Ah, yes, it's that wonderful time of year when entertainment gets, well, entertaining. The nominees for the Oscars have been released. Not surprisingly, Avatar is the odds-on favorite to win. It would be the first time a sci-fi film would be the winner, to which I say, about fucking time, and a big, fat middle finger to those who didn't nominate Empire Strikes Back. But there really should be no surprise. Avatar has all the hallmarks of a winning film: It has a former lead trying to restore an acting career, it has a maverick director, it has a plot which is about as predictable as Titanic, and, most importantly, it meets the minimum three-hour-long requirement for oscar-worthy films. I'd complain about the latter with a witty statement, something which points out how I would need to go see a gerontologist after the film because I'd developed arthritis sometime after scene 177, but honestly, I can't complain about the length of the film if I've paid $8 to see it. Seriously, for $8 I should be able to use the theater as a make-shift hotel room for those long road trips! Actually, I doubt I can even joke about that, because it's probably not far off in the future, at the rate we're going. It will cost less to take a hooker to a Motel 6 than it will to go see Avatar 3. One might as well walk out to the concession stand, grab a refill on popcorn, and a clean towel for the in-house shower.
But we've also had the Superbowl! Ah yes, and a very entertaining (Who dat?!) time it was, with a (Who dat?!) nice game which ended with a (Who dat?!)... Oh, fine! I submit to my inner voice cheering for the Saints! That's right, SAINT'S! As in, 'Saint Peyton Manning's year! Ho, ho! WHO DAT say dey were gon' beat 'dem Saints?!
Of course, that also means we have Superbowl TV ads -- also known as the one time out of the year ad writers do their damned jobs. Soon after, those same writers will go back to their endless games of Halo, World of Warcraft, and their cheezy poofs, leaving the rest of us to suffer through their endlessly repeated work all during the long baseball season. I deeply desire vengeance upon them for this, but all I can do is wish them high cholesterol.
And then we have people all over our great nation sitting on the edge of their seats, counting the seconds down for the very latest episode of Lost. I'd say something about that but, I, well, um, lost it.
Anyway, I get my permanent internet hook up back tomorrow, and then, there's no stopping me from turning my scalding gaze upon the deepest recessive corners upon the world! Entertainers, be warned!
Cheers!
Eric
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Polls, Abstinence, and Republicans
Let's talk poll numbers.
A recent federally funded study, as published by the Washington Post, has revealed that abstinence-only sex education programs result in fewer teens having sex. This, according to many conservative pundits, has confirmed what they've been saying all along: that absinence is the best form of sex-ed.
Well, not so fast. Sure, fewer teens ended up having sex (about one third, as opposed to one half who were involved in other forms of sex-ed programs). But whether or not teens are having sex really isn't the issue, is it? Yes, I'll risk offending people by saying it (and, in fact, that's sort of the point of this blog), but I just don't care if teenagers are having sex or not. That statistic doesn't worry me. The statistic that worries me is the rate of teen pregnancy.
Teen pregnancy is the stat we want to bring down, and that statistic really is independent of the rate of sexual activity among teens. There is some correlation, of course, since one needs sex to get pregnant, but if only one third of one group of teens are having premarital sex and not using much protection (which is often the case if those kids have been taught abstinence-only!), while half of another group of teens are having premarital sex and always using protection, the number of teen pregnancies will be lower in the latter group. Of course!
You see, the goal is to put as many barriers to teen pregnancy in place as possible. What liberals sometimes try to do is completely decry abstinence in sex education, perhaps out of some misguided hippie-style "free love" attitude toward sexuality. And what conservatives try to do is fight against 85 million years of evolution by persuading young people to not engage in sex at all until marriage -- a technique which didn't entirely work even in the prudish 1800's, and which encourages young people to start bad and/or doomed marriages out of lust. The sad result of this needless tug of war is that some barriers to teen pregnancy get ruled out in certain schools. This is unacceptable! We need teach contraception, show teens how to use it, AND remind them that the only 100% effective birth control method is abstinence. These two lessons must always go together.
Let's face it. It's a different world. Back when abstinence was the rule (like, before the roaring 1920's), teenage pregnancy was prevented by making sure teenagers got married! It wasn't at all unusual for 16 year old girls to marry 17 year old boys. If a boy got a girl pregnant, they were hastily married to avoid scandal. But teenagers can't get married today -- it's just economically stupid, even if the ages of 16 and 17 weren't so infantile in terms of being prepared for our hyper-technology era. And let's not forget that it is also a different world from the 1960's. Back before HIV, and when gonorrhea was not resistant to penecillin, it made perfect sense to sleep around indiscriminately. But today, there is a slight risk that unprotected sex could kill you!
What changed the game forever were two things: The rubber condom, and the pill. Ever since then, abstinence as a primary means of birth control was doomed. After all, abstinence was used as birth control prior to that point because -- well, there really was nothing else for it! There were rudimentary technologies using sponges attached to ribbons, or horribly smelly things made from sheep intestines, but these were only marginally effective. Abstinence-only was the primary means of birth control in the olden days only because society had no other choice! Now that we have a choice, going back is laughably stupid.
So for kids who can abstain, let them abstain. And for those who are hell bent on not abstaining, let's provide the means of protection they damned well need. We're not giving permission, but we're damned well not taking chances, either!
Oh, and by the way, as a biology teacher, I'm certain to be tapped to instruct on such matters. I intend to teach that if one engages in sex, that one should always use the "double protection" technique. If he says he's using protection, or if she says she's on the pill, that's not enough, especially for teens. BOTH need to use protection. Every time.
This ties in rather well to another poll released almost concurrently with the first one, showing the tendencies of Republican voters. These numbers have been generating a firestorm because they show some remarkable trends in conservative thinking. In relation to the above poll, 51% of Republicans think that sex education should not even be taught in public schools. Apparently because they think that if kids aren't taught about sex, they won't lust after each other or sneak off to experiment on their own?
And there are other shocking numbers. 63% of Republicans feel Obama is a Socialist. (!) 36% think Obama wasn't born in the United States, and 22% aren't sure. 39% think Obama should be impeached. (For what, I wonder? He hasn't been getting blow jobs from interns, you know!) 24% think Obama wants terrorists to win, and 33% aren't sure about that one! 21% thinks that ACORN stole the 2008 election. (55% aren't sure!)
To paraphrase something Bill Mahr said about the 2004 election, it wasn't stolen. But it did fall off a truck!
53% feel that Sarah Palin is more qualified to be president than Barack Obama.
Naturally, because intelligence is an undesirable quality in a politician! We don't want our representatives to be smarter than us!
31% believe that Barack Obama is a racist who hates white people. 33% aren't sure!
23% think their state should cecede from the United States. (Go ahead! I dare ya! Texas, you first!)
77% think that same sex couples should not be allowed to marry. There's the nanny-state for you!
Here's an interesting one: 73% think that openly gay men and women should not be allowed to teach in public schools. As if we don't have too few qualified teachers already! Apparently, Will & Grace can teach our kids at night, but not during the day?
The same percentage, 77%, think that public school students should be taught that the Bible explains how God created the world.
Because, presumably, the Christian view should be presented non-optionally to a captive, non-Christian audience? Because Christians get to force children who don't belong to them to learn their religion against the wishes of the actual parents?
When asked if contraceptive use should be outlawed, 31% of Republican respondents said yes.
Really?!
34% think that the birth control pill is abortion. Which explains the above number.
76% feel that abortion is murder. No shock, there. The survey did not ask at what stage of a woman's pregnancy abortion might be considered murder, however. Pity.
91% support the death penalty. Interesting.
67% feel that the only way for an individual to go to heaven is through Jesus Christ.
But there is one encouraging statistic within this study: 37% of respondents were over the age of 60. 70% were over the age of 45. That means that these hair-brained opinions are grey-haired. And someday soon, they'll die off. When they do, we'll perhaps at last be rid of some of this nonsense. Whether this will happen before Obama's presidency has ended is another matter.
If they succeed in derailing health care reform, they'll die off a lot quicker! How's that for poetic!
Eric
Monday, February 1, 2010
Don't Ask, Don't Tell
So it's recently out how the policy of "Don't ask, don't tell," implemented in our military as a cop-out compromise to Bill Clinton's efforts to outright allow gays and lesbians in the military, is about to be rescinded. I know our military will take a hit in terms of troop morale on this one, so I had mixed feelings about this, until I heard a stunning statistic. Check this out:
We've lost about 10% of our military's translators of Arabic and Farsi due to the anti-gay policy the armed forces currently holds. (This, as reported on Rachel Maddow's show.) That means that some of our most critical personnel are missing at precisely the time our soldiers need them most.
Now, I'm always cautious of statistics. There are lies, damned lies, and statistics fall even beneath them, as Mark Twain would remind us. I'd like to confirm this. But this statistic makes sense. Fluent native speakers of the dialects of Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan would leave their cultures to help us, why? Precisely because a homosexual lifestyle would result in death for them back home! Better to be shunned than dead! So they may choose to change sides to help us in exchange for amnesty, right? But how many more key translators and cultural attaches would we gain if we went from merely shunning gays and lesbians to tolerating them outright? How stupid is it if we refuse to allow them into our military because of homophobia?
Again, I would like to confirm this statistic. But it really is a moral imperative to give our soldiers in uniform every possible tactical advantage needed to achieve victory. And here is a situation where barring gays from the military could literally get our sons and daughters killed, either because they would not have a key translation of imminent danger, or because they might be unable to pick up on local unrest before things get out of control.
I'm always intrigued when there is a conflict between two conservative values. Or two liberal ones, for that matter. Which side one chooses in the dilemma tells a great deal about which values are most important to the individual. For example, conservatives are in favor of private health insurance as opposed to government control, and are opposed to partial birth abortion. Yet private insurers are forced by competition to try to cut costs by denying pregant women under the age of 35 certain tests for mosaic disorders, such as tetrasomy 14, thus putting more women in situations where partial birth abortions are necessary. Which value is more important? Opposition to partial birth abortion, or to nationalized health care? Or for liberals, who are in favor of recycling, even though recycling greatly increases the use of fossil fuels to both transport and remake the recyclable materials. Which value is more important? Environmentalism, or, well, environmentalism?
In like manner, conservatives have a dilemma: Which value is more important? Opposing servicemembers serving with fags, or opposing servicemembers coming home in a pine box?
It'll be interesting to see which one wins out in the end. But I, for one, hope the military has to put up with the fags so that more of our soldiers can come home alive.
Eric
We've lost about 10% of our military's translators of Arabic and Farsi due to the anti-gay policy the armed forces currently holds. (This, as reported on Rachel Maddow's show.) That means that some of our most critical personnel are missing at precisely the time our soldiers need them most.
Now, I'm always cautious of statistics. There are lies, damned lies, and statistics fall even beneath them, as Mark Twain would remind us. I'd like to confirm this. But this statistic makes sense. Fluent native speakers of the dialects of Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan would leave their cultures to help us, why? Precisely because a homosexual lifestyle would result in death for them back home! Better to be shunned than dead! So they may choose to change sides to help us in exchange for amnesty, right? But how many more key translators and cultural attaches would we gain if we went from merely shunning gays and lesbians to tolerating them outright? How stupid is it if we refuse to allow them into our military because of homophobia?
Again, I would like to confirm this statistic. But it really is a moral imperative to give our soldiers in uniform every possible tactical advantage needed to achieve victory. And here is a situation where barring gays from the military could literally get our sons and daughters killed, either because they would not have a key translation of imminent danger, or because they might be unable to pick up on local unrest before things get out of control.
I'm always intrigued when there is a conflict between two conservative values. Or two liberal ones, for that matter. Which side one chooses in the dilemma tells a great deal about which values are most important to the individual. For example, conservatives are in favor of private health insurance as opposed to government control, and are opposed to partial birth abortion. Yet private insurers are forced by competition to try to cut costs by denying pregant women under the age of 35 certain tests for mosaic disorders, such as tetrasomy 14, thus putting more women in situations where partial birth abortions are necessary. Which value is more important? Opposition to partial birth abortion, or to nationalized health care? Or for liberals, who are in favor of recycling, even though recycling greatly increases the use of fossil fuels to both transport and remake the recyclable materials. Which value is more important? Environmentalism, or, well, environmentalism?
In like manner, conservatives have a dilemma: Which value is more important? Opposing servicemembers serving with fags, or opposing servicemembers coming home in a pine box?
It'll be interesting to see which one wins out in the end. But I, for one, hope the military has to put up with the fags so that more of our soldiers can come home alive.
Eric
Friday, January 29, 2010
State of the Disunion
Well, I made my prediction, and it didn't pan out. This is why I don't gamble at the race track. Or at the casino. Or anywhere, for that matter. (Except, one day, I hope, the stock market.) Looks like the freeze on government spending is not being done as a reciprocal countermeasure to the likely failure of healthcare. Instead, the President openly scolded the Republicans for requiring 60 votes in the senate to get anything done. I'm sure that they'll lose plenty of sleep over that chiding for weeks to come. (Not!)
Oh, there were some bi-partisan moments. Like when Obama supported the building of new nuclear power plants. Both sides cheered. That's something I've backed on this blog, too. Our President also pointed out that even if one doubts climate change, the transition to cleaner energy is the right and necessary thing to do, and this also got bipartisan cheers.
Say, I wonder if they might actually be reading this blog?
Still, for the most part, I noticed the same sort of partisan lack of cheering for stuff that should be universally endorsed, making me recognize that there really isn't going to be much bipartisanship. Because, of the Republicans currently in office, there isn't a single Obamacan among them. Not one! And that's amazing since it was arguably the Obamacans who got our President elected. So where did they all go? Well, they're still there, but it seems they just haven't been elected yet. I hope some of them do get elected, because that's the only way any deadlock is going to get broken. I hope some sitting Republicans get challenged by some more centrist Republicans and get defeated.
It wasn't too long ago when being Republican didn't necessarily mean you were a conservative. Nor did it mean you were a liberal if you were a Democrat. There used to be a lot more crossover. And it pays to remember that Abraham Lincoln, the founding father of the GOP, was quite liberal, while William Jennings Bryant, the creationist conservative battle-axe who prosecuted the Scopes trial, was a Democrat. It would be nice to see the days return where people could disagree, yet still listen to and comprehend the views of the other side. Right now, it seems that sitting Democrats, especially our President, have that ability, while Republicans don't. Eventually, that closed mindedness will cost the GOP dearly, but at the cost of everyone.
Yes, it was one hell of a State of the Union speech, and one which illustrates two things: One, we have the right President for the job. And two, we have the wrong congress! It's as if you put Peyton Manning in as quarterback of a high school football team, and then tried to win the Superbowl with it. Can't be done. We've got a general, but an army of stumblebums who think that they're generals, too. 2/5ths of them want our President to fail, fuck all of us.
Just for the sake of discussion, let's say they succeed. Let's say that they derail all of Obama's plans, and he loses re-election in 2012 because he couldn't get the job done. Is that really anything but a Pyrrhic victory? And what about the aftermath? Obama is such an iconic and intelligent leader, that losing with him in the Oval Office would feel much the same as the Patiots failing to go to the Superbowl after a 16-0 season! It would ignite a pro-liberal backlash the likes of which have never been seen before. I would seriously hope that's not the future conservatives are boneheadedly aiming for.
Simple formula: The president succeeds, we all usually win. The president fails, we all usually lose. That's why, even with George W. Bush in office, the President had my respect and support. One may disagree with him (and I did!), but damn it all, he's President. So the best strategy for our nation is this, if you happen to be conservative:
Let Obama win some legislation!
You know, the best achievements of both Democrats and Republicans came when there was a Democratic President, Bill Clinton, and a Republican Congress. We could do with that again.
Of course, back then, the Republicans in office were young, idealistic members of the Contract With America, which brought about a sweeping breath of fresh air and fresh thinking. These guys were just the sort of mavericks brave enough to balance a budget and boost an economy. They were good people.
And let's be honest: What today is the Conservative movement, the neocons of today, are largely the aftermath of those brave people who DIDN'T march in lockstep with party leadership. They are the wishful memory of what once was. They look back to those days, not realizing that it was their LACK of partisanship which made them great! It was their centrist thinking which was their primary strength.
Today, there's very little left of those brave souls. The ones who were elected took a pledge of self-imposed term limits, because they believed, quite rightly, that a two-term limit was enough for Congress -- that career politicians make poor choices. The ones who are still around today from that movement are there precisely because they took that two-term pledge and pitched it out the window, which lets us know how much they truly valued their promises then. Or now.
We need a new Contract With America. Both Conservative and Liberal. Republican and Democrat. Let's get some new, fresh faces in there. Let's impose a two-term limit on Congress members. Because right now, we've got a bunch of stodgy old farts who care more about party loyalty than about American loyalty, and it's killing us.
Eric
Oh, there were some bi-partisan moments. Like when Obama supported the building of new nuclear power plants. Both sides cheered. That's something I've backed on this blog, too. Our President also pointed out that even if one doubts climate change, the transition to cleaner energy is the right and necessary thing to do, and this also got bipartisan cheers.
Say, I wonder if they might actually be reading this blog?
Still, for the most part, I noticed the same sort of partisan lack of cheering for stuff that should be universally endorsed, making me recognize that there really isn't going to be much bipartisanship. Because, of the Republicans currently in office, there isn't a single Obamacan among them. Not one! And that's amazing since it was arguably the Obamacans who got our President elected. So where did they all go? Well, they're still there, but it seems they just haven't been elected yet. I hope some of them do get elected, because that's the only way any deadlock is going to get broken. I hope some sitting Republicans get challenged by some more centrist Republicans and get defeated.
It wasn't too long ago when being Republican didn't necessarily mean you were a conservative. Nor did it mean you were a liberal if you were a Democrat. There used to be a lot more crossover. And it pays to remember that Abraham Lincoln, the founding father of the GOP, was quite liberal, while William Jennings Bryant, the creationist conservative battle-axe who prosecuted the Scopes trial, was a Democrat. It would be nice to see the days return where people could disagree, yet still listen to and comprehend the views of the other side. Right now, it seems that sitting Democrats, especially our President, have that ability, while Republicans don't. Eventually, that closed mindedness will cost the GOP dearly, but at the cost of everyone.
Yes, it was one hell of a State of the Union speech, and one which illustrates two things: One, we have the right President for the job. And two, we have the wrong congress! It's as if you put Peyton Manning in as quarterback of a high school football team, and then tried to win the Superbowl with it. Can't be done. We've got a general, but an army of stumblebums who think that they're generals, too. 2/5ths of them want our President to fail, fuck all of us.
Just for the sake of discussion, let's say they succeed. Let's say that they derail all of Obama's plans, and he loses re-election in 2012 because he couldn't get the job done. Is that really anything but a Pyrrhic victory? And what about the aftermath? Obama is such an iconic and intelligent leader, that losing with him in the Oval Office would feel much the same as the Patiots failing to go to the Superbowl after a 16-0 season! It would ignite a pro-liberal backlash the likes of which have never been seen before. I would seriously hope that's not the future conservatives are boneheadedly aiming for.
Simple formula: The president succeeds, we all usually win. The president fails, we all usually lose. That's why, even with George W. Bush in office, the President had my respect and support. One may disagree with him (and I did!), but damn it all, he's President. So the best strategy for our nation is this, if you happen to be conservative:
Let Obama win some legislation!
You know, the best achievements of both Democrats and Republicans came when there was a Democratic President, Bill Clinton, and a Republican Congress. We could do with that again.
Of course, back then, the Republicans in office were young, idealistic members of the Contract With America, which brought about a sweeping breath of fresh air and fresh thinking. These guys were just the sort of mavericks brave enough to balance a budget and boost an economy. They were good people.
And let's be honest: What today is the Conservative movement, the neocons of today, are largely the aftermath of those brave people who DIDN'T march in lockstep with party leadership. They are the wishful memory of what once was. They look back to those days, not realizing that it was their LACK of partisanship which made them great! It was their centrist thinking which was their primary strength.
Today, there's very little left of those brave souls. The ones who were elected took a pledge of self-imposed term limits, because they believed, quite rightly, that a two-term limit was enough for Congress -- that career politicians make poor choices. The ones who are still around today from that movement are there precisely because they took that two-term pledge and pitched it out the window, which lets us know how much they truly valued their promises then. Or now.
We need a new Contract With America. Both Conservative and Liberal. Republican and Democrat. Let's get some new, fresh faces in there. Let's impose a two-term limit on Congress members. Because right now, we've got a bunch of stodgy old farts who care more about party loyalty than about American loyalty, and it's killing us.
Eric
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Dead Sea Scrolls & SOTU Prediction
I just went to see the Dead Sea Scrolls yesterday. Quite interesting. Mostly, it's the same sort of dramatic music and wind-sound effects that the Milwaukee Public Museum has done for its Titanic and Pharaohs exhibits of the past. There's lots of Greek, Roman, and Israeli coins, together with assorted bric-a-brac like oil lamps and alabaster flasks. An impressive small-scale model of the old city of Jerusalem is something to behold. But the real attraction, of course, is the scrolls. Mostly, they are exact facsimiles, which are so perfect in their reproduction that they must be marked with a special stamp on the back so as to prevent them from being mistaken for the real thing!
As an aside, this in and of itself should give us pause, because if our technology can so exactly reproduce these genuine manuscripts, think of the other things that it could produce to fabricate evidence of not-so-genuine manuscripts. There are already, I've heard, reproductions of famous paintings which also require an identification stamp so as not to be mistaken for the genuine article. Not far off in the future, creationists may finally be able to fabricate a fossilized human in the jaws of a T-Rex! Or moon-landing-hoax progenitors will be able to falsify some government document suggesting a cover-up. So if there were ever a time for science to win out over pseudoscience and superstition, it's now!
Anyway, there are, amidst the reproductions, some fragments of the actual scrolls themselves, along with one hemi-cylinder of the two copper scrolls. There is also the controversial Jeselsohn Stone, which some claim portends to Jesus and the resurrection. There's also a Milwaukee connection in the form of a tribute to James Trevor, who was born in Milwaukee, and was the very man who photographed the scrolls for posterity. But it's mostly a bone thrown to a largely Christian audience. It features pages from ancient codexes of the New Testament: A page from Matthew, a page from Luke, a papyrus page from one of Paul's epistles, and a sizeable collection of Bibles, including a Gutenberg Bible, a Luther Bible, and an original King James.
What's impressive about all this is just how much sway these little scraps of parchment and papyrus have had throughout the years. They eventually persuaded enough people to allow one key Roman emperor to establish Christianity as the official religion, and that watershed event pretty much led to religion as we know it today. It also meant that other scraps of parchment documentation, such as ones describing the religion of Mithras, will never be seen in a museum, because they were consigned to the book-burning pile. On second thought, perhaps it isn't si amazing how much power these little scraps of paper have had -- we only get to see the scraps of paper preserved by the victors.
But what really altered my perception of the scrolls is just how tiny the letters are. Often, when I've studied the Bible, and seen how large the book of Isaiah is, for example, I've often wondered how you could fit such a huge book into a mere pair of 27-foot scrolls. Now I know: these letters were tiny! So tiny, in fact, that they rival our modern-day print! It must have taken master-scribes years just to copy one book! Each letter painstakingly reduced to the smallest size, each word carefully spaced to ruler-line perfection, and the teeniest little mistake meant you had to start all over again! I have a new respect for the scholarly pursuits of the ancients. Considering that most people were illiterate, they really put a lot of effort into preserving what few, if any, would ever appreciate!
So if you get a chance, go see the Dead Sea Scrolls at the MPM. You won't be disappointed.
And now for something completely different...
I've heard that our Trophy President is set to announce a 3-year spending freeze in his first State of the Union address.
Odd...!
What could he be thinking? Less government spending during a recession? When an intelligent person does something which seems to make no sense, it always makes me think that there's a deeper agenda of some sort. After all, people of high IQ don't make boneheaded moves unless it means they're sacrificing a metaphorical chess queen for a checkmate. So this has set the wheels of my mind to turning, and I knew I'd need to blog about this today, before our President speaks, just to make sure I've documented this well beforehand. You see, I'm about to state what I think is going on, and make a prediction at the same time:
The health care reform bill is basically every bit as stuck in quicksand as the Mars rover, Spirit. And while Dems have said that the "reform" will save costs, Republicans have claimed that it will increase the deficit. Frankly, I don't know which side is right, but I do think that Obama thinks the former rather than the latter. So, I think what our president is about to say is that the spending freeze is something he has no choice but to enact because the health care bill may fail. He's setting the stage for the Republicans to be blamed for a forced stoppage of all but the most necessary of government spending as a direct result of their obstructionist tactics.
Will it work? Who knows! Certainly the only thing predictable about politics these days is that its unpredictable, especially in Massachusetts. But if I'm right in this prediction, it could be a pretty smart move. The President will basically have said, in the tone of a scolding father-figure, "Look, either you pass health care reform, or I'll have no choice but to take away your allowance money." That might, just might, persuade a few Republicans to get off their fat asses and vote for what is basically an all-but-Republican bill anyway. It will also boost the value of the dollar, as it will let foreign investors know that the U.S. is firmly committed to remaining solvent.
Well, if congress acts like children, I guess they should be treated like children. We'll see if I'm right in this prediction this very evening!
Eric
As an aside, this in and of itself should give us pause, because if our technology can so exactly reproduce these genuine manuscripts, think of the other things that it could produce to fabricate evidence of not-so-genuine manuscripts. There are already, I've heard, reproductions of famous paintings which also require an identification stamp so as not to be mistaken for the genuine article. Not far off in the future, creationists may finally be able to fabricate a fossilized human in the jaws of a T-Rex! Or moon-landing-hoax progenitors will be able to falsify some government document suggesting a cover-up. So if there were ever a time for science to win out over pseudoscience and superstition, it's now!
Anyway, there are, amidst the reproductions, some fragments of the actual scrolls themselves, along with one hemi-cylinder of the two copper scrolls. There is also the controversial Jeselsohn Stone, which some claim portends to Jesus and the resurrection. There's also a Milwaukee connection in the form of a tribute to James Trevor, who was born in Milwaukee, and was the very man who photographed the scrolls for posterity. But it's mostly a bone thrown to a largely Christian audience. It features pages from ancient codexes of the New Testament: A page from Matthew, a page from Luke, a papyrus page from one of Paul's epistles, and a sizeable collection of Bibles, including a Gutenberg Bible, a Luther Bible, and an original King James.
What's impressive about all this is just how much sway these little scraps of parchment and papyrus have had throughout the years. They eventually persuaded enough people to allow one key Roman emperor to establish Christianity as the official religion, and that watershed event pretty much led to religion as we know it today. It also meant that other scraps of parchment documentation, such as ones describing the religion of Mithras, will never be seen in a museum, because they were consigned to the book-burning pile. On second thought, perhaps it isn't si amazing how much power these little scraps of paper have had -- we only get to see the scraps of paper preserved by the victors.
But what really altered my perception of the scrolls is just how tiny the letters are. Often, when I've studied the Bible, and seen how large the book of Isaiah is, for example, I've often wondered how you could fit such a huge book into a mere pair of 27-foot scrolls. Now I know: these letters were tiny! So tiny, in fact, that they rival our modern-day print! It must have taken master-scribes years just to copy one book! Each letter painstakingly reduced to the smallest size, each word carefully spaced to ruler-line perfection, and the teeniest little mistake meant you had to start all over again! I have a new respect for the scholarly pursuits of the ancients. Considering that most people were illiterate, they really put a lot of effort into preserving what few, if any, would ever appreciate!
So if you get a chance, go see the Dead Sea Scrolls at the MPM. You won't be disappointed.
And now for something completely different...
I've heard that our Trophy President is set to announce a 3-year spending freeze in his first State of the Union address.
Odd...!
What could he be thinking? Less government spending during a recession? When an intelligent person does something which seems to make no sense, it always makes me think that there's a deeper agenda of some sort. After all, people of high IQ don't make boneheaded moves unless it means they're sacrificing a metaphorical chess queen for a checkmate. So this has set the wheels of my mind to turning, and I knew I'd need to blog about this today, before our President speaks, just to make sure I've documented this well beforehand. You see, I'm about to state what I think is going on, and make a prediction at the same time:
The health care reform bill is basically every bit as stuck in quicksand as the Mars rover, Spirit. And while Dems have said that the "reform" will save costs, Republicans have claimed that it will increase the deficit. Frankly, I don't know which side is right, but I do think that Obama thinks the former rather than the latter. So, I think what our president is about to say is that the spending freeze is something he has no choice but to enact because the health care bill may fail. He's setting the stage for the Republicans to be blamed for a forced stoppage of all but the most necessary of government spending as a direct result of their obstructionist tactics.
Will it work? Who knows! Certainly the only thing predictable about politics these days is that its unpredictable, especially in Massachusetts. But if I'm right in this prediction, it could be a pretty smart move. The President will basically have said, in the tone of a scolding father-figure, "Look, either you pass health care reform, or I'll have no choice but to take away your allowance money." That might, just might, persuade a few Republicans to get off their fat asses and vote for what is basically an all-but-Republican bill anyway. It will also boost the value of the dollar, as it will let foreign investors know that the U.S. is firmly committed to remaining solvent.
Well, if congress acts like children, I guess they should be treated like children. We'll see if I'm right in this prediction this very evening!
Eric
Saturday, January 23, 2010
The Purpose of Government
Such events in the recent news. Turns out, John Edwards has admitted he fathered his mistress's baby. Wow! What a shock! (Hear the sarcasm in my text?) I mean, who would have thought? Next thing you know, Mark McGuire will be admitting he used steroids!
Oh, yeah, right.
But now Massachusetts has voted for a Republican to go to the U.S. Senate. No, wait, let me rephrase that. The people of Mass. have decided that they would rather vote for Charles Manson than send Barbara Coakley to the U.S. Senate. And so, horrors, a Republican is going to represent the bluest of states. Mr. Brown is going to Washington.
That's what you get when you try to run a dark campaign, and take voters for granted. Apparently, in Massachusetts, you can win an election even if you are a terminal alchoholic, a cocaine abuser, and a murderer of Mary Jo Kopechne, but damn it, don't you dare try to mail it in! That sin is just too great!
I suppose that's the situation that has made me ponder our current state of affairs on Capital Hill. I've blogged before about the insanity of partisanship making it impossible to get a moderate elected. Perhaps Mr. Brown will be more Purple than Red. But why is it that Republicans have decided that everything Barack Obama tries to do must be opposed, no matter what? Why are they continually opposing what is essentially now a Republican-themed health care reform bill? Why?
It can only be that they're afraid of Obama being skilled enough to build a legacy that will essentially render the Republican party a minority for decades. He's FDR and JFK rolled into the dream of MLK, and if he succeeds, they're out for a very, very long time. So they're determined to stop him at all costs. Including, and especially, the well being of our country.
Sorry, but I don't think that our entire nation needs to be sacrificed just to stop the Obama juggernaut.
You see, what ADULTS do, is find some middle ground. They find ways to compromise to get something, anything, done. But these overgrown babies are so blinded by their Polish thinking (see my previous blog post on being Polish) that they're willing to throw the American Dream into the gears of the machine just to make it grind to a halt. What unbelievably juvenile bullshit!
Yes, people are pissed off about what they perceive as the socialization of health care. Let's understand that this "health care" bill is about as socialist as Joe McCarthy and the John Birch Society! But even if it weren't, what's the point of this "Tea Party" phenomenon, if not a misunderstanding of the purpose of government? Or rather, The Purpose of Government (capitalized).
You see, The Purpose of Government is, at its most basic, the protection of its citizens. That's it. All other reasons for government's existence all boil down to that one. We protect our citizens from crime, so we establish laws, courts, police, and so forth. We protect our citizens from foreign invasion, and so we have a military. We protect our citizens from fire, from flood, from natural disasters. It is this protection which is the very purpose of why we bother putting up with a government at all.
So, by definition, a government must protect us from viruses, from bacteria, from injury and illness. It therefore must pay for health care. It is not optional! And if a government does not bother to protect us from sickness and disease, then it has failed us in The Purpose of Government. Our response must be to revolt, and put into place a government that will ensure health care is available!
We've seen a revolt. But, amazingly, the revolt is to prevent health care from being provided! This is the "Tea Party."
Of all the bass-ackward, upside-down, inside-out, turned-around fucking bullshit of public stupidity! Just what does it take to get people to understand that by fighting for health care, we're just trying to get government to do its damned job?!
Okay, Thomas Jefferson famously said: "That government is best, which governs least." And at the time he said it, it was very much true. As a person with libertarian leanings, or as my friend Charlotte put it, a "progressive libertarian" (I like that!), I want government out of our lives as much as possible. But we have reached a modern technological age where we have no choice but to turn to big government for certain things. Why? Because there are other forces out there with big money and big special interests who would run over us rampant if a big government wasn't there to protect us from them. Again, that's part of The Purpose of Government.
Big government is needed to counter the big interests of Exxon-Mobil, of BP, of Royal Dutch Shell. It needs to balance out Wal-Mart, Target, Walgreens and Sears/K-Mart. It needs to be the one thing feared by Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and Glaxo Smith Kline. It needs to be bigger than McDonalds, Coka-Cola, or Pepsico. If Big Government weren't there, these giants would inadvertently crush us, much like Gulliver crushing the Lilliputians in some Dickens novel.
So the days of small government are, sadly, over. Thomas Jefferson, were he alive today, would concede that. And Tea Partiers who lobby for smaller government are just plain living in an 1800's dream world.
But we can still lobby to get Big Government out of our personal lives. We can tell Uncle Sam to quit telling people which God to pray to. We can tell government to quit telling consenting adults that they can't get married because they're the same gender. We can tell government to quit forcing fake science into our classrooms. We can tell them to not wiretap us, and that we don't care what excuse of fighting terrorism they use. We can tell them to stop outlawing harmless recreational drugs.
In short, we can tell them to finally give us FREEDOM! Isn't America supposed to be about freedom?
Stick that in your teabag!
Eric
Oh, yeah, right.
But now Massachusetts has voted for a Republican to go to the U.S. Senate. No, wait, let me rephrase that. The people of Mass. have decided that they would rather vote for Charles Manson than send Barbara Coakley to the U.S. Senate. And so, horrors, a Republican is going to represent the bluest of states. Mr. Brown is going to Washington.
That's what you get when you try to run a dark campaign, and take voters for granted. Apparently, in Massachusetts, you can win an election even if you are a terminal alchoholic, a cocaine abuser, and a murderer of Mary Jo Kopechne, but damn it, don't you dare try to mail it in! That sin is just too great!
I suppose that's the situation that has made me ponder our current state of affairs on Capital Hill. I've blogged before about the insanity of partisanship making it impossible to get a moderate elected. Perhaps Mr. Brown will be more Purple than Red. But why is it that Republicans have decided that everything Barack Obama tries to do must be opposed, no matter what? Why are they continually opposing what is essentially now a Republican-themed health care reform bill? Why?
It can only be that they're afraid of Obama being skilled enough to build a legacy that will essentially render the Republican party a minority for decades. He's FDR and JFK rolled into the dream of MLK, and if he succeeds, they're out for a very, very long time. So they're determined to stop him at all costs. Including, and especially, the well being of our country.
Sorry, but I don't think that our entire nation needs to be sacrificed just to stop the Obama juggernaut.
You see, what ADULTS do, is find some middle ground. They find ways to compromise to get something, anything, done. But these overgrown babies are so blinded by their Polish thinking (see my previous blog post on being Polish) that they're willing to throw the American Dream into the gears of the machine just to make it grind to a halt. What unbelievably juvenile bullshit!
Yes, people are pissed off about what they perceive as the socialization of health care. Let's understand that this "health care" bill is about as socialist as Joe McCarthy and the John Birch Society! But even if it weren't, what's the point of this "Tea Party" phenomenon, if not a misunderstanding of the purpose of government? Or rather, The Purpose of Government (capitalized).
You see, The Purpose of Government is, at its most basic, the protection of its citizens. That's it. All other reasons for government's existence all boil down to that one. We protect our citizens from crime, so we establish laws, courts, police, and so forth. We protect our citizens from foreign invasion, and so we have a military. We protect our citizens from fire, from flood, from natural disasters. It is this protection which is the very purpose of why we bother putting up with a government at all.
So, by definition, a government must protect us from viruses, from bacteria, from injury and illness. It therefore must pay for health care. It is not optional! And if a government does not bother to protect us from sickness and disease, then it has failed us in The Purpose of Government. Our response must be to revolt, and put into place a government that will ensure health care is available!
We've seen a revolt. But, amazingly, the revolt is to prevent health care from being provided! This is the "Tea Party."
Of all the bass-ackward, upside-down, inside-out, turned-around fucking bullshit of public stupidity! Just what does it take to get people to understand that by fighting for health care, we're just trying to get government to do its damned job?!
Okay, Thomas Jefferson famously said: "That government is best, which governs least." And at the time he said it, it was very much true. As a person with libertarian leanings, or as my friend Charlotte put it, a "progressive libertarian" (I like that!), I want government out of our lives as much as possible. But we have reached a modern technological age where we have no choice but to turn to big government for certain things. Why? Because there are other forces out there with big money and big special interests who would run over us rampant if a big government wasn't there to protect us from them. Again, that's part of The Purpose of Government.
Big government is needed to counter the big interests of Exxon-Mobil, of BP, of Royal Dutch Shell. It needs to balance out Wal-Mart, Target, Walgreens and Sears/K-Mart. It needs to be the one thing feared by Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and Glaxo Smith Kline. It needs to be bigger than McDonalds, Coka-Cola, or Pepsico. If Big Government weren't there, these giants would inadvertently crush us, much like Gulliver crushing the Lilliputians in some Dickens novel.
So the days of small government are, sadly, over. Thomas Jefferson, were he alive today, would concede that. And Tea Partiers who lobby for smaller government are just plain living in an 1800's dream world.
But we can still lobby to get Big Government out of our personal lives. We can tell Uncle Sam to quit telling people which God to pray to. We can tell government to quit telling consenting adults that they can't get married because they're the same gender. We can tell government to quit forcing fake science into our classrooms. We can tell them to not wiretap us, and that we don't care what excuse of fighting terrorism they use. We can tell them to stop outlawing harmless recreational drugs.
In short, we can tell them to finally give us FREEDOM! Isn't America supposed to be about freedom?
Stick that in your teabag!
Eric
Sunday, January 17, 2010
How to Deal With Terrorism
I love the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He's funnier even than my stupid mistake in my last blog post in misspelling Harry Reid vs. Harry Reed. He somehow finds a way to boil away all the irrelevant sound bites so that what's left is a clear, concise, and unbelievably funny look at the news. So, while I was catching up with all of his most recent episodes on Hulu.com (oh, how I love Internet Television), I heard a blip from Rudy Giuliani that called to mind something I'd been meaning to blog about for a long time. He said that there had been no terrorism attacks under George W. Bush, but there's been one now with Barack Obama.
Now, as Jon himself pointed out, he meant to say, "no terror attacks since 9/11." Only, he said it funnier. But haven't we heard stuff like this now for nearly a decade? Stuff like, "Bush's policies are working because we haven't been attacked again. Bush's policies are working because we haven't been attacked again. Bush's policies.... working... attacked again... yadda yadda yadda."
Time for somebody to blow that myth right out of the water! You see, the last time any Al Quaida attack took place on U.S. soil before 9/11 was, hmmm, let's see... back in 1993! Yes, that was the failed bombing of the World Trade Center as botched by Mohammed Salameh when he parked his damned white van in the wrong spot of the underground parking area. (Could someone please tell me why the bad guys always use a white van? That seems rather odd.) That was during the early part of Bill Clinton's presidency. Eight years passed before there were any other Al Quaida attacks on U.S. soil, with NONE of George W. Bush's Orwellian anti-terrorism tactics.
So, a "fair and balanced" evaluation of George W. Bush's anti-terrorism policies would be if no other attacks would take place within eight years of the LAST one, since that's how long it took before!
The result? It took almost exactly eight years for the next Al Quaida attack, just like last time!
You know, I remarked in my last post about how eerily similar each early cycle of a presidency seems. A repeat of Iraq, a repeat of a Haiti crisis, and a repeat of a terror strike in the first year of a two-term presidency. (I think we can assume Obama will win a second term.)
So the conclusion must be that Bush's attempts to throw all our freedoms away and wire-tap all sorts of people he had no business listening to resulted in EXACTLY NO CHANGE. It's just a three-peat of a terror strike every eight years or so, with or without the Patriot Act. So KNOCK IT OFF about how successful Bush's policies were!
You know, I've noticed that in response to a major crisis, congress goes and does something massively stupid. 9/11 crisis results in the Patriot Act, and America flirts with becoming a police state. A financial crisis hits the banks, and congress responds by bailing out the rich. And these aren't the only times when a little piece of the constitution has been sacrificed over some crisis somewhere. Whether it's with Reagan in Grenada, or Bush I in Panama, or Clinton with Haiti, some crisis seems to erode some area of governmental restraint.
I only hope the next crisis doesn't sink us.
But the question was raised in that very episode (last Monday) of Jon Stewart's show, regarding torture, and how you deal with terrorism without it. Should torture be allowed for terrorists who have been captured?
Alan Dershowitz toyed with this idea by proposing a hypothetical scenario: Suppose there were a nuclear bomb about to go off in a major city like New York. You have, in custody, one of the terrorists behind this nightmare, and he's not talking. If you torture him to make him talk, you could save millions of lives. If you don't, they could all die. What's to be done?
Most people say that torture is justified in such a situation. But here, some conservatives argue that this is a legitimate reason for letting interrogators of terror suspects have the latitude to use methods like waterboarding in Gitmo, and this is where I disagree. The issue is not whether torture is sometimes justified. The issue is whether torture should be legalized, in some circumstances.
I argue, no. Never.
Putting aside the travesty that our nation would consider legalizing torture before it considers legalizing cannabis, it should be remembered that keeping torture illegal does not guarantee that torture will not take place. It just means that the one doing the torturing would be in violation of U.S. law. This is important to remember, because it means that no one would engage in torture unless it were ABSOLUTELY necessary. And that's the way it should be.
We should also remember the phenomenon of jury nullification. A jury has the power to find a defendant not guilty, even if that person actually committed the crime. This has been a factor in situations where a murderer who keeps escaping justice gets gunned down by an avenging family member of one of his victims, and has frustratingly also been a factor in court cases long ago in the deep south, where a white man tried for his role in a lynching would be let off by an all-white jury. But in the case of torture to extract information about a bomb or other terror threat, a jury could find that such a torturer is not guilty, even though he committed the crime. With that in mind, this is the means by which someone who engages in torture as a last resort could have a legal way out -- a jury simply wouldn't convict such a hero. And, if that somehow doesn't work, the President has the power to pardon.
But consider the alternative: Suppose we give some area of the government the power to torture? Suppose we give military tribunal authority to nab suspected terrorists and torture them without benefit of civilian trial? What then?
The answer, frighteningly, is that the government has a loophole to be able to grab anyone, at anytime. Simply declare that person a terrorist, and away they go to Gitmo, or some similar off-shore establishment. Suspected Al Quaida today, enemies of a particular administration tomorrow. Then soon afterward, homosexuals. After that, all non-Christians. And after that, those declared to be phony Christians, such as Mormons. After that, the Catholics. Long before then, there's no America left.
So that's how we deal with torture and terrorism in our modern age. We keep torture illegal, thus guaranteeing that it won't be done unless we have no other choice. That way, we keep our freedoms intact, and make sure our rights to fair process are not yanked away.
And regarding those talk show hosts who insist that torture is necessary, that it should be legal, and that closing Gitmo is a mistake?
They are violators of human freedom, traitors to America, and enemies of democracy!
We might not be able to get such people arrested, nor would we be able to put them on trial for treason. Freedom of speech really does go that far. That's just American Freedom for you.
But it would be nice if Clear Channel woke up and at least took these assholes off the air.
Eric
Now, as Jon himself pointed out, he meant to say, "no terror attacks since 9/11." Only, he said it funnier. But haven't we heard stuff like this now for nearly a decade? Stuff like, "Bush's policies are working because we haven't been attacked again. Bush's policies are working because we haven't been attacked again. Bush's policies.... working... attacked again... yadda yadda yadda."
Time for somebody to blow that myth right out of the water! You see, the last time any Al Quaida attack took place on U.S. soil before 9/11 was, hmmm, let's see... back in 1993! Yes, that was the failed bombing of the World Trade Center as botched by Mohammed Salameh when he parked his damned white van in the wrong spot of the underground parking area. (Could someone please tell me why the bad guys always use a white van? That seems rather odd.) That was during the early part of Bill Clinton's presidency. Eight years passed before there were any other Al Quaida attacks on U.S. soil, with NONE of George W. Bush's Orwellian anti-terrorism tactics.
So, a "fair and balanced" evaluation of George W. Bush's anti-terrorism policies would be if no other attacks would take place within eight years of the LAST one, since that's how long it took before!
The result? It took almost exactly eight years for the next Al Quaida attack, just like last time!
You know, I remarked in my last post about how eerily similar each early cycle of a presidency seems. A repeat of Iraq, a repeat of a Haiti crisis, and a repeat of a terror strike in the first year of a two-term presidency. (I think we can assume Obama will win a second term.)
So the conclusion must be that Bush's attempts to throw all our freedoms away and wire-tap all sorts of people he had no business listening to resulted in EXACTLY NO CHANGE. It's just a three-peat of a terror strike every eight years or so, with or without the Patriot Act. So KNOCK IT OFF about how successful Bush's policies were!
You know, I've noticed that in response to a major crisis, congress goes and does something massively stupid. 9/11 crisis results in the Patriot Act, and America flirts with becoming a police state. A financial crisis hits the banks, and congress responds by bailing out the rich. And these aren't the only times when a little piece of the constitution has been sacrificed over some crisis somewhere. Whether it's with Reagan in Grenada, or Bush I in Panama, or Clinton with Haiti, some crisis seems to erode some area of governmental restraint.
I only hope the next crisis doesn't sink us.
But the question was raised in that very episode (last Monday) of Jon Stewart's show, regarding torture, and how you deal with terrorism without it. Should torture be allowed for terrorists who have been captured?
Alan Dershowitz toyed with this idea by proposing a hypothetical scenario: Suppose there were a nuclear bomb about to go off in a major city like New York. You have, in custody, one of the terrorists behind this nightmare, and he's not talking. If you torture him to make him talk, you could save millions of lives. If you don't, they could all die. What's to be done?
Most people say that torture is justified in such a situation. But here, some conservatives argue that this is a legitimate reason for letting interrogators of terror suspects have the latitude to use methods like waterboarding in Gitmo, and this is where I disagree. The issue is not whether torture is sometimes justified. The issue is whether torture should be legalized, in some circumstances.
I argue, no. Never.
Putting aside the travesty that our nation would consider legalizing torture before it considers legalizing cannabis, it should be remembered that keeping torture illegal does not guarantee that torture will not take place. It just means that the one doing the torturing would be in violation of U.S. law. This is important to remember, because it means that no one would engage in torture unless it were ABSOLUTELY necessary. And that's the way it should be.
We should also remember the phenomenon of jury nullification. A jury has the power to find a defendant not guilty, even if that person actually committed the crime. This has been a factor in situations where a murderer who keeps escaping justice gets gunned down by an avenging family member of one of his victims, and has frustratingly also been a factor in court cases long ago in the deep south, where a white man tried for his role in a lynching would be let off by an all-white jury. But in the case of torture to extract information about a bomb or other terror threat, a jury could find that such a torturer is not guilty, even though he committed the crime. With that in mind, this is the means by which someone who engages in torture as a last resort could have a legal way out -- a jury simply wouldn't convict such a hero. And, if that somehow doesn't work, the President has the power to pardon.
But consider the alternative: Suppose we give some area of the government the power to torture? Suppose we give military tribunal authority to nab suspected terrorists and torture them without benefit of civilian trial? What then?
The answer, frighteningly, is that the government has a loophole to be able to grab anyone, at anytime. Simply declare that person a terrorist, and away they go to Gitmo, or some similar off-shore establishment. Suspected Al Quaida today, enemies of a particular administration tomorrow. Then soon afterward, homosexuals. After that, all non-Christians. And after that, those declared to be phony Christians, such as Mormons. After that, the Catholics. Long before then, there's no America left.
So that's how we deal with torture and terrorism in our modern age. We keep torture illegal, thus guaranteeing that it won't be done unless we have no other choice. That way, we keep our freedoms intact, and make sure our rights to fair process are not yanked away.
And regarding those talk show hosts who insist that torture is necessary, that it should be legal, and that closing Gitmo is a mistake?
They are violators of human freedom, traitors to America, and enemies of democracy!
We might not be able to get such people arrested, nor would we be able to put them on trial for treason. Freedom of speech really does go that far. That's just American Freedom for you.
But it would be nice if Clear Channel woke up and at least took these assholes off the air.
Eric
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