Miss Universe

I recently wrote to the newly crowned Miss Universe. My letter to her is reprinted below, as I thought you all might find it interesting.




Dear Olivia Culpo,
    Congratulations on winning the Miss Universe Pageant. I must say that I find no fault with the judges decision, and I'm quite sure that I speak for a large majority of men out there.
    Since you are from Rhode Island, you have a unique opportunity to speak up regarding the recent tragedy in Sandy Hook Elementary School in a way no one else can. I'm a resident of the Milwaukee, WI area, and the mass shooting at the Sikh Temple in Oak Creek happened right near my cousins' house, so the issue is very close to me. I think that it goes without saying that defensive, rather than offensive, weapons could prevent or greatly reduce such tragedies. I am speaking of Tasers, of course.
    Did you know that Rhode Island is the only state in the union where one can purchase an assault rifle and not a Taser? I find this to be a remarkable injustice in a nation where, presumably, we have the right to bear arms. When I think of how many more little angels there would be on earth rather than in heaven if just one security guard or teacher had a Taser, it makes my heart sink. Unfortunately, in Connecticut, Tasers are legal only in one's private home.
    The cliche among those in your particular profession is that you all want "world peace." Isn't advocating weapons which stun, but don't kill, an excellent place to start? I hope you'll consider my humble suggestion. Thank you.

Sincerely,
Eric J. Hildeman
Milwaukee, WI

I Have A Solution!

With all the talk in the nation that’s been going around regarding the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, and how to prevent it, it would seem remarkably arrogant of me to step up and imply that I know better than all of them by saying that I have a solution to the problem.

Well, I have a solution to the problem.

In my earlier not-so-serious blog post, I pointed out that more people having non-lethal defensive weapons would prevent any shooter from getting very far before being stopped. Yes, such defensive weapons may be abused, but so might any other weapon. Well, on a more serious note, I do believe I may have been on to something. The Taser may just be the workable solution.

Tasers are sensibly legal in 44 out of our 50 states. But in a few, more backward members of our union (at least in this regard) such defensive weapons are actually prohibited.

Connecticut is one of those states!

Yes, in the state of Connecticut, a Taser may only be kept in the home. Schools such as Sandy Hook cannot even have a security guard which is armed with one.

Okay, cue the Dragnet theme song as you sing this next line:

Dumb…… Dumb, Dumb…Dumb…… DUMMMMMMB!

The other states which prohibit Tasers are Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Hawaii. Tasers are permitted only with a firearm registration in the District of Columbia, and only certain kinds of Tasers are legal in the state of Florida. But in Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York, it is possible to buy a GUN, but NOT (*head slap!*) a Taser!

Dumb…… Dumb, Dumb…Dumb…… DUMMMMMMB!

And in the state of Rhode Island, it is possible to buy an assault rifle, but not a Taser!

Dumb…… Dumb, Dumb…Dumb……  No, wait, stop the music! That’s just holy FUCK bat-shit stupid insanity!

At least in Hawaii, Tasers can be carried by cops, and guns are banned.

Imagine a world where every school security guard has a Taser. Imagine teachers having a coded lock box underneath each desk with a Taser inside. If some insane kid enters a school and starts shooting, any teacher can go under the desk, type in the code, and have some means of defending his or her students. Yes, this would be a weak defense, but it is much, much, MUCH better than nothing, and will work splendidly at slowing down any assailant to a crawl, allowing law enforcement enough time to speed their way to the school and send in the S.W.A.T. team!

If even one teacher or security guard at Sandy Hooke had this, there would be a lot fewer little angels in heaven, and more here on earth.

By the way, where is the National Taser Association? There isn't one, unfortunately. The National Rifle Association - excuse me, I mean the National Assault Rifle Association, because that's closer to the truth - simply does not defend a citizen's right to defense with a non-deadly weapon. No, they would rather people kill other people. I suppose that might come from an inward desire to see people who hold up businesses or commit muggings killed on sight, but if defense is the whole point (and they say that it is), isn't defending the Taser the highest priority? Is there ANY excuse for prohibiting a Taser anywhere? I strongly argue no! The National Rifle Association is an utterly pointless organization, unless it defends Tasers first!

To this, I need to add one more thing: My friend Angie Olson, an amazingly intelligent woman whom I increasingly admire, recently posted to Facebook about the importance of emphasizing mental health efforts if we are to avoid such future tragedies as the one in Sandy Hook. Boy, did she hit the nail right on the head! If we have a lot fewer crazy people out there, then by extension we're going to have a lot fewer crazy people shooting off guns! And, I might add, if we focus this attention upon young males, we're putting the effort right where it's needed the most. The one constant with mass shootings is that the shooter is always young and male. There's nothing wrong with people being young and male per se, but we can no longer allow young males to be perpetually pissed off at the world. From now on, excessive teenage male anger must be classified as a mental illness.

So there it is. Tasers, along with gun licensing, the banning of semi-automatic assault rifles, the outlawing of certain kinds of ultra-deadly ammunition, prohibiting large-capacity bullet clips, and a HUGE emphasis on the mental health of our young people, especially teenage males, is my overall solution. Agree with it or disagree with it, I challenge anyone to test it in debate. I think I can defend it without having to resort to firing on anybody.

In the meantime, I plan on someday buying a Taser for home defense. And they can have it when they take it from my cold, dead hands!


Eric

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Domestic vs. International Terror

On "Meet The Press" this past Sunday, David Gregory cited one post he'd seen on Twitter which pointed out how, when one shoe-bomber fails on board one plane, we all must remove our footwear forever, but when gunmen repeatedly open fire in crowded places, nothing happens in response.

How very interesting! I can see why that particular post caught Gregory's eye. But I'd like to take this a step further by highlighting not only how there's a disconnect between our attitudes toward organized vs. random acts of terror, but also the disconnect between domestic vs. international terrorism.

When a government tries to take away a citizens' assault rifle, it is argued that the rifle is needed to defend himself against a government becoming overly oppressive. Yet when the DHS wire-taps that same person just because it's Tuesday and they feel like the next Al Quaeda cell happens to have a phone number ending in "7," no argument about overly oppressive government is made. When sales are made at gun shows, it is argued that criminal background checks are unnecessary, yet if one wants to board an airplane, not only do our backgrounds get checked but all our luggage is x-rayed and some total stranger gets to see what we look like in our skivvies. When someone suggests a database be kept of gun-owners, as well as people who should not own a gun, privacy rights are argued, yet nobody whines about the NSA's no-fly list, nor did many of the same people object to Joseph McCarthy or J. Edgar Hoover compiling lists of suspected communists two generations ago. When gun registration and licensing is argued, gun-rights advocates scream "Big Brother," yet keep totally silent about things like criminal databases, driver license databases, the social security system which reduces each of us down to a number, or even social media outlets like Facebook, where nobody seems to care if Big Brother is watching or not.

Why the fuck is there this disconnect?

I think the ultimate answer to this can be discerned with the question of who is directly threatened. A domestic crackpot who enters a mall and starts firing a gun, that's one thing. But a terrorist who flies a plane into the Pentagon? That's not tolerable! People toting guns can get as far into the seat of the government as the White House fence, but will be shot on sight if seen trying to hop that fence, whether armed or not. So the gun-toters end up nowhere near government, and everywhere among the general populace. Unless, that is, that crazy person boards a plane and is able to fly it into a government building! Then, suddenly, the government gets a taste of what inner city black people have to put up with every day! And so, every airplane passenger is carefully screened, prodded, poked, and processed, just to make certain that the government doesn't ever get threatened.

There's also a religious bias, here. When domestic terrorists struck, nobody talked of throwing away our rights so that the government could "protect us." When Timothy McVeigh blew up a truck full of explosives in front of a federal building, people didn't seriously talk about having federal agents creating a massive database to hunt such people down in advance. When David Koresh led a religious movement into stockpiling weapons for an outright war against the United States itself, few people had their calls for stricter gun laws taken seriously. Yet when some Muslims flew planes into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, people suddenly were willing to sacrifice freedom for security. Part of that is due to the mass carnage of 9/11, but part of it is also the fact that we, as a nation, are simply more comfortable with a Christian terrorist over a Muslim one. Maybe he's a bat-shit crazy asshole, but he's OUR bat-shit crazy asshole!

I'm not arguing that we need security checks in every walk of life, nor am I arguing that citizens shouldn't be armed or have their privacy rights protected. I'm certainly not saying that I have all the answers. But if we're willing to accept the occasional mass shooting as the kind of collateral damage necessary to maintain our individual liberties when it comes to owning firearms...

...shouldn't we at least be able to finally do away with having to remove our shoes before boarding the airplane?


Eric

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Phasers On Stun

I am on record as clearly promoting two major ideas when it comes to guns: 1.) that we, the people have an absolute right to own and carry defensive weapons, and 2.) that it is beyond obvious that we need a system of registration and licensing for firearms. The recent tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School certainly underscores the dire need which we have for a greater effort at keeping guns out of the hands of bat-shit crazy people, that much is certain. But the guns used in that tragedy were legally bought by the perpetrator's mother, and none of them were military-caliber offensive assault rifles. So I'm forced, reluctantly, to admit that the drums I've been beating for so long about gun ownership and control would simply not have prevented this tragedy. So, as the subject of this blog, I'm going to tackle the question of just what would have prevented this, and I'll simply dump everything out there in a stream of unfiltered consciousness. Please understand, this is all sheer brainstorming, and I do not necessarily espouse anything below as a certain solution.

First, I have to say this: We could stop all of this nonsense if only we could just keep guns out of the hands of any males between the age of 16 and 25. If there's one predicting factor which is consistent in every mass-shooting tragedy over the past several years, it's simply that only young men pop off and shoot people. I have yet to see any young woman grab a gun and open fire in a school, theater, or other crowded place. So, here's a thought: How about we arm all the women and disarm all the men? At least this would be an off-setting factor for the biological fact that men are physically stronger. But, of course, a strong man can wrestle the gun out of the hands of most women. So how about this (and this is a completely sci-fi geek nonsense thought): Every woman could have a gun built into the bone structure of her left arm, which will pop out and shoot muggers and rapists a la Wolverine's claws. Maybe not practical, but it would make the world a more peaceful place, and more men would take their cunnilingus seriously.

Or how about this: Isn't it interesting that all these mass-shooters usually kill themselves at the end? I wonder if it's possible to implant a hypnotic suggestion, maybe using subliminal techniques embedded in the very same heavy metal music and violent video games which purportedly encourage this behavior in the first place, to simply kill themselves first? It would save a lot of innocent lives if that could be pulled off.

But really what we need is a very effective, readily available defensive weapon which stuns but does not kill. We have some such things already, such as tasers, but these are bulky, tricky to aim, and do not always stop an assailant, particularly one hyped up on methamphetamine.  Other weapons, such as plastic bullet rifles and  glue-balls, are simply too bulky and act too slowly. The ideal weapon should be small, easily concealable, and be able to drop an assailant cold in an instant without killing him. Then we use them to arm every school teacher, movie theater employee, and mall cashier. Such a device hasn't been invented yet, but if it were, it would be the phaser.

That's right, phasers on stun! The small, pocket-sized device is easy to aim, easy to use, and can stop a Klingon dead in his tracks! With stunning phasers everywhere, the handgun almost becomes obsolete. True, such defensive weapons would inevitably be misused by the very muggers and rapists we're trying to stop, but at least the victim wouldn't be dead afterward, and there's more than a sporting chance that the perp would be the one shot first. With computerized and automated systems, a phaser defense grid could be set up as part of the surveillance system of any public location where large numbers of people gather. Any gun-toting freak would be lucky to get off one shot before the sound of gunfire would cause the automated system to home in on the source and stun that crazy fucker down before he manages to kill anybody!

Okay, maybe that's all just facetious crap on my part. But in all seriousness, shouldn't we finally have cheap, defensive ray-guns by now? It's 2012 for Pete's sake! We've been to the moon, put cool robots on Mars, and landed probes on Titan! How the hell can we not have a lightsabre or a cool Buck Rogers style blaster yet?

On the other hand, maybe I'm just talking crazy talk.

I guess they'd better not let me have a gun.


Eric

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Higher Taxes, Lower Unemployment?

I recently received a letter from my congressman, Mr. Jim Sensenbrenner. It was a response to the e-mail I sent him, begging him to cooperate with Our Trophy President and let tax cuts on the wealthiest 2% expire. His reply cited a very interesting paper. He writes:

“The independent firm Ernst & Young has stated that allowing tax rates to expire for the top two income brackets will cost our economy 700,000 jobs.”

He then goes on to argue that closing loopholes is the better approach. But just how is closing loopholes not raising taxes on the rich using a different method? That question has been bugging me all during this past election. But the more pressing point he’d made was in regard to this Ernst & Young study. I was intrigued.

So I downloaded a copy and read it.

It’s not a very comprehensive report. It leaves off the exact formulae used in the calculation. This is perhaps understandable, as they don’t want their proprietary model stolen by competing interests. But even then, it is not very quantitative in any respect. In other words, they just don’t give any solid, damned numbers! Here’s the key paragraph from the actual report:

"This report finds that the increase in the top tax rates would reduce long-run output by 1.3% when the resulting revenue is used to finance additional government spending. Employment is found to fall by 0.5%. In today’s economy, these results would translate into a reduction of gross domestic product (GDP) of $200 billion and employment by 710,000 jobs. Investment and the capital stock (net worth) would fall in the long-run by 2.4% and 1.4%, respectively. Real (non-inflationary) after-tax wages would fall by 1.8%, indicative of the decline in living standards relative to what would have occurred otherwise.”

Sounds dire. But how did they get these numbers? Ernst & Young gives us one, and only one, piece of information. They used the “Ernst & Young General Equilibrium Model of the US Economy.” Just what is that, exactly?

Well, General Equilibrium economic models have been around since the late 70’s. They have been quite cumbersome at times, but advancements in computer technology have made them much easier to use. As such, many Chicago-school and neo-conservative economists love using them, because they think that the fancy mathematical formulae makes them irrefutable.

That having been said, they have a history of failure.

Not only Ernst & Young’s General Equilibrium model, but everybody else’s as well, failed to predict and respond to the housing bubble which led to the crisis in 2008. In fact, part of the very reason that professional economists failed to sound the alarm was because their General Equilibrium models kept indicating that there was no problem! You see, such models have to assume that businesses and consumers will behave perfectly rationally – or else their behavior would be impossible to compute with accurate numbers. Fine in theory, but in practice, people do not behave rationally with money! Hence, General Equilibrium models do not work, and their record proves it.

These General Equilibrium models have such a spotty track record that neo-Keynsian economists find them laughable. I’m forced to agree. When such economic models failed us so spectacularly in 2008, should we really give them any credence in 2012, four years later? Even if they say they’ve worked out all the bugs, would you trust their product?

Let’s face it: General Equilibrium models might work someday. But for now, they are the Yugo of economics, and the Sylvia Browne of economic prediction.

The report repeatedly states that the impact is “long term.” But just what is meant by that? Five years? Ten years? Fifteen? The report fails to say, and that’s so unforgivably sloppy that it should tell any critical reader how jokingly unreliable the conclusion must be.  After all, $710,000 jobs over 20 years is about 2,960 jobs each month. Since job growth has been taking place at an average of 140,000 jobs each month over the last three years, that means that this “dire consequence” would be a mere 137,000 additional jobs each month. Big deal! If the model predicted a loss of 710,000 jobs out of four million potential jobs added, that’s a 3.29 million job gain. It would therefore be irresponsible to report the 710,000 “job loss” number by itself. A slight decrease in future job growth is not a loss! Is that what this report did? Again, they failed to specify. I wonder why that is?

A criticism of this report by the White House and the Huffington Post points out that it assumes that the additional tax revenue would be used for additional spending. Not so, says the Obama administration, because that money instead will be used to pay down the deficit, lower interest rates, and create economic growth over the long run that way. Fine, but conservative economists do not take this gripe seriously, and neither do I. The neocons argue that the additional spending will be there because it all goes into the same federal reserve where there is no specific account labeled “deficit reduction.” I, on the other hand, argue that the additional spending could be on bullet trains, roads and infrastructure, thus providing more than enough jobs to offset the proposed job losses. It’s all a matter of where that money gets spent.  The Post also criticizes those who paid to develop their report, arguing vested interest. This is rightly rejected as an ad hominem argument, but I also add that such an argument is not even necessary.

The Ernst & Young report fails on its own lack of merit.


Eric

In Defense of Susan Rice

Some of you gen-X’ers out there might be too young to know about this, but the Colgate Co. once had an ad campaign back in the 1970’s which told TV viewers that Dawn dish-washing soap got dishes “so clean, they squeak.” To emphasize the point, the middle aged actress who was pitching the product would, with sincerity radiating from her smiling eyes, hold her freshly-washed plate in her hands and run her wet finger across the surface.  It would make a squeaking noise as the plate, now completely grease-free, would make the kind of noise based on the same principle that resonates a glass harmonica. Several other Dawn dish-soap commercials talked about dishes being “squeaky clean” and “passing the squeak-test,” and the phrases entered the popular lexicon, leaving most 20-somethings to be potentially confused as to the meaning 35 years later.

So when I make the following statement, I want there to be no confusion as to my exact meaning.

Susan Rice is so clean she squeaks.

I mean, seriously! There is nothing about this woman that is not five-star, grade-A, 4.0 excellence! Valedictorian, Magna Cum Laude from Harvard, flawless ambassadorship in the U.N., a solid 9.5 on the attractiveness scale and probably even looks perfect in a bikini.  Is there anything about this woman that isn't over-qualified for the job of Secretary of State?

Why, oh why then, are Republicans so up in arms over this woman?

Um, guys? You’re persecuting the wrong babe. The one who slept with David Petraeus is over there.

I used to think that this all might be a peremptory strike against the possibility that this woman might become a political candidate someday. After Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice is probably the next likely female to be able to win the presidency someday, followed closely by Condoleeza Rice and Elizabeth Warren.  But the opposition is simply too uniform and coordinated for something like that. There must be something else going on, here.

There is. Should John Kerry be named Secretary of State instead of Susan Rice, a special election would have to be held in Massachusetts to fill Kerry’s vacated seat, and that would give Republicans an excellent chance to get their beloved Scott Brown back into the Senate. After all, Scott Brown is a potential future presidential or vice-presidential candidate as well, and they have no intention of allowing their best golden-boy to be yanked off the stage! So, the game for Republicans is, force Obama to name John Kerry, and then their potential Messiah gets back into the spotlight. To accomplish this, they must sling mud at Susan Rice.

One problem: They’re fresh out of mud! Dirt too! So, to get by, they’re pointing at her spotless jerkin, insisting they see a stain there.

Let’s analyze this alleged stain.

It basically comes in two parts: First, that Susan Rice is too abrasive and/or blunt. Second, that she mislead the public regarding the attacks in Benghazi, Libya.

Regarding part one, that she’s too abrasive, what they mean to say is that she’s too abrasive for a woman. If she were male, she would be regarded as forceful, confident, bold, and possibly even a natural leader. But because she’s a woman, all these are considered negative traits. Really? Bullshit, I say!

So much for that.

And part two, that she misled the public regarding a matter of public interest, let’s take a good look at the track record of Susan’s critics.

The entire Republican party has mislead people about deregulation aiding the economy. Some part of it might have stopped inflation in the 80’s under Reagan, but other than that, everything else they've sold us about absolutism being applied to free markets has amounted to getting ill on too much of a good thing. Shadow banking was deregulated, and we got a Savings and Loan crisis. Credit lending was deregulated, and we got a credit-card crisis. Housing loans were deregulated, and we got a housing-bubble crisis, and its hideous aftermath. We’re learning the hard way that those banking and lending regulations are in place for damned good reasons, and removing them does not stimulate economic growth – or if it does, that the growth is short-lived, and collapses into recession. And this is just one economic area where Republicans have mislead the American public for 40 straight years.

On the talk radio circuit, whether it be Rush Limbaugh calling Sarah Fluke a “slut,” Glenn Beck calling Obama the Antichrist, or any number of other whoppers, the over-paid propagandists have been out there misleading everyone on everything from taxation to foreign trade. As long as they defend the rich executives who ultimately pay them, they’ll go on spin-doctoring things to mislead voters into voting for fat-cats who pretend at piety.

In short, even if the allegations against Susan Rice are true (which they are not), they are accusing her of doing just once what they, themselves have been doing consistently for an entire lifetime!

This isn't just the pot calling the kettle black, it's the entire cookware set! Every clown in the circus is daring to call her silly!

Well, so much for that, too! Susan Rice should be immediately confirmed as Secretary of State. If the Republicans who criticize her are successful in getting her removed from consideration, then they should all also be removed from consideration for re-election by the same standard. In a perfect world, that would happen.

If so, Scott Brown might be the only elected Republican left.


Eric

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The Founding Father Mythos

The battle for the future is sometimes strangely fought in the past.  Like time-traveling soldiers vs. terminator robots, our culture warriors seem to travel back in time to the dawn of our nation in order to do battle with each other, each one trying to stake claim to America’s foundation as its territory.  The notion seems to be that if our nation was intended as either Christian or secular by the Founding Fathers, that this means that’s the way the nation should be today.

Of course, the whole notion is daft.  It's as absurd as saying that if the original rule book was intended a certain way, then that’s the way the rule book should remain now.  Let the NFL do away with instant replay while Major League Baseball segregates a separate league for black people, and you get an application of this same, silly principle.  But this doesn't keep the religious Right from trying the tactic anyway.  If the Founding Fathers were Christian, it is preached, then we should be Christian too, because that means it’s the American Way.  It is somehow absurdly believed that the authors of the Constitution were somehow Constitutional themselves, and that therefore their personal beliefs, or even foibles, are somehow applicable to policy making today.

Let's have a reality check: The founding fathers were, for all their virtues, for all their vices, merely human beings.  They made brilliant decisions along with some colossal blunders.  They achieved great things under the cloud of unforgivable failure, and blazed an important trail while leaving a hideous mess in its wake.  In the end, we must see them as the belching, farting, shitting, slave-fucking and halitosis-ridden homo sapiens that they truly were.  And we should no more follow their example than a modern-day physician should return to bloodletting.

The bottom line behind the founding principles of our nation is simply this: they were a good start.  Not perfect, but a good start.  And ever since then it has been up to succeeding generations to keep improving upon the idea, eliminating the mistakes in the original version where they are found, revising the outdated areas when technology and cultural progress dictate that they need to be, and adding new ones as novel situations dictate.  Sometimes we might get it right, as with public education and investing in the infrastructures of transportation, power and water.  Other times, we might get it wrong, as we did during prohibition.  But always, hopefully, we gradually ratchet things forward to an improvement upon what we inherited when we were younger.  As such, looking back upon the starting point, and those who helped start it, as some sort of "ideal," is nothing more than flipping the middle-finger at our modern-day world, and advocating a return to the "good old days" when life was nasty, brutish and short. What rubbish!

It is our turn to improve upon the original. We may make mistakes, but if we do things right, we will produce more progress than setback. So how about, instead of looking backward for guidance, we look forward?

I’m sure the founding fathers would have wanted it that way, in any case.

Eric