Despite being Atheist, Jimmy Stewart's "It's a Wonderful Life" is something I never miss each Christmas Eve. It's a heartwarming tale about the good in man, which is actually what humanism is all about. Something occurred to me about halfway through though, a thought spawned in my head when recalling the recent Fox News attack on "The Muppet Movie" and how it bashes capitalism and the evil oil tycoon villain who is trying to destroy the Muppet Studios. That started me thinking, if "It's a Wonderful Life" was released in today's world, would it get the same treatment? Mr. Potter clearly fits the same role as the evil oil tycoon, but by Fox News' logic, the movie is bashing capitalism by the actions Mr. Potter undertakes. Mr. Potter is just trying to be a good business man, expanding his holdings, as the free market dictates. When a warrant is put out to arrest George Bailey for the missing money the town comes to his rescue, right in front of the police donating money to save him from prosecution. I'm not familiar with banking regulations back then, but today, that would not save him from prosecution.
Anyway, its just a thought I had about the misplaced priorities many people have these days.
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Monday, December 26, 2011
Wrist
So, I screwed up my wrist and its all wrapped up in an ace bandage. So unless something so big happens that its worth the pain, posting will be light for a bit.
Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Kwazy Kwanzaa, a tip-top Tet, and a solemn & dignified Ramadan.
Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Kwazy Kwanzaa, a tip-top Tet, and a solemn & dignified Ramadan.
Saturday, December 24, 2011
A Very Special Nerds and Politics and Nerds Freakin' Christmas
I finally took down my Don't Donate to the Salvation army profile picture on facebook. I wanted to go at least one day with a regular x-mas picture. I had about 6 people message me privately, only one I actually knew, about why I had it up. Each time I explained how I used to donate casually but after reading the article I posted in one of the earlier blog posts, changed my position. Every single time someone asked, they were simply curious as to what it meant, they weren't raging about it, each time I also got a "Thanks" after giving them all the basic same explanation. The one friend I did have ask me, who is a pretty strong Christian, went on to have a great conversation with me about various other religion related issues and I was pleased with how it turned out. If anything comes of this entire thing, I hope that its these people have come to the realization that just because I don't believe in God, doesn't mean I am not a good person.
Today, I leave you with my favorite Family Guy quote, and it always makes me think of my good friend Bugatow, which was his gaming nickname, who drank, then drove, then died. He was one of my first true, really close friends and each year on the anniversary of his death and on his birthday I usually end up shut in my room and if I'm not too broken up about it, playing games online as his name as sort of an homage to him. Anyways, from Family Guy, myself and Bugatow, I wish everyone a Happy Christmas.
"As we all know, Christmas is that mystical time of year when the ghost of Jesus rises from the grave to feed on the flesh of the living. So we all sing Christmas carols to lull him back to sleep." -Peter Griffin, A Very Special Family Guy Freakin' Christmas.
Today, I leave you with my favorite Family Guy quote, and it always makes me think of my good friend Bugatow, which was his gaming nickname, who drank, then drove, then died. He was one of my first true, really close friends and each year on the anniversary of his death and on his birthday I usually end up shut in my room and if I'm not too broken up about it, playing games online as his name as sort of an homage to him. Anyways, from Family Guy, myself and Bugatow, I wish everyone a Happy Christmas.
"As we all know, Christmas is that mystical time of year when the ghost of Jesus rises from the grave to feed on the flesh of the living. So we all sing Christmas carols to lull him back to sleep." -Peter Griffin, A Very Special Family Guy Freakin' Christmas.
Friday, December 23, 2011
Iowa Republican Caucus
If you have been following the republican nomination process at all this year, you have had the privilege of watching a grade A circus for free. Now, I'm from Iowa, I know Iowa politically like the back of my lever pulling hand and I've basically had my top 3 picked for months now. Before I get into that though, a little explanation of how Iowa Caucuses work. For a candidate to be viable in each precinct they have to have a certain percentage of the voters in the room. 4 years ago, in my precinct, it was 8 people. This number is based on how many total representatives the precinct gets to the county convention. So if you have 4 delegates, you need 25% for 1 delegate. The caucuses are also not limited to a single vote, so if a group does not have enough then they can join another group. For instance, I caucused originally for Richardson, we only had 4 people so we all discussed it and went over to Obama and consequently, Obama gained an extra delegate.
Now that you, hopefully, have a decent understanding of how it works, it will make it easier to follow the logic behind my predictions. First I'll go through each of the candidates.
Bachmann - One of many social conservatives in the race, mediocre support after sinking like a stone, but she'll have her few people in each precinct
Huntsman - My favorite, but for some reason he hasn't grabbed the attention of the masses, probably dead in the water, but he hasn't really campaigned in Iowa either.
Paul - Ron Paul has a VERY loyal VERY energetic group of supporters, but at the same time he has a ceiling. He has other problems too, namely isolationism and the fact that while personally pro-life, he says its up to states to decide. He also is probably the least electable or maybe a bit more electable than Santorum. This is where the redistribution of voters plays its biggest role in my opinion. The rest of the caucus goers, or at least the free ones who's candidates are not viable, will not even touch Ron Paul. They will rally around other candidates so that someone, almost anyone, gets more delegates and not him.
Romney - He did decent 4 years ago. He's doing worse this time. He's mormon. He is seen as the guy that fires you, not the guy that you want to have a beer with. He's flip floppy out the wazoo, sometimes even in the same response. I don't have a problem with him being mormon, obviously since Huntsman is too and he is my favorite, but social conservatives do.
Gingrich - He's plummeting like a rock down a well. People remember him for what he was as speaker a guy willing to get himself dirty if it means you will be slightly dirtier. Most importantly, he took that money from Fannie and Freddy.
Rick Perry - Rick Perry and Michelle Bachmann are the biggest groups I see likely to switch candidates day-of. To everyone else, he's a joke. To social conservatives, he says a lot of the things they like, but he's just had too many idiotic moments on national tv.
Rick Santorum - The frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex. If you're not familiar with why I put that line, google "Santorum." He snagged a huge endorsement from Bob Vanderplaats a social conservative nutbag who runs some nutty organization in Iowa that thinks its influential. This is where I see the spare delegates congregating, a lot of which has to do with the endorsement.
Heres how I see the ultimate break down. The top 3 I can see being almost interchangeable too.
1.) Paul
2.) Romney
3.) Santorum
4.) Gingrich
5.) Bachmann
6.) Perry
7.) Huntsman
This brings me to the most important point. The Iowa Republican Caucuses are at a very large risk of being irrelevant. They already have a statistically horrible rate of picking the final candidate. The problem is that Iowans as a whole are slightly left of center, but very very independent. Now, this is less true for the democrats, as I have experienced their party dynamics all the way to the state level, but the Republican party caucus goers are insanely far right, social conservatives. In 2008 they chose Huckabee. So all these polls happening are dramatically under polling Santorum. In the end, if the Iowa caucuses select anyone other than Romney or Gingrich, it essentially becomes irrelevant. Paul has no staying power, his numbers in Iowa are big, but that isn't the case pretty much everywhere else. Bachman and Perry have positioned themselves so far right that most people can no longer see them off in the distance. Huntsman, well he's screwed anyway. When it comes down to it, the establishment HATES Ron Paul and they will do everything they can to make sure he doesn't get in. That leaves them with Romney's "electability" and Gingrich's brains. That leaves the rest of us with a rocking good time.
Now that you, hopefully, have a decent understanding of how it works, it will make it easier to follow the logic behind my predictions. First I'll go through each of the candidates.
Bachmann - One of many social conservatives in the race, mediocre support after sinking like a stone, but she'll have her few people in each precinct
Huntsman - My favorite, but for some reason he hasn't grabbed the attention of the masses, probably dead in the water, but he hasn't really campaigned in Iowa either.
Paul - Ron Paul has a VERY loyal VERY energetic group of supporters, but at the same time he has a ceiling. He has other problems too, namely isolationism and the fact that while personally pro-life, he says its up to states to decide. He also is probably the least electable or maybe a bit more electable than Santorum. This is where the redistribution of voters plays its biggest role in my opinion. The rest of the caucus goers, or at least the free ones who's candidates are not viable, will not even touch Ron Paul. They will rally around other candidates so that someone, almost anyone, gets more delegates and not him.
Romney - He did decent 4 years ago. He's doing worse this time. He's mormon. He is seen as the guy that fires you, not the guy that you want to have a beer with. He's flip floppy out the wazoo, sometimes even in the same response. I don't have a problem with him being mormon, obviously since Huntsman is too and he is my favorite, but social conservatives do.
Gingrich - He's plummeting like a rock down a well. People remember him for what he was as speaker a guy willing to get himself dirty if it means you will be slightly dirtier. Most importantly, he took that money from Fannie and Freddy.
Rick Perry - Rick Perry and Michelle Bachmann are the biggest groups I see likely to switch candidates day-of. To everyone else, he's a joke. To social conservatives, he says a lot of the things they like, but he's just had too many idiotic moments on national tv.
Rick Santorum - The frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex. If you're not familiar with why I put that line, google "Santorum." He snagged a huge endorsement from Bob Vanderplaats a social conservative nutbag who runs some nutty organization in Iowa that thinks its influential. This is where I see the spare delegates congregating, a lot of which has to do with the endorsement.
Heres how I see the ultimate break down. The top 3 I can see being almost interchangeable too.
1.) Paul
2.) Romney
3.) Santorum
4.) Gingrich
5.) Bachmann
6.) Perry
7.) Huntsman
This brings me to the most important point. The Iowa Republican Caucuses are at a very large risk of being irrelevant. They already have a statistically horrible rate of picking the final candidate. The problem is that Iowans as a whole are slightly left of center, but very very independent. Now, this is less true for the democrats, as I have experienced their party dynamics all the way to the state level, but the Republican party caucus goers are insanely far right, social conservatives. In 2008 they chose Huckabee. So all these polls happening are dramatically under polling Santorum. In the end, if the Iowa caucuses select anyone other than Romney or Gingrich, it essentially becomes irrelevant. Paul has no staying power, his numbers in Iowa are big, but that isn't the case pretty much everywhere else. Bachman and Perry have positioned themselves so far right that most people can no longer see them off in the distance. Huntsman, well he's screwed anyway. When it comes down to it, the establishment HATES Ron Paul and they will do everything they can to make sure he doesn't get in. That leaves them with Romney's "electability" and Gingrich's brains. That leaves the rest of us with a rocking good time.
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Gay Men and Women in the Military
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/two-navy-women-share-traditional-first-kiss-upon-ships-return/
Do you see it? It's horrifying. It's the comment stream. I did not do a count, but it looked like maybe in in 30 or so were people being positive about this. The rest were talking about how America is ruined because of this, how the bible says it is evil. One person actually said that they no longer support the troops because of the repeal of DADT. These are the people who harangue anyone who disagrees with war as not supporting the troops. I'm a pacifist, I have a deep moral objection to the existence of the military. That does not translate to me not supporting the troops. My Grandpa served in Guam, his son, my Dad's twin brother, served for years, for awhile in Germany. My Dad and his twin actually enlisted instead of waiting for the draft to call their number. The only reason my Dad didn't serve was because he failed his physical, he had a heart murmur, he now has a pacemaker and suffered 2 long years of regular seizures because his brain was not getting proper blood flow. That is what kept him out. I could name many more people I know who are or were serving, but I think its obvious I support the troops. One of the great reasons this country is so prosperous is because of the G.I. Bill. It propelled people through higher learning from their service.
Serve your country, your country serves you. Unless you're gay, then you can rot in hell, according to these nuts.
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Why Not Ron Paul?
I have many friends who are Ron Paul supporters and a few who support Obama but have Ron Paul as their runner up. I find this startlingly scary. Yes, what Ron Paul says and does is fairly straightforward and it is easy to guess his position if you understand Austrian school economics and libertarian philosophy, but there is a problem with that. When everything is so black and white, or rigid and uncompromising, you run into the same problems that communism ran into. Both theories are utopian in nature, but neither are 100% implementable, when you can't implement them 100%, then they fall apart and the utopia they purport to create are never realized. In theory, "From each according to his ability and to each according to his need" is a great straightforward idea. Everyone puts in what they can, everyone takes out what they need, no more, no less, on each account. What's the problem with that? Well people are inherently greedy and try to get the best for themselves and their family and friends. People in charge will give everything good to themselves and those close to them, people skilled at gaming the system will get more than their need. When it comes to work, if people are getting things provided to them, they are, in general, not going to put forth an exemplary performance and will likely do just what they need to get by. No reward for success means people don't strive for success. That lays out some of the problems with Communism and Marxism.
Libertarianism claims to be purely meritocracy, people get out of society according to what they put into society. The problem with this is that not everyone starts at the same point. So much lies with what level of society you are born into, if you are born into a poor family that lives in the poorest neighborhood of a city, it is almost guaranteed that you will enter kindergarten already behind students from different demographics. That right there is where a pure free market libertarian system will fall apart. By the time people reach an age where they are able to put into the system you already have people starting ahead of others simply because their parents could afford to send them to private schools and other societal reasons that would require much more in depth analysis and would distract from the focus of this posting. After a student reaches the age they can begin working full time and earning a real living, there is another separation point. Some families simply have more connections than others and you will end up with people securing jobs and careers not based solely on their abilities but tainted because they know a person who knows a person. The end result of this is almost a creation of a ruling class that keeps everyone else down and dramatically decreases social mobility. The rich get richer, the poor stay poor.
That pseudo-meritocracy is what you get with Ron Paul when it comes to economics. There is also his isolationist stance. When it comes to matching my approach to the armed forces and international affairs, I definitely lie closer on the map to Ron Paul than most other candidates, but at the same time I would never agree with him because he goes dramatically too far. Yes, we should not have been in Iraq, bombing Afghanistan to get at the Taliban was the right thing to do, but we should have gotten out long ago, Libya was more or less correctly handled, we don't need a billion bases all around the world but some, as part of a larger alliance, would not be bad. With Ron Paul we would retreat within our borders and let chaos reign throughout the world, with little care of what people are being oppressed, starved or tortured. Potentially, as with what happened during WWII, you could get a national build up of military strength that goes unchallenged and eventually that military demands to be used, and would be. I think the best example of this would be the relationship between North Korea and South Korea. North Korea has the 5th largest military in the world, the only thing keeping them from overrunning its neighbors is the American presence in and alliance with South Korea. If we pull back completely, we're leaving millions of people who are under our protection, helpless. Then there are the great progressive programs that have helped propell American society to the forefront in the world, the progressive income tax, medicaid/medicare and social security. You can judge a country based on how well it takes care of its needy, if you look at the US budget over the last few decades, huge chunks are devoted to keeping those people safe and healthy. Without social security people would need to have someone take care of them, for free, once they become unable to earn a living. A person who at 62, who has reached the end of his ability to do his job satisfactorily would have to quit and his chances of getting hired anywhere else would be slim to nil. He had better have saved up enough money to potentially last him up to 40 years or he's screwed. But it wouldn't just be him screwed, if we don't leave him to die in an alley, someone has to take care of him, and that means someone is footing the bill. That money could have been better spent in many other places. With medicare, medicaid and the Affordable care act people with pre-existing conditions are getting the treatment they need, more effectively. Preventative care increases, which has been proven to significantly decrease overall health costs and instead of having people with no insurance show up at hospitals, unable to pay and putting the bill onto taxpayers, everyone has coverage. Not only that, since everyone is in the insurance pools, costs go down for everyone. As for the progressive income tax, I don't really need to go into a lot of that. The flatter the tax the more pain on the poor and middle classes.
The point of all this, yes, Ron Paul sounds great and yes despite being in congress for decades, he is still an outsider and sticks to his principles but in an office with such power as the Presidency, you can say goodbye to the America of the last 80 years, it's rise from horrific economic times to the internet boom. All of that will be gone and in its place will be a glorious, free society, with glitter and bright lights all built on the backs of a very large majority of the country who never get to see the glitter and bright lights shine on them.
Libertarianism claims to be purely meritocracy, people get out of society according to what they put into society. The problem with this is that not everyone starts at the same point. So much lies with what level of society you are born into, if you are born into a poor family that lives in the poorest neighborhood of a city, it is almost guaranteed that you will enter kindergarten already behind students from different demographics. That right there is where a pure free market libertarian system will fall apart. By the time people reach an age where they are able to put into the system you already have people starting ahead of others simply because their parents could afford to send them to private schools and other societal reasons that would require much more in depth analysis and would distract from the focus of this posting. After a student reaches the age they can begin working full time and earning a real living, there is another separation point. Some families simply have more connections than others and you will end up with people securing jobs and careers not based solely on their abilities but tainted because they know a person who knows a person. The end result of this is almost a creation of a ruling class that keeps everyone else down and dramatically decreases social mobility. The rich get richer, the poor stay poor.
That pseudo-meritocracy is what you get with Ron Paul when it comes to economics. There is also his isolationist stance. When it comes to matching my approach to the armed forces and international affairs, I definitely lie closer on the map to Ron Paul than most other candidates, but at the same time I would never agree with him because he goes dramatically too far. Yes, we should not have been in Iraq, bombing Afghanistan to get at the Taliban was the right thing to do, but we should have gotten out long ago, Libya was more or less correctly handled, we don't need a billion bases all around the world but some, as part of a larger alliance, would not be bad. With Ron Paul we would retreat within our borders and let chaos reign throughout the world, with little care of what people are being oppressed, starved or tortured. Potentially, as with what happened during WWII, you could get a national build up of military strength that goes unchallenged and eventually that military demands to be used, and would be. I think the best example of this would be the relationship between North Korea and South Korea. North Korea has the 5th largest military in the world, the only thing keeping them from overrunning its neighbors is the American presence in and alliance with South Korea. If we pull back completely, we're leaving millions of people who are under our protection, helpless. Then there are the great progressive programs that have helped propell American society to the forefront in the world, the progressive income tax, medicaid/medicare and social security. You can judge a country based on how well it takes care of its needy, if you look at the US budget over the last few decades, huge chunks are devoted to keeping those people safe and healthy. Without social security people would need to have someone take care of them, for free, once they become unable to earn a living. A person who at 62, who has reached the end of his ability to do his job satisfactorily would have to quit and his chances of getting hired anywhere else would be slim to nil. He had better have saved up enough money to potentially last him up to 40 years or he's screwed. But it wouldn't just be him screwed, if we don't leave him to die in an alley, someone has to take care of him, and that means someone is footing the bill. That money could have been better spent in many other places. With medicare, medicaid and the Affordable care act people with pre-existing conditions are getting the treatment they need, more effectively. Preventative care increases, which has been proven to significantly decrease overall health costs and instead of having people with no insurance show up at hospitals, unable to pay and putting the bill onto taxpayers, everyone has coverage. Not only that, since everyone is in the insurance pools, costs go down for everyone. As for the progressive income tax, I don't really need to go into a lot of that. The flatter the tax the more pain on the poor and middle classes.
The point of all this, yes, Ron Paul sounds great and yes despite being in congress for decades, he is still an outsider and sticks to his principles but in an office with such power as the Presidency, you can say goodbye to the America of the last 80 years, it's rise from horrific economic times to the internet boom. All of that will be gone and in its place will be a glorious, free society, with glitter and bright lights all built on the backs of a very large majority of the country who never get to see the glitter and bright lights shine on them.
Friday, December 16, 2011
Time for a nerd post
A large majority of the posts I've made have been political in nature or center around Atheism, so today I'm going to back up a bit and dive head first into some hardcore nerdocity.
I recently had the most amazing creative experience with a few friends of mine. To start this story off, in my large circle of friends there are a few people working on their own private project, creating their own pen and paper, D&D style game, the end result being sold for profit, hopefully. To do this, they are going to need people to test their game, people who know their way around the mechanics of similar games and who would be able to look at the rules and game setup and intentionally break it all to hell. Now, their system isn't quite ready for us yet, but at the same time, the person who will be in charge of the campaign is going to need a fictional world for the test to take place in. That is where this creative experience happened.
The basic idea is that everyone present is taking on the role of God's forming this new world. Each round you roll dice to randomly generate how many power points you get to add to your power pool. When it is your turn in each round you have many options in front of you, though at the beginning the focus is primarily on continent/climate building and general geographical shaping. For us, this meant making the most absurd formations we could think of. The end result were mountain ranges with peaks around 40,000 feet, everywhere, A giant continent with a valley that slowly descends until it breaks through the crust into the mantle, climactic shifts that make constant tornadoes all over said continent, a giant underwater trench that spans the entire planet and a continent that mirrors the great valley/pit except inverted resulting in a plateau/throne at 40,000 ft. On the seventh day, Ra'kur, God of Chaos, descended upon the world and sat upon his throne. We ended up getting through the 0th and 1st of 3 eras and ended up with the aforementioned geographical and climate features as well as two races of humans vomited up by Ra'Kur accidentally, aquatic orcs, dwarves, halflings and elves.
Playing God is so fun.
I recently had the most amazing creative experience with a few friends of mine. To start this story off, in my large circle of friends there are a few people working on their own private project, creating their own pen and paper, D&D style game, the end result being sold for profit, hopefully. To do this, they are going to need people to test their game, people who know their way around the mechanics of similar games and who would be able to look at the rules and game setup and intentionally break it all to hell. Now, their system isn't quite ready for us yet, but at the same time, the person who will be in charge of the campaign is going to need a fictional world for the test to take place in. That is where this creative experience happened.
The basic idea is that everyone present is taking on the role of God's forming this new world. Each round you roll dice to randomly generate how many power points you get to add to your power pool. When it is your turn in each round you have many options in front of you, though at the beginning the focus is primarily on continent/climate building and general geographical shaping. For us, this meant making the most absurd formations we could think of. The end result were mountain ranges with peaks around 40,000 feet, everywhere, A giant continent with a valley that slowly descends until it breaks through the crust into the mantle, climactic shifts that make constant tornadoes all over said continent, a giant underwater trench that spans the entire planet and a continent that mirrors the great valley/pit except inverted resulting in a plateau/throne at 40,000 ft. On the seventh day, Ra'kur, God of Chaos, descended upon the world and sat upon his throne. We ended up getting through the 0th and 1st of 3 eras and ended up with the aforementioned geographical and climate features as well as two races of humans vomited up by Ra'Kur accidentally, aquatic orcs, dwarves, halflings and elves.
Playing God is so fun.
Monday, December 12, 2011
J-Pop America Fun Time Now
I was furious the first time I saw this skit on SNL, so this last weekend when I saw it brought back, you can imagine I was livid. The skit follows two anime/Japanese culture fans in their attempt to put on a show via campus television at Michigan State. That in itself isn't so bad, but they take J-Pop and a little bit of J-Rock attributes and twist them horribly. The two barely speak a word of real Japanese and at best their impressions can be likened to the Speed Racer cartoon of old. The worst part is, they sing songs which have very little resemblance to anything J-Pop or J-Rock. Through the whole thing their professor is adamant about how they are horrible students and are reflecting only a tiny fraction of Japanese culture. The end result is the watchers are left with the impression that anyone who enjoys J-Pop and J-Rock fits those descriptions.
J-Pop and J-Rock music has been one of my great pastimes over the last 10 years, since I began watching anime. There is something unique in the opening, ending and insert songs that go with anime in that they are often pulled from or paired with popular music. I found some of my favorite bands because they had one song that I loved, I went searching for more and I found it. Heck, Access, a band made up of two men, a singer and a composer/instrumentalist, has been around since 1992 and the composer/instrumentalist, Daisuke Asakura, has had a hand in producing countless artists during that time. I do not run around like some sort of fool, pretending that I am Japanese. Yes, I do sing along when rocking out to various songs that are entirely in Japanese, but I also do not limit myself to Japanese songs. There is one artist whose songs have English, Japanese, Russian and even some Latin all in the same song. There is a beauty to the human voice as an instrument that tends to be hidden because you know what the lyrics mean. Yes the lyrics are important and come from the heart of the artist, but when you remove that understanding you realize how much more there is underneath. Now, since I started listening I have learned a lot more Japanese, but it hasn't really overshadowed the voice as an instrument like it used to. There is also a much heavier techno-rock presence in J-Rock than anything you can really get here in the US. So it is not just the voice as an instrument but innovative uses of instruments and even singers. While there are some prominent rock bands with female lead singers here in the USA, it is not the same as how Japanese bands use them. For instance, High and Mighty Color, which has now broken up, made fantastic use of both a female singer and male singer with very different styles, but they complimented each other so well. You can see it to a lesser extent with Maximum the Hormone. Most people only ever hear the two songs from the anime "Death Note" but if you branch out to the rest of their music, you discover that their drummer, a woman, has a beautiful voice and the juxtaposition with her brother who does some singing and their main singer, a male, is fantastic and a unique experience that I have never seen, anywhere, ever.
This is the deep love and understanding I have for this "tiny aspect of Japanese culture" and this skit just ripped it apart and took a big steaming shit on it.
J-Pop and J-Rock music has been one of my great pastimes over the last 10 years, since I began watching anime. There is something unique in the opening, ending and insert songs that go with anime in that they are often pulled from or paired with popular music. I found some of my favorite bands because they had one song that I loved, I went searching for more and I found it. Heck, Access, a band made up of two men, a singer and a composer/instrumentalist, has been around since 1992 and the composer/instrumentalist, Daisuke Asakura, has had a hand in producing countless artists during that time. I do not run around like some sort of fool, pretending that I am Japanese. Yes, I do sing along when rocking out to various songs that are entirely in Japanese, but I also do not limit myself to Japanese songs. There is one artist whose songs have English, Japanese, Russian and even some Latin all in the same song. There is a beauty to the human voice as an instrument that tends to be hidden because you know what the lyrics mean. Yes the lyrics are important and come from the heart of the artist, but when you remove that understanding you realize how much more there is underneath. Now, since I started listening I have learned a lot more Japanese, but it hasn't really overshadowed the voice as an instrument like it used to. There is also a much heavier techno-rock presence in J-Rock than anything you can really get here in the US. So it is not just the voice as an instrument but innovative uses of instruments and even singers. While there are some prominent rock bands with female lead singers here in the USA, it is not the same as how Japanese bands use them. For instance, High and Mighty Color, which has now broken up, made fantastic use of both a female singer and male singer with very different styles, but they complimented each other so well. You can see it to a lesser extent with Maximum the Hormone. Most people only ever hear the two songs from the anime "Death Note" but if you branch out to the rest of their music, you discover that their drummer, a woman, has a beautiful voice and the juxtaposition with her brother who does some singing and their main singer, a male, is fantastic and a unique experience that I have never seen, anywhere, ever.
This is the deep love and understanding I have for this "tiny aspect of Japanese culture" and this skit just ripped it apart and took a big steaming shit on it.
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Terry Branstad
I grew up in Terry Branstad's Iowa. It was not a good place. The economy was stagnate. Governor Branstad was dead set on destroying anything in the public sector. That doesn't mean things like HHS and job service, but also teachers and even workers at a completely self-sufficient institution for the mentally and physically handicapped. By self-sufficient I mean that the state of Iowa and Federal Government contribute nothing to the operation of the facility. But that wasn't good enough for him. He began a series of lay offs that decimated my humble little town. My mother, a teacher, was hit. My father spent some time worried that it would hit him too, but fortunately he was pretty high up on the seniority list and he managed to escape the wrath of the be-mustached fiend sitting in Des Moines. Here is what she did in between the time she was laid off, in my elementary years, and the time she began working for the local school district, the job which she retired form 2 years ago:
-Drove an hour each way to a Job Service of Iowa job
-Transfered to a closer town so only a half hour each way to the same job
-Middle school aged special education teacher in another town
-Daycare provider
-High School Aged special education teacher, the job she retired from
Throughout this entire time my mom still spent time with her former students at the job she was laid off from. She wasn't paid for it, she took time out of her life to spend it with the deaf and blind girls she had worked with for so long. She even became guardian to two. Now tell me, is that someone whos job deserves to be cut?
Eventually Tom Vilsack came along and unseated Terry Braindead. Then Iowa thrived. The agricultural sector expanded like crazy with the innovation of ethanol fuel. Vilsack knew his way around Iowa, and by the time he willingly left office he was loved by the entire state. Terry Branstad had been governor for 4 terms before losing. Vilsack limited himself to two terms. So what happens when Vilsack, the slayer of mustaches, leaves the local stage? Terry Branstad shows up again. The man has made a career on the backs of Iowans. He's been elected again. He's tearing apart Iowa again. He appointed a democrat to a board knowing that the democrats district was likely to produce a republican which would give the republicans the majority in both houses and the governorship. Fortunately he was thwarted and a democrat was elected. Yesterday, during the republican debate, I heard him yell out that Iowa is the healthiest state in the nation. As much as I'd like to think it to be true, it isn't, Vermont has had that distinction for the last 5 years. Now it is true that Iowa has always been up there, none of it has to do with Branstad and ALL of it has to do with Vilsack and a slight bit to his rather mediocre successor Chet Culver.
I still can't believe that man was elected governor again. But, you know, its okay, because in my head, and in the head of the little munchkin I was when he laid off my mom. He will still look like Saddam Hussein to me and frankly, they have about the same moral compass.
Can you tell the difference?
-Drove an hour each way to a Job Service of Iowa job
-Transfered to a closer town so only a half hour each way to the same job
-Middle school aged special education teacher in another town
-Daycare provider
-High School Aged special education teacher, the job she retired from
Throughout this entire time my mom still spent time with her former students at the job she was laid off from. She wasn't paid for it, she took time out of her life to spend it with the deaf and blind girls she had worked with for so long. She even became guardian to two. Now tell me, is that someone whos job deserves to be cut?
Eventually Tom Vilsack came along and unseated Terry Braindead. Then Iowa thrived. The agricultural sector expanded like crazy with the innovation of ethanol fuel. Vilsack knew his way around Iowa, and by the time he willingly left office he was loved by the entire state. Terry Branstad had been governor for 4 terms before losing. Vilsack limited himself to two terms. So what happens when Vilsack, the slayer of mustaches, leaves the local stage? Terry Branstad shows up again. The man has made a career on the backs of Iowans. He's been elected again. He's tearing apart Iowa again. He appointed a democrat to a board knowing that the democrats district was likely to produce a republican which would give the republicans the majority in both houses and the governorship. Fortunately he was thwarted and a democrat was elected. Yesterday, during the republican debate, I heard him yell out that Iowa is the healthiest state in the nation. As much as I'd like to think it to be true, it isn't, Vermont has had that distinction for the last 5 years. Now it is true that Iowa has always been up there, none of it has to do with Branstad and ALL of it has to do with Vilsack and a slight bit to his rather mediocre successor Chet Culver.
I still can't believe that man was elected governor again. But, you know, its okay, because in my head, and in the head of the little munchkin I was when he laid off my mom. He will still look like Saddam Hussein to me and frankly, they have about the same moral compass.
Can you tell the difference?
Saturday, December 10, 2011
IQ compared to Religiosity
Today I saw a post going around about IQ related to how religious a person is. I don't put a whole lot of stock in it as far as pointing to some random religious person and saying that I am smarter than them, because I have quite a few religious or partially religious friends who are very intelligent. The focal point of this post, however, will be on certain trends that have been found amongst those who are non-religious. In the few places I "researched" there were some similar correlations reported. Typically atheists average about 6 IQ points higher than strict theists with people of varying degree of religiosity falling in between the two edges. While you would probably be correct in saying that Atheists in general have higher IQs, a difference of 6 points isn't a terribly large gap so in the end its not "brainiac" vs "Can't tie my shoes" but more like "Average Joe who reads the newspaper" vs "Average Joe who doesn't read the newspaper."
There are also a few racial trends, at least in the USA, there are higher rates of Atheists in the Caucasian and Asian populations but lower rates in African American and Hispanic populations. In this case I don't believe it is an inherent attribute of the race so much as the two populations are not afforded the same opportunities and education that others are lucky enough to have been born into. But the systemic prejudice here is an issue for another post.
The next demographic, age, seems to correlate with the general population's rise in Atheism. Over the last 60 years, the rate of people who are atheist, agnostic or non-religious in general has risen from 2% to about 20% of the population. That is 1 in 5 people. If you look at the distribution as well, 55% are 35 and younger, 30% are 50 and over with a peculiar 15% making up the 36-49 range. I have no data to support this, but I do believe that age range, during their formative years, coincides with the rise of evangelism, though it is also a smaller range than the other two, at least with respect to age itself.
Men are more likely to be non-religious than women.
The most important one though, in my opinion, is the rate of criminality and religiosity. One of the misconceptions of Atheism, and it is promoted heavily in many churches, is that atheists are morally corrupt and societal deviants, which transfers over into criminals. Sometimes it is only perpetuated by the perception that having a faith makes you a good person and leaves the rest unsaid about those without religion. Unfortunately for anyone who wants to perpetuate this stereotype, its dramatically false, almost to the point of non-existence. Of those incarcerated, a whopping 1/10th of 1% lack any sort of religiosity. That 1 in 1000 inmates.
So hows that "Atheists are degenerates" idea fit up against that?
There are also a few racial trends, at least in the USA, there are higher rates of Atheists in the Caucasian and Asian populations but lower rates in African American and Hispanic populations. In this case I don't believe it is an inherent attribute of the race so much as the two populations are not afforded the same opportunities and education that others are lucky enough to have been born into. But the systemic prejudice here is an issue for another post.
The next demographic, age, seems to correlate with the general population's rise in Atheism. Over the last 60 years, the rate of people who are atheist, agnostic or non-religious in general has risen from 2% to about 20% of the population. That is 1 in 5 people. If you look at the distribution as well, 55% are 35 and younger, 30% are 50 and over with a peculiar 15% making up the 36-49 range. I have no data to support this, but I do believe that age range, during their formative years, coincides with the rise of evangelism, though it is also a smaller range than the other two, at least with respect to age itself.
Men are more likely to be non-religious than women.
The most important one though, in my opinion, is the rate of criminality and religiosity. One of the misconceptions of Atheism, and it is promoted heavily in many churches, is that atheists are morally corrupt and societal deviants, which transfers over into criminals. Sometimes it is only perpetuated by the perception that having a faith makes you a good person and leaves the rest unsaid about those without religion. Unfortunately for anyone who wants to perpetuate this stereotype, its dramatically false, almost to the point of non-existence. Of those incarcerated, a whopping 1/10th of 1% lack any sort of religiosity. That 1 in 1000 inmates.
So hows that "Atheists are degenerates" idea fit up against that?
Friday, December 9, 2011
The World God Only Knows
Okay, this post will be the first of many that are brief reviews of a series I have just finished. The honor of the first post goes to "The World God Only Knows," a series that revolves around a single boy who is an expert at playing "Dating sims." If you're not familiar with that, its a decently large genre of video gaming in Japan in which you follow along as part of the story, making decisions with the goal being to strike up a relationship with one of the other characters. The end game typically being a successful relationship. I'm not really a big fan of these, they seem a little weird and have tried one. Frankly, I'd rather watch an anime or tv show than play through one of these games. But anyway, that is not the real topic of this post. In this series, there exist these sort of, spirit hunters who are spirits themselves. I use the term spirit hunters so I don't have to explain the japanese word origin. Anyway, a bunch of souls escape containment and begin jumping into humans all over the place. The only way to free the humans is to get them to fall in love, at which point the spirit hunter will gather the soul and seal it. At the beginning of the series you have a spirit hunter making a pact with the God of Conquest, a teenage boy who does nothing but play dating sims games, even in class at school, sometimes playing more than one at once. He is famous among the fans of the dating sim genre as the best there is, so of course he applies this talent to the girls who have been possessed and ends up conquering girl after girl, each of which forget it all afterwards.
So, while it was funny and enjoyable, I'd give it a 6/10. Not a waste of my time, but probably not going to watch it again.
So, while it was funny and enjoyable, I'd give it a 6/10. Not a waste of my time, but probably not going to watch it again.
The Salvation Army Turns Away Gay Couples
Most people look at the red tins outside of stores and see people volunteering their time to help out the needy. I did too up until this year. Though I am atheist, I always looked favorably upon charities even if they were religious based, because they usually help people without asking questions. This year, I learned something. The salvation army does ask questions. The salvation army does not like homosexuals. The salvation army actively opposes anything done to help out people because they are gay. The following points are from
http://www.bilerico.com/2011/11/why_you_shouldnt_donate_to_the_salvation_army_bell.php
Now, I'm sure there are plenty of people in the charity that would never turn anyone away, no matter what, and I challenge them to step forward and seize the charity and change it to help everyone, with the only requirement being that the people are in need.
Salvation Army heads. You are bad people. You should feel bad. I hope you lose sleep over the people left out in the cold because you were too bigoted to overlook how they were different than you. But most of all, you are a disgrace to the word "Charity."
http://www.bilerico.com/2011/11/why_you_shouldnt_donate_to_the_salvation_army_bell.php
- When New Zealand considered passage of the Homosexual Law Reform Act in 1986, the Salvation Army collected signatures in an attempt to get the legislation killed. The act decriminalized consensual sex between gay men. The measure passed over the charity's objections.
- In the United Kingdom, the Salvation Army actively pushed passage of an amendment to the Local Government Act. The amendment stated that local authorities "shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality" or "promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship." The law has since been repealed, but it led many schools and colleges to close LGBT student organizations out of fear they'd lose their government funding.
- In 2001, the organization tried to extract a resolution from the White House that they could ignore local non-discrimination laws that protected LGBT people. While the commitment would have applied to all employees, the group claimed that it needed the resolution so it "did not have to ordain sexually active gay ministers and did not have to provide medical benefits to the same-sex partners of employees." After lawmakers and civil rights activists revealed the Salvation Army's active resistance to non-discrimination laws, the White House admitted the charity was seeking the exemptions.
- Also in 2001, the evangelical charity actively lobbied to change how the Bush administration would distribute over $24 billion in grants and tax deductions by urging the White House deny funding to any cities or states that included LGBT non-discrimination laws. Ari Fleischer, White House press secretary, issued a statement saying the administration was denying a "regulation sought by the church to protect the right of taxpayer-funded religious organizations to discriminate against homosexuals."
- In 2004, the Salvation Army threatened to close all their soup kitchens in New York City to protest the city's decision to require all vendors and charities doing business with the city to adhere to all civil rights laws. The organization balked at having to treat gay employees equal to straight employees.
Now, I'm sure there are plenty of people in the charity that would never turn anyone away, no matter what, and I challenge them to step forward and seize the charity and change it to help everyone, with the only requirement being that the people are in need.
Salvation Army heads. You are bad people. You should feel bad. I hope you lose sleep over the people left out in the cold because you were too bigoted to overlook how they were different than you. But most of all, you are a disgrace to the word "Charity."
Thursday, December 8, 2011
To be an atheist in America
Today I read a story about the University of Connecticut. Some people were upset that the pledge of allegiance is being said before each game. Why? Because the pledge includes the words "under god" and since UCONN is a public institution, reciting such a thing as part of a school-run event, violates the separation of church and state. I first saw this posted on Facebook by a local radio station's page. The station is rather conservative, playing Limbaugh, Beck and Savage and they always try to inflame their listeners. The article was a blast at atheists. Under the article there were 4 posts, all siding with the radio station except one, mine, which simply stated "The pledge itself is unconstitutional, well at least the current one is. The original was just fine." This is 100% true, you ask any atheist around, they would have no objection to returning the pledge to how it was, without the "under god" that was added as an attempt to differentiate us from Russia way back in the day. But theres something larger here, and it goes hand in hand with Fox News's non-existant war on christmas. That is the oppressive subtext that is all around us in nearly everything we do and everywhere we go. You go to the courthouse and you might see the 10 commandments posted, or in congress, where sessions are started with prayer and people are sworn in, for the most part, on bibles. These are the people that are elected to represent us in the institution whose very existence is to protect the people from unjust behaviors of other people.
Now step back and think about it a bit, put yourself in our place. How would you feel if everywhere you went you saw such symbols displayed unabashedly. You go into court and the judge has the 10 commandments posted, or maybe he is wearing a cross that is clearly visible over his robes. Or maybe you send your children to a public school, and each day is started by the students reciting a pledge that is the antithesis of everything you believe and are raising your children to believe. Do you really think that you can get a fair shake in such a world? Will this Judge, so proud in his beliefs, give you the same treatment he would give a Christian if he knew you were an Atheist? That is what it is like to be an atheist in today's world. To LIVE everyday knowing that your core being, everything you are, makes you less of a person to those who are in power.
Atheists are currently the most hated demographic in the country.
We just count ourselves lucky that we can hide who we are, unlike many other demographics.
How horrible is it that THAT is the upside. We can hide.
Now step back and think about it a bit, put yourself in our place. How would you feel if everywhere you went you saw such symbols displayed unabashedly. You go into court and the judge has the 10 commandments posted, or maybe he is wearing a cross that is clearly visible over his robes. Or maybe you send your children to a public school, and each day is started by the students reciting a pledge that is the antithesis of everything you believe and are raising your children to believe. Do you really think that you can get a fair shake in such a world? Will this Judge, so proud in his beliefs, give you the same treatment he would give a Christian if he knew you were an Atheist? That is what it is like to be an atheist in today's world. To LIVE everyday knowing that your core being, everything you are, makes you less of a person to those who are in power.
Atheists are currently the most hated demographic in the country.
We just count ourselves lucky that we can hide who we are, unlike many other demographics.
How horrible is it that THAT is the upside. We can hide.
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Intellectual Hypocrisy
I believe I have mentioned before that I have a lot of friends with different political views than myself, and that most of them enjoy debating them as much as I do. I do know one person, though, who drives me absolutely batty. Earlier today she made a post asking people to list even a single thing that President Obama did good. As most of her friends are hardcore libertarians, almost anarchical, there were a lot of "none!" responses. Then I posted mine. Now, I could have rattled off a few myself from just off the top of my head, but I wanted to do this right so I went through politifact's promises kept list and picked out things I agreed with that were good and things I knew that would line up with a typical libertarians view point. All in all the list I made had 23 items, not including the repeal of DADT because someone had already mentioned it. The response I got from her wasn't a critique of my list, in fact I'm not even sure she read it. Based on her response she probably looked at one or two items and then typed "did you just pull all that BS off their campaign website?" From there I highlighted a few things in the list that I knew she would agree with, like reform for drug laws. Even then it was an angry "well its not good enough," befitting the current conservative all-or-nothing sentiment. These posts went on for awhile, another friend posted a critique of my list, THANK YOU, and was willing to admit a few things he liked. Having known him for something like 5 years now, this did not surprise me and I was glad he did it. Fast forward to later in the day, I did something I had been tossing around my head for months now, I challenged myself to go one week without posting anything political or about religion. It really had nothing to do with stuff that happened today and everything to do with the realization that not every one of my friends loves politics like I do and that sometimes I get a little post happy and flood the news feed with stuff. I suspect there's more than one casual acquaintance that has hidden me from their feed because of it, though that doesn't bother me a whole lot. So, all in all it is an exercise in restraint and an effort to tone it down a notch for my friends.
Incidentally, this blog was created as a way to channel said posting urges and I made a deliberate attempt to keep it separate from everything else I do in terms of usernames and real names and such.
Incidentally, this blog was created as a way to channel said posting urges and I made a deliberate attempt to keep it separate from everything else I do in terms of usernames and real names and such.
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Taxes
I think priorities for Congress and the President have been a little off since the Affordable Care Act went through. Don't get me wrong, I love the changes made to the healthcare system and it is all for the better. I started out on the fence with the mandate, but as I educated myself on the issue it became more and more obvious why it is needed for many of the changes to be successful. There is going to be a little roughness as things roll in from the program, but in the end its for the better. Most of the opposition to the act centered around the mandate and pretty much all of Obama's political capital was spent on that one thing. He paid the price for it in the 2010 election, and so did the American people as Tea Party ideologues came in. The opposition from the Tea Party candidates was directly responsible for the volatility of the market all last spring through summer and into August. This wasn't a spending issue, it was a living up to our responsibilities as a people issue. All it was was repaying our debt and instead it became tainted and twisted into some big spending problem. I'm not saying that we don't have a spending problem, its pretty clear we do, and it needs to be tackled immediately with Tax reform and cuts to military spending as well at a good look and cuts to various other areas of the government. But the debt ceiling was not the time nor issue to draw the line on. As a result our credit rating was downgraded, as I said, the market went wild, which, since we are such a driving force in the world, also affected the world economy at large. I think all of this could have been avoided if President Obama, following the Affordable Care Act, dove straight into tax reform.
Now, while there is significant blame to go around to all parties, a much larger chunk can be attributed to Republican action than to Democrats. The Bush tax cuts were meant to spur the economy back into action, and it did, a little bit, for a short while, but they weren't paid for so in the end we're cutting our income and thanks to the neocon war machine, increased our spending massively. So here are a few things that are current problems or arguments proposed by Republicans .
1.) Tax Cuts create jobs
No, they don't. They relieve pressure during tough times on businesses, but there has never been a correlation between tax cuts and hiring.
2.) Small Businesses fall into the top tax bracket.
No, they don't, or at least any businessman worth his beans would not operate his business so that he is filing his business income with his personal income tax. Like any good business man with a good business plan, would have a salary or wage for himself and attach the profits to the business itself. Doing so allows the business a lot more tax freedom and allows the owners personal taxes to be significantly smaller.
3.) Trickle down economics
Reagan's idea that more money in the hands of the richer people trickles down into the other income ranges and everybody benefits. This is patently false and if you look at the wages, wealth and social mobility from Reagan's presidency through today there is a gigantic increase in the upper levels while pretty much everyone else is staying at roughly the same income or in some cases, their incomes have decreased.
4.) Tax Brackets
The Tax Code brackets are set monetary levels that do not account for inflation/deflation so as a result, as time passes the brackets effectively lower themselves to hit more and more people who proportionately are making less and less. This would be fine if we had typical inflation/deflation cycles, but we haven't had a particularly significant deflation cycle in decades, so the end result is the upper middle/middle class paying more of the income out in taxes.
5.) The Tax code is bloated and full of holes
This is probably one of the biggest problems with the tax code, though the closing of loopholes doesn't add up to nearly enough to fix the revenue/spending problems we have, in its current state it is dramatically tougher on people who cannot afford to hire big name accountants and tax lawyers to get them the big breaks. Rick Perry had a fantastic idea in how his plan could fit on an index card that would resonate in a HUGE manner with most of the country, even if the rest of his plan was idiotic.
The best thing that can be done now to fix this is, like I've stated so far, a rewriting of the tax code.
6.) The economy is at its best when everyone is doing well
This isn't a statement advocating communism or something. An all encompassing government, ie communism, is as implementable as libertarianism in its pure form. Neither work. But if you look at the operation of the economy, a majority of product movement and monetary movement centers around those in the middle class and below. When there is high demand in those income ranges that means people who run businesses are going to be selling at a pretty good rate. That in turn means they're able to employ more people, which keeps the unemployment rate down and demand steady. Instead, we've had cuts to higher income levels, which is good for keeping supply going, but we don't have a supply problem right now, so all it does is keep that money in the higher areas and the rest of the country is left struggling.
7.) Wealth Inequality
This is something I've always struggled with because I really despise the idea of income redistribution. The problem is, if you look at history, the larger the gap in the higher percentage of wealth owners and the lower percentages, the more likely the civilization collapses. Obviously I don't see American civilization collapsing, and a lot of the free market system inherently protects against that, but the social unrest that comes with that is the real problem.
8.) Capital Gains Tax
Removal of the capital gains tax has been a huge issue for republicans for ages. The problem you have there is high income earners, CEOs and such, transfer their earnings directly into stock and by living on the profits from said stock, they end up paying a lower tax rate than people who make significantly less than them. Case and point, Warren Buffett, one of the richest men in the country, paid a lower percentage than his secretary. You also have people who can live solely off the money generated in the stock market and end up being paid for doing nothing. Also, if you remove the tax, the market will be significantly more volatile. One of the main reasons behind the tax is to encourage people to keep their money in the market. Without it you would have people trading on the slightest shifts and the volatility involved will be the likes of which has never been seen.
9.) Estate Tax
There is a huge roadblock to America being a meritocracy, that is the wealth and connections provided to certain people simply because of their birth. That dramatically decreases social mobility which can be a real hindrance on society at large. Now, of course people will just gift it before death and such, and there really isn't anything you can do about that, but you need to combat it anyway if you really want people to have wealth that they have earned. That is why I would advocate high percentages on estates.
10.) Corporate Taxes
The US has pretty competitive rates when it comes to Corporate taxes, so its not a huge issue for myself. I am kind of outside the typical democrat position on this. I don't think we need to raise taxes on corporations. In fact, I think they would be fine if they were equal to personal income tax rates. We just need to close loopholes so we don't end up with stuff like GM paying nothing in taxes despite huge profits.
11.) Repatriation of foreign profits
Currently there is a large sum of money owned by American corporations, or multinationals with a good portion of their focus on the USA. We have a tax on bringing those profits back. Now, in the past we have had a moratorium temporarily placed on this, and in the end, nothing really comes of it and once that moratorium ends the money just starts building up again. The tax needs to be scrapped all-together, or at least be extremely small, like 1%. Something to encourage them to invest the money back in our economy because there is a proportionately small loss to the tax versus the profits made on it once it has returned.
12.) Flat Tax
I often hear that a flat tax and the fair tax, which is a misnomer by the way, are fair solutions to the tax system. The problem is that it could not be farther from the truth. They are both extremely regressive taxes and the less and less you make the harder and harder it hits you. For example, say a family of four makes $40k a year, and another family of four makes $400k a year. Even with the second family perhaps paying for higher quality goods instead of being as frugal as the first family, the amount of their total earnings going to basic necessities like food, clothing and a home is going to have an enormously larger impact on the first family versus the second family. In effect they are left with a much lower percentage of their total income to spend on non-necessities and have to scrape along to survive. In turn, the higher income family is left with a huge amount of their total income. Example: The cost of living in the area is $35k, including the flat tax. That leaves $5k for one family and a whopping $365k for the other.
Finally, my proposal for the new tax code. Obviously this is just an amateur proposal, but it is rooted in arguments I have heard before from all sides and I suspect it would accepted rather positively for most people.
1.) One of the very important points is that these percentages don't apply to all of the earners income. Each bracket applies to that set amount of money, the next bracket to the next portion of the money. So a person who makes 2 million dollars, would pay one rate on the first million, and a second rate on the second million. That lends itself much more towards a fair impact on everyone involved.
2.) Another important point is to clean up the overall tax code. Scrapping nearly all the exemptions would be ideal. I would suggest leaving exemptions that are targeted towards benefiting the poor, such as exemptions for children.
3) The tiered bracket system HAS to be adjustable for inflation and deflation. For the sake of this proposal, I'll use set numbers though.
$10k and less, No income tax
$25k to $50k, 5%
$50k to $100k, 10 %
$100k to $250k, 15%
$250k to $500k, 20%
$500k to $1 million, 25%
$1 million to $10 million, 30%
$10 million to $50 million, 35%
$50 million to $250 million, 40%
$250 million to $500 million, 45%
$500 million to $1 billion, 50%
These numbers are strictly for example, I do not know what the total tax revenue would be, but the idea is to demonstrate a much broader tiered tax system. In this example, Someone who earns $50k would pay $1250 total (5% on all money above $25k). Someone who earns $100k would pay $1250 + $5000 = $6250. Someone who earns 1 billion would pay $1250 + $5,000 + $22,500 + $50,000 + $125,000 + $2,700,000 + 14,000,000 + 80,000,000 + 112,500,000 + $250,000,000 = 459,403,750
That is an effective total rate for the $1 billion earner of 45.9%.
Once again, there is no logic behind these specific numbers, this is just to illustrate a broader tax base with a more comprehensive tiered system which has less impact on lower percentage earners.
Now, while there is significant blame to go around to all parties, a much larger chunk can be attributed to Republican action than to Democrats. The Bush tax cuts were meant to spur the economy back into action, and it did, a little bit, for a short while, but they weren't paid for so in the end we're cutting our income and thanks to the neocon war machine, increased our spending massively. So here are a few things that are current problems or arguments proposed by Republicans .
1.) Tax Cuts create jobs
No, they don't. They relieve pressure during tough times on businesses, but there has never been a correlation between tax cuts and hiring.
2.) Small Businesses fall into the top tax bracket.
No, they don't, or at least any businessman worth his beans would not operate his business so that he is filing his business income with his personal income tax. Like any good business man with a good business plan, would have a salary or wage for himself and attach the profits to the business itself. Doing so allows the business a lot more tax freedom and allows the owners personal taxes to be significantly smaller.
3.) Trickle down economics
Reagan's idea that more money in the hands of the richer people trickles down into the other income ranges and everybody benefits. This is patently false and if you look at the wages, wealth and social mobility from Reagan's presidency through today there is a gigantic increase in the upper levels while pretty much everyone else is staying at roughly the same income or in some cases, their incomes have decreased.
4.) Tax Brackets
The Tax Code brackets are set monetary levels that do not account for inflation/deflation so as a result, as time passes the brackets effectively lower themselves to hit more and more people who proportionately are making less and less. This would be fine if we had typical inflation/deflation cycles, but we haven't had a particularly significant deflation cycle in decades, so the end result is the upper middle/middle class paying more of the income out in taxes.
5.) The Tax code is bloated and full of holes
This is probably one of the biggest problems with the tax code, though the closing of loopholes doesn't add up to nearly enough to fix the revenue/spending problems we have, in its current state it is dramatically tougher on people who cannot afford to hire big name accountants and tax lawyers to get them the big breaks. Rick Perry had a fantastic idea in how his plan could fit on an index card that would resonate in a HUGE manner with most of the country, even if the rest of his plan was idiotic.
The best thing that can be done now to fix this is, like I've stated so far, a rewriting of the tax code.
6.) The economy is at its best when everyone is doing well
This isn't a statement advocating communism or something. An all encompassing government, ie communism, is as implementable as libertarianism in its pure form. Neither work. But if you look at the operation of the economy, a majority of product movement and monetary movement centers around those in the middle class and below. When there is high demand in those income ranges that means people who run businesses are going to be selling at a pretty good rate. That in turn means they're able to employ more people, which keeps the unemployment rate down and demand steady. Instead, we've had cuts to higher income levels, which is good for keeping supply going, but we don't have a supply problem right now, so all it does is keep that money in the higher areas and the rest of the country is left struggling.
7.) Wealth Inequality
This is something I've always struggled with because I really despise the idea of income redistribution. The problem is, if you look at history, the larger the gap in the higher percentage of wealth owners and the lower percentages, the more likely the civilization collapses. Obviously I don't see American civilization collapsing, and a lot of the free market system inherently protects against that, but the social unrest that comes with that is the real problem.
8.) Capital Gains Tax
Removal of the capital gains tax has been a huge issue for republicans for ages. The problem you have there is high income earners, CEOs and such, transfer their earnings directly into stock and by living on the profits from said stock, they end up paying a lower tax rate than people who make significantly less than them. Case and point, Warren Buffett, one of the richest men in the country, paid a lower percentage than his secretary. You also have people who can live solely off the money generated in the stock market and end up being paid for doing nothing. Also, if you remove the tax, the market will be significantly more volatile. One of the main reasons behind the tax is to encourage people to keep their money in the market. Without it you would have people trading on the slightest shifts and the volatility involved will be the likes of which has never been seen.
9.) Estate Tax
There is a huge roadblock to America being a meritocracy, that is the wealth and connections provided to certain people simply because of their birth. That dramatically decreases social mobility which can be a real hindrance on society at large. Now, of course people will just gift it before death and such, and there really isn't anything you can do about that, but you need to combat it anyway if you really want people to have wealth that they have earned. That is why I would advocate high percentages on estates.
10.) Corporate Taxes
The US has pretty competitive rates when it comes to Corporate taxes, so its not a huge issue for myself. I am kind of outside the typical democrat position on this. I don't think we need to raise taxes on corporations. In fact, I think they would be fine if they were equal to personal income tax rates. We just need to close loopholes so we don't end up with stuff like GM paying nothing in taxes despite huge profits.
11.) Repatriation of foreign profits
Currently there is a large sum of money owned by American corporations, or multinationals with a good portion of their focus on the USA. We have a tax on bringing those profits back. Now, in the past we have had a moratorium temporarily placed on this, and in the end, nothing really comes of it and once that moratorium ends the money just starts building up again. The tax needs to be scrapped all-together, or at least be extremely small, like 1%. Something to encourage them to invest the money back in our economy because there is a proportionately small loss to the tax versus the profits made on it once it has returned.
12.) Flat Tax
I often hear that a flat tax and the fair tax, which is a misnomer by the way, are fair solutions to the tax system. The problem is that it could not be farther from the truth. They are both extremely regressive taxes and the less and less you make the harder and harder it hits you. For example, say a family of four makes $40k a year, and another family of four makes $400k a year. Even with the second family perhaps paying for higher quality goods instead of being as frugal as the first family, the amount of their total earnings going to basic necessities like food, clothing and a home is going to have an enormously larger impact on the first family versus the second family. In effect they are left with a much lower percentage of their total income to spend on non-necessities and have to scrape along to survive. In turn, the higher income family is left with a huge amount of their total income. Example: The cost of living in the area is $35k, including the flat tax. That leaves $5k for one family and a whopping $365k for the other.
Finally, my proposal for the new tax code. Obviously this is just an amateur proposal, but it is rooted in arguments I have heard before from all sides and I suspect it would accepted rather positively for most people.
1.) One of the very important points is that these percentages don't apply to all of the earners income. Each bracket applies to that set amount of money, the next bracket to the next portion of the money. So a person who makes 2 million dollars, would pay one rate on the first million, and a second rate on the second million. That lends itself much more towards a fair impact on everyone involved.
2.) Another important point is to clean up the overall tax code. Scrapping nearly all the exemptions would be ideal. I would suggest leaving exemptions that are targeted towards benefiting the poor, such as exemptions for children.
3) The tiered bracket system HAS to be adjustable for inflation and deflation. For the sake of this proposal, I'll use set numbers though.
$10k and less, No income tax
$25k to $50k, 5%
$50k to $100k, 10 %
$100k to $250k, 15%
$250k to $500k, 20%
$500k to $1 million, 25%
$1 million to $10 million, 30%
$10 million to $50 million, 35%
$50 million to $250 million, 40%
$250 million to $500 million, 45%
$500 million to $1 billion, 50%
These numbers are strictly for example, I do not know what the total tax revenue would be, but the idea is to demonstrate a much broader tiered tax system. In this example, Someone who earns $50k would pay $1250 total (5% on all money above $25k). Someone who earns $100k would pay $1250 + $5000 = $6250. Someone who earns 1 billion would pay $1250 + $5,000 + $22,500 + $50,000 + $125,000 + $2,700,000 + 14,000,000 + 80,000,000 + 112,500,000 + $250,000,000 = 459,403,750
That is an effective total rate for the $1 billion earner of 45.9%.
Once again, there is no logic behind these specific numbers, this is just to illustrate a broader tax base with a more comprehensive tiered system which has less impact on lower percentage earners.
Monday, December 5, 2011
National Defense Authorization Act
Over the last week or so there has been a lot of news on the interwebz regarding the National Defense Authorization Act and its proposal to more or less indefinitely hold citizens as terrorists. I have found this entire event extremely fascinating as I look back on where we came from, The Patriot Act, until today. Back then the Patriot Act was highly controversial but democrats couldn't really do anything to stop it and the sentiment of the populous was divided too with one side shaming the other and the other side dropping Nazi references left and right (hah, left and right). Fast forward to today and you have the killing of Anwar Al-Awlaki, an american born muslim who renounced his citizenship and declared war on the country with al-qaeda. During this entire time we have detainees in Guantanamo who, it is argued, cannot be let out because they will just attack again, but they have never seen a trial. Fast Forward to this last week and the culmination of all of this is the proposal to be able to detain American Citizens indefinitely. The cable media response to this was completely absent as they focused on the fall of the illustrious womanizer Herman Cain and the print media who, to their credit, did report it, were surprisingly lax in doing so. I watched all week, fairly ambivalent to it, as my friends repeatedly posted things about it on facebook. Now, when I say ambivalent I do not mean that I had no position. I was against the patriot act in its inception, I am in favor of trials for the Guantanamo bay detainees because everyone is entitled to due process, even if they aren't citizens. To do otherwise would be to claim non-americans are of less value to the world. But at the same time, I support the drone strike on Al-Awlaki only because he renounced citizenship. Following the train of thought that leads to those positions, you would probably guess correctly that I am vehemently against this bill, and I am. In the end though, I was not worried because the bill was essentially doomed to failure. The white house had come out many times and told the Senate that if the bill made it to the president's desk that he would veto it no matter what. Well at the end of last week, the bill finally passed. I figured it would be a fairly close vote with national security republicans crossing borders to join democrats but no, the tally was a staggering 93-7. Amongst those 93 yes's and 7 no's there wasn't really a party line. Looking at that line you would think that most of the country supported the bill, but that was not the case. The non-media populous was furious the specific amendment was even proposed. The media ignored the populous, the senators ignored the populous and in the end, the bills passing didn't get a drop of major news coverage.
Now, I'm still not terribly worried the thing will ever make it into law, because of the President's veto power, and I'm not sure how the house will vote either, but that 93/100 is more than high enough percentage to over rule the veto in the senate, which is mildly alarming. But my favorite part of all this, Tom Harkin, Senator from Iowa, someone who's political career I have followed my entire life, voted no. When I went to see the vote list yesterday, and I saw that, I was proud to be an Iowan. As proud as I was when I woke up on my birthday not so long ago to find out that an Iowa court had declared Gay Marriage legal in my beloved home state. This is one of the reasons I tease my friends, who are almost all from Nebraska, that Iowa is a better state. All Nebraska has is Omaha, which I love, but Iowa has Tom Harkin. Iowa has center-liberalism without the far-left insanity you see other places. Iowa made Tom Vilsack. Iowa will forever have my heart.
Now, I'm still not terribly worried the thing will ever make it into law, because of the President's veto power, and I'm not sure how the house will vote either, but that 93/100 is more than high enough percentage to over rule the veto in the senate, which is mildly alarming. But my favorite part of all this, Tom Harkin, Senator from Iowa, someone who's political career I have followed my entire life, voted no. When I went to see the vote list yesterday, and I saw that, I was proud to be an Iowan. As proud as I was when I woke up on my birthday not so long ago to find out that an Iowa court had declared Gay Marriage legal in my beloved home state. This is one of the reasons I tease my friends, who are almost all from Nebraska, that Iowa is a better state. All Nebraska has is Omaha, which I love, but Iowa has Tom Harkin. Iowa has center-liberalism without the far-left insanity you see other places. Iowa made Tom Vilsack. Iowa will forever have my heart.
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Anti-Intellectualism
For some time now there has been a growing sentiment amongst a segment of the population that makes up a much larger portion of the American citizenry than it should. This isn't breaking news or anything, but to someone such as myself, who is constantly trying to objectively study, well, everything, this is quite perplexing. Today while watching the morning news I saw a clip of some back and forth banter between Michelle Bachmann and Newt Gingrich. What makes it even more perplexing is that both are products of academia. Gingrich, prior to entering public service, was professor of history and has a PhD in said discipline while Bachmann was a tax lawyer. Now, Gingrich, to his credit, doesn't really hide his academic background, but it does sort of open him up to right wing attacks on the percieved elitism of academia versus the rest of the country. Yesterday, Bachmann seized on this and attacked the former speaker with this, "Speaker Gingrich is a professor and professors do not like to be challenged." Now, with her making this statement, it really makes you wonder what sort of academic world Bachmann came out of. Sure, everybody has some sort of bias and some people have trouble seeing when they may be wrong, but anyone who has had any sort of academia exposure surely knows that degrees on many levels, particularly PhD's, tend to bring forth rather large amounts of peer review and a handy little event or events where people are required to present and defend their assertions to those similarly or more experienced in the field. Heck, the entire credibility of the institution relies upon it.
I'd really like to attend those academic conferences the professors that Bachmann is reffering to attend. They must be absolute war zones.
I'd really like to attend those academic conferences the professors that Bachmann is reffering to attend. They must be absolute war zones.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
DFC and DFC and DFC
For years now I've wanted to broaden my programming ability by making something actually useful to me. For awhile it was a spell planner for the recreation of Magestorm an FPS RPG from Mythic Entertainment, but that was only mildly useful and needlessly complicated for the medium I wanted to polish my skills in compared to other, better ways to do it. Then there was a replacement program for D&D e-tools, a piece of software used to create D&D characters that was horribly designed and became more and more bloated the more modules you added (details from other books). Plus the overall project would have been huge if I wanted to do it right. I have finally decided on one that I think I can pull off and will have lots of fun with because it is essentially a recreation of the first real game addiction I ever had, Darkness Falls: The Crusade. It's a MUD also made my Mythic Entertainment in the 1990s that drained away a ton of my free time for about 5 years and was part of the inspiration for Dark Age of Camelot. Theres not a lot of actual graphics outside of the basic program GUI that needs making, which is probably my biggest weakness since I have no graphic arts skills, period. Content-wise, almost all of the game is in my head with the exception of exploration areas which are completely a creative element as opposed to mechanics and programming. The best part is I get to make changes to the game that I always thought needed to be made but that the staff never implemented, essentially like a WoW player having his own say over how the game is updated. The best part, my favorite character name I used in the game, "Draken", named after my cat from back then, "Drake", with a little effort can be reworked to my own parodical twist on the new games name, "Drakens's Falls: The Crusade." Okay, off to work!
Monday, November 21, 2011
Fox News and MSNBC and Fox News
Over the years I've had many friends inquire as to why me, a fairly liberal person, watches Fox News and listens to talk radio. I've had many reasons and they all still play a role in why I continue such an act of masochism. Part of it relates to me being, at my very core, a contrary person. Ever since I was little I had to be different, could never do anything the way the other kids were doing it. I hated liking something that everybody else liked because it seemed to lessen the value I had on it, as if I was only going along with the crowd, I wanted something pure, something I truly like for myself, it took me until about the 17th year of my life to find it in gaming friends and about my 22nd to find it in local friends. I've been aware of this for years now, and I am aware that it is not a real reason to like or dislike something, so I try to focus it and I'm usually successful, but not always, such is life. Anyway, listening to such harshly different media outlets fits perfectly in that sense. I take in what they are saying and because it is the predominant opinion surrounding me at said moment, I am able to focus this counter-populism feeling towards dissecting and analyzing the argument, or even on some days, just firing myself up. It doesn't always work, sometimes I get irritated and turn the channel, other days I get inspired and make brilliant new observations I've never noticed before. There is, however, one thing that came out of this, unintentionally, at least at first, that has now become the primary reason I keep a portion of conservative media in my life. That reason is that by exposing yourself to differing viewpoints, you help ground yourself in your own viewpoints and it helps you spot holes in your argument that you and those with like minds around you might not have seen, or even, random number generator forbid, show you that you are wrong. I have seen this with one acquaintance who works in D.C. at a libertarian cause promoting organization. He is a very intelligent person, he has a bachelors degree from the same college that I attend and to his credit never falls to name calling or any illogical fallacy like it during discussions. However, outside of the few discussions we have on facebook on each others posts, it is pretty clear that he is surrounded constantly by those with like minds and as a result has begun to get a sort of tunnel vision on political reality, suffering from a sort of groupthink. That is not to say that he just inserts himself into a social circle and sponges the intellectual climate and makes it his own, he came to his conclusions prior to this, is very capable of forming a coherent argument, but I think he enjoys the company of like minded individuals as opposed to scholarly discussion and banter, and his position suffers as a result. This is exactly the kind of thing that I never want to see happen to me, so I watch fox news, I listen to Hannity, Limbaugh and Beck, I take in what they say, compare it to presentations I've seen, heard or read elsewhere and try my best to reach the truth. In the process of exposing myself to so many sources, it is not hard to tell where the integrity lies and the lies harm integrity and that is why I believe it is categorically false to even imply that Fox News and MSNBC are of the same make when it comes to media outlets.
So let's start off at the obvious starting point, that Fox News is the right wing news source for America and that MSNBC is the equivalent left wing source. I don't think this assertion is completely wrong, it is obvious that the powers that be in both lean a certain direction, or at the very least, lean in said direction as part of a profit motive, but I think it is somewhat lazy. I've observed both sources throughout the day and there is a stark difference in programming. While Fox takes a much heavier hand towards hosted shows, directed by individuals, MSNBC clearly has a much more panel oriented system. As you watch throughout the daytime hours on Fox, you will notice a very solo oriented vibe on most of the shows and while some may have panels, they are clearly heavily weighted in one direction and the odd ball out liberal is often pushed to the side or clearly not given equal credence as the others. Conversely, on MSNBC, you see a panel setup for entire shows or at the very least a portion of a said show devoted to such discussion. That, however, is not where the difference ends, within this panel style setting there is almost always someone acting as the mouthpiece of each side and they are not dismissed simply because of their viewpoints. In the majority of these shows, the mouthpieces are really just that, acting on the behalf of their party, and that is not a terrible thing, though it does wear on the listener and become quite obvious at times even making it rather entertaining to see them jump through hoops (both sides) to defend their view. But then you have the Dylan Ratigan show. To this day, I think that the DRS is probably the only show I've consistently seen where the host sits everybody down and genuinely says "I want to hear and understand what you think about this, how you came to that conclusion and how you feel about the other viewpoints being expressed." It is a true roundtable discussion that you really don't see anymore. I think Fox's closest equivalent is the O'Reilly Factor and there all you have is the host badgering people when they suggest he might be wrong. But you don't really get that a whole lot with MSNBC, in fact, this last week, I was struck by a move Chris Matthews pulled on his show that even caught one of his panelists off guard. As they were closing down the segment, Matthews had set time aside to apologize on air to a republican strategist because he had expressed, of screen, that he had felt jipped in a prior appearance. The strategist who was there for a different issue was clearly caught off guard and Matthews made a point of saying that on his show people are welcome to express their viewpoint and he didn't want to reach the point where his show didn't allow that. He then proceeded to give the person the time needed to present the argument and left it with that. You don't see that sort of thing happen at fox news, when they admit they were wrong with something, they don't point it out for people to see. At best, you will get a brief apology on the host's section of the website and to be fair, if the offender was Bill O'Reilly, he has been known to offer corrections of himself, though they always seem very smug and unapologetic.
Next up, Mislabeling. I think this is probably the most egregious and overt thing a news outlet could do and in this instance, Fox News takes the cake. It may have happened once or twice, but it happens so frequently and in such clearly calculated places at Fox that it is clearly an attempt to taint the story. In fact, I'm not even sure Fox bothers apologizing for it these days. In case you're not familiar with what I am talking about, whenever a news story happens or press conferences are being held, Fox will observe what party the person being speaking is and then proceed to change their party alignment to present Republicans and conservatives in a better light. There is no better example than what Fox tried to pull with the recent voter referendum in Ohio. So, in case people aren't aware, I'll dive into that a bit to give a little better perspective. Ohio's current governor is John Kasich, a republican who used to be all up in it at Fox News. One of the first things he did upon coming into office along with majorities in the state house and state senate as to roll back collective bargaining rights of unions. Since democrats had absolutely no power to prevent this it was pushed through basically unobstructed, until it met the Ohio populace that is. The Ohio populace is VERY worker and union friendly, this did not sit well with them, this made all the more obvious that when the signed petitions were presented for verification, there were so many that the state government had to make sure that the floor of the building they were being brought to could support the massive weight of all the piles and piles of paper. Needless to say, the referendum won in a landslide and the law was repealed, a huge slap in the face of the Ohio Republican Party. Along with this, Kasich, who had barely won his election in the first place with 49% of the vote, was being ravaged by dismal approval ratings and polls saying that if the previous election as re-held again, he'd lose handedly. So, Kasich, like any governor after such a resounding defeat, held a press conference to concede that he was wrong, and to his credit, he did admit he over reached, but thats not the issue here. Fox News, seeing this coming decided that it was time to break out the old mislabeling machine and promptly declared him the Democratic Governor of Ohio. Image compliments of Dailykos.
I think that is enough for tonight, I put significant more thought into this post than my normal blog posts and while I could go on and on about why they are not the same, I think everyone reading gets the idea. I don't claim that MSNBC is infallible and that everyone should just go watch it because it is right and everything else is wrong, but it clearly has a better understanding of how journalistic integrity works as well as...well...facts.
So let's start off at the obvious starting point, that Fox News is the right wing news source for America and that MSNBC is the equivalent left wing source. I don't think this assertion is completely wrong, it is obvious that the powers that be in both lean a certain direction, or at the very least, lean in said direction as part of a profit motive, but I think it is somewhat lazy. I've observed both sources throughout the day and there is a stark difference in programming. While Fox takes a much heavier hand towards hosted shows, directed by individuals, MSNBC clearly has a much more panel oriented system. As you watch throughout the daytime hours on Fox, you will notice a very solo oriented vibe on most of the shows and while some may have panels, they are clearly heavily weighted in one direction and the odd ball out liberal is often pushed to the side or clearly not given equal credence as the others. Conversely, on MSNBC, you see a panel setup for entire shows or at the very least a portion of a said show devoted to such discussion. That, however, is not where the difference ends, within this panel style setting there is almost always someone acting as the mouthpiece of each side and they are not dismissed simply because of their viewpoints. In the majority of these shows, the mouthpieces are really just that, acting on the behalf of their party, and that is not a terrible thing, though it does wear on the listener and become quite obvious at times even making it rather entertaining to see them jump through hoops (both sides) to defend their view. But then you have the Dylan Ratigan show. To this day, I think that the DRS is probably the only show I've consistently seen where the host sits everybody down and genuinely says "I want to hear and understand what you think about this, how you came to that conclusion and how you feel about the other viewpoints being expressed." It is a true roundtable discussion that you really don't see anymore. I think Fox's closest equivalent is the O'Reilly Factor and there all you have is the host badgering people when they suggest he might be wrong. But you don't really get that a whole lot with MSNBC, in fact, this last week, I was struck by a move Chris Matthews pulled on his show that even caught one of his panelists off guard. As they were closing down the segment, Matthews had set time aside to apologize on air to a republican strategist because he had expressed, of screen, that he had felt jipped in a prior appearance. The strategist who was there for a different issue was clearly caught off guard and Matthews made a point of saying that on his show people are welcome to express their viewpoint and he didn't want to reach the point where his show didn't allow that. He then proceeded to give the person the time needed to present the argument and left it with that. You don't see that sort of thing happen at fox news, when they admit they were wrong with something, they don't point it out for people to see. At best, you will get a brief apology on the host's section of the website and to be fair, if the offender was Bill O'Reilly, he has been known to offer corrections of himself, though they always seem very smug and unapologetic.
Next up, Mislabeling. I think this is probably the most egregious and overt thing a news outlet could do and in this instance, Fox News takes the cake. It may have happened once or twice, but it happens so frequently and in such clearly calculated places at Fox that it is clearly an attempt to taint the story. In fact, I'm not even sure Fox bothers apologizing for it these days. In case you're not familiar with what I am talking about, whenever a news story happens or press conferences are being held, Fox will observe what party the person being speaking is and then proceed to change their party alignment to present Republicans and conservatives in a better light. There is no better example than what Fox tried to pull with the recent voter referendum in Ohio. So, in case people aren't aware, I'll dive into that a bit to give a little better perspective. Ohio's current governor is John Kasich, a republican who used to be all up in it at Fox News. One of the first things he did upon coming into office along with majorities in the state house and state senate as to roll back collective bargaining rights of unions. Since democrats had absolutely no power to prevent this it was pushed through basically unobstructed, until it met the Ohio populace that is. The Ohio populace is VERY worker and union friendly, this did not sit well with them, this made all the more obvious that when the signed petitions were presented for verification, there were so many that the state government had to make sure that the floor of the building they were being brought to could support the massive weight of all the piles and piles of paper. Needless to say, the referendum won in a landslide and the law was repealed, a huge slap in the face of the Ohio Republican Party. Along with this, Kasich, who had barely won his election in the first place with 49% of the vote, was being ravaged by dismal approval ratings and polls saying that if the previous election as re-held again, he'd lose handedly. So, Kasich, like any governor after such a resounding defeat, held a press conference to concede that he was wrong, and to his credit, he did admit he over reached, but thats not the issue here. Fox News, seeing this coming decided that it was time to break out the old mislabeling machine and promptly declared him the Democratic Governor of Ohio. Image compliments of Dailykos.
I think that is enough for tonight, I put significant more thought into this post than my normal blog posts and while I could go on and on about why they are not the same, I think everyone reading gets the idea. I don't claim that MSNBC is infallible and that everyone should just go watch it because it is right and everything else is wrong, but it clearly has a better understanding of how journalistic integrity works as well as...well...facts.
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Libertarianism and Atheism and Libertarianism
Been a little downtime, my laptop fell off my end table last week and went kaputski. The joke of it all being that I had two hard drives in it, one I booted off of, which was about a month old, and the other that came with the laptop which had started going bad but was still in working condition so I kept it to store a few extras things on. Guess which one of the two hard drives was completely bricked? Anyway, it was no big loss since I have quadruple redundancy (4 identical computers with nearly identical filesystems) so all I lost was the mobility of my laptop and the tabs I keep open in firefox. Anyway, I'm back, and on to today's two cents.
Since I don't have a profile setup yet I'll preface the real content of this post with an explanation about myself. Politically, I've always been very liberal, socially and economically. It used to be that I approached my political beliefs with the understanding that while Marxism was utopian in theory, basic human nature would prevent it from ever being implementable and therefore largely useless as a political theory. This meant taking note of observations made by Marx and other scholars and applying them in vastly smaller scale than across the entirety of life. Socially speaking, I was very center of the road. I grew up in a house with a very religious mother, though not in an oppressive manner. My mother raised my sister and myself in a Baptist church with good people, though we were never really strictly denominational so much as the community there was fabulous and she wanted us around good people. I am now atheist, having accidentally outed myself over facebook to my Dad awhile back and then him accidentally outing me to my mom earlier this year. I am now 27, and I'd say the first time I first contemplated anything like a non-christian universe was probably around age 16, and the transition to atheist was a gradual process and not really triggered by any one event so much as my own contemplation and observations of how the religious right has risen to power and gone against everything their religion stands for by preaching hate. I don't hold Christianity responsible, I hold man responsible, who in Christianity's own admission, is fallible. As an example of my intellectual transition, when I was in my teens I was of the mindset that homosexuality was not so much evil, but unnatural and illogical, but I didn't hate because of it. I was weakly siding with Don't Ask Don't Tell supporters because frankly, I was 14, didn't know any better and the only gay person I knew was my uncle who I never really saw. As gay marriage became more and more of an issue, I was more of the mindset "let them have civil unions" though I frequently pointed out to people that marriage was a financial transaction long before it was anything religious. This was the compromising, naive kid in me. As I became more and more of a thinker I eventually reached the final conclusion of supporter of gay rights, equality, marriage, the whole 9 yards, for all the often cited reasons like "What two consenting people do is no business of mine" and "Who the hell am I to say two people can't love each other," not to mention the fact that childhood friends came out of the closet and I met other friends who are gay/bi/transgendered and they are often better people than many I see preaching hate from the right ever could be. So along with this gradual religious perspective change came a shift in the source of my political thinking without actually changing the final conclusions. By this, I mean that the basic instances of political stance I have are roughly the same, except now, instead of coming at it from a view of Marxism and its unimplementable, lofty ideals, I come at it from a realization that Libertarianism is equally perfect in theory but unimplementable in practice. In fact, the faults of each are very similar. Marxism is an attempt to level out society but this is impossible because human nature will always create hierarchical arangement and you can never achieve said faux-equality. On the other hand, for libertarianism to work everyone has to be starting from the same point, but that is equally impossible to implement, you will always have someone with family and friend connections or inheritance that gives an unfair advantage to someone else. There isn't anything that can be done to change that and I'm not particularly fond of the government trying either.
So, now that that is all setup, its time to get into the core issue I wanted to rant about. Today a friend of mine posted how he wanted to see Andrew Napolitano asking questions during the republican debates instead of neocon fox news shills. This friend of mine has a bachelors in political science and has been a Ron Paul supporter long before most people knew who Ron Paul was. He is a very scholarly fellow and I really enjoy discussing pretty much anything with him and he is equally open to hearing my point of view. Anyway, for anyone who isn't familiar with Napolitano, he's a very libertarian person, and not the good kind like many of my friends but rather the bad kind who sees the government as inherently evil and that anyone doing anything in support of government, particularly democrats, is trying to stomp out freedom and kill capitalism. When trying to think of a way to describe him, it occurred to me that this view of two basic types of libertarians is similar to the two basic types of atheists that I have met. You have the quiet atheist person who likely doesn't speak much of his or her atheism unless the topic comes up. They are everyday people, your neighbors, your friends. They don't dislike you or your belief and think that religious or non-religious self discovery is a very personal thing and should never stop being evaluated. Then there are the militant atheists who give the rest of us a bad name. They treat religious belief as the enemy and think anyone with any sort of religion is deluded, brainwashed and or stupid. It has been my experience, through watching Napolitano on his show and other shows that he falls into the latter militant libertarian category and like militant atheists who are giving the rest of us a bad name, he gives other Libertarians like many of my friends a bad name.
As always, I write this as I begin to fall asleep and in said state, am not much for proofreading, so please be forgiving in that sense.
Since I don't have a profile setup yet I'll preface the real content of this post with an explanation about myself. Politically, I've always been very liberal, socially and economically. It used to be that I approached my political beliefs with the understanding that while Marxism was utopian in theory, basic human nature would prevent it from ever being implementable and therefore largely useless as a political theory. This meant taking note of observations made by Marx and other scholars and applying them in vastly smaller scale than across the entirety of life. Socially speaking, I was very center of the road. I grew up in a house with a very religious mother, though not in an oppressive manner. My mother raised my sister and myself in a Baptist church with good people, though we were never really strictly denominational so much as the community there was fabulous and she wanted us around good people. I am now atheist, having accidentally outed myself over facebook to my Dad awhile back and then him accidentally outing me to my mom earlier this year. I am now 27, and I'd say the first time I first contemplated anything like a non-christian universe was probably around age 16, and the transition to atheist was a gradual process and not really triggered by any one event so much as my own contemplation and observations of how the religious right has risen to power and gone against everything their religion stands for by preaching hate. I don't hold Christianity responsible, I hold man responsible, who in Christianity's own admission, is fallible. As an example of my intellectual transition, when I was in my teens I was of the mindset that homosexuality was not so much evil, but unnatural and illogical, but I didn't hate because of it. I was weakly siding with Don't Ask Don't Tell supporters because frankly, I was 14, didn't know any better and the only gay person I knew was my uncle who I never really saw. As gay marriage became more and more of an issue, I was more of the mindset "let them have civil unions" though I frequently pointed out to people that marriage was a financial transaction long before it was anything religious. This was the compromising, naive kid in me. As I became more and more of a thinker I eventually reached the final conclusion of supporter of gay rights, equality, marriage, the whole 9 yards, for all the often cited reasons like "What two consenting people do is no business of mine" and "Who the hell am I to say two people can't love each other," not to mention the fact that childhood friends came out of the closet and I met other friends who are gay/bi/transgendered and they are often better people than many I see preaching hate from the right ever could be. So along with this gradual religious perspective change came a shift in the source of my political thinking without actually changing the final conclusions. By this, I mean that the basic instances of political stance I have are roughly the same, except now, instead of coming at it from a view of Marxism and its unimplementable, lofty ideals, I come at it from a realization that Libertarianism is equally perfect in theory but unimplementable in practice. In fact, the faults of each are very similar. Marxism is an attempt to level out society but this is impossible because human nature will always create hierarchical arangement and you can never achieve said faux-equality. On the other hand, for libertarianism to work everyone has to be starting from the same point, but that is equally impossible to implement, you will always have someone with family and friend connections or inheritance that gives an unfair advantage to someone else. There isn't anything that can be done to change that and I'm not particularly fond of the government trying either.
So, now that that is all setup, its time to get into the core issue I wanted to rant about. Today a friend of mine posted how he wanted to see Andrew Napolitano asking questions during the republican debates instead of neocon fox news shills. This friend of mine has a bachelors in political science and has been a Ron Paul supporter long before most people knew who Ron Paul was. He is a very scholarly fellow and I really enjoy discussing pretty much anything with him and he is equally open to hearing my point of view. Anyway, for anyone who isn't familiar with Napolitano, he's a very libertarian person, and not the good kind like many of my friends but rather the bad kind who sees the government as inherently evil and that anyone doing anything in support of government, particularly democrats, is trying to stomp out freedom and kill capitalism. When trying to think of a way to describe him, it occurred to me that this view of two basic types of libertarians is similar to the two basic types of atheists that I have met. You have the quiet atheist person who likely doesn't speak much of his or her atheism unless the topic comes up. They are everyday people, your neighbors, your friends. They don't dislike you or your belief and think that religious or non-religious self discovery is a very personal thing and should never stop being evaluated. Then there are the militant atheists who give the rest of us a bad name. They treat religious belief as the enemy and think anyone with any sort of religion is deluded, brainwashed and or stupid. It has been my experience, through watching Napolitano on his show and other shows that he falls into the latter militant libertarian category and like militant atheists who are giving the rest of us a bad name, he gives other Libertarians like many of my friends a bad name.
As always, I write this as I begin to fall asleep and in said state, am not much for proofreading, so please be forgiving in that sense.
Friday, November 11, 2011
Herman Cain says Herman Cain is Herman Cain
Okay a whole lot has happened in the last few days, at least politically. I'm not even going to touch all the Penn State stuff, I could barely get through the time line list ESPN published on their site without vomiting. But what I want to talk about tonight isn't outside that same vein. I want to talk about the utter lack of balls that the Herman Cain campaign has, including the people over at the HermanCainPAC. My primary focus in life is to approach everything as objectively as possible and to try and treat things as they are without a bias from things around them or past events not directly related. That is why everything about the recent Cain sexual harassment revelations has irked me so much, because they are playing fast and loose with the facts of the case, are using their ability to get headlines to warp the facts and vilify the victims and in some cases the accusers. Now, I say victims and accusers for a reason, and it needs to be acknowledged that there is a difference and why some of these women are anonymous. I've heard numbers ranging from 4 to 7 separate complaints as well as people saying they have witnessed inappropriate behavior in the past while working with Cain. SO, lets start from the bottom. For certain, there are two cases that have been settled outside of court and that Cain has signed off on each settlement. That means that these two women are by Cain's own admission, victims, and that he did something wrong. In one case I believe was settled up in the millions and with a settlement that high, something happened because going to court to fight it if he was innocent would certainly be less costly. Additionally, Cain keeps talking about the reference he made to the victim about how tall she was compared to his wife. Yes, it is true that is part of one of the complaints, but it is only one incident of several that were cited. Also in these agreements, which is pretty standard for most out of court settlements, the victims were required to never speak publicly about it. That is why they, the original 2 victims reported by Politico, were listed as anonymous, because if they had come out and said anything they would have been sued into oblivion. Outside sources have since uncovered one of the women, who has been found to work in a government agency, the treasury I believe, and since having been publicly outed has been attacked relentlessly by Cain, many in the right wing radio industry and in some papers alongside the woman who came forth earlier this week with an unfortunate choice for a lawyer. Between the two women we have heard much misinformation and vilifying. It was reported by Cain's manager that the son of one of the women was a reporter at Politico and stated that it has been verified. This is not the case, there was a man working for politico over 10 months ago with the same last name as one of the victims, but who is of no relation to the victim and now works somewhere else. Additionally, said woman has had a picture of her posted on Herman Cain's PAC website and referred to as an "Ugly Bitch" while a second woman had an editorial written about her, claiming she needed to have her face painted in makeup in order to be presentable. With these two cases, what the hell kind of relevance does what either woman look like even have to do with anything? Also, one of the to women isn't selling her story or anything, she is just putting her story out there.
I'm going to cut this short, with no editing of this post because I'm really tired, and finish with a tidbit about the debate from last night. Herman Cain referred to one of the most successful Speakers of the House, Nancy Pelosi, as "Princess Nancy". To be fair, immediately following the debate he apologized, but at best I think it was a hollow apology. See this isn't the first time he's referred to her that way. When he used to do a radio show he would frequently refer to her as "Princess Nancy." I think this, and his habitual referring to himself in the third person, as very indicative of the kind of person he is. Pompous, egotistical, holier than thou with no respect for women who have worked hard in their lives to get where they are.
I'm going to cut this short, with no editing of this post because I'm really tired, and finish with a tidbit about the debate from last night. Herman Cain referred to one of the most successful Speakers of the House, Nancy Pelosi, as "Princess Nancy". To be fair, immediately following the debate he apologized, but at best I think it was a hollow apology. See this isn't the first time he's referred to her that way. When he used to do a radio show he would frequently refer to her as "Princess Nancy." I think this, and his habitual referring to himself in the third person, as very indicative of the kind of person he is. Pompous, egotistical, holier than thou with no respect for women who have worked hard in their lives to get where they are.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Anime Nebraskon 2011
So this last weekend was Anime Nebraskon, an anime convention here in Omaha with a little under 3000 attendees this year. I've had the good fortune to be with the con for a good 5 years now and its probably one of the better things I've done with my life. It is completely non-profit, completely volunteer run organization. We pride ourselves on our customer service, the first and foremost thing we are there for is to give the attendees of all ages the best possible time we can and to help people make connections with each other, not just in the local nerd community but across the country, in fact we have had a few attendees from as far away as Australia. My specific duties are fairly music oriented, in that using my own personal Japanese music collection and some provided by two others on staff, I run two events, one is a "Name that tune" panel in which myself and one of the other previously mentioned staff members select songs for teams of attendees to try and guess what series they are from. It can be surprisingly hard to be on either side of the table during this too, as I have tried the game at other cons. Anime genres and their target demographics can vary greatly both in gender and age group. Add to that the fact that the music selection we use totals close to 1500 songs and that you don't want to make it too easy by playing something you know everyone will know in two seconds. The end result is sometimes going through the first 30 seconds or so of maybe 10 songs where everyone has blank looks on their faces, and then the next 3 songs are named almost immediately. The other event is much bigger though, in duration, organization requirements and attendee interest, and that would be Karaoke. I'm very proud of the Karaoke event that we put on at Nebraskon, and it would be significantly more difficult if the other person who has ran it with me the last two years hadn't have expressed interest. With 3 days available to her she cataloged all of the music available to us, removed songs from the gaming section without lyrics and composed a long list of every song we had so that we no longer had to have the attendee ask us if we had it. She was a godsend and it made everything run so much more smooth. We have it set so there is nothing behind us in the schedule and we run from 8pm until there is nobody else left who wants to sing. Typically it ends around 2am each night (Friday/Saturday) but in 2010 our Saturday event ran until 4 am, including the extra hour for daylight savings time. Between that and being able to play any song we have or that the attendees can get to us and remove the vocals or leave them in, and provide lyrics on a big flat screen tv if needed, we probably have one of the better Karaoke events at an anime con in the country. Each year at least 2 or 3 people come up to us and compliment us on it and how much better it is than other conventions they have been to which often only last an hour or two, are very restrictive on what you can and cannot sing and may limit you to a single song the entire time.
Now, while I take great pride in both of those events, I take even more pride in the events I put on with my group of friends known locally as [RHO] or Robot House Industries. The founders and most of the others all met as students at UNO, mostly through the anime club we formed through the university, though some of us met through other means. There is a core of about 10 of us or so, but the corps overall is probably closer to 30, and 4 of us have been part of staff for awhile now, one of which is the head of the tech committee. Anyway, I digress, we have two panels that we run that are simultaneously nearly identical and completely different, and we wouldn't have it any other way, and this year we had the last minute pleasure of subbing in on a different panel because the panelist was otherwise disposed, and it oddly served as a good midpoint between the two. The three titles are: "Ethical issues in anime", "Biggest Anime Prick Contest" (The substituting one) and "Your Anime Sucks and This is Why". Now at first glance our two panels are vastly different. Ethical issues is a very intellectual theme, polite, educational and dedicated to exploring themes in anime and japanese culture overall in an open minded manner. Your Anime Sucks (YAS) on the other hand, is full of cursing, purposefully mean spirited and completely devoted to ruining your favorite series for you in an attempt to entertain everyone else in the room. I'll get to the third later since we never planned it in the first place and had it thrust upon us. Now, if you dig a bit deeper into our two panels, it is quite obvious why we are able to do both with such ease. Both are semi-roundtable discussions, primarily lead by us but also encouraging audience input at the same time. Both require a wide range of series to have been seen by the panelists to properly address the series proposed to us. Within that, both also require an ability to analyze what you have seen from many different poitns of view. With Ethics, you have to be able to detach yourself from your own point of view and look at it from the point of view of the various characters. For instance, Lelouch in Code Geass is probably one of the better character examples we've ever addressed. So much of what he does can be seen as incredibly wrong from many points of view, but at the same time, he is doing it all to make the world a better place for his sister, even at the cost of his own life. Similarly, with YAS, when someone in the audience suggests an anime for us to tear into, most often the panelists doing so are one of that series biggest fans and because they can detach themselves to analyze something objectively like in Ethics, similarly they can take that analysis, throw in colorful language and some jokingly mean spirit and you have fun for all. We love doing this panel and it easily fills the 2nd largest room we have at the con, reaching around 100 attendees and standing room only.
I was going to describe how I got conscripted to sub into the other panel, but it's 2:30 and I'm really tired, maybe some other time.
Now, while I take great pride in both of those events, I take even more pride in the events I put on with my group of friends known locally as [RHO] or Robot House Industries. The founders and most of the others all met as students at UNO, mostly through the anime club we formed through the university, though some of us met through other means. There is a core of about 10 of us or so, but the corps overall is probably closer to 30, and 4 of us have been part of staff for awhile now, one of which is the head of the tech committee. Anyway, I digress, we have two panels that we run that are simultaneously nearly identical and completely different, and we wouldn't have it any other way, and this year we had the last minute pleasure of subbing in on a different panel because the panelist was otherwise disposed, and it oddly served as a good midpoint between the two. The three titles are: "Ethical issues in anime", "Biggest Anime Prick Contest" (The substituting one) and "Your Anime Sucks and This is Why". Now at first glance our two panels are vastly different. Ethical issues is a very intellectual theme, polite, educational and dedicated to exploring themes in anime and japanese culture overall in an open minded manner. Your Anime Sucks (YAS) on the other hand, is full of cursing, purposefully mean spirited and completely devoted to ruining your favorite series for you in an attempt to entertain everyone else in the room. I'll get to the third later since we never planned it in the first place and had it thrust upon us. Now, if you dig a bit deeper into our two panels, it is quite obvious why we are able to do both with such ease. Both are semi-roundtable discussions, primarily lead by us but also encouraging audience input at the same time. Both require a wide range of series to have been seen by the panelists to properly address the series proposed to us. Within that, both also require an ability to analyze what you have seen from many different poitns of view. With Ethics, you have to be able to detach yourself from your own point of view and look at it from the point of view of the various characters. For instance, Lelouch in Code Geass is probably one of the better character examples we've ever addressed. So much of what he does can be seen as incredibly wrong from many points of view, but at the same time, he is doing it all to make the world a better place for his sister, even at the cost of his own life. Similarly, with YAS, when someone in the audience suggests an anime for us to tear into, most often the panelists doing so are one of that series biggest fans and because they can detach themselves to analyze something objectively like in Ethics, similarly they can take that analysis, throw in colorful language and some jokingly mean spirit and you have fun for all. We love doing this panel and it easily fills the 2nd largest room we have at the con, reaching around 100 attendees and standing room only.
I was going to describe how I got conscripted to sub into the other panel, but it's 2:30 and I'm really tired, maybe some other time.
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