Elitist(TM) "Let us decide. We're smarter than you."
Not sufficiently happy with with Obamacare train wreck, apparently congress is pushing Doc-Fix a bill that will allow them to use your doctor as a puppet. Well, in reality - they'll pass it off to a bunch of bureaucratic idiots with College Degrees(TM) in Worthless. And since the IRS is now running healthcare, you can get audited at the same time you go in for your colonoscopy. I mean if you're going to get reamed by the government, why not just get it over and done with.
Because any collage degree makes you wise and raises your IQ and since you were smart enough to work for the government - you obviously know better than any Doctor of Medicine, who doesn't work for the State.
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
Sunday, December 15, 2013
Totally Destroyed Student?
I think some peoples definition of totally destroyed and mine must be different. What I find amazing is that someone thought writing a letter like that was a good idea. I think the professor was a lot kinder than I would have been. I'm sure it never occurred to the student or the moron who suggested they write the letter -but perhaps if the student had been paying attention and needed a little boost in grade he might have asked the professor if he could redo some of the work, or do something for extra credit to get over the hump. Yeah doing extra work - yikes that's just not right.
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
Educational Chicken or Egg
I've been thinking about our rather sad educational system, again. It happens every time I read an article about it. Maybe it's the sites I choose, but I never see a article that says good things about the system - just that it's broken. Broken in so many ways it hard to decide which part is more screwed up.
Is it the feminization - which seems to be primarily responsible for the over diagnosis of ADHD in boys and getting them drugged - all so that they'll be more manageable in the female collective.
Is it the quality of the teachers - most of whom score in the lower percentages of college rankings?
Is it the bloat of school administration?
Is it the progressive / communist influence of political correctness and Zero Tolerance for anything except failure. Zero Tolerance which resulted in a boy being expelled because he pretended to shoot an arrow? (no bow, no arrow - just pretending) Or wore an NRA tee-shirt? or.... yeah there are a ton of examples. It's become almost a daily thing.
Is it the relatively low pay of teachers? By which I mean, did this start because we refused to pay our teachers what they could have made in private industry and thus had to accept those who couldn't make it in the private sector? If it was the dollar, then we failed a long time ago, back in the 30's or 40's at least. There is no point in raising salaries at this point - there are certainly a few that are worth it but most teachers are nothing more than pampered baby sitters. Rewarding them for continued failure is - ill-advised. Is there any surprise that the billions the teachers union raises is used to squash the idea of competition from say private school vouchers? That's our money! They scream, go get your own.
Perhaps it was getting the state involved in education at all - The only thing the state excels at is bureaucracy - dead weight, and the restriction of liberty and the individual. And that is what education has become - dead weight. In public schools - No child is allowed ahead, or all children are left behind equally. Competition something females have evolved to avoid as much as possible, has become a call for action - stamp it out! Dodgeball - state forbid, it's competition, it's barbaric, people have to choose teams and someone is always last - feelings get hurt! We might damage their unearned self-esteem, as if anyone should have to earn anything anyway. For a group (progressives) who seem to lean toward atheism, they seem to have latched on to the idea that all people were created equal, and if they weren't well then we'll just have to fix that. It's hard to make a stupid person smart, so let's just make the smart people stupid, which requires that they learn just how helpless they are - leave it to the state, let the state take care of it.
Any way you look at it - we allowed it to happen, we got too busy being told what success is, and that we needed to dedicate our lives to our careers, especially women. Then we let them ( progressives ) tell us that trades skills are icky and dirty and no one should have to do that when you can get a degree in women's studies. I often wonder - if they succeed in getting everyone a college degree - no matter how Worthless, who do they think is going to come fix the leaky faucet or clogged drains? Who's going to fix their cars? Their roads? Who's going to build their smart phones? Who's going to kill the cows for their steaks? or pluck the veggies for their salads?
I suppose that's what comes from having no connection to anything but your feelings. Nature is there to be observed, no played in, not touched, certainly not worked in. Why would you kill a defenseless animal and where the hell is my prime rib? You can't teach this stuff in schools anymore - because VIOLENCE and icky stuff and what about my feelings?
So instead of teaching Economics, and math (too hard, makes me feel stupid and everyone says I'm not stupid so it must be the math that's wrong) and competition* they teach each child that they are special but just the same as everyone else - yes unique little snowflakes just like everyone else - we simply change the definition of unique, easer that way. We teach the boys to behave like girls and the girls to want to be boys. We teach them that doing hard work is icky and no one should have to do that, and you shouldn't have to take care of your kids because it gets in the way of your career - unless it's the undocumented worker you hired to take care of your kids so you don't have to, in which case, taking care of kids is okay. Because none of this applies to them, just the everyone we decide it applies to.
* You know how to deal with being one of 250 people with college degrees trying to get a job putting icing on cup cakes - which apparently requires a degree in creative writing, communications or women's studies now... Gotta pay your dues - well maybe you just have to pay the teachers union dues.
Is it the feminization - which seems to be primarily responsible for the over diagnosis of ADHD in boys and getting them drugged - all so that they'll be more manageable in the female collective.
Is it the quality of the teachers - most of whom score in the lower percentages of college rankings?
Is it the bloat of school administration?
Is it the progressive / communist influence of political correctness and Zero Tolerance for anything except failure. Zero Tolerance which resulted in a boy being expelled because he pretended to shoot an arrow? (no bow, no arrow - just pretending) Or wore an NRA tee-shirt? or.... yeah there are a ton of examples. It's become almost a daily thing.
Is it the relatively low pay of teachers? By which I mean, did this start because we refused to pay our teachers what they could have made in private industry and thus had to accept those who couldn't make it in the private sector? If it was the dollar, then we failed a long time ago, back in the 30's or 40's at least. There is no point in raising salaries at this point - there are certainly a few that are worth it but most teachers are nothing more than pampered baby sitters. Rewarding them for continued failure is - ill-advised. Is there any surprise that the billions the teachers union raises is used to squash the idea of competition from say private school vouchers? That's our money! They scream, go get your own.
Perhaps it was getting the state involved in education at all - The only thing the state excels at is bureaucracy - dead weight, and the restriction of liberty and the individual. And that is what education has become - dead weight. In public schools - No child is allowed ahead, or all children are left behind equally. Competition something females have evolved to avoid as much as possible, has become a call for action - stamp it out! Dodgeball - state forbid, it's competition, it's barbaric, people have to choose teams and someone is always last - feelings get hurt! We might damage their unearned self-esteem, as if anyone should have to earn anything anyway. For a group (progressives) who seem to lean toward atheism, they seem to have latched on to the idea that all people were created equal, and if they weren't well then we'll just have to fix that. It's hard to make a stupid person smart, so let's just make the smart people stupid, which requires that they learn just how helpless they are - leave it to the state, let the state take care of it.
Any way you look at it - we allowed it to happen, we got too busy being told what success is, and that we needed to dedicate our lives to our careers, especially women. Then we let them ( progressives ) tell us that trades skills are icky and dirty and no one should have to do that when you can get a degree in women's studies. I often wonder - if they succeed in getting everyone a college degree - no matter how Worthless, who do they think is going to come fix the leaky faucet or clogged drains? Who's going to fix their cars? Their roads? Who's going to build their smart phones? Who's going to kill the cows for their steaks? or pluck the veggies for their salads?
I suppose that's what comes from having no connection to anything but your feelings. Nature is there to be observed, no played in, not touched, certainly not worked in. Why would you kill a defenseless animal and where the hell is my prime rib? You can't teach this stuff in schools anymore - because VIOLENCE and icky stuff and what about my feelings?
So instead of teaching Economics, and math (too hard, makes me feel stupid and everyone says I'm not stupid so it must be the math that's wrong) and competition* they teach each child that they are special but just the same as everyone else - yes unique little snowflakes just like everyone else - we simply change the definition of unique, easer that way. We teach the boys to behave like girls and the girls to want to be boys. We teach them that doing hard work is icky and no one should have to do that, and you shouldn't have to take care of your kids because it gets in the way of your career - unless it's the undocumented worker you hired to take care of your kids so you don't have to, in which case, taking care of kids is okay. Because none of this applies to them, just the everyone we decide it applies to.
* You know how to deal with being one of 250 people with college degrees trying to get a job putting icing on cup cakes - which apparently requires a degree in creative writing, communications or women's studies now... Gotta pay your dues - well maybe you just have to pay the teachers union dues.
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
STEM(S) is good
I like Mike. Mike Rowe - Dirty jobs.
He's figured out a way to make a living and he gets to smack the smug useless academia "everyone needs a college degree" types with a dirty rag. Go Mike!
Work Hard and Smart.
Respect for the Skilled Labor - you know, the guys (and gals) that actually keep everything running?
So, Mike has asked us (people who read his blog) to let people know about an upcoming STEM(S) conference in DC. Yep STEM(S)
Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Skilled Labor - you know, all those people who make it possible for the STEM people to have jobs, by actually doing all the hard physical work that results in - well... production.
So - Check it out. Please!
He's figured out a way to make a living and he gets to smack the smug useless academia "everyone needs a college degree" types with a dirty rag. Go Mike!
Work Hard and Smart.
Respect for the Skilled Labor - you know, the guys (and gals) that actually keep everything running?
So, Mike has asked us (people who read his blog) to let people know about an upcoming STEM(S) conference in DC. Yep STEM(S)
Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Skilled Labor - you know, all those people who make it possible for the STEM people to have jobs, by actually doing all the hard physical work that results in - well... production.
So - Check it out. Please!
Saturday, November 30, 2013
Selfishness
I just read an interesting piece over at the National Review about selfishness, and how people seem to dislike monetary selfishness, but don't recognize political selfishness.
While I think many of the points made by Mr. Williamson are good and his analysis of the Obamassiah is essentially accurate, I think he misses a vital point, or two.
Monetary selfishness as applied to the individual - the only real candidate for the title - is perhaps unseemly in the extreme cases but unless it leads to crime, is not really harmful to society. It's a personal problem, like halitosis. If you don't like them - don't deal with them. Eventually they die - problem solved.
Monetary selfishness as applied to the corporation is inappropriate, the whole point of corporation is money. It's the reason they exist. To consider the act of a corporation seeking a profit as selfish is just stupid. Corporations have other problems, like people thinking a non-existent entity can have ethics - people have ethics, not governments, not corporations. The more you allow the people to distance them selves from their actions within the government or the corporation the less ethical they become. They point at the corporation and say - it wasn't me, it was the corporation. As if a legal fiction written on a piece of paper had a will of it's own. Yet, again - if you don't like them, don't deal with them - vote with your pocketbook. If enough people vote NO with their pocket book, the corporation crumbles and dies. Problem solved (which is not to say the same problem won't show it's self in other places.)
Selfishness as applied to politics, and power (perhaps redundant) is much, much worse. Here we have selfishness with out constraint. The use of coercion to achieve gains in power. Everything done by politicians and governments is done at the point of a gun. Every law they pass is another excuse to point a gun at you and claim the right to kill you if you don't do what they want. When a politician who has taken power from the people and given it to the state dies, the problem is not solved. The State retains that power, voting it back to the people is next to impossible and has only been accomplished a few times at best, and generally it's lost again anyway.
No, Political selfishness is definitely the worst of the breed, and sadly the most common.
While I think many of the points made by Mr. Williamson are good and his analysis of the Obamassiah is essentially accurate, I think he misses a vital point, or two.
Monetary selfishness as applied to the individual - the only real candidate for the title - is perhaps unseemly in the extreme cases but unless it leads to crime, is not really harmful to society. It's a personal problem, like halitosis. If you don't like them - don't deal with them. Eventually they die - problem solved.
Monetary selfishness as applied to the corporation is inappropriate, the whole point of corporation is money. It's the reason they exist. To consider the act of a corporation seeking a profit as selfish is just stupid. Corporations have other problems, like people thinking a non-existent entity can have ethics - people have ethics, not governments, not corporations. The more you allow the people to distance them selves from their actions within the government or the corporation the less ethical they become. They point at the corporation and say - it wasn't me, it was the corporation. As if a legal fiction written on a piece of paper had a will of it's own. Yet, again - if you don't like them, don't deal with them - vote with your pocketbook. If enough people vote NO with their pocket book, the corporation crumbles and dies. Problem solved (which is not to say the same problem won't show it's self in other places.)
Selfishness as applied to politics, and power (perhaps redundant) is much, much worse. Here we have selfishness with out constraint. The use of coercion to achieve gains in power. Everything done by politicians and governments is done at the point of a gun. Every law they pass is another excuse to point a gun at you and claim the right to kill you if you don't do what they want. When a politician who has taken power from the people and given it to the state dies, the problem is not solved. The State retains that power, voting it back to the people is next to impossible and has only been accomplished a few times at best, and generally it's lost again anyway.
No, Political selfishness is definitely the worst of the breed, and sadly the most common.
Wednesday, October 23, 2013
There's SPAM and then there's SPAM
I've looked at a few schemes for blinding the NSA privacy attacks on U.S. Citizens. I view their activity as a direct violation of our rights. So making it hard is nothing if not patriotic from a Constitutional point of view - If you're a fan of the this administration then doing anything that might support the Constitution is considered extremist and enemies of the state - and of course you should be locked up in GitMo (yeah that place they wanted Obama to shut down and he never did.) So as long as it can be used to get rid of Enemies of the State - don't hold your breath - it won't be closing any time soon.
So Borepatch has posted several times about circumventing or corrupting the NSA attempts to violate your rights. I'm going to propose my own. I haven't spent too much time thinking this though, so I'll have missed a few things. But anything that makes their attack on our privacy harder or worth less, I view as a good thing.
Keep in mind - you're 700 times more likely to be killed by mistake as a patient in a hospital than you are to be killed by a terrorist in this country. 65,000 times if we take a 10 year slice of data that doesn't include 9/11. See any huge, expensive programs to lower those numbers? Yeah there's your tax dollars at work.
While Email Spam is useful in creating so many false positives that the system is essentially a cost burden with no useable output. I think we're missing a bet.
I'd like to see an open source app that anyone can run that has the following:
A downloadable list of "bad sites" - things that the government wouldn't approve of, and would prefer just went away - nothing illegal, just stuff they consider the territory of the extremist. How to make explosives, assassination techniques, links to web sites that are pro radical Islam, white supremacist, etc. It's a long list.
A personal list of sites, if you find something new and juicy you'll want to be able to add it.
It needs to be able to spoof your web browser, if you use firefox it should look like firefox, you just throw the data away once it's processed for links.
It should keep the data long enough to simulate browsing - following links, with enough time that it might look like your actually reading the stuff.
It should use search engines to find new and similar sites.
It needs to know when you launch your browser, and stop it's own browsing and resume if your away from keyboard for a long time - say long enough to actually read the page you were on.
It should allow you to upload site URLs to be added to the general list.
In other words - needs to act like someone is actually browsing
Runs in the back ground - 24 hours a day, creating false data.
Why? with enough people hitting these sites, and adding new ones, there will be no point in tracking it anymore - how useful is 99% false positives?
Get everyone who thinks the NSA in particular and the Government in general has a bad case of overreach to run this program.Yeah it will result in more network traffic, which I'd like to avoid. I'm starting to view it as an necessary evil.
So what happens when in addition to the email spam they get web access spam? how useful will their data be? The more false data that they can't differentiate from real data, the better.
Another option? We need a series of VPN's hosted in non-extradition countries. The VPN's should also create false access data. These sights should contain no history except in memory - and the memory should be wiped on a regular basis - eventually they'll be physically compromised, so just assume it and rebuild everything on a regular basis.
Right now TOR is broken - the NSA has compromised it. VPN's were always vulnerable to meta data collection - once the endpoints are identified, it's just a matter of tracking web site access on one end and users on inbound side. With sufficient analysis of usage time, and end point access times, you can start to get a pretty good idea of what sites people are using even though you have no idea what they really searched for. How do you fix this? Spam access to sites - for every inbound request, you create a few thousand outbound requests. Unless they've compromised the endpoint server - they're job just got a lot harder. You'd need to keep a significant portion of overlap in both the normal sites and the false positive sites, if you make it random, a pattern will emerge. In reality, a patter will emerge sooner or later anyway, you fix that by mirroring a significant percentage of requested sites. So that inbound request don't correlate to out bound connections. The downside is that you won't know if as the end user your getting current data or not, not with out some additional data. Like an add-on for the VPN that shows if the data came from the web or a mirror, and when the last update was, and if it's out of date, when it will be updated.
I'd like the meet the idiots that thought having the NSA compromise internet encryption was a good idea. Once people believe a system can be hacked - it will be, once that happens you've just compromised all e-commerce and e-banking - well done guys - you BONE HEADS. If you really think it was worth the economic cost of destroying the worlds trust in these operations - you're so screwed up in the head your hopeless.
So Borepatch has posted several times about circumventing or corrupting the NSA attempts to violate your rights. I'm going to propose my own. I haven't spent too much time thinking this though, so I'll have missed a few things. But anything that makes their attack on our privacy harder or worth less, I view as a good thing.
Keep in mind - you're 700 times more likely to be killed by mistake as a patient in a hospital than you are to be killed by a terrorist in this country. 65,000 times if we take a 10 year slice of data that doesn't include 9/11. See any huge, expensive programs to lower those numbers? Yeah there's your tax dollars at work.
While Email Spam is useful in creating so many false positives that the system is essentially a cost burden with no useable output. I think we're missing a bet.
I'd like to see an open source app that anyone can run that has the following:
A downloadable list of "bad sites" - things that the government wouldn't approve of, and would prefer just went away - nothing illegal, just stuff they consider the territory of the extremist. How to make explosives, assassination techniques, links to web sites that are pro radical Islam, white supremacist, etc. It's a long list.
A personal list of sites, if you find something new and juicy you'll want to be able to add it.
It needs to be able to spoof your web browser, if you use firefox it should look like firefox, you just throw the data away once it's processed for links.
It should keep the data long enough to simulate browsing - following links, with enough time that it might look like your actually reading the stuff.
It should use search engines to find new and similar sites.
It needs to know when you launch your browser, and stop it's own browsing and resume if your away from keyboard for a long time - say long enough to actually read the page you were on.
It should allow you to upload site URLs to be added to the general list.
In other words - needs to act like someone is actually browsing
Runs in the back ground - 24 hours a day, creating false data.
Why? with enough people hitting these sites, and adding new ones, there will be no point in tracking it anymore - how useful is 99% false positives?
Get everyone who thinks the NSA in particular and the Government in general has a bad case of overreach to run this program.Yeah it will result in more network traffic, which I'd like to avoid. I'm starting to view it as an necessary evil.
So what happens when in addition to the email spam they get web access spam? how useful will their data be? The more false data that they can't differentiate from real data, the better.
Another option? We need a series of VPN's hosted in non-extradition countries. The VPN's should also create false access data. These sights should contain no history except in memory - and the memory should be wiped on a regular basis - eventually they'll be physically compromised, so just assume it and rebuild everything on a regular basis.
Right now TOR is broken - the NSA has compromised it. VPN's were always vulnerable to meta data collection - once the endpoints are identified, it's just a matter of tracking web site access on one end and users on inbound side. With sufficient analysis of usage time, and end point access times, you can start to get a pretty good idea of what sites people are using even though you have no idea what they really searched for. How do you fix this? Spam access to sites - for every inbound request, you create a few thousand outbound requests. Unless they've compromised the endpoint server - they're job just got a lot harder. You'd need to keep a significant portion of overlap in both the normal sites and the false positive sites, if you make it random, a pattern will emerge. In reality, a patter will emerge sooner or later anyway, you fix that by mirroring a significant percentage of requested sites. So that inbound request don't correlate to out bound connections. The downside is that you won't know if as the end user your getting current data or not, not with out some additional data. Like an add-on for the VPN that shows if the data came from the web or a mirror, and when the last update was, and if it's out of date, when it will be updated.
I'd like the meet the idiots that thought having the NSA compromise internet encryption was a good idea. Once people believe a system can be hacked - it will be, once that happens you've just compromised all e-commerce and e-banking - well done guys - you BONE HEADS. If you really think it was worth the economic cost of destroying the worlds trust in these operations - you're so screwed up in the head your hopeless.
Thursday, October 17, 2013
Perfection
So I borrowed this from Blue's Blog
I've said it before - the progressive mind is one that shy's away from any sort of risk. They crave safety, security, and want to take no responsibility for their actions. - This is Perfect.
Thursday, September 19, 2013
Starbucks
I'm not really surprised, but I am disappointed. Howard Schultz posted an open letter which basically says:
Please don't bring your guns to Starbucks.
It's not a ban, it's a request. I suspect it was really an attempt to get people to stop using Starbucks as a rallying point for their gun agenda (pro or anti). He states that part very clearly, and I agree completely. Starbucks appreciation is one thing, slinging an AR across your shoulders to piss-off anti's wasn't useful, nor was it much appreciated by Starbucks - I suspect it wouldn't be appreciated by any business. If you normally strap an AR to your back, well then - good for you. But I've been around a few years, and I've NEVER seen it happen. Around here, I'd have to say it' a rare thing. Having the store full of people doing open carry as a planned even - also not useful.
As such it's a good idea, the problem was the wording. He specifically requested that we not bring guns to Starbucks, rather than reaching out to the gun community and asking them to please stop using his business as a political tool. Which I suspect we'd have complied with, I would have done so happily - Sadly, what it's going to do, is alienate gun owners, and it's not going to make the anti's any any happier at all. The upside if there is one, will be for people in the middle, those who just wish we'd both go away. The end result will be for a lot of gun rights activists to eventually find some other place to buy their coffee.
I am one of those. Not because I'm mad at Mr. Schultz, I'm not, just a bit disappointed. I'll stop going there because he very politely asked me to. Given the choice of having to handle my gun in the parking lot, or finding another coffee shop, there's really only one sensible choice.
I've been a Starbucks customer for a long time, not particularly because I like their coffee, there's really only a couple blends I really like. I'll be canceling my Starbucks card, hopefully I'll be able to get the cash back. There are lots of other coffee's quite a few I think are noticeably better than Starbucks
Please don't bring your guns to Starbucks.
It's not a ban, it's a request. I suspect it was really an attempt to get people to stop using Starbucks as a rallying point for their gun agenda (pro or anti). He states that part very clearly, and I agree completely. Starbucks appreciation is one thing, slinging an AR across your shoulders to piss-off anti's wasn't useful, nor was it much appreciated by Starbucks - I suspect it wouldn't be appreciated by any business. If you normally strap an AR to your back, well then - good for you. But I've been around a few years, and I've NEVER seen it happen. Around here, I'd have to say it' a rare thing. Having the store full of people doing open carry as a planned even - also not useful.
As such it's a good idea, the problem was the wording. He specifically requested that we not bring guns to Starbucks, rather than reaching out to the gun community and asking them to please stop using his business as a political tool. Which I suspect we'd have complied with, I would have done so happily - Sadly, what it's going to do, is alienate gun owners, and it's not going to make the anti's any any happier at all. The upside if there is one, will be for people in the middle, those who just wish we'd both go away. The end result will be for a lot of gun rights activists to eventually find some other place to buy their coffee.
I am one of those. Not because I'm mad at Mr. Schultz, I'm not, just a bit disappointed. I'll stop going there because he very politely asked me to. Given the choice of having to handle my gun in the parking lot, or finding another coffee shop, there's really only one sensible choice.
I've been a Starbucks customer for a long time, not particularly because I like their coffee, there's really only a couple blends I really like. I'll be canceling my Starbucks card, hopefully I'll be able to get the cash back. There are lots of other coffee's quite a few I think are noticeably better than Starbucks
Sunday, September 15, 2013
It's loud outside
I'm having a lazy Sunday - my back and neck are messed up, my sinuses are in rebellion. On the upside - We're having a thunderstorm. I like thunderstorms. For reasons I can't explain they always make the house feel warm and cozy. It probably has to do with not being outside in the storm.
Friday, September 6, 2013
Let's Obama Syria
It's really kind of funny at this point.
Obama has always been an apologist. Then he gets all fierce and says Assad has to go. - let's see, that was what? two years ago?
Then he draws a line in the sand. Which got crossed. Apparently a disturbed look, and a head shake is Obama's best weapon against someone who crosses a line.
Then he said - Ooooh nerve gas - bad Assad - did you really do that? Let us spend months investigating. Oh you Did? Well damn I guess we'll have to fire a warning shot with a firm promise to drop the gun and run away as soon as we fire it. That should do it right? Good - now I'll just go to congress and put everything on hold while we let congress sort it out. - Which, Oh yeah, probably should have been the case to begin with. But since the NY Times told us we had to attack, well - NYT the ultimate authority, gotta do it. So there we are - we fire and warning shot and then run away - that'll show em. - It will, it'll show them what they already knew, that they have nothing to worry about from Obama. Honestly, I don't thing Obama gives a crap what happens in Syria - if the NYT hadn't told him to do something, he's still be dancing around the topic. Which I'd have found preferable to what we're doing now.
Ultimately we'll be coming to the aid of Terrorists and radical fundamentalists against a tyrant. What exactly is the up side to this?
Obama has always been an apologist. Then he gets all fierce and says Assad has to go. - let's see, that was what? two years ago?
Then he draws a line in the sand. Which got crossed. Apparently a disturbed look, and a head shake is Obama's best weapon against someone who crosses a line.
Then he said - Ooooh nerve gas - bad Assad - did you really do that? Let us spend months investigating. Oh you Did? Well damn I guess we'll have to fire a warning shot with a firm promise to drop the gun and run away as soon as we fire it. That should do it right? Good - now I'll just go to congress and put everything on hold while we let congress sort it out. - Which, Oh yeah, probably should have been the case to begin with. But since the NY Times told us we had to attack, well - NYT the ultimate authority, gotta do it. So there we are - we fire and warning shot and then run away - that'll show em. - It will, it'll show them what they already knew, that they have nothing to worry about from Obama. Honestly, I don't thing Obama gives a crap what happens in Syria - if the NYT hadn't told him to do something, he's still be dancing around the topic. Which I'd have found preferable to what we're doing now.
Ultimately we'll be coming to the aid of Terrorists and radical fundamentalists against a tyrant. What exactly is the up side to this?
Thursday, September 5, 2013
Rents and Rent Seeking
Borepatch started a very interesting conversation about Rents - not the kind of rent most people think of when we use that word. But the Economist and apparentl,y Historian meaning of the word. To quote Borepatch:
I'm not a historian, I'm an economist (kinda sort of - it's one of my degrees, but not an occupation).
Risk adversity seems to be rather directly related to standard of living. If you're just getting by, the reward for any given risk is better - or the risk for the same reward is lower depending on your point of view. Some risks may be be unavailable to a lower standard of living. Stocks for example - if your standard of living requires every penny you can earn just to get though the week, stocks are not going to be a risk you have the ability to take or benefit from. Theft might how ever be a risk you deem worth taking - if you have little to lose, spending a few years in prison might be a minor risk for the reward. If you're making 100K a year, a couple years in prison and a prison record could be very, very expensive.
As your standard of living increases, the rewards need to be bigger for the same risk in order to tempt us. One of the ways we reduce risk is by spreading the consequences across a broader group - insurance works this way (well it's supposed to anyway). If you really want to benefit from your risk, you want to create one group that benefits from the risk and a different group that bears the cost. We create the pool of consequence bearers using, taxes, laws, regulations (laws created without over-site) - Rents in other words.
We are in essence a victim of our own success. When life get's too easy for a large group of people, it gives them time to spend on new rent schemes, and the incentive to do it.
The rise of Agriculture is probably the trigger point. A pre-agrarian society for the most part didn't have the concept of ownership. You used what you needed, when it became scarce, you moved. Eventually you learned that given enough time the scarcity would correct itself - you became migratory. You didn't own land, you used it, and only as much as you needed at the time. Taking more meant waste, waste meant scarcity, scarcity meant hardship.
With Agriculture came the idea of ownership. "We claim this land because we've invested a lot into it and now our lives depend on it". Once you go down that path it becomes obvious that more ownership means more security. Excess crops reduce risk and improve the standard of living. All of a sudden, we're worried about growth, and maintaining control over property - we now have the concept of wealth. Ownership and wealth lead to growth. Growth requires specialization. Specialization leads to productivity and more wealth. Specialization leads to specialized interests - special interest groups. Which in turn leads to rent seeking as a means of risk avoidance, and a desire to control the benefactors to a specialized group, rather than the whole and to push the consequences onto the group who doesn't benefit. - Maximize profit.
The die is cast.
Wealth leads a drive to obtain and retain wealth. It becomes a end in and of itself. The drive to obtain and retain that wealth leads to rent seeking, and effective tool for both risk reduction and transfer of wealth. Paradoxically, wealth is considered a form a freedom - which, in a desire to get more, you restrict with additional rents - around and around we go. I suspect the wealthy pursue this path believing that their wealth will keep them outside the ever tightening circle of rents while reaping the benefits. I think, in the long run, they won't like the result.
To control the proliferation of rents would require a constitution that made them extremely difficult and or painful. e.g. every rent scheme has a 1 year twilight and requires an 80% vote. The obvious upside to this is that if you spend all your time trying to raise votes to get your rent scheme extended for another year - you don't have as much time to gather votes for a new one.
When demand changes even a little bit, a vote will fail, a rent will twilight. we're no longer stuck with an ever increasing burden of rents.
As things stand now, the creation of rent schemes is handled by lobbies for special interests. So congress get's to spend all of it's time voting for an ever increasing, never decreasing heap of rents. Congress does little more than bring a document created by a special interest to the floor, unchanged and I suspect in many cases unread or at best poorly understood. Then they bargain for votes. Congress in essence has become nothing more than brokers for special interests groups, buying and selling votes.
There are other controls that would need to be put in place, and I doubt I've really done more than scratch the surface. As long as risk adversity is a part of human nature, and wealth is a measure of success we will have rent seeking. To remove wealth as a measure of success will require either a radical and global shift in how we think (good luck with that) I'm not talking about a petty little shift from capitalism to socialism or Communism, all of which are premised on ownership. I'm talking about a complete shift away from the idea of ownership. The inability to benefit from using/taking more than you need. In short - a utopia that is probably unobtainable. The other possibility is something we may obtain even though the majority of peoples don't want it - the return to the hunter/gatherer life style preceded by a rather substantial reduction in population (say 97% or so).
Liberals like to say that "government is the things we do together". Libertarians like to say that government is the use of power to take money and privilege from unfavored groups to give to favored groups.
Historians call these transfers "rents" and the desire for them "rent seeking". Rents and rent seeking seem to have been with us since the very dawn of history. -- Borepatch
I'm not a historian, I'm an economist (kinda sort of - it's one of my degrees, but not an occupation).
Risk adversity seems to be rather directly related to standard of living. If you're just getting by, the reward for any given risk is better - or the risk for the same reward is lower depending on your point of view. Some risks may be be unavailable to a lower standard of living. Stocks for example - if your standard of living requires every penny you can earn just to get though the week, stocks are not going to be a risk you have the ability to take or benefit from. Theft might how ever be a risk you deem worth taking - if you have little to lose, spending a few years in prison might be a minor risk for the reward. If you're making 100K a year, a couple years in prison and a prison record could be very, very expensive.
As your standard of living increases, the rewards need to be bigger for the same risk in order to tempt us. One of the ways we reduce risk is by spreading the consequences across a broader group - insurance works this way (well it's supposed to anyway). If you really want to benefit from your risk, you want to create one group that benefits from the risk and a different group that bears the cost. We create the pool of consequence bearers using, taxes, laws, regulations (laws created without over-site) - Rents in other words.
We are in essence a victim of our own success. When life get's too easy for a large group of people, it gives them time to spend on new rent schemes, and the incentive to do it.
The rise of Agriculture is probably the trigger point. A pre-agrarian society for the most part didn't have the concept of ownership. You used what you needed, when it became scarce, you moved. Eventually you learned that given enough time the scarcity would correct itself - you became migratory. You didn't own land, you used it, and only as much as you needed at the time. Taking more meant waste, waste meant scarcity, scarcity meant hardship.
With Agriculture came the idea of ownership. "We claim this land because we've invested a lot into it and now our lives depend on it". Once you go down that path it becomes obvious that more ownership means more security. Excess crops reduce risk and improve the standard of living. All of a sudden, we're worried about growth, and maintaining control over property - we now have the concept of wealth. Ownership and wealth lead to growth. Growth requires specialization. Specialization leads to productivity and more wealth. Specialization leads to specialized interests - special interest groups. Which in turn leads to rent seeking as a means of risk avoidance, and a desire to control the benefactors to a specialized group, rather than the whole and to push the consequences onto the group who doesn't benefit. - Maximize profit.
The die is cast.
Wealth leads a drive to obtain and retain wealth. It becomes a end in and of itself. The drive to obtain and retain that wealth leads to rent seeking, and effective tool for both risk reduction and transfer of wealth. Paradoxically, wealth is considered a form a freedom - which, in a desire to get more, you restrict with additional rents - around and around we go. I suspect the wealthy pursue this path believing that their wealth will keep them outside the ever tightening circle of rents while reaping the benefits. I think, in the long run, they won't like the result.
To control the proliferation of rents would require a constitution that made them extremely difficult and or painful. e.g. every rent scheme has a 1 year twilight and requires an 80% vote. The obvious upside to this is that if you spend all your time trying to raise votes to get your rent scheme extended for another year - you don't have as much time to gather votes for a new one.
When demand changes even a little bit, a vote will fail, a rent will twilight. we're no longer stuck with an ever increasing burden of rents.
As things stand now, the creation of rent schemes is handled by lobbies for special interests. So congress get's to spend all of it's time voting for an ever increasing, never decreasing heap of rents. Congress does little more than bring a document created by a special interest to the floor, unchanged and I suspect in many cases unread or at best poorly understood. Then they bargain for votes. Congress in essence has become nothing more than brokers for special interests groups, buying and selling votes.
There are other controls that would need to be put in place, and I doubt I've really done more than scratch the surface. As long as risk adversity is a part of human nature, and wealth is a measure of success we will have rent seeking. To remove wealth as a measure of success will require either a radical and global shift in how we think (good luck with that) I'm not talking about a petty little shift from capitalism to socialism or Communism, all of which are premised on ownership. I'm talking about a complete shift away from the idea of ownership. The inability to benefit from using/taking more than you need. In short - a utopia that is probably unobtainable. The other possibility is something we may obtain even though the majority of peoples don't want it - the return to the hunter/gatherer life style preceded by a rather substantial reduction in population (say 97% or so).
Thursday, August 29, 2013
New Species Classifiction
My Latin sucks, and I'm not a biologist, but I'll give it my best shot.
The Latin for productive is fucundia. The Latin root of parasite is parasitus, which seems pretty useful.
So I propose we create two new classifications.
Homo Fucundia - productive man
Homo Parsitus - parasitic man - or Mooch Man.
I propose this because I think there is clear evidence of an evolutionary trends (albeit - a dead end) that man as evolved away from wisdom toward to evolutionary experiments, Productivity and Parasitical.
No I can't actually site any of that evidence, I think we've clearly seen that evidence or lack thereof is irrelevant - just look at global warming.
Hmm maybe I can site some of it - if one looks at the percentage of the U.S. population that receives government support and or works for said government. Those numbers have clearly been on the climb for decades. (despite the recent drop starting in 2008, which I attribute to a couple of things, non of them are Obama)
The Latin for productive is fucundia. The Latin root of parasite is parasitus, which seems pretty useful.
So I propose we create two new classifications.
Homo Fucundia - productive man
Homo Parsitus - parasitic man - or Mooch Man.
I propose this because I think there is clear evidence of an evolutionary trends (albeit - a dead end) that man as evolved away from wisdom toward to evolutionary experiments, Productivity and Parasitical.
No I can't actually site any of that evidence, I think we've clearly seen that evidence or lack thereof is irrelevant - just look at global warming.
Hmm maybe I can site some of it - if one looks at the percentage of the U.S. population that receives government support and or works for said government. Those numbers have clearly been on the climb for decades. (despite the recent drop starting in 2008, which I attribute to a couple of things, non of them are Obama)
 | ||
| From Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis |
Note, these are growth rates, not quantities.
Saturday, August 24, 2013
Want to graduate with a 4.0?
Now is a good time to go back to college - you can get a 4.0. Why? because Obama's new plan to help colleges (who don't actually need any help) is to tie federal aid to performance - what's the measure of performance - number of graduates, how do you graduate more students, grade inflation. C is the new F. A is the new C.
How cool and ultimately useful that will be. The department of labor says, only about 20% of jobs need a college degree, yet were pumping out about 30%. Why? well it's good for the colleges, it's great for the teachers. Is it good for the students? with an average debt of $26K and lots of debt in excess of $100K and almost no empolyment opportunity for recent grads- yeah great idea. Do you really want to start your job as a janitor with $30,000 of debt, when you could spend half that, see the world and then end up in the same place with half the debt?
But he has a fix for that too. He wants to cap the payment to 10% of your disposable income, and if you don't get it paid off in 20 years we'll just let it go. So you can rack up a dept of 50K, have a disposable annual income of $1000 and pay be only $100 a year. So let's see if we assume a 0 interest load, you'll pay back $2000 of the $50,000 - Don't you wish they'd do that with your car? Or you house? Wondering who's going to eat the difference?
If you get a federal job you can stop paying after 10 years. Obviously working for the government is good and working for industry is bad. The obvious message is - BIG GOVERNMENT.
The flaw they never talk about is what happens when the costs of federal employees exceeds the income tax of the non-government employees - Government employees pay income tax too you say? OK so we discount the budget line item for salaries by 17% Think that'll solve the problem? You do? did you forget all the other stuff the government spends money on that isn't salary? Where did that money come from?
Compiled from: WSJ, ABC, NYT, and a few others.
I'd start with the WSJ, more facts less fluff.
How cool and ultimately useful that will be. The department of labor says, only about 20% of jobs need a college degree, yet were pumping out about 30%. Why? well it's good for the colleges, it's great for the teachers. Is it good for the students? with an average debt of $26K and lots of debt in excess of $100K and almost no empolyment opportunity for recent grads- yeah great idea. Do you really want to start your job as a janitor with $30,000 of debt, when you could spend half that, see the world and then end up in the same place with half the debt?
But he has a fix for that too. He wants to cap the payment to 10% of your disposable income, and if you don't get it paid off in 20 years we'll just let it go. So you can rack up a dept of 50K, have a disposable annual income of $1000 and pay be only $100 a year. So let's see if we assume a 0 interest load, you'll pay back $2000 of the $50,000 - Don't you wish they'd do that with your car? Or you house? Wondering who's going to eat the difference?
If you get a federal job you can stop paying after 10 years. Obviously working for the government is good and working for industry is bad. The obvious message is - BIG GOVERNMENT.
The flaw they never talk about is what happens when the costs of federal employees exceeds the income tax of the non-government employees - Government employees pay income tax too you say? OK so we discount the budget line item for salaries by 17% Think that'll solve the problem? You do? did you forget all the other stuff the government spends money on that isn't salary? Where did that money come from?
Compiled from: WSJ, ABC, NYT, and a few others.
I'd start with the WSJ, more facts less fluff.
Atheism
I find the concept of atheism kind of odd.
As near as I can tell, it's based on the idea of Science, and an unwillingness to believe in something you can't prove. You can't prove the existence of God, or gods - so they don't exist. OK as far as that goes. And yet, almost all science is based on finding things we can't prove, we keep looking until we can - even then we're wrong more often than not.
The atom was suggested back as far as 500 BCE maybe earlier. But we didn't really get close until around 1800 CE. That would be a long time to refuse to believe in something because there's no proof. Once we had the proof, it turned out to be wrong. Yep. The original atom which they proved existed, and hence was something you could now believe in was close but not quite right. Then we proved that atoms were made of sub atomic particles - the smallest division of matter possible - you know, Protons, Neutrons, and Electrons - Oh, wait, still not right - started believing too soon, looks like there are smaller parts. Do we have it right now? maybe maybe not.
So apparently it's OK to believe in something as long as you call it a theory - which is essentially something you believe but can't prove.
Man couldn't fly until he flew. He would never get to the moon until he got to the moon. So why do some people insist that the Divine is - I think the last term I heard was - Bullshit.
Now, You'll notice I didn't Talk about "The Bible" or "The Koran" or "The Tanakh" because that's your problem. I don't follow any of those - doesn't make them wrong, just wrong for me.
The other thing that confuses me about atheists is the vehamence that having to look at, see, or hear other people talk about "God" makes them uncomfortable. - Why? if you don't believe in God, then it should make you about as uncomfortable as people talking about unicorns. Who cares? why make a big deal out of it?
I've considered a lot of theories about why but frankly I'm not happy with any of them, maybe there isn't just one reason. Maybe it's because they don't believe a Divine being, presence or what ever would have allowed the world to become the way it is - but that's a personal perception on the part of the atheist - that the way things are is wrong - maybe it's exactly the way it's supposed to be, maybe the Divine doesn't give a damn, maybe we're too stupid to understand, maybe it's irrelevant. Maybe they don't like the idea that there's something more ... "more" than them - which seems pretty egotistic. Anyway - I don't get it.
Agnostic I understand - Don't know, don't really care - I can get behind that - but they rarely throw temper tantrums about the 10 commandments on a building or Christmas lights. Which is probably why I get them.
In the end it doesn't matter except there seems to be some evidence that believing in something is better than not.
I'm not a Christian, but I love Christmas - I love the feeling, I love the fact that people spend a few days, a week maybe a whole month acting the way the should be acting all year. I like the lights, I like the songs. I like Churches, and Synagogs, and Mosques, because it shows the best of what we can be. I really don't like organized religion but sometimes, they do some pretty nice things (Not enough to make up for the rest but some). One of the things I don't like about book based religions is the book get's used as a club to beat people over the head with, it's a weapon to show how someone else is wrong. Not a single book religion is homogenous - they're all fractured with differing interpretations - sometimes those differences can get pretty violent, and heaven forbid - you use a different book than me. Yikes.
I think it's part of human nature to turn everything into a destructive force. Makes me wonder how we've survived as long as we have - unless there's some Divine plan I don't know about :)
As near as I can tell, it's based on the idea of Science, and an unwillingness to believe in something you can't prove. You can't prove the existence of God, or gods - so they don't exist. OK as far as that goes. And yet, almost all science is based on finding things we can't prove, we keep looking until we can - even then we're wrong more often than not.
The atom was suggested back as far as 500 BCE maybe earlier. But we didn't really get close until around 1800 CE. That would be a long time to refuse to believe in something because there's no proof. Once we had the proof, it turned out to be wrong. Yep. The original atom which they proved existed, and hence was something you could now believe in was close but not quite right. Then we proved that atoms were made of sub atomic particles - the smallest division of matter possible - you know, Protons, Neutrons, and Electrons - Oh, wait, still not right - started believing too soon, looks like there are smaller parts. Do we have it right now? maybe maybe not.
So apparently it's OK to believe in something as long as you call it a theory - which is essentially something you believe but can't prove.
Man couldn't fly until he flew. He would never get to the moon until he got to the moon. So why do some people insist that the Divine is - I think the last term I heard was - Bullshit.
Now, You'll notice I didn't Talk about "The Bible" or "The Koran" or "The Tanakh" because that's your problem. I don't follow any of those - doesn't make them wrong, just wrong for me.
The other thing that confuses me about atheists is the vehamence that having to look at, see, or hear other people talk about "God" makes them uncomfortable. - Why? if you don't believe in God, then it should make you about as uncomfortable as people talking about unicorns. Who cares? why make a big deal out of it?
I've considered a lot of theories about why but frankly I'm not happy with any of them, maybe there isn't just one reason. Maybe it's because they don't believe a Divine being, presence or what ever would have allowed the world to become the way it is - but that's a personal perception on the part of the atheist - that the way things are is wrong - maybe it's exactly the way it's supposed to be, maybe the Divine doesn't give a damn, maybe we're too stupid to understand, maybe it's irrelevant. Maybe they don't like the idea that there's something more ... "more" than them - which seems pretty egotistic. Anyway - I don't get it.
Agnostic I understand - Don't know, don't really care - I can get behind that - but they rarely throw temper tantrums about the 10 commandments on a building or Christmas lights. Which is probably why I get them.
In the end it doesn't matter except there seems to be some evidence that believing in something is better than not.
I'm not a Christian, but I love Christmas - I love the feeling, I love the fact that people spend a few days, a week maybe a whole month acting the way the should be acting all year. I like the lights, I like the songs. I like Churches, and Synagogs, and Mosques, because it shows the best of what we can be. I really don't like organized religion but sometimes, they do some pretty nice things (Not enough to make up for the rest but some). One of the things I don't like about book based religions is the book get's used as a club to beat people over the head with, it's a weapon to show how someone else is wrong. Not a single book religion is homogenous - they're all fractured with differing interpretations - sometimes those differences can get pretty violent, and heaven forbid - you use a different book than me. Yikes.
I think it's part of human nature to turn everything into a destructive force. Makes me wonder how we've survived as long as we have - unless there's some Divine plan I don't know about :)
Excuse me while I get filthy
I have a need to just let it rip, I'm going to spew a lot of dirty words - just to release a little tension.
Honor, Duty, Sacrifice, Self Reliance, Independence,Personal Responsibility, Truth, Fact, Honesty, Saying what you mean, Meaning what you say, Community, Caring, Privacy, Courage, Liberty, Freedom, Personal Initiative, Personal Achievement.
OK, I feel better now.
Honor, Duty, Sacrifice, Self Reliance, Independence,Personal Responsibility, Truth, Fact, Honesty, Saying what you mean, Meaning what you say, Community, Caring, Privacy, Courage, Liberty, Freedom, Personal Initiative, Personal Achievement.
OK, I feel better now.
Thursday, August 22, 2013
Sophomore Humor
For the most part I'm not a fan of sophomoric humor. Things I found funny when I was 17 are just sort of annoying now. For some reason I find these guys funny. No accounting for taste - seriously.
Simon Pegg and Nick Frost creators of Shawn of the Dead, and Paul, have a one coming soon. The Worlds End.
Simon Pegg and Nick Frost creators of Shawn of the Dead, and Paul, have a one coming soon. The Worlds End.
Sunday, August 4, 2013
Racist is a dead word, Science is a dying one.
The meaning of racist has been so mutilated that it has no use anymore.
Here's a case in point:
See what I mean about agenda. If you listen to the MSM, and Environmentalist propaganda, you'd be sure to believe that EVERY time we do something, we screw up mother nature. Sure we do our fair share, but what they seem to forget is the human race is also part of nature and we're just doing what we do, just like beavers making dams that ruin wetlands, or flood endangered species - but since they're not humans, it's OK. Yeah we have the ability to know what some (perhaps quite a few) of the consequences of our actions will be, before we take action, but we're hardly omnipotent and doing nothing is not in our nature - that's a FACT. Biology is a fact, one that feminists seem to be unable to deal with, so they call it a lie. It's true for every living creature on the planet except humans apparently - wow is that ever egotistical. Science is abused to show what they want to believe and ignored or ridiculed when it shows something else.
Science is dying because it's inconvenient for the agenda's of various "popular" people. It's not dead and hopefully we can recover from what the MSM and academia, eco-nuts, and feminists have done to it.
Racism as it's used now I think we're just stuck with. If your not a racist - your a racist.
Here's a case in point:
Guns are for white people
As so eloquently pointed out in the comments by Mark R. it's a matter of demographics. Advertising is ALWAYS aimed at a target market - because it works.
In a recent conversation someone told me - "Of course I voted for Obama, I'm not a racist!"
Well, yeah you are - If we were in fact to be completely non-racist, race would never be considered in anything. You wouldn't go out looking to fill a certain number of RACE slots for jobs, or advertizing or politicians or anything else - because it just doesn't matter. But apparently it does matter, it matters to the people who like to label others as racist, it matters to those who want benefits from being non-white, in this country anyway. So who's more of a racist, someone who votes for a politician based on job history, and their best guess as to what the politician actually will do when they're in office, or someone who votes for them because they're the right race?
Apparently I'm a racist because I believe in FACTS. - It's getting harder and harder to believe in facts, because they're being so adulterated with agenda. I look at numbers and I have to look for a long time before I can decide that the numbers aren't just a bunch of lies. Science used to be relatively pure, in that people didn't just make stuff up to fit their agenda, or to get famous. They actually presented data secure in the knowledge that others would perform the same tests and get the same results. Take Global warming, or I guess it's climate change now, since the "proof" keeps getting shot to pieces. I see evidence of warming, it's hard to miss because so many people want me to see it. I occasionally hear of evidence of the contrary but it's rare, I suspect it's rare because it goes against the AGENDA.
Here's a fun bit (H/T to the Captain, Maggie's Farm, and Reason) from an article by Roland Bailey at Reason.
In 1846, botanist John Hooker from the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew visited and decided to try transplanting a wide variety of plants onto the island. A century and a half later, the result has been an “accidental rainforest.” White Mountain, now renamed Green Mountain, is covered with an extensive cloud forest consisting of guava, banana, wild ginger, bamboo, the Chinese glory bower and Madagascan periwinkle, Norfolk Island pine, and eucalyptus from Australia. Because of the man-made micro-climate, what used to be a desert island now features several permanent streams.Ascension Island undercuts the conventional ecological wisdom that tropical rainforests are supposed to take millions of years to form. And what happened on Ascension has been happening all around the world, as people have moved thousands of species from their native habitats to new locales, increasing species richness. Wherever human beings have gone in the past two centuries, we have increased local and regional biodiversity.
See what I mean about agenda. If you listen to the MSM, and Environmentalist propaganda, you'd be sure to believe that EVERY time we do something, we screw up mother nature. Sure we do our fair share, but what they seem to forget is the human race is also part of nature and we're just doing what we do, just like beavers making dams that ruin wetlands, or flood endangered species - but since they're not humans, it's OK. Yeah we have the ability to know what some (perhaps quite a few) of the consequences of our actions will be, before we take action, but we're hardly omnipotent and doing nothing is not in our nature - that's a FACT. Biology is a fact, one that feminists seem to be unable to deal with, so they call it a lie. It's true for every living creature on the planet except humans apparently - wow is that ever egotistical. Science is abused to show what they want to believe and ignored or ridiculed when it shows something else.
Science is dying because it's inconvenient for the agenda's of various "popular" people. It's not dead and hopefully we can recover from what the MSM and academia, eco-nuts, and feminists have done to it.
Racism as it's used now I think we're just stuck with. If your not a racist - your a racist.
Monday, July 29, 2013
I Love Irony Part II
So you may recall - Obama used the unions to get Obamacare though. Now they're having second thoughts.... I using my shocked face.....
Right at the top of the list..... The NETU - mostly The IRS, yep the group that's charged with enforcing this disaster wants to be exempt - well so do all the congress critters and their staff. Once again, the political elites show their unwavering disdain for the rest of us.
Read the Bill BEFORE you vote. You moron.
Right at the top of the list..... The NETU - mostly The IRS, yep the group that's charged with enforcing this disaster wants to be exempt - well so do all the congress critters and their staff. Once again, the political elites show their unwavering disdain for the rest of us.
Read the Bill BEFORE you vote. You moron.
Some times Ignorance is Bliss
I generally go out of my way to avoid learning the politics of actors - first off, just because they're actors doesn't make them smart, or logical, or knowledgeable. It just means their opinions get more press.
So generally when I find an actor has a particularly disagreeable viewpoint (to me) I stop watching anything they're in. I'm OK with them saying nice things about some liberal candidate - they're entitled to like any idiot they want - for example I, by accident caught a comment by Bill Macy, praising Obama. I'll still watch Bill's movies. Michale Douglas on the other hand - no. Sadly I own at least one DVD of his - acquired before I found out he wants to take away my rights.
I tend to pay a bit more attention to companies that I deal with in this regard - I'm not perfect by any means but I do put some effort into it. Which is why I was so unhappy to read this article about Costco. I'm particularly annoyed by companies that use eminent domain to steal property from it's owners. This is also a problem with some NG companies that run pipelines, many times they just though the room of lawyers at the recalcitrant land owner and force them to either sell at the price the pipeline is willing to pay or spend the next year in court (and they'll still lose). I understand it, I just don't like it.
I'm not crazy about Costco - it's a bit of a pain in the butt, always too busy, but Damn. We'll I'm going to have to do some business with them (really the only source for supplies on a current project), but once that's done - I guess we'll go our separate ways.
Sometimes it SUCKS having principles.
So generally when I find an actor has a particularly disagreeable viewpoint (to me) I stop watching anything they're in. I'm OK with them saying nice things about some liberal candidate - they're entitled to like any idiot they want - for example I, by accident caught a comment by Bill Macy, praising Obama. I'll still watch Bill's movies. Michale Douglas on the other hand - no. Sadly I own at least one DVD of his - acquired before I found out he wants to take away my rights.
I tend to pay a bit more attention to companies that I deal with in this regard - I'm not perfect by any means but I do put some effort into it. Which is why I was so unhappy to read this article about Costco. I'm particularly annoyed by companies that use eminent domain to steal property from it's owners. This is also a problem with some NG companies that run pipelines, many times they just though the room of lawyers at the recalcitrant land owner and force them to either sell at the price the pipeline is willing to pay or spend the next year in court (and they'll still lose). I understand it, I just don't like it.
I'm not crazy about Costco - it's a bit of a pain in the butt, always too busy, but Damn. We'll I'm going to have to do some business with them (really the only source for supplies on a current project), but once that's done - I guess we'll go our separate ways.
Sometimes it SUCKS having principles.
Sunday, July 28, 2013
Maybe they should be worried
Apparently some republicans are feeling threatened by a libertarian point of view in Congress. Good. They should be. When they're not pointing at the Dems for selling us out, they're busy doing it themselves. Maybe they should stop trying to be the other Big Government Party.
That Chris Christie is worried is even better. Maybe the Republicans will be lucky and he won't run (yeah wishful thinking) even with his self-serving grandstanding the republican party will probably still give him support - then he'll sell them out. Poetic justice, but in the end they'll get together and sell the citizens out.
That Chris Christie is worried is even better. Maybe the Republicans will be lucky and he won't run (yeah wishful thinking) even with his self-serving grandstanding the republican party will probably still give him support - then he'll sell them out. Poetic justice, but in the end they'll get together and sell the citizens out.
Friday, July 19, 2013
Bite me, Chris
What and enormous Asshole.
I'll tell you right now, I'm white and Chris Matthews DOES NOT SPEAK FOR ME!. I have never done anything to ANY race that requires an apology.
Chris, screw you.
Does this guy ever say anything that isn't stupid?
I'll tell you right now, I'm white and Chris Matthews DOES NOT SPEAK FOR ME!. I have never done anything to ANY race that requires an apology.
Chris, screw you.
Does this guy ever say anything that isn't stupid?
Saturday, July 13, 2013
I love irony
There are some people that are just irony incarnate.
From the Obamasiah we have THIS - thanks Heroditis I needed that laugh.
From the Feminists - I'll just let JB tell it.
From the Racists at the DOJ we have THIS: which essentially is using our taxpayer dollars to support a Black lynch-mob looking to subvert the rule of law. - yes The Justis department sponsoring Lynch-mobs that's pretty ironic - even more ironic is that Zimmerman apparently a Racist and a Minority - which if you believe the MSM is about as likely as a Unicorn. Unless it fits with their agenda of the moment - in which case he's Whitey, which makes him Inherently racist unless he's also a Radical Feminist and devout Democrat.
The total lack of critical thinking, self awareness and logic seems to be a defining trait of Politicians, Feminists, Educators, and the main stream media.
From the Obamasiah we have THIS - thanks Heroditis I needed that laugh.
From the Feminists - I'll just let JB tell it.
From the Racists at the DOJ we have THIS: which essentially is using our taxpayer dollars to support a Black lynch-mob looking to subvert the rule of law. - yes The Justis department sponsoring Lynch-mobs that's pretty ironic - even more ironic is that Zimmerman apparently a Racist and a Minority - which if you believe the MSM is about as likely as a Unicorn. Unless it fits with their agenda of the moment - in which case he's Whitey, which makes him Inherently racist unless he's also a Radical Feminist and devout Democrat.
The total lack of critical thinking, self awareness and logic seems to be a defining trait of Politicians, Feminists, Educators, and the main stream media.
Thursday, July 11, 2013
Prepair to repel rioters
The Zimmerman case is coming to a close and the New Black Panthers have already put a bounty on his head. There are plans to strike against random White neighborhoods. Yep we're talking about contract killing and inciting to riot and no arrests - because BLACK. Arrests for Hate Speech? Nope - because BLACK.
I've said before - I think Zimmerman was an idiot - he should never have followed anyone. I'm not on the Jury so my opinion of his guilt or innocence is moot. But being an idiot is not a crime, beating the crap out of someone is a crime, shooting someone who is beating the crap out of you may or may not be a crime.
Personally - I'd go with not guilty as I don't think it meets the requirements for manslaughter - it does either meet the requirements for self defense under stand your ground. Or, at least there is reasonable doubt - in my mind anyway.
But then, this hasn't been about his guilt or innocence, since the media got involved - it's been about RACE. When the DOJ is spending tax payers money for rallies to encourage conviction it's about RACE - because that asshat in charge of the DOJ is a Racist.
So if he gets acquitted - which may happen, I fully expect to see riots in every major city with a significant black population. So, get ready. Hopefully I'm wrong - but I don't think so.
I've said before - I think Zimmerman was an idiot - he should never have followed anyone. I'm not on the Jury so my opinion of his guilt or innocence is moot. But being an idiot is not a crime, beating the crap out of someone is a crime, shooting someone who is beating the crap out of you may or may not be a crime.
Personally - I'd go with not guilty as I don't think it meets the requirements for manslaughter - it does either meet the requirements for self defense under stand your ground. Or, at least there is reasonable doubt - in my mind anyway.
But then, this hasn't been about his guilt or innocence, since the media got involved - it's been about RACE. When the DOJ is spending tax payers money for rallies to encourage conviction it's about RACE - because that asshat in charge of the DOJ is a Racist.
So if he gets acquitted - which may happen, I fully expect to see riots in every major city with a significant black population. So, get ready. Hopefully I'm wrong - but I don't think so.
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
The First Amendment doesn't protect your jokes
Apparently if you say something on the internet and add, jk or lol at the end of it, our Governments and apparently our courts which now seem to be owned by the Governments will still treat it as terrorism.
To prove the point - there are two teens sitting in prison right now for making joking threats on the internet. So, no more jokes people. We have to take EVERYTHING absolute seriously. Zero Tollerance. I'm guessing print comes next, then radio, finally they'll get around to TV - even the ubiquitous laugh track won't save you from a charge of Making terrorist threats. - Be really careful which parts you accept, go help you if you play a Bad guy in next summers blockbuster - you might find your self going to prison for it.
Which begs the question - when do we ban Standup comedy, and sitcoms which just loaded with Hate speech "I Hate you!" "I Hate my ex-wife".
What the hell is wrong in Texas (and they're not alone in making STUPID arrests). When we can't count on the courts to inject a little sanity into the process anymore, I think we're screwed. We're like a bunch of lemmings walking off the cliff.
To prove the point - there are two teens sitting in prison right now for making joking threats on the internet. So, no more jokes people. We have to take EVERYTHING absolute seriously. Zero Tollerance. I'm guessing print comes next, then radio, finally they'll get around to TV - even the ubiquitous laugh track won't save you from a charge of Making terrorist threats. - Be really careful which parts you accept, go help you if you play a Bad guy in next summers blockbuster - you might find your self going to prison for it.
Which begs the question - when do we ban Standup comedy, and sitcoms which just loaded with Hate speech "I Hate you!" "I Hate my ex-wife".
What the hell is wrong in Texas (and they're not alone in making STUPID arrests). When we can't count on the courts to inject a little sanity into the process anymore, I think we're screwed. We're like a bunch of lemmings walking off the cliff.
Saturday, July 6, 2013
I can walk today, mostly
Did something to my back, mostly likely muscle strain, on the 4th. Got up late last night to recycle some old coffee and found I couldn't stand up. Well I could, and eventually did, but it wasn't any fun at all. Took 4 Advil and hobbled back to bed. This morning was much better. I might actually do something useful tomorrow.
Friday, July 5, 2013
Free College Education
Oregon is Doing Free Higher Education Obviously the author and editors need a bit of Higher education themselves - If you're paying 3% of your salary for 24 Years - IT'S NOT FREE.
There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. On the other hand the only people who will suffer under this system is - well the system, which makes some very grand assumptions about the economic future of the graduates, and the idiots who take them up on it.
If I had paid 3% of my annual income for 24, years my education would have cost - well none of your damn business but WAY more than I paid.
If you look at the unemployment numbers for those under the age of 25 - it's not pretty, and I suspect a large percentage of those who are employed are part time, minimum wage. 3% does't seem like much until you realize they're talking about 3% of what is already not enough to live on. Gee aren't you glad you went to college to get that worthless degree now? Ah maybe you are - because it's likely that 4 year degree only cost you $36,000 instead of the roughly $84,000 it will cost an in-state student - today*. It's a bargain, assuming you ever get above minimum wage. Given that 76% of people live paycheck to paycheck - I'm betting you'll wish you still had that 3% and had headed off to a 2 year trade school instead.
If you're going into one of the STEM fields, it may still be a bargain but not nearly so much. Assuming you average $100,000 a year over the next 24 years (probably low) Your education cost you $72,000. If you land an IT job at say $90K and average about 3% a year in raises (don't bet on it) Your education cost you $92,951 or an $9,000 premium. If you started at $115,000 then it cost you $118,771 or a $35,000 premium. There is actually a good chance that you'll be subsidizing the idiot working in HR with the degree in feminist studies.
Now since I can do the math - one might assume that the folks at the Universities, and possibly even a Congressional Aid or two can do the math - it doesn't bode well for the System. Roughly 25% of degrees granted are STEM - which means 75% of the graduates don't have the ability to pay back the costs. So, perhaps we need to move to a different set of assumptions**.
Given these numbers, your Underwater Basket Weaving degree will still cost you $36,000 instead of $42,000 but your STEM degree? Well you still pay the same amount - call it $105,000 but what they gave you was only $42,000. So Yeah that works very well for them. Lots of subsidizing of 17th Century Lesbian Studies degrees. Yep Keep all those idiots who couldn't get a job in the real world employed teaching kids useless information, so they can create more over educated, useless people. Brilliant.
I can see one possible alternative to this - Adjust the salaries of the professors & staff to reflect the probable income of their students. The STEM folks still get screwed, but then I expect the number of professors willing to work for $18K*** a year for teaching Native American Lesbian History, might cause a few to retire. Which might reduce the number of useless degrees in the world. Another possibility to increase the payback % and or lengthen the period.
Now if your Matt (see article above) you like the FAIRNESS of the whole thing so much your willing to overlook a few issues - like loosing money - or forcing one set of students (the smart ones) subsidize the a larger set of students (the lazy or not so bright ones).
He has another article here that show's he really has put some though into this - and it could possibly work but he seems to think that the folks who are smart and work really hard should subsidize the rest. Even though his math works better then the Oregon Governments, he still thinks it FREE - it's not FREE Matt! Doesn't mean it's a bad idea - I just don't care for the implementation. It doesn't take into account future value of the money you spend today and will continue to spend until you have a crop of graduates. So there's a lot of money tied up with NO return on investment for 4 or 5 years and even then the ROI is pretty low - so low that only a Government is going to do it (which should tell you something right there). It doesn't take into account that a Degree in Chemical Engineering is considerably more difficult that a degree in Art History. Or that it's going to cost the CE a lot more money. There's an awful lot of socialist/communist type Fairness going on here - You're smart and worked really hard so of course you should subsidize those of us who aren't or don't. That's not fairness - that's slavery.
If you want it to be fair then everyone should pay the same amount, rich/poor, hard working/lazy. The product is the same right? It's a college degree. If your going to charge considerably more for STEM degrees because they have a significantly higher intrinsic value then perhaps that should be reflected in the school budgets and salaries?
* Some assumptions - OSU suggests that Tuition and Books will cost the average (in state) student approximately $10,500 per year. If you add in room and board that's another $10,587 THIS YEAR, anyone seeing these costs going down? So depending on what they cover, and let's assume its tuition, books, supplies, and boarding then the layout is about $21,000 a year. - Four years - $84,000.
**They're only going to cover Tuition and Books - so $10,500 You still need to come up with the rest. - using OSU's numbers that's only another $10,500 a year - piece of cake right?
*** Yes - I just made that number up - I did no MATH - you should be used to that by now, it's what Congress and the Media do all the time.
There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. On the other hand the only people who will suffer under this system is - well the system, which makes some very grand assumptions about the economic future of the graduates, and the idiots who take them up on it.
If I had paid 3% of my annual income for 24, years my education would have cost - well none of your damn business but WAY more than I paid.
If you look at the unemployment numbers for those under the age of 25 - it's not pretty, and I suspect a large percentage of those who are employed are part time, minimum wage. 3% does't seem like much until you realize they're talking about 3% of what is already not enough to live on. Gee aren't you glad you went to college to get that worthless degree now? Ah maybe you are - because it's likely that 4 year degree only cost you $36,000 instead of the roughly $84,000 it will cost an in-state student - today*. It's a bargain, assuming you ever get above minimum wage. Given that 76% of people live paycheck to paycheck - I'm betting you'll wish you still had that 3% and had headed off to a 2 year trade school instead.
If you're going into one of the STEM fields, it may still be a bargain but not nearly so much. Assuming you average $100,000 a year over the next 24 years (probably low) Your education cost you $72,000. If you land an IT job at say $90K and average about 3% a year in raises (don't bet on it) Your education cost you $92,951 or an $9,000 premium. If you started at $115,000 then it cost you $118,771 or a $35,000 premium. There is actually a good chance that you'll be subsidizing the idiot working in HR with the degree in feminist studies.
Now since I can do the math - one might assume that the folks at the Universities, and possibly even a Congressional Aid or two can do the math - it doesn't bode well for the System. Roughly 25% of degrees granted are STEM - which means 75% of the graduates don't have the ability to pay back the costs. So, perhaps we need to move to a different set of assumptions**.
Given these numbers, your Underwater Basket Weaving degree will still cost you $36,000 instead of $42,000 but your STEM degree? Well you still pay the same amount - call it $105,000 but what they gave you was only $42,000. So Yeah that works very well for them. Lots of subsidizing of 17th Century Lesbian Studies degrees. Yep Keep all those idiots who couldn't get a job in the real world employed teaching kids useless information, so they can create more over educated, useless people. Brilliant.
I can see one possible alternative to this - Adjust the salaries of the professors & staff to reflect the probable income of their students. The STEM folks still get screwed, but then I expect the number of professors willing to work for $18K*** a year for teaching Native American Lesbian History, might cause a few to retire. Which might reduce the number of useless degrees in the world. Another possibility to increase the payback % and or lengthen the period.
Now if your Matt (see article above) you like the FAIRNESS of the whole thing so much your willing to overlook a few issues - like loosing money - or forcing one set of students (the smart ones) subsidize the a larger set of students (the lazy or not so bright ones).
He has another article here that show's he really has put some though into this - and it could possibly work but he seems to think that the folks who are smart and work really hard should subsidize the rest. Even though his math works better then the Oregon Governments, he still thinks it FREE - it's not FREE Matt! Doesn't mean it's a bad idea - I just don't care for the implementation. It doesn't take into account future value of the money you spend today and will continue to spend until you have a crop of graduates. So there's a lot of money tied up with NO return on investment for 4 or 5 years and even then the ROI is pretty low - so low that only a Government is going to do it (which should tell you something right there). It doesn't take into account that a Degree in Chemical Engineering is considerably more difficult that a degree in Art History. Or that it's going to cost the CE a lot more money. There's an awful lot of socialist/communist type Fairness going on here - You're smart and worked really hard so of course you should subsidize those of us who aren't or don't. That's not fairness - that's slavery.
If you want it to be fair then everyone should pay the same amount, rich/poor, hard working/lazy. The product is the same right? It's a college degree. If your going to charge considerably more for STEM degrees because they have a significantly higher intrinsic value then perhaps that should be reflected in the school budgets and salaries?
* Some assumptions - OSU suggests that Tuition and Books will cost the average (in state) student approximately $10,500 per year. If you add in room and board that's another $10,587 THIS YEAR, anyone seeing these costs going down? So depending on what they cover, and let's assume its tuition, books, supplies, and boarding then the layout is about $21,000 a year. - Four years - $84,000.
**They're only going to cover Tuition and Books - so $10,500 You still need to come up with the rest. - using OSU's numbers that's only another $10,500 a year - piece of cake right?
*** Yes - I just made that number up - I did no MATH - you should be used to that by now, it's what Congress and the Media do all the time.
Tuesday, July 2, 2013
Obama vs Obama It takes one to know one
Here's a nice little bit of Obama vs Obama Sort of the definition of Hypocrite.
Hard to believe Obama ever said anything positive about the Constitution but - apparently he did. One has to wonder, was he being a politician, and just saying with no conviction, what he thought people wanted to hear, or was he hiding his real agenda. I'm going to vote for the latter.
Specifically - It's OK when I do it, but not when You do it.
Hard to believe Obama ever said anything positive about the Constitution but - apparently he did. One has to wonder, was he being a politician, and just saying with no conviction, what he thought people wanted to hear, or was he hiding his real agenda. I'm going to vote for the latter.
Specifically - It's OK when I do it, but not when You do it.
Trying to save the 2014 elections
So Obama has decided to hold off on the employer portion of the mandate for ObamaCare. No doubt because now everyone is starting to see the effects - Most companies are cutting hours to get as much staff below the 30 hour cutoff. Color me unsurprised. A significant percentage of the U.S. doesn't even realize they're going to get clobbered on their taxes because they didn't understand they needed to get insurance - on their own. Because the individual mandate is still scheduled for 2014.
Obsensibly this is done because they (the Administration) realized there is NO WAY they can roll this train wreck out this fast. And they're hoping that this will delay the staggering effect that the employer mandate is already having on full time employment. The real reason is to get folks to not spend time thinking about how badly they're being screwed until AFTER the elections. Now the question is - will the Democrats believe their own bullshit and go into the 2014 elections with the ObamaCare Sword swinging for their necks or will they realize that voting for something no one ever read is perhaps a bad idea. Will they understand that, all the people who've already had their 40 hour jobs turned into 30 hour jobs, are going to understand (because their employers told them) that it's ObamaCare's fault. And ObamaCare was the Democrats baby.
So - on the one hand you can expect companies to stop cutting hours -- or not. I'm betting NOT. On the other hand, you can expect a lot of folks to see their cost of individual insurance climb, kind of significantly. My insurance company tells me I should know sometime in September. I'll be a bit surprised if the increase is less than 30% and not at all surprised if it's over 50%. Why? because I have what is essentially classified as catastrophic coverage. Really high deductible, no prescription coverage.
I'm wondering who in fact who; besides perhaps young single moms who don't want to work more than 20 hours a week because it screws with their benefits, will actually see any of this as a good thing come April.
I guess we'll see if anyone is paying attention - the Democrats have more than a few things to answer for, and one would hope that the Independents at least will remind folks of just what the Democrats did - with the help in a lot of cases of the Republicans. My guess is that lots of liberals will blaming the downsides of ObamaCare, the IRS, Benghazi, Fast&Furious, NSA problems on Bush. Because... BUSH.
Obsensibly this is done because they (the Administration) realized there is NO WAY they can roll this train wreck out this fast. And they're hoping that this will delay the staggering effect that the employer mandate is already having on full time employment. The real reason is to get folks to not spend time thinking about how badly they're being screwed until AFTER the elections. Now the question is - will the Democrats believe their own bullshit and go into the 2014 elections with the ObamaCare Sword swinging for their necks or will they realize that voting for something no one ever read is perhaps a bad idea. Will they understand that, all the people who've already had their 40 hour jobs turned into 30 hour jobs, are going to understand (because their employers told them) that it's ObamaCare's fault. And ObamaCare was the Democrats baby.
So - on the one hand you can expect companies to stop cutting hours -- or not. I'm betting NOT. On the other hand, you can expect a lot of folks to see their cost of individual insurance climb, kind of significantly. My insurance company tells me I should know sometime in September. I'll be a bit surprised if the increase is less than 30% and not at all surprised if it's over 50%. Why? because I have what is essentially classified as catastrophic coverage. Really high deductible, no prescription coverage.
I'm wondering who in fact who; besides perhaps young single moms who don't want to work more than 20 hours a week because it screws with their benefits, will actually see any of this as a good thing come April.
I guess we'll see if anyone is paying attention - the Democrats have more than a few things to answer for, and one would hope that the Independents at least will remind folks of just what the Democrats did - with the help in a lot of cases of the Republicans. My guess is that lots of liberals will blaming the downsides of ObamaCare, the IRS, Benghazi, Fast&Furious, NSA problems on Bush. Because... BUSH.
Sunday, June 30, 2013
State VS Family
One only has to look at the facts to see that the State views the family as competition and is trying to eliminate it.
From: The Ludwig von Mises Institute
From: Forbes
(from: Single Parent Magazine)
Then look at theupside downside:
From: NYT
Now almost no one will point the finger at the source of the problem - but perhaps the following can shed some light on the subject.
When the family fails - what's left? Nothing but slaves to the state. And there is no other term than slave that fits - someone else is determining your needs, your wants, your job, the future of your children, what you can eat, when you can eat it, where you live. It's slavery and 50% of the people in this country can't seem to get enough of it.
From: The Ludwig von Mises Institute
In turning to Sweden, we find a classic case of bureaucratic manipulation to destroy the state's principal rival as a focus of loyalty: the family. Viewing this rivalry between state and family, it is important to understand that a basic level of "dependency" is a constant in all societies. In every human community, there are infants and children, persons who are very old, individuals who have severe handicaps, and others who are seriously ill. These people cannot take care of themselves. Without help from others, they will die. Every society must have a way of giving care to these dependents. Under the domain of liberty, the natural institution of the family (supplemented and supported by local communities and voluntary organizations) provides the protection and care which these "dependent" people need. Indeed, it is in the autonomous family—and only in the family—where the pure socialist principle actually works: from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.
From: Forbes
As the Times reports, families look very different today than they did just a few decades ago. Turn back the clock 30 year, and less than 20% of births occurred outside marriage. Today the rate is 41%. While that difference used to be attributed mostly to race, education seems to be the determining factor now: as recently as 1990, only 10% of the births to white women with some postsecondary education but no college degree were outside of marriage. Today it’s tripled to 30%. It’s even worse for women with a high school degree or less: the figure is 60% for them.
(from: Single Parent Magazine)
13.6
approximately 13.6 million single parents in the United States today, and those parents are responsible for raising 21.2 million children (approximately 26% of children under 21 in the U.S. today).
- U.S. Census Bureau
60%
Single father homes are the fastest growing type of family situation; the amount of single fathers has grown by 60% in the last ten years alone.
- www.usalegalcare.com
1.4
Million children (almost one child in twenty) live in a household headed by their grandparent with no parent present.
- http://ohioline.osu.edu/ss-fact
Then look at the
From: NYT
But while the fact that the sons of single mothers struggle more than their daughters is the easy headline to take away from the work done by Professors Autor and Wasserman, it’s the wrong one. The focus on men and boys shouldn’t distract from a larger problem: single mothers and their daughters may be doing better, but they can’t be said to be thriving. Single motherhood is associated with poor health in middle age, financial hardship and depression. The statistical impacts of being raised by a single parent (like lower average scores on standardized tests, poorer grades and an increased likelihood of dropping out of high school or failing to attend college) may be stronger for sons, but they affect daughters too.
Now almost no one will point the finger at the source of the problem - but perhaps the following can shed some light on the subject.
Look a the growth of the EBT card in the U.S. as yet another dependency program. And now ObamaCare.The rise of the welfare state can be written as the steady transfer of the "dependency" function from the family to the state; from persons tied together by blood, marriage or adoption to persons tied to public employees. The process began in Sweden in the mid-19th century, through bureaucratic projects that began dismantling the bonds between parents and their children. In classic pattern, the first assertion of state control over children came in the 1840s, with the passage of a mandatory school attendance law. While justified as a measure to improve the knowledge and welfare of the people, the deeper dynamic was the socialization of children's time, through the assumptions that state functionaries—the Swedish kingdom's bureaucrats—knew better than parents how children's time should be spent, and that parents could not be expected or trusted to protect their children from exploitation.
The next step came in 1912, with legislation that effectively banned child labor in factories, and to some degree on farms. Again, the implicit assumption was that state welfare officials were better judges of the use of children's time, and more compassionate toward children than parents were or could be.
The final step came at about the same time, when the Swedish government implemented a program of old-age or retirement pensions that quickly became universal. The underlying act here was the socializing of another dependency function, this time, the dependency of the "very old" and the "weak" on mature adults. For eons, the care of the elderly had been a family matter. Henceforward, it would be the state's concern. Taking all of these reforms together, the net effect was to socialize the economic value of children. The natural economy of the household, and the value that children had brought their parents—be it as workers in the family enterprise or as an 'insurance policy' for old age—was stripped away. Parents were still left with the costs of raising the children, but the economic gain they would eventually represent had been seized by "society," meaning the bureaucratic state.
When the family fails - what's left? Nothing but slaves to the state. And there is no other term than slave that fits - someone else is determining your needs, your wants, your job, the future of your children, what you can eat, when you can eat it, where you live. It's slavery and 50% of the people in this country can't seem to get enough of it.
Sunday, June 16, 2013
Wow - Hell just froze over
I really dislike Bill Maher - but apparently he isn't completely stupid, he's just a hypocrite.
I ain't giving up my guns.
So here we have two Progressive morons - who seem to have come to the conclusion that - you need to do something to protect yourself between the time your home is invaded, and the cops show up - if they bother.
I'm not sure which I'm more surprised about - that Moore (hypocritical, lying sack of shit) suggested the Bill needs more range time, or that at least two (and possibly 3) of the panel seem to be admitting to owning guns.
I'm not a tiny bit surprised that Bill referred to the Second Amendment as Bullshit. He think the people who should have rights are the ones who agree with him
That Moore would comment on the amount of range time needed, suggests that he probably owns one or more himself. But then he's a world class hypocrite so..
I ain't giving up my guns.
So here we have two Progressive morons - who seem to have come to the conclusion that - you need to do something to protect yourself between the time your home is invaded, and the cops show up - if they bother.
I'm not sure which I'm more surprised about - that Moore (hypocritical, lying sack of shit) suggested the Bill needs more range time, or that at least two (and possibly 3) of the panel seem to be admitting to owning guns.
I'm not a tiny bit surprised that Bill referred to the Second Amendment as Bullshit. He think the people who should have rights are the ones who agree with him
That Moore would comment on the amount of range time needed, suggests that he probably owns one or more himself. But then he's a world class hypocrite so..
The Curse of History
There's an old quote from Edmund Burke
It's been paraphrased hundreds of times, he may have adapted it from someone earlier - it seems self evident.
Here's the problem - Even when you know history, you may be doomed to repeat it.
If you ask a progressive to tell you about Stalin, or Hitler they'll be able to tell you they were BAD people, they'll be able to recite some of the atrocities. What they won't be able to do is look at their own policies and see the similarity. They don't view themselves that way so they can't see that their actions will inexorably lead to the same result. Part of that is extreme arrogance.
They will never listen to reason. They will never accept facts that contradict the progressive narrative. They can't - it's human nature to believe in your world view, your self worth, your identity depends on it.
So, even if they're well versed in history, it won't help. The curse of history is that some will see it coming again, while those who pursue it won't see it until they're buried under it.
Avoiding it requires both a knowledge of it, and an acceptance that, despite out technological advances, we are separated from our barbarity by a vary thin line that only exists because we've managed to cooperate long enough to achieve some level of comfort. It's human nature - which is to say - it's how we were created, how we evolved. We haven't evolved enough in the last 200 years, or the last 500 years to make a difference. All you need to do to see that is look at the state of suffering in the world.
We might get there in 10,000 years if we can survive that long, but I wouldn't bet on either one happening.
“Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.”
― Edmund Burke
It's been paraphrased hundreds of times, he may have adapted it from someone earlier - it seems self evident.
Here's the problem - Even when you know history, you may be doomed to repeat it.
If you ask a progressive to tell you about Stalin, or Hitler they'll be able to tell you they were BAD people, they'll be able to recite some of the atrocities. What they won't be able to do is look at their own policies and see the similarity. They don't view themselves that way so they can't see that their actions will inexorably lead to the same result. Part of that is extreme arrogance.
When they actually believe it, it's arrogance. They think they're smarter than everyone before them who failed. Somehow - and they're unable to explain the mechanism - they will succeed when attempt in history has resulted in tyranny. The arrogance comes from, I think, a deeply held belief that they are not subject to human nature, that they are more evolved. Despite all the evidence to the contrary. Because they need it to be true - their entire self worth is tied up in it being true.We can make big government work, we can make everyone safe and you'll still be free.
They will never listen to reason. They will never accept facts that contradict the progressive narrative. They can't - it's human nature to believe in your world view, your self worth, your identity depends on it.
So, even if they're well versed in history, it won't help. The curse of history is that some will see it coming again, while those who pursue it won't see it until they're buried under it.
Avoiding it requires both a knowledge of it, and an acceptance that, despite out technological advances, we are separated from our barbarity by a vary thin line that only exists because we've managed to cooperate long enough to achieve some level of comfort. It's human nature - which is to say - it's how we were created, how we evolved. We haven't evolved enough in the last 200 years, or the last 500 years to make a difference. All you need to do to see that is look at the state of suffering in the world.
We might get there in 10,000 years if we can survive that long, but I wouldn't bet on either one happening.
Way too far
Normally I follow the Heinlein Maxim:
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
For THIS to be anything but malice is too hard to believe. The charge is obstruction - the method - he wouldn't stop talking. The cause - he wore an NRA t-shirt.
I suspect this is what Stalin's USSR would look like if it had started off with a Constitution - It would have ended up in the same place, it just would have taken a few years longer. Exercising his first amendment rights - by showing silent support for the NRA is tantamount to terrorism - which apparently they considered charging him with.
Yes the progressives really do think the NRA is a terrorist organization.
Thursday, June 13, 2013
What are the Odds
A little more info for the previous post.
From the CDC: 2010 data
From the Global Terrorism Database total domestic deaths from terrorism were 3,030 from 2000-2010. The data only goes to 2011 so far, So the annual average is 275. If you take the 10 years from 2001-2011 the numbers don't change significantly. Between 9/12/2001 and 12/31/2011 the total is 32 - or approximately 3 people annually.
Given that the NSA knew when the terrorist arrived in the U.S. and essentially did nothing with that data, and given the argument is; we need to let the NSA collect all this data because it will stop attacks. It's only useful if it's acted upon, so 9/11 doesn't meet the goal. From a Data analysis point of view the 9/11 attack is an outlier - completely uncharacteristic of other world wide attacks. The Post 9/11 number is about 3.
So, you're 140 times more likely to commit suicide than be killed by a terrorist. Without 9/11 you're 12,788 times more likely. Are you scared yet?
From Medical News Today - there are 195,000 in hospital deaths by error each year. Which means you are 709 times more likely to be killed by your doctor than a terrorist - that includes 9/11 - with out 9/11 the number is 65,000 times more likely to be killed by your doctor.
If TSA costs each person at the airport 15 minutes (yeah right) and the average wage is $20/hour (and I suspect the number is much higher) then we're taking 3.5 billion out of the economy each year. (source WSJ). And that's JUST the TSA - now add in the cost of all the illegal NSA programs, the DHS TANKS, the wars. It's not pretty.
So, from an economic point of view, the terrorists have won. Because rather than being rational about it - we let our selves be terrified and irrational and we made really stupid choices - like the TSA, or letting the NSA and DHS destroy the Constitution - which was exactly what Osama bin Ladin was after. It could only be accomplished with the help and cooperation of our Government. The scope of terrorism in the U.S. would have to vastly exceed the total world levels to even come close to matching what we're costing ourselves - even without the loss of Liberty.
Let's recap, compared to terrorism, you are:
140 times more likely to commit suicide.
709 times more likely to be killed by your doctor.
120 times more likely to be killed in an auto accident.
YES we absolutely need to take precautions - we need to investigate, we need to be aware, but we've gone WAY too far with this. There is no evidence that TSA has done anything other than harass and steal from passengers, except cost us money. Even with all the extra man power, the militarization of the police, the extension of armed forces into domestic policy - Boston still happened, and it was a civilian who found the terrorist. A little self reliance and paying attention did more than the DHS, National Guard, SWAT and Satellites, in capturing the perp.
So - Get a grip people - you want to be scared of something - be scared of your doctor.
From the CDC: 2010 data
Number of deaths for leading causes of death:
- Heart disease: 597,689
- Cancer: 574,743
- Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 138,080
- Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 129,476
- Accidents (unintentional injuries): 120,859
- Alzheimer's disease: 83,494
- Diabetes: 69,071
- Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 50,476
- Influenza and Pneumonia: 50,097
- Intentional self-harm (suicide): 38,364
From the Global Terrorism Database total domestic deaths from terrorism were 3,030 from 2000-2010. The data only goes to 2011 so far, So the annual average is 275. If you take the 10 years from 2001-2011 the numbers don't change significantly. Between 9/12/2001 and 12/31/2011 the total is 32 - or approximately 3 people annually.
Given that the NSA knew when the terrorist arrived in the U.S. and essentially did nothing with that data, and given the argument is; we need to let the NSA collect all this data because it will stop attacks. It's only useful if it's acted upon, so 9/11 doesn't meet the goal. From a Data analysis point of view the 9/11 attack is an outlier - completely uncharacteristic of other world wide attacks. The Post 9/11 number is about 3.
So, you're 140 times more likely to commit suicide than be killed by a terrorist. Without 9/11 you're 12,788 times more likely. Are you scared yet?
From Medical News Today - there are 195,000 in hospital deaths by error each year. Which means you are 709 times more likely to be killed by your doctor than a terrorist - that includes 9/11 - with out 9/11 the number is 65,000 times more likely to be killed by your doctor.
If TSA costs each person at the airport 15 minutes (yeah right) and the average wage is $20/hour (and I suspect the number is much higher) then we're taking 3.5 billion out of the economy each year. (source WSJ). And that's JUST the TSA - now add in the cost of all the illegal NSA programs, the DHS TANKS, the wars. It's not pretty.
So, from an economic point of view, the terrorists have won. Because rather than being rational about it - we let our selves be terrified and irrational and we made really stupid choices - like the TSA, or letting the NSA and DHS destroy the Constitution - which was exactly what Osama bin Ladin was after. It could only be accomplished with the help and cooperation of our Government. The scope of terrorism in the U.S. would have to vastly exceed the total world levels to even come close to matching what we're costing ourselves - even without the loss of Liberty.
Let's recap, compared to terrorism, you are:
140 times more likely to commit suicide.
709 times more likely to be killed by your doctor.
120 times more likely to be killed in an auto accident.
YES we absolutely need to take precautions - we need to investigate, we need to be aware, but we've gone WAY too far with this. There is no evidence that TSA has done anything other than harass and steal from passengers, except cost us money. Even with all the extra man power, the militarization of the police, the extension of armed forces into domestic policy - Boston still happened, and it was a civilian who found the terrorist. A little self reliance and paying attention did more than the DHS, National Guard, SWAT and Satellites, in capturing the perp.
So - Get a grip people - you want to be scared of something - be scared of your doctor.
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
If you don't trust them
In a comment to JudgyBitch about the NSA spying, I wrote the following:
So I don't believe we need apply the Godwin Law
Most administrations since I understood enough to care, have shown a willingness to abuse their power. The will is there, we don't need to give them a way.
Something to think about, Historically speaking your more likely to be killed by your own government.
From Reason Magazine:
That's from 2001-2010.
From the Wall Street Journal
I find it amusing in a scary sort of way, that Republicans are somewhat OK with NSA snooping when a Republican is in office – Dems are very much against it. Reverse the party in office and reverse the results. What this shows is a serious lack of vision – no hindsight, no ability to project forward. Once a government takes a power to itself, it rarely (if ever) gives it up – so when your party is in power, the question you need to ask is – do I trust the other party with this power? And if the answer isn’t a resounding YES, then maybe you’d better avoid giving that power away.Someone suggested that I needed to take it a step further and ask if you would trust Hitler with it. I live in a community with a lot of retired liberals - when you listen to them, their is no doubt that that wouldn't trust Bush with anything. I suspect their response to any Republican would be similar. Most of them still think Obama was a good idea. The Republicans I know don't trust any Democrat from what I can see. The funny thing is, those two parties are so close in terms of behavior that the only significant difference is which lobbyists they let though the door.
So I don't believe we need apply the Godwin Law
Most administrations since I understood enough to care, have shown a willingness to abuse their power. The will is there, we don't need to give them a way.
Something to think about, Historically speaking your more likely to be killed by your own government.
From Reason Magazine:
Ohio State University political scientist John Mueller and Mark Stewart, an engineering professor at University of Newcastle in Australia recently estimated that the U.S. has spent $1 trillion on anti-terrorism security measures since 2001 (this figure does not include the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan). Assuming that 2,300 Americans might have been killed by terrorists inside the United States, this implies a cost of more that $400 million dollars per life saved. Typically when evaluating the costs of protective regulations, federal government agencies set the value of a life at about $9 million.
That's from 2001-2010.
From the Wall Street Journal
Overall, academic and governmental databases report, terrorist attacks killed a total of about 5,300 people in the most highly developed nations since the end of the Cold War in 1991, a rate of about 300 per year. The chance of a Westerner being killed by a terrorist is exceedingly low: about a one in three million each year, or the same chance an American will be killed by a tornado.So, unless the NSA thinks Americans are building nukes or equally dangerous WMDs (the old definition - not the Boston one) monitoring us is also a waste of money.
Companies I've lost all respect for
Top of my list is Verizon - for obvious reasons.
Then we have Google for a number of reasons. So, I don't use Google directly - I use Startpage.
I've always had a love/hate relationship with Apple - love the hardware, hate the politics. Their approach to OS upgrades SUCK. I can live with the " Gee we're changing platforms so you'll need to go buy all new applications - to bad." What bugs me is when they take a working OS like Snow Leopard, and then turn it into a piece of crap like Lion. Then finally sort of fix it again with Mountain Lion. It's very Microsoft. I don't think I'm going to give up on Apple, it's one of those places where I'm willing to suck it up, because I don't care much for the alternatives. (specifically phones and tablets)
I'm not quite sure how I feel about the other companies on the PRISM list. Seeing what the NSA did to Quest (and I'm not talking about what might have been a valid conviction for Insider trading). Quest had the no-bid contracts - asked for total servalence and when Nacchio said no - they canceled the contracts, essentially punishing QUEST for failing to violate the public trust - the fact the Nacchio sold his stock before the news of the lost contracts came out probably does qualify as insider trading - but then I suspect the government could make a case for every sale of stock owned by a current CEO - and they don't.
I'm unsure how much coercion was being used. I think they all suck for going along with it, but depending on what they'd already signed, maybe some of them felt they didn't have much choice. But let me be clear - you do have a choice. You can either pave the road to Tyranny with your good intentions or you can say NO.
NO by the way is the correct answer.
Then we have Google for a number of reasons. So, I don't use Google directly - I use Startpage.
I've always had a love/hate relationship with Apple - love the hardware, hate the politics. Their approach to OS upgrades SUCK. I can live with the " Gee we're changing platforms so you'll need to go buy all new applications - to bad." What bugs me is when they take a working OS like Snow Leopard, and then turn it into a piece of crap like Lion. Then finally sort of fix it again with Mountain Lion. It's very Microsoft. I don't think I'm going to give up on Apple, it's one of those places where I'm willing to suck it up, because I don't care much for the alternatives. (specifically phones and tablets)
I'm not quite sure how I feel about the other companies on the PRISM list. Seeing what the NSA did to Quest (and I'm not talking about what might have been a valid conviction for Insider trading). Quest had the no-bid contracts - asked for total servalence and when Nacchio said no - they canceled the contracts, essentially punishing QUEST for failing to violate the public trust - the fact the Nacchio sold his stock before the news of the lost contracts came out probably does qualify as insider trading - but then I suspect the government could make a case for every sale of stock owned by a current CEO - and they don't.
I'm unsure how much coercion was being used. I think they all suck for going along with it, but depending on what they'd already signed, maybe some of them felt they didn't have much choice. But let me be clear - you do have a choice. You can either pave the road to Tyranny with your good intentions or you can say NO.
NO by the way is the correct answer.
Men and stuff
Bad night - Sinus headache, bad mood - and I'm going to rant - so be warned.
I've been getting more and more fed up with the notion that it's OK to attack men for being men. I had a conversation with an NPR talk show host when I lived in the Bay Area. This was back in the mid 90's and she wondered why it was the only group anyone could make fun of anymore was White Males - yep even back in the 90's. I called in and told her - Because we're the only one's with a sense of humor anymore. Everyone else takes themselves too seriously.
Well I seem to have lost my sense of humor - it's been pummeled out of me by the constant, unrelenting attacks by feminists.
The Captain had a link to A Voice for Men post about a Bill Burr rant
Where in Pual Elam busts Bill's Balls for easing up on women who trash a man's personal property as an act of revenge for cheating. All based on the Carrie Underwood song. Yeah I hate that song too. So where Paul has a problem with Bill's podcast is:
Where Bill went off the rails is when he decided to go down that same track and talk about two shots to the ball of lettuce on her shoulders. Even saying (and I paraphrase here) - "I'm not condoning hitting woman" - is pointless. It shows that you, as a man can talk about / dream about doing those types of things just as easily as a woman. Counter productive Bill.
The most telling point here - is that Radical Feminism's preaching of hate toward men is having a lot of unintended consequences. I for example, used to think feminists had a valid point of view - now I think they just hate men. Hmm, maybe hate is not the right word - despise perhaps. They've gotten women declared a protected class entitled to treat every criticism as hate speech, much like blacks and other minorities - but they're not a minority. And feminists are the one's distorting facts, preaching hate, and demanding special treatment. Men are starting to respond in a way that women are not going to like. We're being told we're not necessary - So. Fine. We'll go our own way, let's see how well that works for you.
Take Facebook's recent actions as an example. F***b**k has gone over the edge and become a tool for the radical feminists - they can post their hate men messages, but anything critical of feminism get's yanked. I'd have dropped F***b**k except it takes effort to log in and do that. An effort I haven't had the motivation to expend for quite a while. So, some time in the next few days I'll get around to deleting my F***b**k account. Why? Because they force their opinions on people, they spy on people, the treat peoples information and copyrighted data as fodder for their money machine. They represent the worst of the tech industry, much like Google (yeah I know blogger is a G-tool - it provides a platform for me to bash G's politics at G's expense). At least to date they've haven't decided to deny First Amendment rights to people who disagree with them. (I don't expect it to last - they're too progressive to let people disagree with their ideology.)
I'm not looking for protection and special treatment - I'm just going to boycott those who talk about being against hate, when they're really supporting it.
Oh and on the off chance that someone actually wonders - I'm all for equality, even if it is - in the end - a bad deal for women. When I say equality I mean it - if you can't pass the tests, we shouldn't be making them easier just so women can pass (yes I know there are any number of women who would do significantly better than I can on physical fitness tests - not the point, I'm not trying out for Spec Ops, or Fire Fighter). Women should not get any special treatment for being women, they should get equal treatment - period.
I've been getting more and more fed up with the notion that it's OK to attack men for being men. I had a conversation with an NPR talk show host when I lived in the Bay Area. This was back in the mid 90's and she wondered why it was the only group anyone could make fun of anymore was White Males - yep even back in the 90's. I called in and told her - Because we're the only one's with a sense of humor anymore. Everyone else takes themselves too seriously.
Well I seem to have lost my sense of humor - it's been pummeled out of me by the constant, unrelenting attacks by feminists.
The Captain had a link to A Voice for Men post about a Bill Burr rant
Where in Pual Elam busts Bill's Balls for easing up on women who trash a man's personal property as an act of revenge for cheating. All based on the Carrie Underwood song. Yeah I hate that song too. So where Paul has a problem with Bill's podcast is:
Well, Paul - no I don't think that's what he did. I think what he did was council women who might be thinking that way to try a different - less illegal track. Before they take that first step. Now I agree, judging a man by his car is a bit like judging a woman by her purse - kind of stupid. The notion that people use cars as a form of compensation is so exaggerated at this point - it serves no purpose.But here’s the deal. At straight up 9:00 minutes into the video, after ripping these women a complete new asshole for being unrepentant criminals, he challenges women who have been cheated on to find a more functional way handle the situation. And he encourages them to take some responsibility, saying, “You know, rather than looking inward going, you know, maybe I’m a bad judge of character. What sort of qualities am I looking for in somebody, and I’ll date that. I mean, didn’t the fact that the guy had a souped-up four wheel drive truck, didn’t that give it away on any fucking level?”And I am like, what?
Did I just hear Bill Burr counsel women who justify fucking vandalism as form of petty vengeance that the problem was that they chose men with bad character? What about her character? I mean, how much good is it doing to suggest to scumbag women that they need to pick principled men to date? And by what standard, their cars?This is where I think Bill, who was on a hell of a roll, skidded right off the tracks into the ditch. It is consistent with the Sugar and Spice mentality about women that even a guy like Bill can default to, and even when he is talking about some disaster of a cunt who slashes tires when she is upset. Did he imagine that before she was cheated on that this woman was some sort of fucking saint
Where Bill went off the rails is when he decided to go down that same track and talk about two shots to the ball of lettuce on her shoulders. Even saying (and I paraphrase here) - "I'm not condoning hitting woman" - is pointless. It shows that you, as a man can talk about / dream about doing those types of things just as easily as a woman. Counter productive Bill.
The most telling point here - is that Radical Feminism's preaching of hate toward men is having a lot of unintended consequences. I for example, used to think feminists had a valid point of view - now I think they just hate men. Hmm, maybe hate is not the right word - despise perhaps. They've gotten women declared a protected class entitled to treat every criticism as hate speech, much like blacks and other minorities - but they're not a minority. And feminists are the one's distorting facts, preaching hate, and demanding special treatment. Men are starting to respond in a way that women are not going to like. We're being told we're not necessary - So. Fine. We'll go our own way, let's see how well that works for you.
Take Facebook's recent actions as an example. F***b**k has gone over the edge and become a tool for the radical feminists - they can post their hate men messages, but anything critical of feminism get's yanked. I'd have dropped F***b**k except it takes effort to log in and do that. An effort I haven't had the motivation to expend for quite a while. So, some time in the next few days I'll get around to deleting my F***b**k account. Why? Because they force their opinions on people, they spy on people, the treat peoples information and copyrighted data as fodder for their money machine. They represent the worst of the tech industry, much like Google (yeah I know blogger is a G-tool - it provides a platform for me to bash G's politics at G's expense). At least to date they've haven't decided to deny First Amendment rights to people who disagree with them. (I don't expect it to last - they're too progressive to let people disagree with their ideology.)
I'm not looking for protection and special treatment - I'm just going to boycott those who talk about being against hate, when they're really supporting it.
Oh and on the off chance that someone actually wonders - I'm all for equality, even if it is - in the end - a bad deal for women. When I say equality I mean it - if you can't pass the tests, we shouldn't be making them easier just so women can pass (yes I know there are any number of women who would do significantly better than I can on physical fitness tests - not the point, I'm not trying out for Spec Ops, or Fire Fighter). Women should not get any special treatment for being women, they should get equal treatment - period.
Friday, June 7, 2013
Why does everyone sound so surprised?
The NSA is spying on us - wow news - NOT (from last year)
If you think they don't have copies of every email, post, IM and text you've ever sent - your probably wrong. It's what they do - they snoop - on EVERYONE.
Is it abuse - YES. Should they be arrested - YES, imprisoned - YES. Am I surprised? No.
Government Overreach is Standard Operating Procedure.
Welcome to the Police State. - Orwell just missed it by a few years.
If you think they don't have copies of every email, post, IM and text you've ever sent - your probably wrong. It's what they do - they snoop - on EVERYONE.
Is it abuse - YES. Should they be arrested - YES, imprisoned - YES. Am I surprised? No.
Government Overreach is Standard Operating Procedure.
Welcome to the Police State. - Orwell just missed it by a few years.
Thursday, June 6, 2013
Jazz state of mind
I go though phases with music. For months it was Folk/Rock vocals, lately I've been spending a lot of time listening to classic rock. Today I fell into a jazz state of mind today - There's a lot of jazz I really love that's been on the back burner for a while.
Claire Martin who records on the Linn label has been a favorite of mine since the early nineties when I found a copy of The Waiting Game
Claire Martin who records on the Linn label has been a favorite of mine since the early nineties when I found a copy of The Waiting Game
Here's a sample from my favorite album of her's - Old Boyfriends
The Wheelers and Dealers
Once I start down the path I'll be on it for awhile so I suspect I'll be mentioning some of my other favorites in the next few weeks.
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