movie.

For most of my life, I've taken crap from family, friends, and other musicians about my "James Brown rules!" convictions. From "he can't even sing" to "that's nothin' but jungle music," I've heard it all. And it's all wrong. Anyone suffering through another artist attempting to sing "A Man's World" knows how difficult Brown's music is to recreate. All of the lame comedians who grossly failed to even remind us of any aspect of JB's performance skills discovered how complicated, technical, and physically demanding this music is.

I don't imagine that one minute of 2007 will be taken up with my memories of Saddam Hussein or Jerry Ford, but I'm going to miss James Brown and the hope that I'll have another chance to see "the Hardest Working Man in Show Business" again. 

December 2006

Texas Evolution

My wife and I spent about three weeks in Texas this winter. Texans are, as a group, pretty clueless about themselves and how they are perceived outside of the Silly South. National politics and most of the pressing issues of the day are beyond their limited comprehension. For example, if you were to ask a Texan about goofy, illiterate, criminally-vicious Governor Perry, you’ll hear strange things like “he’s the cutest governor in the nation” and “the problem was the debates” (not Perry’s inability to put together a sentient sentence or comprehend a single issue in an adult manner).

The state’s highways are not only poorly maintained, but they are miserably engineered (poor materials, terrible workmanship, and often dished instead of arched for drainage, at the least). Texans blame their weather, in spite of the fact that New Mexico and Oklahoma highways are unarguably better roads and subjected to similar or worse weather. The problem isn’t the environment, other than the corrupt, inbred, good-ole’-boy way of doing business in Texas. You have not seen lethargic road construction crews until you’ve been to Texas in the springtime. They have three-legged shovels to keep the “workers” from falling over.

Thanks to Texas’ dimbulb state government, the state’s low income citizens are deprived of the benefits of the Affordable Care Act, since Perry and his cronies turned down the federal funding to fill in the ACA’s “donut hole.” The Texas Republicans are hoping that the state’s voters are brainless enough to pin the blame on Obama and “liberals”; and they’re probably right. Texas voters are notoriously foolish. Texans believe the rest of the country suffers from the same problems, but Texans are so on the defensive when they leave their hell-hole of a home they are unable to see how much better off many less natural resource endowed states are than Texans.

This isn’t new. “At the risk of descent into unscientific generalization, I must report to you that ninety percent of Texans give the other ten percent a bad name.” John H. Holliday reporting on his Dallas, Texas experiences to his Georgia fiancé, Martha Anne. Nothing appears to have changed in 130 years. There is a wonderful tiny core of Texans who stand out as stark anomalies in comparison to the majority of the state’s residents. Many of them, however, are not native Texans and will probably leave the state if it continues to de-evolve. Texas suffers under the illusion that the nation needs them, but the opposite is the true situation. Texas desperately needs the brains, work ethic, science, and engineering provided to that state by the rest of the country; mostly the dreaded “Yankees.”

Actual economic activity in the majority of Texas is limited to second hand shops and gun stores. Cruising through the dead state’s small towns, one thing stands out; gun sales are up even if every other business in town is down. It is simply amazing how many gun shops there are between the boarder at Clovis, New Mexico and the Oklahoma state line near Arkansas. You’d think there was something, other than people, to hunt in Texas. There is, in fact, but hunting in Texas is the sort of thing Dick Cheney does for fun; domestically raised “wild animals” chained to posts so the big game hunters can find, shoot, and call in the help to haul away the day’s slaughter from the convenience of a golf cart. Otherwise, the state’s natural game has been long disposed of. Texas is pretty much a dead zone, outside of the national parks. The place has been raped and pillaged so completely that flies are about the only natural fauna left in the place. They have plenty of flies, though. And guns.

On our way out of the state, Fort Hood suffered another mass shooting from another deranged military vet. It’s not an unusual occurrence in Texas. In 2012, College Station enjoyed the attention of one of the NRA’s finest, Thomas Alton Caffall III, who pretty much limited his aim to local police officers and himself. The whole sniper-in-the-public thing started off in Texas, back in 1966, with ex-Marine Charles Whitman blasting 16 students from the University of Texas’ Tower. Texans love their guns and are pretty fond of killing each other with guns, staying in the top 15 gun-violence states consistently for decades. “In Texas, rocks are considered inadequate weaponry during school yard scuffles. Dallas children carry a brace of loaded pistols, a concealed Deringer [sp], and a six-inch toadsticker in one boot. That’s the girls, of course. Boys bring Howitzers to class.” John H. Holliday wrote to his cousin and ex-dentist partner, Robert Holliday. Nothing has changed. Texans love their guns and love using them to make as much misery as possible.

After a couple of weeks in Texas, my wife and I shared Doc Holliday’s opinion, “I believe I have enjoyed about as much of Texas as I can stand.” And we were right on the border of Texas and Oklahoma at Lake Texoma in a private park that was as pleasant as any place I’ve ever seen in Texas or the south. Next time we travel to New Mexico, I believe we’ll go by way of Denver.

Technorati Tags: texas,new mexico,violence,pollution,guns,politics

#166 Grow a Funny Bone, Get Liberated

Americans have long had sophisticated humor about their politicians, except for conservatives who are humorless. From Tom Paine to Mark Twain to Jon Stewart, this country has a long, beautiful history of being able to see the failures and comedy in our political mismanagement. Jolly old England is reasonably quick witted, politically. Their tabloids are jammed with slapstick observations of the Royals. Most of western Europe, the Germans in the last half of the last century, and, occasionally, Italians spawn a fair quantity of capable comedians and cartoonists. The Dutch, Swiss, and Swedes are hilarious. The rest of the world, not so much. Honestly, I don't know much about Japanese political humor, but you'd think a cartoon or two would have crossed the boarders and I can't remember ever seeing a single snatch of Japanese political humor. Koreans, Arabs, Chinese, Russians, most of South America, and Africa are dry wells, if you are looking for something to laugh about.

Humor is an absolute requirement for a country to have a chance in hell of a democratic government. The mark of every third world country suffering a political tyrant is a country filled with humorless people. I realize this could be a chicken-and-egg situation, but I am going out on a limb here in declaring that I think the egg came first. The chickens are an aftereffect of a nation going egg-less.

One advantage (?) of the uncontrolled, irrational immigration the US has experienced in the last decade is that we've all had the opportunity to get to know a fair number of folks from those "countries without humor." And, mostly, I've discovered that they don't get the joke, even when they are removed from the dull, humorless environment from which they came. So, I'm beginning to doubt the problem is "nurture" and suspect the root of the obstruction is in their "nature." Possibly, everyone with a sense of humor and revolution have been bred and murdered out of those cultures. Probably, the same tendency that draws these populations to superstitions and genocide could be linked to an absence of humor and rational thought.

Let's face it, North Korea's Kim Yung Ding Dong wouldn't get through a day in office, at the lowest level, in the US without taking some comedic heat for his asexual appearance, girlyman voice, insane pronouncements, and over-inflated opinion of himself. Of course, our conservatives would love him and praise him as he jabbered monkey-talk and spilled food on himself, but the sentient portion of the country would be howling in the isles every time he opened his mouth. All of which points out the obvious, these humorless countries are all insanely conservative. The terrible truth is that conservatives have no sense of humor. Examples of conservatives trying to demonstrate humor are frightening, terrible, and not funny. Rush humiliating 13-year-old Chelsea Clinton for her lack of teenage sex appeal, for example. Wild Man Watergate Boy Gordon Liddy's only funny routine is putting out cigarettes on his forehead. (Or was that David Crosby? I can't tell one bald redneck from the other.) Oliver North is consistently unintentionally funny, but couldn't tell a joke if he used Robin Williams as a translator. The sad fact of conservatism is that, at best, conservatives only laugh at other's misfortune, but they rarely even manage that unless someone explains the joke to them. If it weren't for slapstick, conservatives would have no cause to flex their jowls in an upward direction. That goes for Ann Coulter's strangely plastic-surgeon-tweaked jowls, too.

A few conservatives recognize this as a critical intellectual failure, so they attempt to imitate folks they've identified as "funny." Usually, the only point of humor reference conservatives have is Bob Hope, who had a full-time team of liberal comedy writers attempting to trowel comedic makeup over Hope's total lack of funniness. Dennis Miller went from occasionally funny to relentlessly boring the moment he decided to go for the cash and think conservatively. A stroke wouldn't have stripped off more IQ points than did Miller's political conversion. Any rational IQ test would include a "sense of humor test," but many academics are as impaired as political conservatives. This, of course, explains the core curriculum of all business management programs. You might see this as some sort of conspiracy, but you'd be over-estimating conservative intelligence. They do these dumb things, without a chuckle, because they are simply not clever enough to see the joke or a solution to the real problems.

It's a long-standing truth that conservatives are not artistic. Conservative attempts at art, movies, music, and architecture are painful reminders of this fact. Country western music is as close as conservatives get to creativity and C&W is just obsolete R&R performed by folks who failed to attract attention as R&R'ers. Fundamentalists, of all sorts, are universally devoid of humor. Can you imagine the Ayatollah or Billy Graham laughing?  Me either. How about Chairman Mao, Adolph Hitler, Stalin, British Royalty, Rush Limbaugh or George Bush? (Smirking or sneering does not count.) Nope, me either. The more conservative they get, the less funny they become. 

Not all liberals are endowed with cleverness, either. However, the word "liberal" has received something of a distorted image by modern politics. Teddy Kennedy, the neocon's posterboy for liberalism, is actually pretty funny when he wants to be. Ralph Nader possess the driest sense of humor I've ever experienced. However, more radical liberal types appear to be obeying some version of quantum mechanics and have swung so far left that they are coming around the other side and turning into radical conservatives, humor-wise.

Today, I want to add another conservative and anti-liberty characteristic to the common knowledge; a lack of humor. Even more important, any nation that wants to foster creativity, liberty, and prosperity has to put a fair effort into being funny. The evidence points to the possibility that you can't be free without being funny.

December 2006

#165 What do We Deserve?

All Rights Reserved © 2006 Thomas W. Day

"We get the government we deserve." I think that may be one of the least obvious, most true statements about government of any type, any size, and at any time in history. The best periods of government in American history all occurred during brief times when the public was so disappointed by the performance of the usual suspects that they rose from their lethargy and took back power for those who should never be allowed to possess it. In geopolitical time, those high points barely warrant a blink of an eye compared to the eons of droning, corrupt, self-serving governments that have cursed humanity since the first caveman decided to tell other cavemen who was boss.

Looking at politics under the lens of "what does the public deserve" does, maybe, a disservice to places like Mexico and most of South and Central America, most of Africa, the Arab nations, most of Asia and East Europe. At the core, obviously, many parents in those countries raised or failed to raise the little rat bastards who torture, destroy, and terrorize those countries. If their offspring turn out to be the knife that kills the parent, it's tough to generate a lot of sympathy for the "victim." You grew it, you own it.

Tough love, I know, but it comes back to haunt us. Much of the world's misery is generated by American robber baron corporations that use US military power and the threat of that power to manipulate foreign governments, smaller nations' natural resources, and the world's monetary system. We grew it, now we own it. Those corporations have grown beyond the boundaries of the United States and show no more loyalty to our flag than they do the flags of the countries they've invaded in the past. Should that really be surprising to anyone? In 1968, Chicago discovered that cops on the take don't take orders. Throughout the 1960s until today, we should have learned that a CIA/FBI on the take is equally insensitive to management. Now, we're beginning to see that corporations that manipulate, to their financial and power advantage, all of the worst aspects of our culture are insensitive to the culture that they supposedly serve. Well, duh. You lay down with dogs, you get up with fleas.

Which brings us to our present dilemma. Our government, from local to federal is a contaminated, corrupt mess. The bits that aren't owned and operated by international corporations are owned and operated by local gangsters. Even the smallest cities are poorly managed by special interests that don't care one whit about the safety, security, financial stability, or future of the communities they pretend to serve. And we, apparently, love them for it.

My hometown, Dodge City, Kansas, once hired a City Manager from some damned place because he had magical business credentials and could, supposedly, bring new business to that dying community. Within a couple of years, he attracted a collection of packing plants and associated service vendors for that industry, which drew a few thousand illegal laborers to the town, driving wages into the dust, ruining neighborhoods, and decimating the town's already weak education system. After the City Manager's "work was done," he promptly left town with yet another credit to his resume. The town has yet to, and probably will never, recover.

My current home, Little Canada, Minnesota, presents less opportunity for industry, being a fully-developed bedroom suburb of St. Paul. That hasn't slowed up the march of political opportunism, though. Like most eastern cities, we have a supremely expensive, astoundingly unproductive city government. With too many employees doing too little work, all hired or appointed by a crony-system that is old, well-entrenched, and regularly re-elected by local voters. For some reason, the majority of voters like the current system, even though they don't know anything about how it operates. We're a mirror of national politics, which does nothing to explain either local or national politics.

In a fit of irrational community loyalty, my wife ran for City Council in the last election. She campaigned by going door-to-door, talking to our neighbors, engaging in the local televised debate, and taking every opportunity to talk about how our little city's quality of life could be improved. She campaigned on city efficiency, managing the city's resources and development, opening the city's financial decisions to public examination, protecting our small group of lakes and waterways, She placed campaign signs on our neighbors' lawns, with local businesses, and handed out fliers until she felt she'd contacted everyone who might care about the community and vote that concern.

Her opponents controlled the debate, placed their campaign signs, illegally, on public property, in front of a few bars and liquor stores and their own homes, took the local vote for granted and, correctly, assumed that the voters would be as uninvolved, uninformed, and dysfunctional as they had been in the past. One of the incumbents had been seriously ill with disabling cancer and died soon after the election, before taking office. Our little city's experiment in democracy ran aground almost immediately, as the existing office holders disingenuously praised the deceased council member's dedication to the city's welfare (something I never witnessed in dozens of council meetings I observed over the years). While waving that distracting flag with one hand, they worked quickly to subvert democratic principle so they could appoint another of their cronies to the council. Public comment was discounted, logic and fairness ignored, and it appears that we'll continue down the corrupt path our city has trod in the past, because that's what conservatives do.

The problem is normal people don't want to associate with the kind of people who work in government, run for , political office, or own the people who squat in those jobs. One trip to a city council meeting is enough to keep the typical citizen from venturing into that boring, degenerate environment for years. A short conversation with a city manager, a council member, state legislator, or governor will drive most of us into an hour-long hand washing frenzy. Government and business share this quality, the closer you get to the top, the scummier your associations become. At some point, freedom and liberty have to be defended by those who expect the rewards of those precious qualities. If we don't take back our governments from the scumbags who will use it against us, we'll deserve the government we get.

December 2006

#164 Who Won?

All Rights Reserved © 2006 Thomas W. Day

The election is over. Republicans lost the U.S. House and won a microscopic (1 vote) advantage in the Senate. The American public spoke and their voice was heard. Yeah, right. A single "accidental death," like Paul Wellstone's, could allow a nutty Republicrat governor to appoint an equally crazy Republicrat replacement, putting Cheany in the deciding vote position in the Senate. All that energy into one of the most stunning electoral repudiations of government in US history and it can all be overturned by one of the old farts in the Senate acting naturally and dying.

It's true that the public spoke with their feet and votes. It's true that the nation's anti-war sentiment is pretty damn strong and that a few Demolicans managed to identify that movement and march at a safe distance behind the voting public. In the end, even before the polls closed Pelosi and crew were backing off of their promises and rearranging their priorities. Power corrupts and political parties are all about power. It's going to take a lot more than an election to fix the mess the Republicrats have made in the world. In fact, I suspect it's beyond fixing.

A few years back, Michael Moore produced a film called "Bowling for Columbine." The film obviously had an agenda and Michael pursued it relentlessly until he discovered, near the end, that his original premise was disproved by Canada and Switzerland; two countries with possibly more heavily armed civilian populations than the U.S. He ended the film, honestly and sadly, without a conclusion.

He gave me a lot to think about, though. My conclusion, as usual, is that every institution (government is the ultimate institution, size-wise) is led and inspired top-down. Since the early years of the 1800's, the United States government has been a violently corrupt institution; invading neighbors to steal territory, devastating Native American populations out of greed and general viciousness, and beginning the tradition of destabilizing other countries' governments so our robber barons can take advantage of their natural resources without interference. The 1800s turned our for-and-by-the-people government into a corporate tool for the hostile takeover of anything not bolted down and well-defended. We'll whip out the guns and cannons and bombers for practically any justification imaginable. Is it any wonder that neighbors resort to trading bullets over property disputes, marital arguments, or parking space? It's a national tradition.

As individuals, we might be tired of sending our children to foreign wars of corporate interest. As a nation, we're perfectly happy to toss kids into flames if someone convinces us that it will make a Bush, Rockefeller, or Halliburton a little richer. In fact, there are whole regions of the United States that specialize in producing cannon fodder; Nebraska, Kansas, South Dakota, Mississippi, and most of rural America, for example. It takes, literally, minimal motivation for parents of these states to decide to send their boys and girls into the breach. They have been conditioned, since the Civil War, to toss their kids into the hands of politicians and corporations anytime the words "patriotism," "national security," or "threat to the economy" are mentioned. I am going to be hard-pressed to imagine that anything in this last election will alter that national mindset.

War is such a vicious, terrible, evil option that it's hard to imagine why a nation would select a foolish, slimy, amoral scumbag like Bush or Chaney to a position where they might be able to sacrifice nature or youth to their whims. It's a critical human fault that puts serious doubt on any "intelligent design" fantasy.

I don't see this election as a solution to any of the country's worst problems. A single Demolican defection on any vote will maintain the status quo. A single assassination would return the country to 2000's Republicrat corruption. Do you really think that Chaney and the Oil Barons wouldn't kill anyone to keep the oil money flowing unimpeded? We're a long way from out of the frying pan and the fire is still burning under the pan.

November 2006

#163 The Really Good Die Young and Unnoticed (2006)

[This is the last of the Rat reprints. All of the stuff I wrote after 2006 went to the blog and the website, simultaneously. This essay was also posted to the blog when I first wrote it, but I think Dr. Jeevan Paul deserves all the notice he can get. He is missed and was an American hero. If I'm still alive in 2016, I'm sure I'll still miss him. If I'm not, this will be the last thing I intended to post on this blog. Either way, we all win.]

All Rights Reserved © 2006 Thomas W. Day

NPR's Prairie Home Companion fans will be disappointed to here that, regardless of what NPR's Garrison Keillor says, Saint Paul is an armpit of a city, compared to Minneapolis, St. Cloud, Rochester, or any other city in Minnesota. Like every state in our nutty nation, the state capitol is the state's official embarrassment; the most corrupt, the most degenerate, the most poorly managed, and the one place in the state that most adversely affects the state's average IQ. Think Topeka, Kansas or Albany, New York or even Sacramento, California and you'll know what I'm talking about. Austin, Texas is an exception, but that city is surrounded by an armpit of a state. You could be forgiven in thinking that we've decided to put all of the worst people we know in a common location so that, if we ever decided to be a rational nation, it would be easy to identify where most of the problems reside. I stumbled into more evidence of our national capitol perversion this week when I decided to see a doctor for a ailment that has been persecuting me for the past month. 

To build a little background, I spent a decade in medical devices during the 1990s and the most valuable thing I learned from that experience is that Ted Sturgeon's rule ("90% of everything is crap") more than applies to medicine. In fact, Sturgeon is optimistic. Most of the physicians I met were mediocre talents, barely involved in their profession, disconnected to the pain and suffering of their victims, and almost as principled as Enron executives (or any other company's executives, for that matter). From that experience and my history of minimal medical difficulties, I hoped to avoid contact with doctors whenever possible.

At the end of that miserable career path, I found myself exactly where I'd hoped never to be: looking for a competent doctor. Our of necessity and through a referral from someone who's opinion I valued, I met Dr. Jeevan Paul in August of 2001. I was in terrible shape and had been in and out of a dozen doctors' offices since May, with no result other than continued degeneration of my condition and increased frustration. Dr. Paul gave me a complete physical, his complete attention and empathy, and identified the source of and several possible solutions for my problem in a single visit. 

Unfortunately, my corporate insurance did not include his clinic, so I was forced to return to the other 90%, armed with the information Dr. Paul had provided. The cost of the tests he'd performed was high, since the laboratories he used were the usual suspects of medical practice. So, he helped me negotiate with my insurance company and, eventually, they paid for a portion of the lab costs. He stayed in touch with me for several months, through e-mail, to follow-up on the treatment I received from my insurance provider. 

Like most Americans, I've been uninsured or under-insured for the last four years, so my contact with doctors has been limited to desperate times only. Once freed from my medical problems, I haven't had much cause to hang out with doctors, even the one I actually liked and trusted; Dr. Jeevan Paul. A couple of months ago, I decided to get back in touch and discovered that Dr. Paul died in 2005. He was thirty-seven years old. Typically, his brief memorial, buried in the back pages of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, requested that any memorials be sent to his favorite "hobby"; Medicins Sans Frontiers (Doctors Without Borders). 

Since I last saw Dr. Paul, he had moved to a different facility and a new specialty; chronic pain. He was active in the Minnesota Medical Association and constantly worked to provide medical services to low income patients and other disadvantaged citizens who are typically unprotected by our current profit-driven medical system. He posthumously received an award from a Minnesota physician's organization which described Dr. Paul in this simple statement, "Increasing access to care for under-served communities was the cause closest to Dr. Paul's heart, said Dr. Tooker. A general internist, Dr. Paul spent most of his career working at a community health center in St. Paul, where he worked to break down barriers to care for low-income patients."

Now, back to my original premise, the one that stated my opinion of St. Paul's low status as a city. Dr. Paul was active in local and state politics. He regularly participated in a physicians' outreach program that annually attempted to inform our state legislators of critical issues regarding the state's health care systems. I doubt that anyone in the state did more to promote community, compassion, or sacrifice than did Dr. Jeevan Paul. 

In recognition of his life and death, the St. Paul Pioneer Press didn't even bother to post a notice of his passing. No mention was made in the state legislature of the loss of this great man. If it weren't for the Minneapolis Tribune's brief mention in the obituary column. 

Maybe this makes sense to you. Maybe you really believe that the piddling activities of professional athletes warrants a seven page section of the newspaper? Maybe you think movie reviews are critical to the progress and outcome of civilization. Maybe you think government is wisely spending its time jabbering about gay marriage, abortion, finding more ways to reduce the tax burden of the wealthy, and slipping more corporate tax loopholes? I, on the other hand, think all this crap is wall-to-wall signs of a decadent society that has no moral guidelines, no purpose, and is so intently concentrated on greed and corruption that we won't even have Nero entertaining us with a violin solo when the walls crumble down on our heads.
October 2006

#162 Appeasing Nazis (2006)

All Rights Reserved © 2006 Thomas W. Day

 

Defense Secretary and neocon wildman Donny Rumsfeld, a man whose bleary, boozy appearance always inspires the endearing nickname "Rummy," recently went into a hysterical rant comparing his critics to "Nazi appeasers" who are interfering in his pursuit of "a new type of fascism." Sam Kinison must be laughing, somewhere.

These days, any attempt to report an administration speech comes off as rightwing propaganda, these characters are so far off the political charts that they are coming around the other side and beginning to sound leftist. My source of information, a Los Angeles Times article (by Julian E. Barnes), was so badly written that I thought, for a few seconds, that Rummy had grown a conscience and swapped sides. The Times, a paper that once was so disregarded that it was barely considered to be more than a rightwing real estate promotion rag, has returned to its roots. Barnes works his ass off to make Rummy sound almost sentient, while reducing contradicting opinions to background noise. Still, even with careful editing, Rummy is pretty funny.

Let's face it, anyone who knows squat about history has long since connected the dots between the 1936 Nazi political takeover of Germany and the 2000 neocon overthrow of the United States democracy. But, no, when he presented his newest, most hilarious argument, Rummy was hiding in that great bastion of nationalism, the American Legion convention. An audience sense of history was noticeably missing.¹ Rummy went into a semi-literate rant about the people who were interfering with his dissection of the Constitution and his illegal Iraq oil takeover attempt. There weren't nearly as many laughs as Rummy would have received if he'd have picked a more conscious crowd, like a college campus. I expect he was disappointed. He went to a lot of work to assemble the best neocon comedic writers and this was some of their best work. Hardly anyone laughed, assuming Barnes and the Times accurately reported the event.

I laughed a lot, when I read the Times' article. I particularly loved this convoluted and typically-Rummy argument, "If we abandon the Iraqi people before their government is strong enough to secure the country, they we will show reformers across the region that America cannot be trusted to keep its word. We will embolden extremist enemies of moderation and of democratic reform." Has anyone ever seen any sign that Rummy supports moderation or democratic reform in this country? Did I miss Rummy's anguished performance when the 2000 Supreme Court disrespected more than 50 million votes, the majority, and politically "appointed" Rummy's boss; "Queen of America?" This is sarcasm, right? It has to be. When was the last time one of the monosyllabic neocons used the word "embolden?" Aren't conservatives terrified of people who are emboldened? When has a reformer ever looked to this administration for any inspiration? Reformers all over South America are looking to the north in fear, especially those who have oil resources. But no political leader with an ounce of good toward his citizens will would ever expect assistance from the Bush Presidency. We don't even expect assistance from our government. Our elections are so fraudulent that "trust" is a word that has vanished from the American political vocabulary. And does abandoning "the Iraqi people" mean that we'd quit shooting them for entertainment? There is so much irony in this pair of sentences that I think Mark Twain would be intimidated by the comedic genius of Rummy's writers.

Rummy tipped his whiskey jar and continued with, "I recount that history because, once again, we face similar challenges in efforts to confront the rising threat of a new type of fascism." Really? The Bushies are doing something new? What did I miss? It doesn't look new to me. 2000 was the same kind of turn-around year for the United States that Germany suffered in 1932 when the Nazi Party wrestled power from the Weimar Democracy in the heat of the world economic depression. Hitler's 1932 "victory" was no less legitimate or more creative than was George Bush's in 2000. The United States has made a slow turn in the exact Nazi German direction that led to WWII. But "new?" I see nothing new in fascism. Fascism is an economic system that attempts to reach corporate and elite goals through force, repression, and fear. Sounds like the Republican Party platform to me. The fact that working class folks keep voting Republican is the funniest, saddest proof that humans are a sincerely, chronically, pathologically stupid species. But that's nothing new, either.

He had to have had them rolling in the isles, but Rummy kept delivering punch lines. Like this one, "Can we truly afford to believe that, somehow or someway, vicious extremists could be appeased?" No, we can't, but we will. I have never believed that the brown shirt extremists who forced the end of the 2000 presidential election recount with violence and a politically corrupt Supreme Court overthrow of democracy can be appeased. I thought they should have been arrested, tried, and executed for treason; including the five members of the Court. Honestly, I can't imagine this country returning to democratic principles without a civil war and I have very little faith that the docile citizens of this country care enough about freedom, liberty, or democracy to go to war for it.  Still, appeasing the Bush Administration is a moral crime and I agree with Rummy, we should all be opposing them with every ounce of our existence. That was what he was talking about, wasn't it? Maybe he was still stuffing his contradictions into a paradox burrito. Irony is so subtle. Of course, when Rummy tosses off a phrase like "moral confusion," we know there's a punch line here somewhere. Morals? Republicans? Where would the two ever meet?

One after another, Rummy kept the one-liners coming, "Can we truly afford to return to the destructive view that America--not the enemy--is the real source of the world's troubles?" I read that and thought, "No, we can't, but I don't remember ever leaving that view." Reagan really kicked it up a notch or ten, but since the end of WWII, the United States has destabilized nations and continents, continuously, for the profit of a few rich corporate criminals. I don't know how anyone with the slightest knowledge of world history can avoid pointing, like a compass swinging north, a finger at the United States when a discussion of "the world's troubles" begins. Still, at some clinging basic core, America (including Canada and Mexico and South America) are the hope of much of the world. Bush and Rummy, however, do not represent America (including the United States) at its best. They are us at our worst, our most destabilizing, our most class-controlled, our most short-sighted, and our most violently greedy. That's not that funny, now that I reconsider it. I guess I can see why the reporter didn't mention laughs at this point in Rummy's speech.

As background noise, Rummy (and Condi and Georgie and the rest) keep talking about "victory" in Iraq. This has to be a joke, right? How can an occupying force ever hope for "victory" in an invasion? Historically, the best imperialist occupation forces have ever managed is "balance." Balance usually means the occupier gains as much, in assets or trade, as they lose in moral character, national focus, and actual lives sacrificed so that the ruling class, who does gain from the occupation, can make their profits. That's "victory" when it comes to invading another nation in the hopes of controlling their resources. Oil, in this case and in case you've forgotten why we're in Iraq. With this history lesson in mind, I can't help but wonder when the Native Americans will reclaim this country. "Winning" isn't even an option, but it's pretty funny to think that anyone can take this argument seriously.

Democrats are making a mistake in calling for Rummy's resignation. Rummy isn't the problem, he's a symptom. He's distracting entertainment. When you are attempting to cure a disease, the last thing you want to do is hide symptoms unless the symptoms are all the damage the disease can cause. This disease is the entire conservative movement. Their irrational, superstitious view of the world is colored by rosy prism-shaped glasses that obscure anything resembling reality. They can overthrow the Constitution and the democracy and call it "national security." They can hand over the nation's assets to a tiny, inbred group of wealthy corporate traitors and call it "capitalism." They can destroy the nation's public education system and imagine, somehow, that unlimited immigration of unskilled, uneducated menial laborers and superstition-based charter schools will make up for the national brain trust that has been squandered during the last two decades.

I say let Rummy stand up and say what's on his little booze-soaked, hallucination-blurred mind. Let's ask him what he thinks, on every opportunity and on every subject, and be sure the cameras are rolling. For as little as Rummy seems to comprehend, he's nearly infinitely more conscious than his boss and, if he's the best Bush can offer up, we should be considering that very carefully. Of course, this is all part of Carl Rove's slavish devotion to maintaining Machiavelli's illusion of the "Prince." The goal is to make the Prince sound reasonable, a tough task for Bush, while his representatives act as vicious attack dogs chasing away opponents. The act is growing old and predictable. Maybe Machiavellian government has exceeded it's comedic limits? Maybe Rove is exceeding his abilities in trying to work both Rummy and Bush at the same time: all those hours with both hands up a pair of puppet's butts is probably tiring.

Rummy gives it his best, though. My favorite, and last, Rummy quote is ". . . but some seem not to have learned history's lessons." Exactly what I said in 2003 when I compared the administration's rush to invade and occupy Iraq, except that I was comparing Iraq to Vietnam. Using Rummy's Nazi lesson, I think it's clear how little this country learned from the "Great War" and the political and economic events that caused it.

That's not funny.

¹On Labor Day Weekend, let's not forget that the American Legion and the state militias (the National Guard) first saw significant use in modern times as strike-breaking goons. Celebrated in Woody Guthrie's "You Can't Scare Me I'm Working for the Union" and other famous lore, these guys hide behind nationalism while performing the menial labor for their corporate Republican owners. Sad, but a nasty piece of American history. Some things never change, some barely change.

September 2006

#161 Terrorists and Biker Gangs (2006)

All Rights Reserved © 2006 Thomas W. Day

Biker gangs have been with us since the beginning of history. This was first pointed out to me by my wife when I described the "Comancheros" who used to terrorize the American plains before and after the Civil War, before "civilization" replaced random acts of terror with organized terror (aka "government"). In this context, Viking marauders were boat-gangsters. The Mongol hordes were really big horse-riding gangs. Roaming packs of male chimpanzees are horseless, bike-less proto-gangsters. Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia were nations of biker-gangsters, finally, wearing helmets and uniforms. It's about time a biker gang thought about safety and strapped on helmets.

The basic concept of gangs could be taken from the Three Musketeers, "One for all, all for one."  Of course, when the going gets really tough and individual qualities are required, the members add "and everyone for himself" until the smoke clears. Without loud and clear orders to follow and simple rules to remember, biker gangsters revert to the most human primitive values. 

Years ago, I stumbled into a discussion with a guy who'd spent most of his life in biker gangs.  He talked about "honor" and "loyalty" as if those character traits didn't exist outside of gangs.  I had to comment on the fact that I had a hard time rectifying the habit biker gangs have of ganging up on an outsider who presented some minor challenge to one of their members with the quality of "honor." 

His reply was that disrespecting one member of the gang was disrespect to all.  Any challenge to a single member was a challenge to the whole group, even when the challenge was issued completely out of context to the group.  Honestly, I though that was the nuttiest answer possible.  I am incapable of seeing a gang beating as anything other than group cowardice and incredibly despicable.  But I'm never going to be recruited to be a gang member, partially because I don't think like gang members.  I'm all for "all for one and one for all," but at some point individuals have to accept the responsibility of their own actions.  Gang members are not individuals. They surrender their individuality when they merge their weak personalities into the slightly stronger group-mind.

How does a 12-on-1 gang beating fit into the concept of "honor?" The logical extension of this response is the old 10-for-1 reprisal rule that the Nazi's applied to resistance movements.  Today, the USA and Israel have extended that logic to several thousand for one in Iraq and Lebanon. To me, it still violates my Kansas cowboy sense of justice and fairness and I don't get it. Let's face it, when most of us saw L.A.'s cops beating the crap out of Rodney King we thought "somebody ought to help that guy," no matter what King did to get into that predicament.  At least, I hope most of us thought that. 

Paul William Roberts describes an American Special Forces soldier in A War Against Truth, "He was as alien as the yogis I'd seen up in isolated Himalayan caves - people who have had no interaction with other humans for years, who have forgotten how.  The soldier was both shy and lethal.  He had lost most human qualities. If he married, it would not last: she'd realize eventually that he had no feelings towards her - that he had no feelings at all. The 'company' would never let him go, either.  It might make his leash quite long, but it would always want to know what he was doing, because it had trained him and knew what he was capable of doing. If he turned to crime, no police force on earth would be any match for him. This was The Terminator for real." This is a pretty accurate description of the prototypical biker gang member; with the exception of the Special Forces' exceptional training. Some bikers are ex-Special Forces and the like, however, and we can thank our military for loosing them on the public.

One of the prime faults in biker gang logic is the misinterpretation of fear as respect. Nobody respects bikers, but most everyone from cops to man-on-the-street citizens fear them. Any group inspiring fear creates an equal amount of hate.  Hate and fear create a need for security.  The need for security creates an opposite reaction to the source of the fear and hate.  And arms races are born of thus.

Internationally, we're seeing these qualities displayed by at least two nations: Israel and the United States.  Both nations have decided that the Geneva Convention doesn't apply to them because . . . those rules are inconvenient. Both nations react to specific acts of violence with random, extended violence disproportionate to the initial event and without any concern for striking the actual perpetrators.  Like drunken biker gangs, Israel and the US blast everything in the general direction of their enemies, creating larger and more sophisticated enemies.  They intentionally pick on small, unarmed or barely armed nations and attempt to "shock and awe" them into submission.  They are careless about the "collateral damage" they cause to both those they attack and the nation (gang) they "represent." 

This is not just Little George's gang, Clinton's gang, Old George's Gang, and Reagan's gang (who have mostly moved on to Little George's gang) all felt the same way.  Remember Madeleine Albright's response to the possibility of 300,000 children dying to effect "regime change in Iraq?" "I think it is worth the price."  That's what she said.  Billy Clinton's Secretary of State was willing to sacrifice 300,000 children to replace Saddam with an unknown (but more compliant) political system. So, we did. 

Things have changed in Iraq, mostly much for the worse.  A few hundred thousand Iraqis have been sacrificed since 1991. We patrol, but don't control, the oil wells that were the real reason for this sacrifice. And we've created an image for ourselves that is equal to the shining aura of the Hell's Angels. We've become a nation of crack-importing, meth-manufacturing, gang-banging bikers who instill fear in every sane nation in the world. 

Any national leader who cares about his country's security is either cranking up the national defense mechanisms, building weapons of self-defense and mass destruction, or is sucking up to Little George in hopes that obedience is all he and his loons want.  In the case of Great Britain, that's probably all that is necessary.  They have used up their natural resources, so there is nothing worth stealing on that pitiful island. The rest of North Africa, however, is scared to death.  South America is bracing for another round of assassinations and invasions. George Pataki, New York's nutty governor and the potential 2008 Republican Presidential candidate, ramped up the hyperbola about to be concentrated against Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez in his National Press speech, "Energy Freedom: Putting an End to Foreign Oil's Dangerous Grip on America's Future." "Energy freedom" was a side-issue in Pataki's speech, mostly he used the forum to rant against the elected leader of a country that has failed to allow American corporations unrestricted access to that country's national resources. 

Shame on them. Everybody grab a weapon.  We're gonna go beat the crap out of those disrespectful civilians.

August 2006

#160 Jews Who Hate Jews (2006)

All Rights Reserved © 2006 Thomas W. Day

"Christianity" has confused me since I was a young boy.  In church, the Methodist Church to be exact, I learned that Jesus (the "Christ" in "Christian," as best I understood) was a particularly intolerant man who set out some extremely clear and simple rules to get to heaven.  In his little section of the Bible he supposedly said, "You have heard the commandment, 'an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.'  But what I say to you is: offer no resistance to injury.  When a person strikes you on the right cheek, turn and offer him the other. If anyone wants your shirt, hand him your cloak as well. Should anyone press you into service for one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the man who begs from you. Do not turn your back on the borrower. . . If you want to avoid judgment, stop passing judgment. Your verdict on others will be the verdict passed on you . . . Threat others the way you would have them treat you: this sums up the law and the prophets . . . I have come to call, not the self-righteous, but sinners . . . It is not what goes into a man that makes him unclean, but what comes out of his mouth . . . It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God."  And on he goes, condemning public prayer, cathedrals of religion, organized religion in general, prejudice, jealousy, violence, and greed.  Wow! If you can find room in that to be rich, for capital punishment, to persecute anyone for anything, and to go to war, you read between the lines much better than me. If "Christians" actually listened to Jesus, they'd be pretty astoundingly peaceful people.

Nothing I saw from the parishioners or even the pastor of my hometown church, or practically anyone else's church, resembled attempts to live the life Jesus described as "the way" into Heaven.  My country was an even worse offender.  The United States was building and using the world's worst weapons of mass destruction decades before I was born, conducting a horrific war in Korea when I was two, spreading instability and supporting anti-democratic regimes in Africa and South America through my toddling years, and bombing the snot out of a small Asian country when I was a teenager.  Through all of these greedy and violent acts, most US churches argued that "god was on our side," even if his "only begotten son" would have sentenced us to eternal damnation for those sins.  Our current fearful leader actually personally condemned people to death in his old job of Texas Head Executioner and, still, imagines himself to be following Jesus.  He believes his current crusade to enrich the already filthy rich and powerful is, somehow, found in Jesus' teachings.  You'd have to be completely illiterate to read that in Jesus' small portion of the New Testament. 

All these years, I've been unable to figure out why so many people call themselves "Christian" when "the Christ" has so little to do with their behavior.  They could be followers of Moses or any number of hateful, murdering, greedy, child-virgin-raping Old Testament characters or even Islam's Mohammed, but the teachings of Jesus are unimaginably far from their actions and beliefs. 

It's not a matter of failing to act, they are outright proud of ignoring Jesus' instructions. So, if they aren't Christ-followers, what are they?

This week, Mel Gibson the smugly-righteous, deeply-religious conservative, proudly-retro-Catholic, constantly-breeding actor in Hollywood gets drunk, drives down a busy California road, and, when he is pulled over for endangering innocent lives on the highway, flames into a nutty rant blaming Jews for all of his ineptitudes and moral failures.  Of course, having a god-complex Gibson also has to toss out blame for all of the world's problems to this tiny fraction of the world's population. If you're going to be insane, you might was well go for the whole ball of mania. Having read a bit from his roadside rant, it dawned on me what he and the rest of the knee-jerking fundamentalist crowd are; Jews who hate Jews.

The difference between the Old Testament and the Torah is miniscule, I've been told.  That's the best I can do for you.  Both books are so full of murder, prejudice, hatred, mumbo-jumbo, and obscure inconsistencies that I can more easily re-read my old college calculus textbooks than I can wade through the gore and misery found in those giant manuscripts.  College calculus has been a cure for insomnia since I was a teenager.  Suffering the ancient sheepherder ranting found in the Old Testament is as painfully weird as reading the Greek and Irish Ulysses randomly sorted and backwards.

If those two books are fundamentally the same, however, nothing else explains the actions of fundamentalist neocons.  In deed and word, they are exactly like the characters who run modern Israel.  Nobody loves revenge like these folks. They extract thousands of eyes for a single Jewish or US eye. The closest they get to turning the other cheek is when they have to reach across their body for a weapon. They celebrate the death penalty. They covet wealth and abuse the poor, the downtrodden, and the "unclean."  It's hard for them to decide which group they want to persecute next, there are so many to choose from.  If Pat Robertson, Jerry Farwell, Oral Roberts, and the rest were not "self-righteous" they wouldn't have personalities at all. 

And rich?  Man, these folks can't get their hands on enough cash.  The Treasury can't print it fast enough for them. When they aren't grubbing money, they're coveting power.  It's hard for them to keep track of which they desire the most.

All of these characteristics are exactly like the state and the people they love to hate; Israel and the Jews.  Listening to Israel's politicians explain away the inconvenience of all the innocent life they are wasting in Lebanon is "déjà' vu' all over again." I've heard exactly the same words from Bush and CRAP, throughout the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions and occupations. Their exchange rate for eyes must require a dump truck for each US or Israeli optical injury. And they justify it through exactly the same religious context. 

It still remains unclear to me why our fundamentalists have chosen not to call themselves Jewish.  It, obviously, isn't because they have some serious attachment to any part of Jesus of Nazareth.  Maybe they just think "Christian" sounds better than "Jewish?"

August 2006

#158 The Amerika Factor (2006)

All Rights Reserved © 2006 Thomas W. Day

Joe Klein is a funny guy.  I'm never sure if he's trying to be funny, but he usually is (even if it's in spite of himself). He's doing a hard set, too.  Time Magazine is filled with funny guys and girls.  This uber-conservative-trying-to-appear-fair-and-balanced rag is so full of contradictions and irrational statements that it has the feel of a wordy Mag Magazine suffering from absentee editors.  I can never guess what kind of wackiness Time will deliver, but I can always count on it being biased and marginally researched.  Consistency is the spice of conservatism. Klein, still, puts on a consistently funny set.

I bumped into Joe Klein, the Time Magazine commentator, accidentally.  Pretty much the same way I discovered jazz through a childish subscription to the Columbia Record Club in 1957.  After a few years of being nagged by Northwest Airlines to do something with my Frequent Flyer Miles, I randomly checked off a pile of boxes on their magazine subscription option and returned to my life. Most of the rags I picked have been disappointing, which is why I don't spend real money on them.  A couple bankrupted and disappeared before they delivered their first issue.  Time has been an education. 

This month, Klein began his column (titled "The Iran Factor") with this little dialog, "When I visited Iran a few years ago, my favorite question was, 'Who runs this country?' The response often was nervous laughter, followed by a raised eyebrow, a shrug and a stage whisper: 'The dark forces.'"

Klein went on to describe this mysterious country with it's levels and shades of "governmental and religious and bazaari" conspirators and a hilarious quote from a  "senior U.S. diplomat," "We really don't have any real idea about what goes on inside that government."

I'm blowing breakfast cereal milk from my nose and I'm not even half-way through the article.  I'm having recent-news-flashbacks, suffering survivor-syndrome, and post-traumatic-stress episodes.  What country is Klein talking about?  Iran?  Amerika?  Them?  Us?  Both them and us?  Damn this is funny stuff!

Ok, ok, I'm better now.  I put away the cereal bowl.  I'm not sipping coffee.  I'm just going to try to write this rant without letting any complications confuse the issue. 

So, who the hell is Klein talking about?  If it weren't for the article's title and an occasional reference to some Islamic nutjob with a name that appears to be a random list of consonants, I'd have thought he was talking about us.  The USofA.  The country now known as Amerika the Red. 

If there is any country in the world that is being run by mysterious "Dark Forces," it's us.  The neocons think the country is controlled by Satanists, Hollywood, and the totally invisible, amazingly silent liberal MSM.  Liberals think the country has gone to hell and is being disassembled for fuel by shark-mind international corporations, greedy bankers and investment hucksters, neo-Nazi Christian fundamentalists, crooked electronic election machine manufacturers, and disgruntled Cold War military-industrial leftovers.  The Silent Majority, recently more accurately renamed "the TFM vote" (see "Bush Losing Core Supporters"), blames witches, liberals, and Mexicans for the nation's problems. 

The only thing we all agree on is that this is no longer a representative democracy and that the "we the people" opening declaration of the Constitution of the United States is no longer applicable. While "government of the people, by the people, for the people" may be an obsolete concept, replacing "people" with "corporation" might get closer to the truth.  However, corporations are not the living entities that our flawed judicial system imagines.  Corporations are simply shields and tax haves for our elite ruling class.  This group is as theocratic, shadowy, and self-interested as anything the craziest folks in Iran could dream up. 

The incredible effort Republicans and the media have put behind redefining the Estate Tax as the ominous "Death Tax" is a wonderful example of how powerful and insidious our richest few can be.  The fact that the media hasn't laughed this campaign into late night talk show comedy routines tells us all we need to know about the power of our "Dark Forces."  These folks control the country so completely that we've lost our sense of humor regarding their motivations and manipulations.  Damn, that's good propaganda!

Back in Kansas, earlier this summer, I listened to my one of my family's crazies rant about "activist judges" describing the unknown Dark Forces that loosed the terror of lawlessness on the country.  Casually, I asked for an example of judges making law, knowing full well the answer would be "Roe vs. Wade." I wasn't disappointed, but the explanation was so filled with right wing MSM misrepresentations that I was amazed that even my foolish Kansas relatives could be so easily duped.  In some states, apparently, for practical purposes you can "fool all of the people all of the time." 

The Iranian Dark Forces are not particularly clever and either are ours.  The fatal flaw in democratic government is that an open government has few defenses against an uneducated and ignorant public.  The easiest way to overthrow a democracy is to, first, damage public education.  Follow that by turning over the nation's information systems to corrupt interests and you have a simple blueprint for transferring power from the citizens to the Dark Forces. 

The fact that a popular magazine like Time can publish an article like Klein's "The Iran Factor" without a hint of irony, expecting no blow-back and no outrage, is a sign of the times.  Simply by wiping out the free press, eliminating quality public education, and handing over the reins of power to corporate interests, we've given up any hope of democratic reforms.  Apparently, we're content to worry about other nations' paranoid hysteria while tolerating our own. 

July 2006

The Republican National Committee (and party) Theme Song

#157 Where Did the Creativity Go? (2006)

All Rights Reserved © 2006 Thomas W. Day

The nation's head doofus, G.W. Bush, and his band of merry Mayberry conservatives have suddenly discovered that the nation is short on "nerds and geeks."  After thirty years of ridiculing anyone with a talent for math, science, and engineering, the crazy right is in a panic because this nation is producing an economy-stifling, constantly-shrinking minimum of youth with skills in math, science, and engineering.  Again we hear the plaintive cry of the double-breasted conservative pundit, "nobody knew this would happen!"

While they've put some effort into turning education institutions into centers of superstitious and political fantasies, conservatives been blindsided by the fact that those concepts are in opposition to the needs of a technical and scientific nation and world.  It even seems to be something of a surprise to these folks that importing a plentiful supply of menial labor has not produced intellectual stimulus to the nation's "melting pot."  The best and brightest of the immigration class are going elsewhere; where their talents will be appreciated, rewarded, and utilized.  All the sleaziest Republicrat and Demolican efforts have produced a nation that is poised on the edge of technical collapse.  Still, they wonder why.

For three generations, the Bush family has labored under the unfounded delusion that pampering the nation's elite class would produce creativity, economic stability, and national brilliance.  Yeah, that's worked out really well for the Family, hasn't it?  Can anyone in that pack of inbred mutants say "nuclear" without a lisp?  The Bush family is an established gang of dysfunctional, dyslexic, hedonistic, technically challenged, intellectual midgets who desperately rely on mommy's money, daddy's connections, and a long history of corruption and nepotism for their survival and success.  Now that is an inspirational role model, don't you think?  I'm sure every Rockefeller wants to grow up to be a Bush, but that model doesn't do much for the children of the productive working class.

The foolishness behind this sudden movement toward encouraging practical technical skills is a textbook example of "do what I say, not what I do."  The dumbest folks in the nation think they can con the smartest folks into working harder for no apparent reason.  If the most powerful, richest people in the country earned their golden spoons through inheritance and/or corruption, why would anyone pick a different route? 

Most working class kids are not that stupid.  When minimal skills will provide a doorway to corporate success, very few of us have chosen the more demanding math, science, and engineering path.  Trust fund  babies, lawyers, MBAs, economists, politicians, actors, and pro athletes are the most successful, most powerful people in the country.  The are also the least technically competent.  Why would an enterprising, creative, intelligent student pick a different career (especially one steeped in difficult concepts and long, mostly unsuccessful, hours of study followed by a career of hardship and instability) when there are so many easier ways to succeed? 

Reagan was the watermark for the latest phase in the decline of the United States' technical base.  Reagan, the ignorant Hollywood conservative, ridiculed Carter, the engineering "egghead," publicly and often for "overcomplicating" the nation and world's problems.  Reagan simply represented the lowest common denominator's belief that "somewhere there is a simple solution to every complicated problem."  There usually is, but that solution rarely works. 

Reagan's simpleminded "trickle down" economics didn't work and we suffered twelve years of recession while he and his goofy elitists proved and re-proved that point.  In the meantime, Reagan and Bush I cut back funding for education, scientific research on everything from alternative energy to medicine.  They promoted the export of technical jobs, manufacturing, and skills while obsolescing those skills in the USA by exporting industry to Asia.  After a brief revival of a few of those critical proficiencies during the Clinton years, Bush II is back in the export business with the single-minded focus of someone who is serious about the damage he wants to do to this nation.

Let's face it, a country governed and managed by characters like Ken Lay, G.H.W. and G.W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Carl Rove might as well skip the pretense and nominate, appoint, and promote Tony Soprano and his family.  With mobsters like ours in charge of the country's present and future, we're as bound for decadence and humiliation as were Great Britain, Spain, France, Rome, Greece, and every other fallen nation in human history. 

A system designed to reject and neglect the best and the brightest is bound to be limited by the worst and the least capable.  This country's nerd and geek shortage is just beginning.  While colleges are building stadiums and cranking out bushels of useless lawyers and MBAs, the rest of the world is producing the future scientists who will drive the world economy for the rest of this century and beyond.  But we'll be prepared ask them if they "want fries with that."

May 2006

#158 The Class Tax (2006)

All Rights Reserved © 2006 Thomas W. Day

Way back in 2002, the Trent and Bill Republican comedy team, Lott and Frist, were pissed.  This was the dark days of when their previous attempt at making a royalty class permanent failed,  Phil Gramm threatened "this will be a campaign issue..  Frist could hardly breathe after this year's 57 to 41 Senate vote turned against the Paris Hiltons, the Bush girls, the Rockefellers, Jeff Shilling and Kenny "Boy" Lay's precious offspring, and the elite trust fund babies who are the core investors of the Republican Party; "my base," as George II often calls them. 

Lott and Frist were barely able to deliver their usual Washington comedy routine to the waiting press drones.  It was that depressing to be them on this sad day for the nation's elites.  And don't let these ruling class representatives fool you, this piece of legislation is intended to be a gift to a very few of the very few.  Even by their own admission, the estate tax (or, more honestly, the inheritance tax) only applies to "less than 1 percent" of family estates. 

It's less than 1 percent, alright.  More accurately, the current federal estate tax only affects about 1 percent of the nation's richest 1 percent.  Currently, an inheritance has to exceed three million dollars ($3,000,000), after estate planning has eliminated a substantial portion of the booty, before any of it is subjected to taxation.

The comedians are back again.  Working their fat asses off for the nations' fattest cats.

Hiding three million bucks from taxation is not enough protection for the nation's elite who want to pass on their royalty to generations of Hiltons, Bushes, and the rest of the freaky-looking inbred offspring of our ruling class.  Republicans, who represent the richest 1% who own more than 90% of the nation's assets, were rightly disappointed that they weren't able to stand up and deliver for their "base." The elimination of the "death tax," as Republicans so cutely describe the federal inheritance tax system, would go a long way towards creating a permanent royalty class in the United States.  Once this passed-down wealth and power is made absolutely secure, nothing stands between the nation's trust fund babies and absolute power over the country's economic and political system.  The counter-revolution would be complete and all that would remain would be for our government to apply for readmission to the British Empire.  I'm sure Paris Hilton can hardly wait to be called "Princess Paris."

Back in the 1980's, Sony's founder, Akiro Morito, reminded us ("Made in Japan," 1986) that inherited industries are, by nature, decadent and doomed to failure because "second-generation industrialists" are not as competent, motivated, creative, or hard-working as first generation founders.  He was trying to be consoling, by reminding his readers that Japan's first generation of industrial giants and geniuses were old and retiring, leaving that country to the pitiful future of mismanagement by the offspring of the original industrialists.  I think one of his great examples was his speculation that Henry Ford VI probably couldn't even drive a car, let alone design one.  He fully expected that Soichiro Honda VI would be just as incompetent.  We can only hope. 

Apparently, Japan's second generation of industrialists are quick studies.  Hirotoshi Honda was recently forced from heading his racing division and his company auditor will be spending a few years in prison for tax evasion.  Like his American corporate-exec counterparts, Honda claimed that he only signed the troubled tax documents and was too dumb to know what he was signing.  However, Honda has his inherited wealth to fall back on, so he won't be expected to work for a living. 

We have enough of that kind of system in the US.  Current law allows two-million for an individual and four-million for couples to pass un-federally taxed and that amount will increase until it vanishes in 2010.  But it will return to original status in 2011.  Obviously, smart little rich kids ought to seriously consider patricide, big-time, in 2010.  Maybe that's the real reason that the ruling class wants this law made permanent, they're terrified of their spoiled-rotten offspring. 

They ought to be afraid of the rest of us. 

June 2006