Category: Rants: Political and otherwise

Racism

A couple of days ago I created a fake twitter account for the purpose of poking fun at the Tea Party.  I think I may have to stop.  In just a couple of days of poking around for links I found evidence of the most extreme racism I’ve ever seen.  I mean, stuff you might expect from the 50s (or more likely the 1850s), but it’s all recent.  Here’s the most extreme example I’ve found yet (warning, not for the faint at heart):

 http://www.ep.tc/tea-party-comix/

I actually started to feel sick.  Pretending to be a stupid racist Teabagger while mocking them is taking it’s toll on me after just a day or two.  What I’ve found, the evidence of such extreme racism from the Tea Party, from Fox News, from bungholes like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, I can’t handle it.  It’s too much.  Maybe I’ve grown up sheltered, but I didn’t know people were still like that.  Sure, I knew some people were still racist, but not like THAT.  They’re intentionally stoking a fear of black people in white people in exchange for political capital.  It’s sick.

I’m profoundly disturbed by this.  I do what I do because I know the human race can be better than we are.  We can evolve into something better.  We can do it sooner rather than later.  We can be a world of wonderful people, and we can do it within my lifetime.  We can, but we won’t.  Perhaps I’m naive. 

I have moments like this where I just want to give up.  Just go back to my white middle class home in the suburbs good paying job with a wife and two kids life and forget about all of this, just like everybody else.  But that’s how they win.  When those of us who would oppose these things, when those of us who would stand up for what’s right, when those of us who would strive to see the human species become worth saving just give up and shut up.  They’re wearing us down.  I heard it in Michael Moore’s voice at the end of his most recent movie, he’s wearing down.  So am I.  So is Obama.  So are a lot of people.  

Perhaps we’ll mature someday.  Perhaps we’ll become a species that we can be proud of.  Perhaps we’ll get past all the stupidity, small-mindedness and pettiness of our current age.  But not today.  Maybe tomorrow.

I’m going to bed.

Capitalism vs. Socialism

There’s been a lot of throwing around of the “S” word over the past year.  I thought it might be time for a refresher about what that word actually means.  I’m not going to go into the other “ism”s being thrown around (Fascism, Communism, etc etc.).  The truth is that the ones hurling the –isms around don’t really know what any of them mean.  Perhaps I’ll delve into them in a future post.  I think that a detailed analysis of the word “Fascism” combined with an in-depth look at the security policies of the Bush II administration would be very entertaining. 

It works like this.  Imagine you’re at a party.  There are ten people, including you.  A pie is served and cut into ten pieces.  One This is what your share looks like. man comes up and takes nine pieces.  The other nine guests begin to divvy up the last remaining piece.  This is what we call “Capitalism”.  Note that I said this is what we call “Capitalism”.   Perhaps your sliver of the last piece is slightly larger than some of the others.  You want to protect what you’ve Yum, pie!got.  Somebody comes along and suggests that perhaps we could re-divide the pie so that that sorry fellow on the left who got the smallest sliver (it’s so thin that it’s translucent) might get a slightly larger piece.  You immediately become afraid that that person’s portion is going to come out of your own, and you didn’t have all that much to start with.  You become angry.  You begin arguing about how you’ve worked hard for your slice, and it’s not fair for that lazy sod to start taking your pie.  Lost in all of this name-calling and anger is the fact that what was really being suggested was that the guy with nine pieces perhaps only take eight.  With two whole pieces of pie to divvy up between the other nine guests, they just might all get a little more.  This is what we call “Socialism”.  Again, emphasis on the “call” part. 

This is the state of modern politics.  We’ve convinced the guy who  has a slightly larger sliver of that last piece of pie to defend the right of the guy who took nine pieces to take nine pieces because he believes it’s in his own best interest. 

Now, let’s paint a slightly different picture.  The pie comes out, and Fear the evil black man! Fear! Fear! Fear!each guest takes one piece of pie.  Everybody’s satisfied, because one piece of pie is really all you need.  That is what Socialism really is, and for nine people out of ten, it works out pretty well.  It sucks for the first dude, because he’s forced to get by on what everyone else does, but again, the part we forget is that everybody’s getting a pretty good deal of pie.

Ok, if you’re a Republican or (gasp!) a Teabagger you probably haven’t made it this far, because you already dismissed me as a Socialist and stopped reading lest I poison your mind.  I’ve noticed Teabaggers aren’t really interested in hearing alternative points of Why yes, I am a giant asshole continuously crapping on the nation. Why?view.  They’re more interested in being right.  Glenn Beck even put  out a “book” that, based on the title (I haven’t actually read it, nor do I intend to.  The title tells me all I need to know), suggests that it will teach you how to win arguments with people who have left leaning tendencies (A.K.A. Liberal Commie Socialist Scum Bastards who Hate America and Want the Terrorists to Win).  What it does not promise, however, is to teach you how to listen.  It does not promise to teach you how to understand what your opponents want.  It only promises to teach you how to shut them up with clever catch-phrases so that you don’t have to actually hear ideas that conflict with your own and perhaps judge their arguments on their merits using your own mind.  Glenn Beck is quite popular.

What if, just imagine for a moment, that the first dude only took four pieces of pie.  The remaining nine guests now have six whole pieces of pie to fight over.  One of them might even get an entire piece all to himself.  This is what Capitalism really is, and it doesn’t sound all that bad either.  It’s not what we have though.  We claim to love Seen outside Fox News. Capitalism, but we don’t really know what it is, because none of us living have ever seen it.  We fight for our little sliver of pie and fight for the first dude because we hope someday we might be the dude getting all the pie.  Our world view, though, is distorted from reality.  We think he’s only got three or four pieces of pie, and someday we might get that too.  We think we’ve got a much bigger piece than we really do.  The richest 1% of the nation has more money than the remaining 99% (that’s you).  We all think someday we’ll become part of that 1%, because we think it’s really more like 30%.  But it’s not, and you won’t.  The vast majority of the uber-rich today were born rich, and that’s how it’s done.  Very few new billionaires get made, they’re born.  Bill Gates is an anomaly.

So I’ll conclude with a sort of anti-thesis to Glenn Beck’s book, butThis is what we're up against. much shorter and a hell of a lot cheaper.  Now you understand what the Teabaggers believe and why they fight for it.  All you need to do to win an argument is to get them to understand what they believe and why they believe it.  Good luck.

Ray Comfort is at it… Again

I recently found out about this: http://www.livingwaters.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=383

About anything I could say about it is here: http://www.thegoodatheist.net/2009/06/dont-read-this-version-of-origin-of-species/

Centuries after the dark ages we still have religion attacking science.  Why?  Why is it necessary to discredit science?  Can’t you just simply have your beliefs and leave the rest of us alone to learn about things based in fact? If we had listened to you lot we would still be in the dark ages. 

Why the deception Ray?  Why is it necessary to distribute a scientific work with a 50-page rant against it at the beginning?  I’ve never heard of such a thing before.  It’s despicable.  If I hadn’t already left Christianity long ago, that would be enough to convince me that you lot are absolutely beyond any shadow of a doubt FUCKED IN THE HEAD!  Thousands of college kids will remember this later in life.  This will ultimately work against what you’re trying to achieve.  Take some advice: Believe in God all you want, share whatever stories you want, convert as many people as you want, but stop being a fucking prick.  Leave science alone.  If you don’t believe it, that’s your right.  Nobody is forcing you to be an intelligent human being (obviously).  But make your point without having to attack known science with half truths, outright lies and logic fallacies.  Stop preying on the young.  In other words, stop behaving like Republicans.  Stop proving Richard Dawkins right.

Ray Comfort: you, sir, are an asshole.

Retaliation

On September 11, 2001 nineteen terrorists took control of four commercial airplanes.  Two of them were flown into the World Trade center, collapsing both towers.  One was flown into the Pentagon.  On crashed in Pennsylvania, as the passengers decided to fight back.

The total number of confirmed deaths for this atrocious act was 2,973 (not including the nineteen perpetrators).  When men come to our country and murder our civilians, we call it terrorism.

This act, the senseless killing of nearly 3,000 American lives so enraged this nation that we went to war.  President George W. Bush sent the troops to Afghanistan, where the mastermind of the attack was alleged to be cowering, and went after his ass. 

For a while.

Then we went to Iraq because Saddam Hussein may or may not have weapons of mass destruction that he may or may not intend to use on American Soil and he may or may not have some terrorists there too.  So we pre-emptively kicked the crap out of his country (that means we struck first.  We weren’t provoked).  We found and captured the man who hadn’t actually attacked us but probably was maybe going to.  We turned him over to the new government we installed there and they executed him promptly.  Scratch one bad guy. 

Meanwhile we’re not really focused on finding the guy who killed nearly 3,000 American civilians anymore.  Iraq was far more important.  The cost of the war in Iraq is well documented.  We paid for our invasion of Iraq with over 4,000 American Soldiers.  When we send our young men and women to another country and they get killed then, we call this patriotism.

Meanwhile, as a result of our invasion and conquer of the sovereign nation of Iraq, since 2003 100,971 of their civilians have died.  When we send men to another country and their civilians die, we call this collateral damage.

Just to recap:

American civilian deaths: 2,973 as a result of a terrorist attack.
American soldier deaths: 4,287* as a result of our invasion.
Iraqi civilian deaths: 100,971* as a result of our invasion.
*Afghanistan statistics not included. 

And we’re completely baffled as to why people in the Middle East don’t like us.

In Dalton Trumbo’s classic book “Johnny got his gun”, he added an additional introduction in 1971 responding to the then current Vietnam War.  To avoid possible copyright issues, I’ll paraphrase as much as possible, but I would much rather type it in verbatim. 

He says that 40,000 dead young men (the number of dead American soldiers at the time) was equal to 3000 tons of bone and flesh.  124,000 pounds of brain matter.  50,000 gallons of blood.  1,840,000 years of potential life lost.  With 4,000 dead, you can easily adjust these numbers for Iraq.

300 tons of flesh and bone.
12,400 pounds of brain matter.
5,000 gallons of blood.
184,000 years of lost potential life.

The math is a slightly harder for the Iraqi citizens.

7500 tons of flesh and bone.
310,000 pounds of brain matter.

You get the point.  These numbers should make you vomit.  If they don’t, you need to ask yourself why.

Fascism

I recently pointed out somewhat facetiously that the number of death threats towards President Obama is 400% higher than the number of death threats towards President Bush (II) during his term. 

http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/10/new-report-find-secret-service-overwhelmed-by-increased-threats.php

While there’s a subtle understated fact that the irrational anger against him is reaching a frightening level, I put it somewhat ironically, stating that of course fewer people threatened Bush.  He was the only thing standing between us and Cheney as president!

It was in somewhat bad taste I admit, and I completely glossed over the fact that this completely debunks the right’s claims that the anger against Bush was just as extreme.  As an aside, Bush gave us some very good reasons for being angry at him, but I’ve been through that before. 

Someone pointed out the 2007 movie “Death of a President” as evidence of how much more extreme it was against Bush. I’ve never seen this movie, but I have to say now that I’m aware of it, I’m intrigued.  It obviously has some moral undertones to it, but the plot sounds fascinating.  What if Cheney really had become president?  How much worse might it have been?  And this hardly seems like a Bush hate movie.  It actually looks quite thought provoking.

The movie synopsis, though, reminded me about the Patriot Act of 2001.  There were so many contemptuous acts committed by the Bush administration, that it’s sometimes hard to remember all of them, but this one is important.  This was the point at which our civil rights began to be eroded.  If you don’t remember, go read up on it.  Right now.  I’ll wait.

Seriously now, how is that NOT a big step towards fascism?

And this is the part that confuses me.  The Tea Party marches and shouts “Obama is a Fascist”, he’s “destroying the Constitution” and “eroding our civil rights”.  These claims were all made over health care reform. 

Can some right-winger please explain to me how health care reform is more fascist, more unconstitutional, and violates our rights more than the Patriot Act?  If you can’t (and you won’t, just admit it), then where were you when this happened?  Why no marches then?

Have we all really gone THAT mad?

… what’s that?  Do I hear crickets?

The Republican record so far…

The Republicans make it hard to not side with the Democrats.  I’m NOT a Democrat and I have serious issues with them, including Obama, but I have to side with them because my only other choice is to side with the party that stands for everything I’m against.

The Republican Progress Report.

  • Label an attempt to fix a broken health care system that is resulting in as many as 44,000 deaths per year as Socialist/Communist/Fascist/some-other-ist: Succeeded.
  • Get the Democrats to pass 161 Republican-sponsored amendments to Health Care Reform that weakens the bill in an attempt to get bi-partisan support, then don’t vote for it: Succeeded.
  • Employ Dick Armey and FreedomWorks to manufacture the “Tea Party”, an angry “grass roots movement” that calls everything that doesn’t benefit multi-billion dollar companies Communist/Socialist/etc. etc.: Succeeded.
  • Get Fox News to promote the “Tea Party” as a legitimate movement instead of a corporate designed opposition to legislation that helps Americans and is detrimental to multi-billion dollar companies profit margins: Succeeded.
  • Stop Health Care Reform legislation that will help 30 million Americans get health coverage and possibly not die: Failed.
  • Oppose Financial Reform that restricts multi-billion dollar banks from becoming “too big to fail” and prevents them from engaging in the risky but lucrative practices which previously led to the economy imploding: In Progress.
  • Pass a law requiring all people who “look like illegal immigrants” (e.g. Mexicans) to carry papers while in the state of Arizona in an attempt to look “tough on immigration” while labeling opponents of this obvious civil rights violation as “weak on immigration”: Succeeded
  • Oppose Obama on EVERYTHING: In Progress.

Good job guys.  At this rate you just might get another maniacal war monger in the white house by 2012.  You do know that if you guys stopped being buttholes for five minutes, there would actually be time to level plenty of fair criticisms against President Obama.

Dear God…

Dear God,

First of all, let’s be honest.  I don’t believe you’re there.  Every type of logic I apply to the question indicates that it’s unlikely that there’s any kind of supernatural deity controlling everything.  I’m pretty sure the Christian Coalition is proof positive of that.  It also makes it much easier to answer the “How could God allow that to happen” question.  That said….

On the off chance that I’m wrong and you actually are there, I’d like to discuss your followers with you.  There’s a bit of a problem there.  Could you please make them smart?  While it’s not universally true, the vast majority of them seem to use religion as an excuse for staying stupid.  For instance, I live in Kansas, the one state in the union convinced that science isn’t important to teach to young growing minds.  It’s a little odd to be combating dark ages mentalities and beliefs in what should otherwise be a rather enlightened age.  For instance, I’ve considered calling the state in an attempt to force my wife to send my children to school so that they can learn science rather than some kind of absurd belief about how the world was created that has absolutely nothing to do with the core of what Christianity is about, but since that state is Kansas and Kansas doesn’t see the importance of science, that’s not likely to work.  Do you seriously want your followers to combat intelligence and science instead of concentrating on being good people?  Do you seriously want your followers to deny assistance to the poor rather than saving lives?  When did greed and stupidity become Christian values?  Why are your followers so concerned with the obscure or unimportant parts of the bible rather than the parts that tell them what kind of lives they should be leading like Matthew 25?  Why do they only seem to learn the parts of the bible they can use to condemn others rather than the parts that would make them better people?  You know, like Taoists do.

I saw a sticker on the back of a giant-ass truck the other day that read “I’ll take God and guns, you can keep Obama.”  Guns?  Seriously God?  Guns are a Christian value?  I kind of though Christians were supposed to be a peaceful lot, Bush/Cheney’s warmongering notwithstanding.  A gun in the hands of the stupid redneck driving that truck just sounds like a really really bad idea to me.  On the other hand, when he manages to shoot himself, perhaps people will believe Darwin after all.  Let’s just hope he doesn’t kill too many intelligent people first.

Some say religion is a crutch.  I say it’s not a crutch, it’s a tool, and it’s being wielded with great skill by douchebags like Pat Robertson, who uses the power of Christian beliefs to condemn the poor and unfortunate and those with liberal political values while making himself obscenely rich.  Didn’t you say something about the likelihood of rich people getting into heaven?  Seems like I recall something there.  I also seem to recall a phrase that read something like “demonizing the poor” is bad, but what do I know?  Surely Robertson has actually read the thing, right?

Oh, and one last request, would you mind please smiting Ray Comfort, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity from the face of the earth?  Pat Robertson really ought to go too for being a complete and total douchebag.  Also, if you don’t mind a few non-Christian (AFAICT) requests, the world would be better off without Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Bachman, and pretty much the entire staff of Fox News. I suppose if smiting isn’t how you do things these days, perhaps you could at least give them some kind of revelation that makes them less of a group of complete assholes?

Thanks,

The Cowboy.

Dear Dick Cheney

Dear Dick,

What do you use to wash the blood of our American Soldiers off your hands with?  I only ask because it seems really effective.  Based on your attitude one tell that you feel no remorse at the thousands of soldiers who died for your wallet.  I won’t even mention the almost countless dead Iraqis, because they don’t really count, right?

I really would like to know in case I ever find myself in a situation where I can make myself and my friends blindingly rich at the cost of hundred of thousands of lives.  Good trade off, eh?

Seriously, the United States of America has signed no less than two treaties making the use of torture by the American Government a crime punishable by international law.  One of these treaties is the Geneva Convention.  Why is the international community not pressing charges against George Bush and Dick Cheney?  The entire world knows they are guilty of war crimes just as much as Saddam Hussein or Adolf Hitler.  Where is the international outrage?  Obama is NOT going to do it.  The American people are not listened to by their government, or they would already be on trial.  The American Government proves this every day.  They listen to big corporations.  That’s who they represent, that’s who they protect.  Not you, not us. 

It’s up to you, the rest of the world, to make this happen.  Stand up and say “we will not tolerate war crimes, whether they be committed by Iraq, Iran, Germany, Italy, or the freakin’ U.S.A”.  Martin Luther King Jr. gave a speech entitled “Beyond Vietnam” about a year before his assassination.  In it he spoke of a worldwide revolution.  I think this revolution has largely occurred, and just as he predicted, the United States is dead last in keeping up. 

It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”

It’s time.

6-12-24

10 years ago, the average family paid $6,000/year for health insurance.

Today, the average family pays $12,000/year for health insurance.

It’s estimated, at the current rate of increase, that in 10 years, without reform, the average family will pay $24,000/year for health insurance. 

The poverty line has been defined as $20,000/year.  This hasn’t changed in a very long time.  If no health reform is passed, or even worse, if something like the Baucus Bill is passed that does not control costs or provide a public option, and requires every citizen to buy private insurance under penalty of fine, well… do the math.

People who make $30,000 a year or less will have to decide, give all or most of their income to health insurance or face a fine of up to $3,800?  Unfortunately, breaking the law will become the economical choice.  At least until somebody becomes sick.

If you oppose reform, do the math.