Lindsey Lohan Nude Pictures!

Just curious how many hits I get for that title ;)

Dear Dr. Laura

What the fuck is wrong with you?  I am so sick of you right-wing crybabies.  You spew the n-word 11 times on the air, then you quit over the fact that it pissed people off?  What… the… FUCK!?!?

The reason is, I want to regain my First Amendment rights," she said. "I want to be able to say what's on my mind and in my heart and what I think is helpful and useful without somebody getting angry, some special interest group deciding this is the time to silence a voice of dissent and attack affiliates, attack sponsors. I'm sort of done with that."

Your first amendment rights?  The right to free speech?  Have you been arrested?  Has the government somehow suppressed your right to spew idiocy all over American airwaves?  No.  Calling you a dumb-ass racist bitch because you spewed racial profanity over the air IS FREEDOM OF SPEECH!   How stupid are you?  That's how it works.  You say stupid shit then we call you a racist bitch for doing it and we're all free to do so! 

Advertisers pulling out?  They have that right.  The First Amendment has nothing to do with that and does not protect you from your own stupidity.

People angry at your racist rant?  How would you silence that without infringing their first amendment rights?  You can't.

You idiots need to stop crying wolf on the First Amendment.  Personally, I think you're trying to use the First Amendment to suppress the First Amendment rights of your detractors.  Oooh, the irony.  Too bad!  Our First Amendment rights are safe for at least two more years! Nyah nyah!

Piss off.

How to Rule the World

Fear is possibly the most powerful human emotion.  It causes decent human beings to do things they would not normally do.

I had been thinking about this post all day, and idly this evening I began watching The End of America.  When she began listing off the steps required to “close an open society”, I got chills.  I realized this was exactly what I had been planning as a blog post, a satirical list of things one would need to do to became a dictator of a powerful nation and possibly conquer the world.  Then I would go on to take a few jabs at the Bush administration and probably the Obama administration as well for failing to fix the damage. You should watch this movie.  It’s creepy to review what happened in hindsight and realize how the path we were on from 2001-2008 paralleled Nazi Germany.  I mean eerie.  And it may not be over.  Obama has not walked us back from the brink, and in some cases has consciously decided to continue Bush policies we explicitly elected him to repeal.

1. Invoke An Internal and External Threat
   The obvious threat here is terrorism.  On September 11, 2001 terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center.  We were shocked, we were hurt, and we were angry.  And most of all, we were afraid.  After an attack in Germany, they passed a law that allowed the government to invade citizens privacy in the name of national security.  In America, we called it the Patriot Act.
2. Secret Prisons where Torture takes place.
   These places always operate outside the law.  They are unaccountable.  People designated enemies disappear to these places and may or may not be heard from again.  Duration and sentence is discretionary.  There is no appeal.  Torture always occurs.  Germany called them concentration camps.  In America, we called it Guantanamo Bay.  In Germany they used what they called “Versharfte Vernehmung”, which translates to Enhanced Interrogation.
3. Develop a Paramilitary Force
   Germany: The Brownshirts
   America: Blackwater
4. Surveil Ordinary Citizens
   Closing societies keep lists of potential enemies for quick round-up.  Germany had a list of Jews.  America has a high-security risk list (the no-fly list).  Take Drew Griffin, CNN journalist, who did an investigative report on the TSA only to find himself on the no-fly list. 
5. Infiltrate Citizens’ Groups
   Well documented.
6. Detain and Release Ordinary Citizens
   In America James Yee.  Maher Arar.  Countless Others.
7. Target Key Individuals
   The Dixie Chicks.  Dan Rather.  Valerie Plame. 
8. Restrict the Press
   N.Y. Times.  Izvestia.  Wikileaks.  Josh Wolf.
9. Recast Criticism as Espionage and Dissent as Treason
10. Subvert the Rule of Law.

Civil Liberties are a special commodity, and once lost, they are difficult to get back.

A patriot must be ready to defend his country against his government.

If this were a dictatorship it would be a heck of a lot easier… just so long as I’m the dictator 
–George W. Bush

Watch this movie, or read the book.  It’s frightening to realize that what happened in Germany in the 1930s could so easily happen here.  It still could.  The laws passed by the Bush administration which enable these abuses have not been repealed.  Perhaps we can trust Obama not to abuse them, perhaps not.  Can we trust the next guy?  Or the next?  It’s time to undo the damage.

I Give Up

I saw this video today about the 9/11 responders bill.  In case you were wondering, it was a bill to cover the health care of people who were ill because they were there on 9/11 and risked their lives to save others.  They ran into the giant building with an airplane stuck in in while everybody else was running out.  Something I doubt ANY single fucking politician in Washington would have the balls to do.  And we just told them, “Nice job, now go fuck off.”  Woohoo!  Go America.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
I Give Up - 9/11 Responders Bill
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

I think this sums up quite nicely how I feel.  I’m totally disillusioned.  This—GODDMAN FUCKING THIS—is how we treat our nation’s heroes.  “Thanks for saving our asses, but if it’s between you and our offshore tax shelters, fuck off.”  Our system is totally broken.  I’m no longer sure it can be saved.  I mean seriously, we can’t even PASS A GODDAMN FUCKING BILL TO TAKE CARE OF THOSE WHO SHOWED THE REST OF THE WORLD THE BEST OF AMERICA ON OUR WORST DAY EVER!?!?!? 

This shows the absolute worst of America, and that’s really saying something these days.  This is pathetic.  This is sick.  Fuck you Washington.  Fuck you Republicans.  Fuck you Democrats.  Fuck all of you.  Just…. Fuck You All.

Darkness and Light

Six billion people look up at the moon and see six billion different things.  What do you see?  I cannot say, but I see hope.  I see a beacon of light in the darkness that represents a future for our species beyond the petty bickering, political maneuvering, wars, hate, anger and bigotry of our age.  I see the chance that we might become better than we are.  That we can be something commendable to another intelligence we might someday encounter.  Mostly, that we might actually just survive who we are.

Each of us carries within us a darkness and a light.  I can remember today the horror and revulsion I felt when as a young man I discovered within myself the capacity for great evil.  Each and every one of us carries this, but we make a choice.  I chose not to embrace the darkness, but to strive for the light.  Yet, as a whole, we still have so much darkness.  Evil spreads and we don’t fight it, we cheer it on.  One among us speaks against our lesser selves, and we jeer and mock them. 

It might be that this, much like adolescence, is just a phase that our species must simply pass through.  That there’s no cure for our rampant stupidity but to just simply grow up.  We have to wait until we’ve achieved the wisdom that only comes with age.  What worries me is just how many teenagers don’t survive to adulthood.  I was nearly one of them.  let’s hope the humans make it to adulthood. 

The coming darkness might simply be inevitable.  It might be something we can’t avoid.  It can’t, and won’t last.  We’ll either destroy ourselves or dispose of the evil we are yet to do. 

For those of us who are not cheering on our lesser nature, we’ll continue to hold a light.  It is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.  I forget who said that.  Be a light.  Even if all the world is against you, be a light. 

WTF?

I'm not sure if this is a good thing or not…

Racism

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

 http://www.ep.tc/tea-party-comix/

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

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

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

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

I'm going to bed.

Capitalism vs. Socialism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ray Comfort is at it… Again

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

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

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

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

Ray Comfort: you, sir, are an asshole.

Retaliation

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

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

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

For a while.

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

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

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

Just to recap:

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

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

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

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

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

The math is a slightly harder for the Iraqi citizens.

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

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