Friday, October 25, 2013
Movie Review: Gravity
We all missed out when the makers of Europa Report decided to rip the accessibility to this great movie away from us this summer. The movie is now available both on DVD and Net Streaming, and better late than never, but damn, what a missed opportunity those filmmakers had. They could have made millions, and completely dropped the ball.
Fortunately, for those of us who live for true hard sci-fi movies, there is now one which has made up for this tragic loss. Gravity stars George Clooney and Sandra Bullock, who share a close working relationship in outer space. This movie has finally given Hollywood the wake-up call it so richly deserves, sending it the message that science fiction doesn't have to be done like Men In Black in order to be successful. There are now three great cinema works of hard sci-fi: 2001: A Space Odyssey, Contact, and Gravity.
I have no intention of revealing the whole plot of the film, nor will I spoil it for you by giving away the ending, but I will give you the synopsis to whet your appetite, because it truly is an excellent story. It begins with a space shuttle mission, which is a somewhat dated idea since all our space shuttles have now been retired. The shuttle is doing yet another repair on the Hubble Space Telescope, which again is a bit dated as the HST has now officially been de-funded by NASA. But if you can get past this, the stage becomes set for a truly massive outer-space adventure. Many satellites operate in close-circuit with each other, sitting in the Clarke orbit, allowing our telecommunications companies to give us everything from full-coverage sports to GPS location. But in this movie, a chance meteor happens to hit one of the nearby satellites. The result is entirely plausible, and quite disastrous. An eruption of bullet-speed shrapnel gets blasted away from the hit satellite, which hits another satellite, which makes more shrapnel, which hits another satellite, which makes more shrapnel to hit another satellite, and so forth in a chain reaction which renders much of the world telecom-blind. Or, as George Clooney's character quips afterward, "Half of North America just lost their Facebook!"
After this, the plot of the film is simple: Survival! The HST and the space shuttle are hit, and destroyed. The astronauts who avoid being killed find themselves stranded and locked in a desperate chase to find any way home, going first to the International Space Station (which abandoned ship at the first sign of trouble), and then to a Chinese satellite as a last-resort. What happens after that, you'll just have to watch the movie to find out.
This is a true science adventure, where all the realities of being in outer space are accurately depicted. Explosions are not heard, merely seen. Sounds of tools being used are not really heard at all, but come across as the muffled residual sounds that travel up the space suit and into the ears of the astronauts inside their helmets. And when an astronaut goes spinning off out of control, he keeps spinning and spinning at the same rate, never slowing down, completely unable to stop the dizzying, stomach-churning terror of the experience. This might not be a movie for the faint of heart, or for those who get sick easily. This is also not a movie for those who want ray-guns, lightsabres, ships which bank as they turn, and all the other unforgivable scientific inaccuracies normally found in movies.
But for those who love space adventures for the science, you're in for a real treat!
Eric
*
Thursday, September 26, 2013
Biker Permit vs. "Million Muslim March"
Hello, folks. It's been awhile. I've missed you.
I suppose that getting used to a more physical form of employment means that I need to adjust to how one goes about writing blog entries. After all, I can no longer luxuriously write various things when my 3rd shift work is done, can I? No, now I must slip in a commentary edge-wise when I am not working overtime or being dragged to yet another karaoke show to spend money I shouldn't be.
So what's prompted this entry? Could it be that hyper-extremists are yet again threatening a government shutdown over trying to repeal that which they have no choice but to accept? Oddly enough, no. Such temper-tantrums are things I've written about often enough before (sigh!), and I've grown rather tired of giving what little attention I have left to give to crybabies. No, this time, it's something rather different.
You see, a good friend of mine recently mentioned to me how she'd been a complete Obama fan, but now hates him. Wounded and heartbroken, I asked why. And then she proceeded to tell me a fantastic story. Apparently, Obama denied a permit for a million Harley bikers to ride non-stop, funeral-line-style through Washington, D.C. on the anniversary of 9/11, but on the same day allowed a Million Muslim March to be held in D.C. on the very same day on the White House lawn. The outrage!
Of course, as soon as the words "Obama" and "Muslim" are said in the same phrase, I instantly become suspicious. How many times have we heard stupid mistakes like this before, where our president is purportedly a Muslim born in Kenya who was planted behind American lines in order to subvert Christianity from within like some sort of Manchurian candidate. I immediately pointed this out to my young lady friend, telling her that I'd research it, but that it was likely bullshit.
Well, I kept my promise, tried to look up the story, and immediately found it - via Fox News. Naturally, my B.S. detector was red flagging me full-blast at this point, but as it turns out, there turned out to be a nugget of truth to the story. Yes, Harley riders were denied a permit to ride unchecked through every stop light and over every pedestrian crossing for hours on end, snarling traffic and preventing grieving families from even reaching their 9/11 memorial sites, while the motorcycles themselves were revved up to a high-decibel-level, window-rattling, alarm-triggering, ear-splitting maximum. I don't blame officials for the denial. At the same time, a permit was granted for the "Million Muslim March," which quickly changed its name to the "Million American March for Peace" or some such silly euphemism, because even die-hard Muslims remember the sting of Louis Farrakahn's embarrassing nonsense. The permit was for a rally in the National Plaza - a place away from traffic and held in a wide-open meeting space near the Washington Monument (NOT the White House lawn!), where rallies are routinely approved for everything from neo-Nazi rallies to banning dish soap. So yes, there's a little truth to the story, and in major pissed-off response, hundreds of thousands of Harley bikers roared through D.C. anyway, obeying traffic laws, red lights, and merely making a lot of noise - you know, the way Harley bikes are supposed to - while not significantly snarling traffic. By contrast, the number of Muslims who showed up on the National Plaza could be counted by two kids on their fingers and toes.
Big dud!
Okay, now my take on all this. Holy shit is this ever a municipal issue! It got decided at the city level, not at the federal level, of government! (Duh!) Traffic permits are granted by the local police department, not the White House! And rally permits are decided by the National Parks Service. The people to blame for this are the mayor of D.C., the chief of police for the District of Columbia, and possibly the Parks Commission. Obama had nothing to do with it! The fact that D.C.'s city government and the federal government are separate is demonstrated by the fact that everything at the national level is so pristine while surrounded by an urban landscape composed of the worst neighborhoods where drug-infested public schools and gang-shootings are common. I know it's common to mistake everything that goes on in Washington as being the president's fault, just as its common to mistakenly blame the president for pretty much everything else. But Obama is not the mayor of D.C.! And we would do well to remember that. It would be like blaming Obama for Tom Barrett allowing a similar debacle here in Milwaukee!
So let's all just remember what our president's job is, shall we? The president is a bully-pulpit with a veto pen, nothing more. Congress and the Senate run the show. That means we cannot expect Obama to fix everything overnight. He is not a king! (Thank heaven!)
By the same token, we cannot lay the blame at Obama's feet for everything, especially not a permit dispute that some silly mayor fucked up.
And Fox News, you are again full of shit!
Eric
*
Sunday, August 25, 2013
A Society Of Ariel Castros
News coverage has quieted somewhat regarding Egypt. There are bigger fish to fry in the Middle East as far as the media is concerned, particularly in Syria, where the use of chemical weapons has become the hot-button topic.
I think the focus should be brought back to Egypt for a moment.
I've recently watched some interesting TED Talks from oppressed women from the Middle East (namely, Saudi Arabia) and have discovered an interesting juxtaposition between what's going on in the Islamic world and a recent event in our news locally.
The case of Ariel Castro may seem to have little to do with Egypt. But upon closer inspection, it bears a great deal of similarity. Castro kidnapped and confined three young women in his basement for an entire decade, forcing them to exchange sex for food and favors, getting them pregnant, disposing of the unwanted pregnancies in gruesome ways, and the list of horrors goes on. What has this to do with the Middle East? It's as simple as listening to what Castro had to say at his sentencing hearing.
Castro insisted that the hearing was a sham, that he had done nothing wrong, that all the sex was consensual, and that the girls wanted to be under his protection, hidden away from the world. This sounds insane to any of us who are rational, and that's because it is. But here's the Middle East connection:
What, in Ariel Castro's argument, is different about how he viewed his captives and about how Muslim men view the women of their society?
The stunning answer is: there isn't one!
Think about it. The only difference between the captivity of Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight, and the millions of Muslim women who are kept locked indoors or buried beneath piles of hot black cloth, is the form of the prison. The males of the Muslim world are comprised of one, gigantic Ariel Castro population!
We condemn Castro as insane for his statements. Why then do we not condemn the Islamic world similarly? "She loves her captivity," "the forced sex is consensual," "she is happy in her subservient status." Are these statements really insane when they come out of the mouth of a professed Christian, yet sane when they come out of the mouth of a Muslim?
And now we come to Egypt, because the Ariel Castros of that country, going by the name of the Muslim Brotherhood, have tried to take advantage of a flawed structure in Egypt's first democratic election to attempt a takeover of a secular country, imposing Sharia bullshit and stealing away human rights and liberties. But the Amanda Berrys of Egypt escaped, and held enough sway over Egypt's military to oust the Ariel Castros, hopefully for good. Now, the Ariel Castros are fighting back, and they are twice as violent!
Yes, it's hard to see genocide being exacted upon anyone, but Islam is the sort of evil which seeks to hijack democratic liberties and make them subservient to its own ends. In the interest of "tolerance" it proceeds to seek police protection for its intolerance. In the interest of "religious liberty," it tries to outlaw apostates. In the interest of "freedom of speech" it tries to ban any negative expressions against its religion or its god. Criticism of Islam is labeled "hate speech," and there are some liberals who are damnably fool enough to buy into it.
Islam wants to kill democracy. Not figuratively, but literally. Freedom of speech means we are blasphemers. Freedom of religion means we are infidels. Insisting that we be free of their attempts to force their religion upon us means that we are intolerant. Well, since that is the case, we must meet violence with violence, and we cannot be tolerant of that which is not tolerant of us. We cannot beat this kind of evil without occasionally raising the gun and firing, because that's the only language such disguised Satanism understands. And if we are unwilling to meet fire with fire, then democracy will be thrown into a deep, dark basement, and the key will forever hang around Ariel Castro's neck.
Egypt understands. 60% of the country is secular, and means to stay that way. But they've lived with Islam in their back yards for hundreds of years, and they know how intolerant it can be. They were nearly cheated out of their democracy, and rightly demand a do-over. They know that the rioting must be put down under the jack boot of counter-violence, because those who are bound within a nutshell and count themselves the kings of infinite space desperately seek to impose their "freedom" upon the rest of us.
Way to go, Egypt! Be sure to give those Ariel Castros a black eye on behalf of America! We love you!
And may we be so wise when the time comes, because it will.
Eric
*
I think the focus should be brought back to Egypt for a moment.
I've recently watched some interesting TED Talks from oppressed women from the Middle East (namely, Saudi Arabia) and have discovered an interesting juxtaposition between what's going on in the Islamic world and a recent event in our news locally.
The case of Ariel Castro may seem to have little to do with Egypt. But upon closer inspection, it bears a great deal of similarity. Castro kidnapped and confined three young women in his basement for an entire decade, forcing them to exchange sex for food and favors, getting them pregnant, disposing of the unwanted pregnancies in gruesome ways, and the list of horrors goes on. What has this to do with the Middle East? It's as simple as listening to what Castro had to say at his sentencing hearing.
Castro insisted that the hearing was a sham, that he had done nothing wrong, that all the sex was consensual, and that the girls wanted to be under his protection, hidden away from the world. This sounds insane to any of us who are rational, and that's because it is. But here's the Middle East connection:
What, in Ariel Castro's argument, is different about how he viewed his captives and about how Muslim men view the women of their society?
The stunning answer is: there isn't one!
Think about it. The only difference between the captivity of Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight, and the millions of Muslim women who are kept locked indoors or buried beneath piles of hot black cloth, is the form of the prison. The males of the Muslim world are comprised of one, gigantic Ariel Castro population!
We condemn Castro as insane for his statements. Why then do we not condemn the Islamic world similarly? "She loves her captivity," "the forced sex is consensual," "she is happy in her subservient status." Are these statements really insane when they come out of the mouth of a professed Christian, yet sane when they come out of the mouth of a Muslim?
And now we come to Egypt, because the Ariel Castros of that country, going by the name of the Muslim Brotherhood, have tried to take advantage of a flawed structure in Egypt's first democratic election to attempt a takeover of a secular country, imposing Sharia bullshit and stealing away human rights and liberties. But the Amanda Berrys of Egypt escaped, and held enough sway over Egypt's military to oust the Ariel Castros, hopefully for good. Now, the Ariel Castros are fighting back, and they are twice as violent!
Yes, it's hard to see genocide being exacted upon anyone, but Islam is the sort of evil which seeks to hijack democratic liberties and make them subservient to its own ends. In the interest of "tolerance" it proceeds to seek police protection for its intolerance. In the interest of "religious liberty," it tries to outlaw apostates. In the interest of "freedom of speech" it tries to ban any negative expressions against its religion or its god. Criticism of Islam is labeled "hate speech," and there are some liberals who are damnably fool enough to buy into it.
Islam wants to kill democracy. Not figuratively, but literally. Freedom of speech means we are blasphemers. Freedom of religion means we are infidels. Insisting that we be free of their attempts to force their religion upon us means that we are intolerant. Well, since that is the case, we must meet violence with violence, and we cannot be tolerant of that which is not tolerant of us. We cannot beat this kind of evil without occasionally raising the gun and firing, because that's the only language such disguised Satanism understands. And if we are unwilling to meet fire with fire, then democracy will be thrown into a deep, dark basement, and the key will forever hang around Ariel Castro's neck.
Egypt understands. 60% of the country is secular, and means to stay that way. But they've lived with Islam in their back yards for hundreds of years, and they know how intolerant it can be. They were nearly cheated out of their democracy, and rightly demand a do-over. They know that the rioting must be put down under the jack boot of counter-violence, because those who are bound within a nutshell and count themselves the kings of infinite space desperately seek to impose their "freedom" upon the rest of us.
Way to go, Egypt! Be sure to give those Ariel Castros a black eye on behalf of America! We love you!
And may we be so wise when the time comes, because it will.
Eric
*
Monday, August 5, 2013
Time Warner Customers: Demand Your Rebate!
I find it somewhat interesting that Time Warner Cable has now axed all of its CBS affiliate stations in key municipalities. According to them, the programming is not there because of the excessive demands being made by the network for re-broadcasting fees. But the network executives beg to differ, claiming that it's Time Warner which is being unfair by demanding rates that would undermine the network's profitability anyway. On both sides, editorials are being broadcast which preach their side of the argument. As is usually the case with entertainment executives, both sides are wrong.
Oddly, here in Milwaukee, it is the NBC affiliate, WTMJ Channel 4, which is the odd one out. It's out for the same reason the CBS stations are out in other markets. In those areas, like New York or L.A., CBS is the top market. In Milwaukee, WTMJ is the dominant news and entertainment outlet. It's all a matter of who's on top and where.
There is a key lesson to take away from this, and it has to do with free market capitalism. If perfectly balanced, free market capitalism ensures competition between businesses, which lowers prices to their minimum possible value. But if taken to its fullest logical conclusion, this means that profits become almost zero, at which point there is very little point in being in business at all. Yes, the free market works for the consumer, but not always perfectly, because if there is no profit at all in the business, the goods don't get to market, no matter how badly the goods might be needed. In the case of Time Warner vs. CBS, both sides can't agree because a fair deal for both sides means no profitability for either one. The free market has failed, and so the goods end up not getting to market. Yes, capitalism works, but it does have its flaws.
My take on this is simple: I don't care! All I care about is Time Warner providing me with what I, and you, paid for. Time Warner couldn't reach a new contract agreement, and so many stations went off the air. What they forget is that they already had an existing contract with YOU, the customer, and that contract has now been violated! They agreed to provide you with certain channels at a set price. Now, some of those channels are gone. They broke their deal with you. Hell, it's not like that deal was even fair to begin with, as you are paying $50 to $80 per month just to have advertisements blared at you from every one of the 2000 channels you are presumably getting quality entertainment from, when your favorite show finally gets a word in edgewise.
So, if channels are missing, calculate the percentage of favorite shows you watch which have been lost, multiply that against the monthly rate you pay to Time Warner, and then demand your rebate! Maybe it's only $2 or $3, but if we all demand it at once, it will amount to millions!
Well, if you break millions of contracts in order to be hard-nosed with ONE contract, just because that contract happens to be with another too-big corporation, then you deserve to lose all that money!
Eric
*
Sunday, July 14, 2013
Hey CNN! Do Your Job!
So, George Zimmerman is acquitted. Wonderful.
I mean wonderful that the trial's finally fucking over, not that Zimmerman is off the hook. Why? Because now CNN, MSNBC and HLN can finally begin reporting the news again.
Yes, I know that Trayvon Martin's death was a watershed incident. Yes, I know that Florida jurors have sent the message that vigilante justice is now legitimized. And yes, I know that this could now incite a race war in the state of Florida and possibly elsewhere. But you know what? There are other news stories out there besides this!
The only news stories to break through the din of this trial, however briefly, were a plane crash and a derailed fuel train fire which wiped out half a whole town. And even then, the fuel train story went under-reported. Meanwhile, over two weeks' worth of news has been lost, unless CNN does a very lengthy segment called "While You Were Out" in which it finally covers all the news stories it neglected.
Fox News provided the only break, albeit temporarily. They too over-covered the story, even though they reported other news events once in a while. You'll never hear me say this very often, but here it is: Thank you, Fox News.
You would think MSNBC would take the hint and let CNN do all the over-covering of the story, but no. It's not enough to have one entire news network hobbled by this story, we have to have TWO entire news networks to cover ONE damned event!
Even the Superbowl isn't broadcast on two networks simultaneously!
Look, this was not the O.J. Simpson trial, here! And even if it was, it was only a fragment of what we needed to know about in order to stay informed as citizens! Sure, this was an important story, but important to the exclusion of everything else.
So, congratulations, Zimmerman, you are cleared. Jerk.
And congratulations to CNN and MSNBC for your unearned two week vacation. Now get back to work and do your job finally!
Eric
*
I mean wonderful that the trial's finally fucking over, not that Zimmerman is off the hook. Why? Because now CNN, MSNBC and HLN can finally begin reporting the news again.
Yes, I know that Trayvon Martin's death was a watershed incident. Yes, I know that Florida jurors have sent the message that vigilante justice is now legitimized. And yes, I know that this could now incite a race war in the state of Florida and possibly elsewhere. But you know what? There are other news stories out there besides this!
The only news stories to break through the din of this trial, however briefly, were a plane crash and a derailed fuel train fire which wiped out half a whole town. And even then, the fuel train story went under-reported. Meanwhile, over two weeks' worth of news has been lost, unless CNN does a very lengthy segment called "While You Were Out" in which it finally covers all the news stories it neglected.
Fox News provided the only break, albeit temporarily. They too over-covered the story, even though they reported other news events once in a while. You'll never hear me say this very often, but here it is: Thank you, Fox News.
You would think MSNBC would take the hint and let CNN do all the over-covering of the story, but no. It's not enough to have one entire news network hobbled by this story, we have to have TWO entire news networks to cover ONE damned event!
Even the Superbowl isn't broadcast on two networks simultaneously!
Look, this was not the O.J. Simpson trial, here! And even if it was, it was only a fragment of what we needed to know about in order to stay informed as citizens! Sure, this was an important story, but important to the exclusion of everything else.
So, congratulations, Zimmerman, you are cleared. Jerk.
And congratulations to CNN and MSNBC for your unearned two week vacation. Now get back to work and do your job finally!
Eric
*
Sunday, July 7, 2013
Egypt, and the Reclaiming of Democracy
What can we say about the military coup which has taken place in Egypt in recent days? Is it, as Our Trophy President has mistakenly said, a matter of grave concern? Should we mourn the overthrow of a democratically elected administration? Is this a failure of democracy in the Islamic world?
Hell, no! This is democracy at its finest, and we all need to stand up and cheer! During this July 4th holiday, with our fireworks of celebration for our own imperfect liberty, we need to recognize this with acute clarity. Egypt, it has now shown, is ready for democracy, perhaps more so than any other Islamic nation. Why? Just ask Thomas Jefferson, who said in a letter to William Stephens Smith in 1787:
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."
Indeed so. Jefferson, and indeed many of the founding fathers, felt that the government always needed to be overthrown on occasion as a matter of course in order to prevent corruption from building slowly from within. He never envisioned that the constitution he helped draft would survive, more or less intact, for two and a third centuries! Democracy, on occasion, requires a "do over," in case an election falls prey to a technicality, or elite money begins to have a louder voice than the Common Man.
Take a look at how Egypt's first ever democratic election proceeded. Rather than having a two-party system, they had a multiple party system where the two candidates who secured the most votes ran against each other in a run-off election. Sounded good on paper, but when the dust settled, they were left with two complete assholes to choose from, both of whom garnered the most votes by securing the vote of extremist minorities. Candidate one was Ahmed Shafik - the former Prime Minister of Egypt under Hosni Mubarak, who garnered the vote of the loyalists to the old regime. The other was, of course, Mohamed Morsi, who secured the vote of the Muslim Brotherhood, and all its Islamic jihadist bullshit. Egyptians had to mourn the loss of dozens of better and more qualified candidates, and then decide between bad and worse. Most opted for Morsi, simply because he was not the Mubarak candidate. Even so, so many Egyptians hated the prospect of a Muslim extremist in power that he only won by the slimmest of margins at 51%.
What a debacle! Egypt has rightly insisted upon their "do over." They know its their right, and they'll settle for nothing less. No, the overthrow of Morsi isn't the failure of democracy. The failure was in how they structured the electoral process. 60% of Egyptians are secularists - who don't want Sharia law bossing them about and want their Coptic Christian friends accorded the same rights which they possess. Good! They should win! But their vote was fractured into too many different directions, allowing a run-off between Tweedle-Dumb, and Tweedle-Dumber. So now they'll try again, and this time, they'll have a more structured primary process which allows a moderate candidate to be a finalist every single time. Perhaps a two-tiered primary before a final run-off election will be put into place. Or perhaps the secularist parties will consolidate to allow their candidate a fair chance. Whatever happens, we can rest assured that Egypt will never be a new Iran. They have shown the way, with their women throwing off their hijabs and their men shaving off their beards, how democracy must insist on nothing less than getting it right the first time!
So where does this miraculous bit of good news from the Middle East leave us? What lesson should we take from being out-democratized by the Arab world? The answer, of course, is that we need our own revolution of sorts. But unlike in Egypt, we cannot stage a military coup. First, our military is simply too well paid for its soldiers to turn upon Washington. But second, and far more importantly, our government's downfall would spell the downfall of countless other governments. Ron and Rand Paul like to preach that our monetary system, centered on the U.S. Dollar, is not based upon anything since it went off the gold standard. Bullshit! Every dollar is backed up by the full faith and credit of the United States Government. In other words, the Government IS the gold which sustains the dollar! Destroy the government and you inevitably destroy the dollar with it. With the fall of the dollar will come the downfall of every other form of currency which depends upon it, including the Euro, the Yen, the Pound and the Yuen.
So what can we do? Our democracy has gotten so far out of reach of the people that only millionaires can run for public office. And in that fact lies the solution to what we must do: We must, as surely as we need air, cut the money out from our electoral process!
According to the Citizens' United ruling from the Supreme Court, less than 200 people can direct any election by forcing certain candidates in or out by directing the flow of money into their campaigns. In other words, the number of people who can vastly influence elections is less than the number of legislators on Capital Hill, and nearly as many as the number of Senators! By all that is good and just, THIS MUST STOP!
How? We take no more of this insane bullshit about campaign contributions, that's how! The dream of McCain/Feingold isn't dead just because Feingold got knocked out by the very same Supreme Court ruling which struck down the piece of campaign reform legislation he helped engineer. The insane amounts of money destroy conservative interests just as much as liberal ones, and it does no party any good when 60% of a representative's time is spent, from day one, fundraising for the next election so that he, and his party, can remain in power!
1.) Corporations are not people! They are governments! COMPETING governments, as it turns out! And the governments of Wal-Mart, Exxon, BP and others must be forever barred from dumping ridiculous amounts of money into campaigns.
2.) Let's put the cap back on dollar amounts to contribute! No, not back at $2,000, but something more drastic. $1,000! Yes, if a politician wants to win, he's just going to have to go out there, wear down some shoe leather, shake a lot of hands, kiss a lot of babies, and actually talk to people!
3.) Enough with the T.V. and radio ad blitzes! We all know that the reason the money has gotten so over-bloated is because the network executives engineered it that way! They pay people like Rachel Maddow and Rush Limbaugh at a probable loss (no, I can't prove it, but I'm absolutely convinced!) so that they can rake in the ad revenues every two to four years. Well, with one voice we can all say FUCK THAT! It's time for a consumer revolt! News Corp and Comcast have had their fun, but now it's time for them to FUCK OFF of our politics!
We are, as a society, sensible enough to put spending restrictions upon our sports teams, but we fail to do the same thing when it comes to our political candidates. Now, that's a serious level of insane!
So it's with great pride that I announce my push to end ALL political advertising. It's as simple as all of us collectively saying together that we simply won't take it anymore! We may not change the candidates, but if we're LOUD about it, they will listen! To my voting rules list, I am adding a new Rule #1:
All things being equal, vote against the millionaire!
Or, we can allow ourselves the embarrassment of seeing Egypt becoming a better democracy than our own.
Eric
*
Hell, no! This is democracy at its finest, and we all need to stand up and cheer! During this July 4th holiday, with our fireworks of celebration for our own imperfect liberty, we need to recognize this with acute clarity. Egypt, it has now shown, is ready for democracy, perhaps more so than any other Islamic nation. Why? Just ask Thomas Jefferson, who said in a letter to William Stephens Smith in 1787:
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."
Indeed so. Jefferson, and indeed many of the founding fathers, felt that the government always needed to be overthrown on occasion as a matter of course in order to prevent corruption from building slowly from within. He never envisioned that the constitution he helped draft would survive, more or less intact, for two and a third centuries! Democracy, on occasion, requires a "do over," in case an election falls prey to a technicality, or elite money begins to have a louder voice than the Common Man.
Take a look at how Egypt's first ever democratic election proceeded. Rather than having a two-party system, they had a multiple party system where the two candidates who secured the most votes ran against each other in a run-off election. Sounded good on paper, but when the dust settled, they were left with two complete assholes to choose from, both of whom garnered the most votes by securing the vote of extremist minorities. Candidate one was Ahmed Shafik - the former Prime Minister of Egypt under Hosni Mubarak, who garnered the vote of the loyalists to the old regime. The other was, of course, Mohamed Morsi, who secured the vote of the Muslim Brotherhood, and all its Islamic jihadist bullshit. Egyptians had to mourn the loss of dozens of better and more qualified candidates, and then decide between bad and worse. Most opted for Morsi, simply because he was not the Mubarak candidate. Even so, so many Egyptians hated the prospect of a Muslim extremist in power that he only won by the slimmest of margins at 51%.
What a debacle! Egypt has rightly insisted upon their "do over." They know its their right, and they'll settle for nothing less. No, the overthrow of Morsi isn't the failure of democracy. The failure was in how they structured the electoral process. 60% of Egyptians are secularists - who don't want Sharia law bossing them about and want their Coptic Christian friends accorded the same rights which they possess. Good! They should win! But their vote was fractured into too many different directions, allowing a run-off between Tweedle-Dumb, and Tweedle-Dumber. So now they'll try again, and this time, they'll have a more structured primary process which allows a moderate candidate to be a finalist every single time. Perhaps a two-tiered primary before a final run-off election will be put into place. Or perhaps the secularist parties will consolidate to allow their candidate a fair chance. Whatever happens, we can rest assured that Egypt will never be a new Iran. They have shown the way, with their women throwing off their hijabs and their men shaving off their beards, how democracy must insist on nothing less than getting it right the first time!
So where does this miraculous bit of good news from the Middle East leave us? What lesson should we take from being out-democratized by the Arab world? The answer, of course, is that we need our own revolution of sorts. But unlike in Egypt, we cannot stage a military coup. First, our military is simply too well paid for its soldiers to turn upon Washington. But second, and far more importantly, our government's downfall would spell the downfall of countless other governments. Ron and Rand Paul like to preach that our monetary system, centered on the U.S. Dollar, is not based upon anything since it went off the gold standard. Bullshit! Every dollar is backed up by the full faith and credit of the United States Government. In other words, the Government IS the gold which sustains the dollar! Destroy the government and you inevitably destroy the dollar with it. With the fall of the dollar will come the downfall of every other form of currency which depends upon it, including the Euro, the Yen, the Pound and the Yuen.
So what can we do? Our democracy has gotten so far out of reach of the people that only millionaires can run for public office. And in that fact lies the solution to what we must do: We must, as surely as we need air, cut the money out from our electoral process!
According to the Citizens' United ruling from the Supreme Court, less than 200 people can direct any election by forcing certain candidates in or out by directing the flow of money into their campaigns. In other words, the number of people who can vastly influence elections is less than the number of legislators on Capital Hill, and nearly as many as the number of Senators! By all that is good and just, THIS MUST STOP!
How? We take no more of this insane bullshit about campaign contributions, that's how! The dream of McCain/Feingold isn't dead just because Feingold got knocked out by the very same Supreme Court ruling which struck down the piece of campaign reform legislation he helped engineer. The insane amounts of money destroy conservative interests just as much as liberal ones, and it does no party any good when 60% of a representative's time is spent, from day one, fundraising for the next election so that he, and his party, can remain in power!
1.) Corporations are not people! They are governments! COMPETING governments, as it turns out! And the governments of Wal-Mart, Exxon, BP and others must be forever barred from dumping ridiculous amounts of money into campaigns.
2.) Let's put the cap back on dollar amounts to contribute! No, not back at $2,000, but something more drastic. $1,000! Yes, if a politician wants to win, he's just going to have to go out there, wear down some shoe leather, shake a lot of hands, kiss a lot of babies, and actually talk to people!
3.) Enough with the T.V. and radio ad blitzes! We all know that the reason the money has gotten so over-bloated is because the network executives engineered it that way! They pay people like Rachel Maddow and Rush Limbaugh at a probable loss (no, I can't prove it, but I'm absolutely convinced!) so that they can rake in the ad revenues every two to four years. Well, with one voice we can all say FUCK THAT! It's time for a consumer revolt! News Corp and Comcast have had their fun, but now it's time for them to FUCK OFF of our politics!
We are, as a society, sensible enough to put spending restrictions upon our sports teams, but we fail to do the same thing when it comes to our political candidates. Now, that's a serious level of insane!
So it's with great pride that I announce my push to end ALL political advertising. It's as simple as all of us collectively saying together that we simply won't take it anymore! We may not change the candidates, but if we're LOUD about it, they will listen! To my voting rules list, I am adding a new Rule #1:
All things being equal, vote against the millionaire!
Or, we can allow ourselves the embarrassment of seeing Egypt becoming a better democracy than our own.
Eric
*
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Lawsuit Idea
In general, I think our society is too litigious. We sue over everything, from spilled coffee at a McDonald's drive-through, to (and I just heard about this one) towing companies who wear out someone's tires when the city tows an illegally parked vehicle. Still, in our lawsuit-happy culture, there may yet be one worthwhile lawsuit worth filing, and I'm positively shocked that all the local ambulance-chasers out there haven't yet thought of it.
You see, as readers of this blog already know, every once in a while I'm struck with a brilliant bit of insight from out of fucking nowhere. This recent brainstorm hit me when I was (of all things) hemming up my softball leggings. (Um, yeah.) I was simultaneously listening to Penn Jillette's Sunday School podcast (which I highly recommend), and he was talking about how certain politicians seem to get elected no matter what. This, as I've often pointed out, is a reflection of gerrymandering, which is a euphemism for vote-stealing on the part of the political party which happens to be in power at the time of the drawing up of voting districts.
Recent example: Republican Mark Sanford was recently elected back into public office in a congressional district of South Carolina which is drawn heavily conservative. In case you've forgotten (and polls say you have), Mark Sanford was the inconsiderate prick who told people that he was "hiking the Appalachian trail" when in fact he was off to Buenos Aires to have an affair with his Argentinian mistress. For this, he was drummed out as South Carolina's governor and forced to resign. Two years later, the voters of this particular congressional district decided they'd rather have a conservative hypocrite than a liberal with integrity, and voted him into office over Elizabeth Colbert Busch, the sister of Stephen Colbert. In response, he thanked God as a deity not only of second chances, "but of third, forth, fifth, sixth and seventh chances!" This apparently got a roar of approval from his supporters.
Welcome back, Plenary Indulgence. We've apparently missed you since the Middle Ages.
In a world where districts are drawn fairly, the moderate middle would have kicked this son-of-a-bitch out on his arrogant ass. Instead, gerrymandering has given this guy an ego that will make him believe he can get away with just about every damned thing, and he'll be quite correct. And all because political parties in power are allowed to engage in a conflict of interest when drawing up district maps. How backward!
And then I realized it: Conflict of interest! Isn't that already against the law? Indeed it is! For lawyers practicing law, anyway. It can result in a lawyer becoming disbarred, or a judge being forced to recuse himself from a case. Can politicians be forced to avoid conflict of interest? Well, the answer is, sometimes, and not all that often. But has anybody ever brought a lawsuit to that effect? Has there ever been a citizen bold enough to sue the (in this case) Republican Party over drawing up unfair districts on the grounds that it is a conflict of interest?
I don't think so. And that's why I'm kicking the idea out there. Could somebody please do that? I haven't the energy or the time for it, but somebody out there does! Citizens surely have a right to have their districts drawn fairly, and to have district borders which ensure that their votes are not stolen by border-dancing.
If a prison inmate can sue over not receiving crunchy peanut-butter because it goes against his totally-made-up religious rights, then surely, we who are not in jail can accomplish this one, noble lawsuit!
Eric
*
You see, as readers of this blog already know, every once in a while I'm struck with a brilliant bit of insight from out of fucking nowhere. This recent brainstorm hit me when I was (of all things) hemming up my softball leggings. (Um, yeah.) I was simultaneously listening to Penn Jillette's Sunday School podcast (which I highly recommend), and he was talking about how certain politicians seem to get elected no matter what. This, as I've often pointed out, is a reflection of gerrymandering, which is a euphemism for vote-stealing on the part of the political party which happens to be in power at the time of the drawing up of voting districts.
Recent example: Republican Mark Sanford was recently elected back into public office in a congressional district of South Carolina which is drawn heavily conservative. In case you've forgotten (and polls say you have), Mark Sanford was the inconsiderate prick who told people that he was "hiking the Appalachian trail" when in fact he was off to Buenos Aires to have an affair with his Argentinian mistress. For this, he was drummed out as South Carolina's governor and forced to resign. Two years later, the voters of this particular congressional district decided they'd rather have a conservative hypocrite than a liberal with integrity, and voted him into office over Elizabeth Colbert Busch, the sister of Stephen Colbert. In response, he thanked God as a deity not only of second chances, "but of third, forth, fifth, sixth and seventh chances!" This apparently got a roar of approval from his supporters.
Welcome back, Plenary Indulgence. We've apparently missed you since the Middle Ages.
In a world where districts are drawn fairly, the moderate middle would have kicked this son-of-a-bitch out on his arrogant ass. Instead, gerrymandering has given this guy an ego that will make him believe he can get away with just about every damned thing, and he'll be quite correct. And all because political parties in power are allowed to engage in a conflict of interest when drawing up district maps. How backward!
And then I realized it: Conflict of interest! Isn't that already against the law? Indeed it is! For lawyers practicing law, anyway. It can result in a lawyer becoming disbarred, or a judge being forced to recuse himself from a case. Can politicians be forced to avoid conflict of interest? Well, the answer is, sometimes, and not all that often. But has anybody ever brought a lawsuit to that effect? Has there ever been a citizen bold enough to sue the (in this case) Republican Party over drawing up unfair districts on the grounds that it is a conflict of interest?
I don't think so. And that's why I'm kicking the idea out there. Could somebody please do that? I haven't the energy or the time for it, but somebody out there does! Citizens surely have a right to have their districts drawn fairly, and to have district borders which ensure that their votes are not stolen by border-dancing.
If a prison inmate can sue over not receiving crunchy peanut-butter because it goes against his totally-made-up religious rights, then surely, we who are not in jail can accomplish this one, noble lawsuit!
Eric
*
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