As If You Needed Another Reason...

Ready for another reason to vote blue next Tuesday? Let's go back in time to 2009, when President Obama had just been sworn in and liberal anger was still white-hot against the Bush administration. Remember how so many wanted to prosecute the entire administration for war crimes, dragging out a simple campaign slogan of "no more war" to what would've been a lengthy, bitterly-divisive, and costly investigation?

Well, President Obama put the kibosh on that right out of the gate, promising that he would move forward with rebuilding the nation and stopping the wars before he dragged out the skeletons from W's closet and put his brand-new presidency at risk. Plenty of liberals wanted more, and as new evidence comes to light, we've seen that they likely had a point, especially about allegations that the administration ignored key warnings that  coulda-woulda-shoulda prevented 9/11.

Or that they were torturing prisoners in defiance of the Geneva Convention.

Or that they lied about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Or that they proceeded with the invasion of Iraq in opposition to international law.

Or... Or...

I think you get the point. Now let's come back to the present. I shouldn't have to tell you about the many controversies, manufactured or otherwise, that have cropped up from right-wing circles about President Obama and his administration. We've seen already that prominent Republicans like Darrell Issa have no qualms about making their own highly-public "investigations" into anything that they think will embolden their base and/or hurt the president. They will literally stop at nothing. So in light of what I've just talked about with President Obama flatly declaring that Bush administration officials are to be given immunity from trials, what do you think will happen if Mitt Romney is elected?

Let me tell you.

His administration will give carte blanche to the likes of Darrell Issa, Joe Arpaio, and any other crackerjack conspiracy theorist to launch their own "investigations" into anything about Barack Obama (and anyone who worked for him) that they feel inclined to blow smoke about. The birther quests and Benghazi bloviations of today will look like child's play in comparison.

Now am I arguing that we re-elect the president to shield him from legitimate investigations in the case of actual wrong-doing on the part of himself or his employees? Certainly not. In the case that he or his administration screws up, they should be held accountable according to legal procedure, but not to some vindictive kangaroo court that a Romney presidency would be powerless to stop, if it didn't outright endorse one.

And who's to say that such retribution would stop at Barack Obama and key administration officials? To play a little devil's advocate here, why not also draw in Democratic members of Congress, on the national and state levels? And why not key Democratic fundraisers and activists? Furthermore, what about the volunteers who could also be implicated? And why not take it all the way down to the very root of the "problem": to the very people who voted for him in the first place?

In case you've been asleep these past few months- well, really years- you've no doubt heard people tell you that "this election is the most important one of our generation". Well guess what: they're right. Absolutely, positively right. And before you go accusing me of spreading just another conspiracy theory, just remember who we're dealing with. Remember where their priorities lie: uteri, guns, and theocracy. Now remember that we are the only tangible thing standing between them and total control of the three things I just mentioned.

Do you really need another reason to make Tuesday "Blues-day"? Really?

AZ Proposition 204, Explained For People Who Have Working Brains

Arizona-based fans, I'm calling a huddle here for a minute. How many of you are familiar with Prop 204? It's a ballot initiative that would keep the temporary sales tax increase that we approved last election, to the tune of $1 billion for public schools. Republicans, like the Center for Arizona Policy, Secretary of State Ken Bennett, and State Treasurer Doug Ducey don't like it one bit. Bennett tried to disqualify it from the ballot, and now Herr Ducey has a new bone to pick with Prop 204: it's "fifteen pages long, single-spaced".

Apparently, this is too much for our dear state treasurer, who likes his books 15 pages long, with pictures of dogs on bikes and only one short sentence every other page. He's so perturbed about this page length issue that he's made a commercial to complain about it. Well, listen up, Ducey:

1.) The revenue from this proposition isn't coming from a "tax hike", because it's actually maintaining the current sales tax rate. If you truly understood math, you'd know that "constant" does not equal "increase".

2.) Monies in the fund are not going towards "bigger bureaucracy" as stated in the many commercials I've seen against Prop 204. If you'd actually read the proposition, you'd see that the money gets distributed to school districts with only $1 million out of the total $1 billion going towards administrative costs, with all surplus going to the payment of education-incurred state debt and/or facilities upkeep for needy school districts.

3.) A large part of the proposition sets up need-based scholarships amounting to 50-60% of total revenue, which from what I gather about you would apparently threaten your job. Wouldn't that just be sad if a third-grader could beat you in reading comprehension?

4.) It puts an end to the AZ GOP's sociopathic compulsion to cut education budgets willy-nilly while throwing heaps of our tax revenue at Joe Arpaio's birther quests to exotic Hawaiian resorts.

5.) It also helps out reservation schools and implements a system of accountability, which I guess you don't like because those Indians are just fine on their own, right? HAHAHA wrong.

6.) The proposition places the revenue out of the hands of the AZ GOP and their so-called "sweep funds", which is just code for stealing from the poor to give to the rich. If only we could keep social programs out of your foul grip as well...

7.) Guess what? It also sets up a fund for infrastructure development! You know, that thing that you Republicans liked so much when you could lay claim to it as President Eisenhower's idea. Too bad he's doing backflips in his grave over you people right now.

8.) Wouldn't you know it, we're back to social programs. A children's health care fund paid for by federal money, the tobacco tax, and private donations? Really? You want to kill that, all because the proposition that sets up its legal framework is too long for you to handle? Well, you'd better buckle up, because I'm a college student right now (incidentally, at one of the universities that your fellows love screwing out of budget money so much), and I'd like to give you a peek at my homework for this weekend. I'll be reading 27 pages by Wednesday for my Native American music class, in addition to 135 pages by Wednesday for Colonial Latin American History. That second one is an entire book, by the way, and both assignments are single-spaced. So do us all a favor and get off your high horse about 15 pages before me and my 162 pages tell you do to something obscene, along with that high horse you rode in on. If you're willing to make this much noise over 15 pages at the expense of Arizona's children, then I'd hate to see what you'd do if you had my homework load.

9.) I'm starting to see why you guys hate this proposition so much. Another section about using taxes collected from businesses to keep children and the general homeless population from starving! I'd accuse you of being Dickensian, but if you can't even fight your way through 15 single-spaced pages in a PDF- that, I should add, is also public record- then I really doubt that you've even cracked a Dickens novel. And not being able to read is no excuse: after all, you've always got Wishbone's version of Oliver Twist (parts one, two, and three)!

10.) I would go on about how the proposition includes measures for re-evaluating the revenue and disbursement structure every five years, as well as outside auditing by state and local courts, but I'm probably fast approaching the threshold of your attention span. I should probably start wrapping it up so you can go back to dreaming about ice cream and how best to defraud your franchisees once you leave state office and rejoin the rest of us out here in the real world. With luck, your pals in the legislature will fail at realizing their Hobbesian fantasies in the lives of your fellow Arizonans, but if they should succeed, I'd simply call it poetic justice.

You may be wondering how I was able to gather so much information about Prop 204 in so little time. After all, your commercial made it sound so daunting: "fifteen pages... single-spaced". Well, you wanna know my secret? Do you? Of course you do. Now lean in close... Here it comes...

My secret is...


(wait for it...)


I READ IT (and you can too!). And what's more, I didn't die from brain overload. No really, you should try it sometime. Reading, that is. It's pretty great. At least, I think so.

So does Wishbone, and he's a dog, for crying out loud.

Plausible Deniability and Voting Third-Party

I have a hypothesis. I won't say it's a theory, because that will just bring up all my memories of having debates with people who say things like "it's only a theory!" and I don't have time for that here. Like I was saying...

I have a hypothesis, and that is that third-party voters are the hipsters of the political scene. I've seen this get thrown around with Ron Paul, but he's not even third-party. No, I'm talking about the candidates that are so far out of the mainstream, that the only evidence we have of their existence is the media equivalent of shoddy demo tapes: Ross Perot, Ralph Nader, Gary Johnson, etc.

I'll admit that even though I was alive during Perot's and Nader's respective heydays, I was too busy watching "Animaniacs" to care either way what they did. I knew that Clinton was president and I had some sort of opinion about Bob Dole, but I don't remember what it was other than that he was way old and Clinton wasn't. Don't ask me for details, because I don't know them.

Anyways, now we live in 2012. I'm not too up on Perot's or Nader's whereabouts these days, but I do see quite a bit about Gary Johnson around town and on campus. For instance, a week or two ago I was greeted by a large tarpaulin sign out behind the Student Union that featured nothing but Gary Johnson's name, a picture of some marijuana cigarettes, and the motto "Gary gets it" plastered across the top in large, comforting letters. Well, Gary may "get it", but I certainly didn't. Not the pot thing, but the whole "voting for someone who has a snowball in Mesa's chance at winning the election" thing.

Johnson fans are prepared for skeptics like myself. As pointed out by one of his fans on my FB friends list, "if everyone wasted their vote on him, he'd win". Well, so would Mickey Mouse. In fact, it's highly plausible that Mickey Mouse will pull more votes than plenty of these third-party candidates, if not necessarily Johnson himself. That's a rather silly argument to make about your candidate, because what it really does instead of inspiring confidence is come off with the hipster vibe I mentioned above. It feels like "well, my candidate will never win and you won't vote for him, but I will because then I can get in everyone else's face about how I voted for someone that no one had ever heard about".

This is not a hipster music debate. This is my attempt to understand how an American voter could knowingly (to use a very rough comparison) throw their ballot in the blender, all in order to stand on a soapbox come November 7th to preach to us about how "I voted for x" or "all candidates are the same except for the one I voted for". All I have to say to the first is "how'd that work out for you, to know that your ballot was essentially meaningless in the face of the rest of the popular vote, much less the electoral vote?" What I have to say to the second is "wow, you haven't been paying attention at all to anything but your nobody candidate, have you?" I really don't equivocate on this one.

I have a temporary job as an early ballot registration canvasser. I've also done some volunteering with voter registration on campus. Most of the people I've talked to are already registered, but occasionally I'll get a really unique response that just makes my mouth hang open. Something like "I don't vote", or "I'm too old for that". Well played, sir... NOT. I haven't run into any adamant third-party voters yet, but I'm pretty sure I know how the conversation would go.

Back to the pot thing. Rather than highlighting some more pressing issues on the Johnson/Libertarian platform, his reps on my campus decided to just focus our attention on one thing: smoking dope. They probably figured it would be a sure-fire hit, since my whole campus smells like pot smoke after 8:00 PM. But inquiring minds want to know: what else will he do? "Well," they said, "he won't start a war with Iran." OK, we're on the right track here, but neither will Obama. Can't we just reelect him instead of going with a Libertarian and all the other things inherent in their platform? Like that whole states' rights thing that the Tea Party gets so much traction out of flogging to death with neo-Confederate rhetoric and "land appropriation" bills in state congresses across the nation.

Look: if you want pot legalization, that's a tough call. The Obama administration doesn't plan to budge in the slightest on this one, but if you honestly think that pot legalization is the most important issue in this whole campaign, you've either not been watching the build-up to the election, or you've been lighting up too much of the sweet stuff to see the many-headed elephant in the room known as "GOP fascist theocracy rearing its ugly head if the Democratic Party doesn't win next month". You think things are bad now with government overreach? Just wait until you get guys like Reps. Hubbard and Fuqua out of Arkansas, who think that "slavery wasn't all that bad" and that citizenship in the US should include some kind of religious exclusion for Muslims. Does those sound like Constitutional principles to you? Or how about more Tea Party reps like those in North Carolina that talk tough about "small government", which really means "it's small compared to a Gatorade bottle and fits inside your uterus (but not ours, because we're men)"? Doesn't really smack of governmental non-intrusion, now does it?

We're approaching the point of this post. I promise. If you're reading this and you plan on voting third-party, I'm sorry if I roughed you up too much in the preceding paragraphs... It hurt me a whole lot more than it hurt you, and I'm being dead serious there. I don't really see many voters in your situation changing your minds on some of these issues. What I would like to see, however, is an acknowledgement of something that Democrats (and Republicans at times) have understood for some time now: compromise is essential to progress.

Just as liberalism used to mean an ideology pushing for rapid change and progress, conservatism used to mean progress as well, but it was more measured and methodical, certainly more so than the socialist movements that arose in the US around the turn of the century. This was also a time when Republicans were pioneers in resource conservation and worker protection. I'm most referring to President Roosevelt the First here, but his ideas enjoyed support then and are still inspirational now. Was he a perfect president? By all means, no. Read some of the things he had to say about the Philippines after we "liberated" them from the Spanish. Sure, they won the war with our help, but then when they asked if they could just hang onto that nice sovereignty thing they'd wanted during the revolution, we pretty much gave them a middle finger and fought the Vietnam War 60 years too early, the biggest difference being that we "won".

That being said, even Teddy wasn't perfect. The system needs balance. It needs compromise. If that means we sacrifice some of our pet legislation to the greater good, then so be it. Exercise a great deal of care, talk out your points and/or grievances, then see that going your own way isn't always the best idea. Sure, I'm tired of Democrats playing too nicely with Republicans who lie, but to conflate the distinction between the Tea Party and the moderate Republicans who still exist out there somewhere will do more harm than good. So will looking down the ballot on November 6th and saying that either "both candidates are the same" or "none of them meet all my expectations perfectly, therefore I'll give my vote to someone who will in all likelihood pull in no more than 4% of the vote if that".

You'd actually be pretty hard-pressed to find a Democrat out there who agrees unquestioningly with every single thing that President Obama has done. Heaven knows it's hard to find a Republican who honestly believes that everything Romney touches turns to gold. Even his campaign workers have to spin and twist his words to get some semblance of continuity between him and the language of his campaign platform... But you know what? That's just the nature of the beast. If you want a candidate who represents you perfectly and believes exactly the same way you do, then you should just go ahead and run now, because I promise you now that the phantom clone candidate that you're looking for simply doesn't exist. I'm serious: go run for something next election. I don't care what office you go after, but if you have some good ideas and a willingness to listen to your potential constituents, why not just go ahead and run?

In this election, however, our obligation is to vote. Not for a candidate whose total voter pull could be threatened by Mickey Mouse, but for a candidate who's been able to demonstrate progress in several areas. Even Reagan's old buddies at the Annenberg Public Policy Center concede that the Obama administration has had some rough times and frankly screwed up in certain areas, but these facts can't be denied: consumer confidence is up, unemployment is on a downward trend line from where it was a couple years ago, around 325,000 jobs have been added in this last year, etc.

Do give credit where it's deserved. Don't give it where it isn't.

Do stay informed. Don't wash your hands of this election and the discussion surrounding it, no matter how annoying or disturbing it may become.

Do vote. Don't throw away that right by either abstaining or giving your vote to a candidate who has no earthly chance of winning, especially if you're doing so for the purpose of standing on an ideological soapbox above the rest of us.

I know that post was basically telling you to vote for President Obama, but let's be real here: you really thought Romney could win this thing? And even if he could, would you really want him to?

A Modern Modest Proposal

A MODEST PROPOSAL

For Preventing the White Supremacists and Racists From Being a Burden on Their Constituents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the African Publick

by Steven Kohlbert

2012

---

As a student of politics, both national and international, it has come to my attention that there exists, even in this post-Civil War America, a sharp divide between certain members of the White community and people of color. This is highlighted by comments recently expressed in the news and in books published by Republican members of state congresses across the nation advocating the idea that the perpetual slavery of the Black race may have been a blessing in disguise. The reasoning behind this statement being that those fortunate few who survived the institution of slavery until its cessation at the end of the Civil War became citizens of “the greatest nation on earth”. Taking into account the gains of the civil rights movement from that time until the present day, this conclusion- that Blacks eventually became citizens as opposed to merely three-fifths of a non-citizen counted for the purpose of the census- can be accepted as partially true. However, it is certainly distressing to see individuals such as these advocating this position without any first-hand experience with the living conditions inherent in slavery. Rather than simply complaining about this disparity, I instead propose a solution that will be beneficial in many ways, which I shall now discuss.

First, it is very important to understand the historical context for African slavery in the Americas. Begun in the 16^th century by Portuguese traders, slaves- typically from West Africa- originally replaced native laborers on plantations in the Caribbean. From there, the practice expanded to cover the entirety of the American Colonies. However, Abolitionist sentiment in the Northern States eventually led to the diminishing of the institution there, if not an end to the trade itself; it eventually ceased in Union territory with the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed all African slaves in areas claimed or reclaimed by Union troops. With the capitulation of the Confederacy and the passage of the Reconstruction Amendments, Africans were finally granted both freedom from slavery where it existed previously, and also full citizenship and equal protection under the law. However, history shows us that traditions of segregation and discrimination lasted long into the next century. Recent events have shown us that this divide was never fully healed.

Part of the justification for this is the erroneous belief that Africans are inherently less civilized than Europeans, a mindset that has prevailed for many a century among the intellectually-challenged. Cited as evidence is Africa's supposed lack of so-called hallmarks of civilization, such as skyscrapers, modern infrastructure, and large-scale food production. To this end, I would like to submit my modest proposal as a way to solve both the problems of apparent African under-development and the ability of White racists to speak about slavery from personal experience.

To state my proposal simply, I would put forward the idea that certain among the White race be eligible for sale into perpetual servitude. This would not apply to all; rather, only those with 1.) a deep-seated hatred or aversion of Black people and 2.) a lack of personal knowledge concerning the institution of slavery would be candidates for such service. This can be ascertained through various methods: analysis of internet, mail, or interpersonal communications; membership in certain groups, clubs, or political organizations; display of or commiseration with symbols known to have connections with any group like those described previously. Additionally, slave status could also be determined by the attitudes held and/or stated by an individual's grandfather on either side of the family, given that the individual holds to the same ideas.

Once prepared for service, White slaves would be gathered at prominent East Coast and Gulf ports like New York City, Charleston, Richmond, and New Orleans, where they would be loaded onto ships bound for the African continent and beyond. In order to facilitate a more realistic experience for our trans-Atlantic voyagers, working replicas of period sailing vessels would need to be constructed from traditional materials using methods proper to the time. Construction of these vessels would be inexpensive as the gathering of materials and the construction proper would obviously be the work of the slaves themselves. While historical African slaves may not necessarily have personally built the vessels that carried them across the Atlantic, it could be argued that this step would be a necessary cost-cutting measure in these tough economic times. Also worth noting is the fact that the United States will incur no debt by this process, as the slaves will be sold on profit in accordance with free-market principles.

The fleet would of necessity follow the current across the Atlantic to ports on the west coast of Africa, a journey of approximately six weeks. As space will be very tight inside the ships, rations for slaves will be restricted to only that which is necessary for survival, though in certain circumstances, even smaller rations may be required. Though not encouraged, this experience will help the slaves prepare themselves for the low-calorie diet inherent of their future lives on African plantations. Additionally, the tight nature of shipboard life will necessitate burial-at-sea for any who unfortunately may perish in the crossing. While safe conveyance of cargo is essential for maintenance of the trade, collateral damage is in some cases unavoidable.

Upon arrival in West African waters, the trading fleet will then separate to distribute their respective cargoes to large ports such as Accra, Lagos, and Monrovia; once there, the slaves will be sold in auction to African landowners and householders. Of necessity, potential buyers will not be obligated to buy a slave's entire family along with an individual. Free-market principles dictate that the owner himself is best-equipped to make decisions regarding his private enterprise, without government or regulation stepping in to mandate the purchase of an entire slave family when only a handful of sundry individuals will suffice. This is further reinforced by the variety of potential occupations for these slaves once they reach their respective plantations or households, which will be discussed presently.

From the ports of West Africa, slaves will be obligated to follow their respective masters to their properties across the continent of Africa and beyond, as circumstances demand. Typical labor could include the following: clearing jungle land for planting; building up infrastructure such as highways, dams, and bridges; farming on existing plantations; even working in their master's house. To ensure that sufficient time is devoted to constructive labors and physical exercise, literacy of slaves will be strongly discouraged where applicable, taking into consideration the prior academic attainments (or lack thereof) of the slave in question.

Here we see the benefit to both the slaves and to the African people as a whole: whereas previously these slaves may have derided the supposed lack of food production and modernity in rural Africa, now they have a unique opportunity to offer themselves selflessly in order to improve conditions for the people of the continent. As standards of living improve for Africans in general, it can be expected that, according to trickle-down economic theory, so too may the lives of the slaves improve, though such evidence is not entirely necessary for the theory to be perpetuated in the minds of men.

Finally, we must consider the hardships that these slaves will undoubtedly encounter, among these are: foreign diseases to which they have no natural immunity; sparse living conditions; lack of clothing, food, and/or clean water; housing insufficient for protection from the elements or family size; physical abuse not limited to whippings, amputation of limbs, attacks by dogs, rape or other forms of sexual abuse; and last but not least, murder or other forms of untimely or unnatural death. While it pains the heart to recognize that such hazards will be inherent to their labor, it also must be borne in mind that despite the illusion of perpetuity, their slavery will most likely not be eternal. Not only will slaves be allowed to purchase their freedom- in relation to the price paid for them in US dollars, as opposed to whatever compensation they may collect in local currency- they will also have the same opportunity given to them that was imparted to the African slaves in days gone by. If, centuries in the future, the respective governments of their new lands decide to end the practice of slavery, these slaves- or at least their distant descendants- will be given the chance to become citizens in their own right, free from service without pay on plantations. Instead, they will likely be able to live in the same hovels they inhabited as slaves, only this time they will be paid wages so small as to be considered insignificant in exchange for their former masters not burning their houses down, sending them to prisons for hard labor, or simply killing them out of hand.

In the end, these future descendants will be able to look back upon the servitude of their ancestors, knowing that in spite of all the many hardships they faced, they are ultimately blessed to be where they now are. Not only that, they will now be able to look African-Americans in the eye and tell them with certainty that they now know what it feels like to be the descendant of a people forced across an ocean to a new land, only to be considered a sub-human beast of burden for many subsequent centuries. The present writer imagines that in that day, many a happy tear will be shed by faces both Black and White. It is worth noting that while the present writer offers the preceding as a modest proposal to be considered by those in positions to mandate such a policy, he also objects himself and his future posterity from such service, as he is not especially adept at manual labor, and has a great love for African contributions to American culture.

Enough About You, Let's Talk About Me

For those of you who read my blog and like my page, you know quite a bit about what I think, but not a lot about the person who's doing the thinking. Today, I'd like you to introduce you to someone: me.

First off, I'm a guy. I thought you should know this. Second, I'm a college student. Not a Mitt Romney "oh, we had to sell some stock to go to school, woe is us" college student, but a "man, I don't know if I can eat chicken ramen again today, maybe I'll just have it for lunch and then go with beef ramen for dinner" college student. I had to take out student loans and get Pell Grants to pay for my education, otherwise I'd still be stuck at home playing Napoleon: Total War instead of majoring in sociocultural anthropology at a state university. Back to Romney, his comments about every American being able to get "as much education as they can afford" really irked me: of course he could say that as a trust-fund baby, but what about the rest of us who can barely continue after high school without working multiple jobs, applying for as much free (and not-so-free) money as we can find, and/or basically selling ourselves into slavery in exchange for student loans that may one day kill us? The kind of plan that Romney puts forward in his statement is one that would leave the wealthy with all access to higher education while relegating the masses to under-educated serfdom. We can discuss serfdom in another post, but just let that point stand alone for now.

Speaking of money, I just got off the phone with my bank an hour or two ago. Thanks to all the mandatory purchases that go along with college- textbooks, an iClicker, rent, etc.- I literally have about $50 to spare this whole semester, provided I stretch my financial aid and possibly work two jobs. Due to a little error of mine in paying for all this, I got hit with an overdraft fee of $38. This turned into a $30 NSF fee on my rent check, which the Paula Deen-esque desk lady at my on-campus apartment said was "just a fact uh laahhf". This got me thinking about the Romneys and their comments about education in America and the ways in which they try to appear as if somehow in some esoteric way they can identify with my struggles as a human being, a student, and a voter (all at the same time).

The more I thought about this, the more furious I became. I don't get furious very often, as any regular on my page can attest, but this was just one big compounding event of fury that really stuck out to me as a way to highlight the disparity between Mitt and me. I'm not talking about religious differences or anything of that nature. What I'm talking about is his ability to empathize with me and others who share similar problems.

In high school, we are shown the same chart; you know, the bar graph that shows relative lifetime earnings based on the level of education we attain. "An AA degree will earn you x," they say, "and a BA will earn you y" and so on. Well, I have two AAs and I'm not exactly making five figures here... Anyways, this chart is supposed to motivate us all to get a higher education and earn lots of money. If we were to assume that this chart is true, you'd think that a society that truly values education as a mechanism of social mobility would want education to be as accessible as possible. You would be right. The problem is that our society doesn't really think like that, at least the guys on top don't. Instead, we get people like Mitt who want education to be a luxury, not a right. Instead, we get guys like the GOP representatives in Congress that want to increase student loan interest rates and cut Pell Grants (which can only be used by the poor). Instead we get a sociopolitical environment that seems to prize ignorance over ingenuity and obedience over objectivity.

If we are to succeed as a nation, much less as a competitor in a global economy that is beginning to favor other nations over our own, this has to change. Fortunately, the easiest way to choose between these two polar alternatives is to vote this November. It really is that simple, at least in the short term.

If you have a similar experience to mine, please share it in the comments.

On Fascist Theocracy

Maybe I've seen too many chickenhawk congressmen and Teabaggers in the last couple weeks, but I really do think Americans at large have a serious problem. Sure, we love our veterans and want them to have all the care and protection they deserve, not to mention our active-duty, reserves and National Guard units. I understand that they protect the country and even though we may quibble about policy and deployment, we would be in real trouble without the protection our military offers us.

BUT.

For going on 200 years now, the mainland United States has not been a theater for warfare against a major foreign threat (with the exception of Mexico, which paled in comparison to standard European armies of the day), and the lessons we should've learned in the Civil War seem more and more distant everyday, especially in light of the Tea Party's push for "states rights"/subversion of the federal government.

Not to discount the impact and tragedy of Pearl Harbor and September 11th, most Americans (myself included) have no experience with war on the homefront. I contend that this has led to an America largely unable to empathize with the victims of warfare, massacres, and injustices on a large scale. For this reason, I have nothing but contempt for the overwhelming majority of Teabaggers who spew their xenophobic hyperbole in an attempt to cast themselves as victims of fascism, Nazism, communism, socialism, Islam, atheism, or any number of conspiracies. This is fear-mongering at its worst that, in the end, will only perpetuate the cycle of crying wolf until the real threat- fascist theocracy- can and will creep among us unobstructed. We've already seen in the person of Wade Michael Page that these kinds of threats exist. Though arguing that he was a theocrat would be pointless at present, we can certainly ascribe his motives to the kind of rhetoric that the right has been buddying up with ever-so-closely in the last couple years.

This is why we all try so hard to expose their faulty logic, their lies, their war-mongering, their distortions, their hatred, and ultimately their efforts to legislate us all into mindless obedience to a political cult posing as Christianity. That the actions of some of the more sanctimonious on the right wing should not be taken as examples of Christ-like behavior is something to be remembered at all times.

Steven Kohlbert, over and out.

The Modern Virtue of Treason

Once, when confronted with sedition in the ranks, George Washington broke the rebels into two groups, one of the leaders and another of the followers. After gathering all the mutineers together, the followers were organized into a firing squad which then executed their own leaders. The Continental Army was underfed, underpaid, and vastly under-powered in the face of its British and Hessian opponents. Without the help of Western European minor nobles inspired by freedom (Casimir Pulaski) and wrecking the British on two continents (the Marquise de Lafayette), our Continental Army would've needed quotation marks to go around using the word "army". Our rough assortment of riflemen, stolen artillery, and decked-out merchant vessels probably looked like an bunch of Amazonian tribesman going up against Seal Team Six.

And yet...

We won. Yes, we won. With training from military professionals, Washington and his commanders organized farmers, trappers, British deserters, and assorted scum into a force that defeated the world's most powerful navy and one of its most powerful infantry forces. Looking back, we admire the minutemen for their sacrifices in the name of liberty. We adore George Washington for his ability to command (and in some instances, compel) his men on to victory against a superior force. We idolize the Colonial Congress for their courage in not only cutting the ties between them and their oppressive English overlords, but also for inspiring like-minded individuals across the world.

And yet...

If the Tea Party puppet masters are to be believed, their hordes of astro-turfed, alarmist xenophobes are the modern-day inheritors of the Continental Army's legacy. For the average TV viewer, the tri-cornered hats and 18th Century garb might lend credence to the Tea Party's assertion. However, the average TV viewer who assumed this would be wrong. Rather than being the brave minutemen that sent themselves to the front with only a dream that they would return to house and home, the Tea Party more closely resembles the sorry chaps I mentioned earlier. You know, the ones that a less patient commander-in-chief lined up in the forest.

First off, the Declaration of Independence was most assuredly treason. This is not debatable. What is debatable is whether or not the Tea Party and their representatives in Congress resemble the colonial patriots in slightest. The answer is "only just", in that they were born here (except for John Sununu, who was born in Cuba). Now, I'm not going to do the expected thing and go through the lengthy list of grievances against the British Crown as contained in the Declaration. Why, you ask? Because that won't convince anybody. Trust me; the Teabaggers have pre-fab arguments for virtually every contingency that the rest of us can throw at them, not to mention that their base foments an unholy distrust against any and all sources information that don't specifically kow-tow to their leadership.

What I will do is take a look at their national and state Congressional records. Let's see... Abortion bills, obstruction on a $35 billion jobs bill for teachers and emergency personnel, arcane anti-gay bills, more obstruction on equal pay for women, a budget proposal that brings the word "Dickensian" back into the vernacular, and a presidential ticket that would make that budget a reality, complete with gangs of impoverished child thieves. After the Department of Education gets gutted, crime is all they'll have left.


You see, the colonial patriots fought to free themselves and their posterity from the fascist theocracy that was England. The king was officially acknowledged by church and government as God's advocate on Earth, only without all that papist claptrap like celibacy oaths and transubstantiation. King Henry VIII even kept the title "Defender of the Faith" as a holdover from the good old days, when Bible translators and rabble-rousers could be burned after either being strangled to death or even after being dead for 44 years.


In a previous post, I pontificated (ha, it's a pun because we discussed Catholicism!) on the separation of church and state. We don't need to get into the nitty-gritty here, only that it exists to protect religion from government and government from religion. That being said, I chuckle wryly every time I hear some Teabagger come on TV and squawk about being repressed. If anything, we should see from the kinds of things these guys do once they get a little bit of power that they have no intention of extending rights to all; rather, they're willing to go to any lengths necessary to keep their own "rights" at the expense of others. If we're looking for a historical American analogue of the modern religious Teabagger, we should look to the Puritans instead of the minutemen. Sure, they came to America for religious freedom, but they only came for their own religious freedom. Objectors were exiled into the forest to start their own colonies.

This brings us to the subject of treason and why it has become a virtue for the Tea Party movement. A Texas judge cries wolf over an imminent invasion by UN troops and warns of civil war as retribution. Hank Williams Jr, the brain-damaged substance abuser that he is, claims that President Obama is a Muslim "who hates farming, hates the military, [and] hates the U.S." and is greeted by applause instead of a firing squad composed of his treasonous comrades. Rush Limbaugh even blames tropical storm warnings on a Democratic conspiracy to disrupt the RNC in Tampa. Need I go on?

What we have now is a very clever breed of fascist theocrat, one that tries to muddy the waters of public sentiment by accusing the other side of materializing their very own darkest desires. We have a large group of people in this country that commands an ever-growing wing of the GOP that exists for the sole purpose of deposing the democratically-elected president of the United States, in some cases "by bullet or by ballot". In another time, a less-patient commander-in-chief lined up the traitors and forced them to execute their own leaders. Will that time ever come? I sincerely hope not. I hope that we will never again see civil war or secession or mutiny within the ranks of our armed forces.

But if that ever happens, I know which side I'll be standing on.

Do you?

A Liberal Who Hates PETA?!

This next subject is one not-so-near-and-dear to my heart, namely PETA. The media and a veritable cornucopia of celebrities would tell you that that particular acronym stands for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, but they're lying through their impeccably-capped teeth. What it really stands for is Pornographers Engaged in Tactless Advertising. You'd be surprised at just how many Hollywood starlets and other easily-manipulated college girls are willing to take off their clothes for these people, just so they can feel better about being drooled over by truckers. Hey, at least the cause is a worthy one, right?

More like "one worthy of my ire". For starters, let's take a look at some statistics about PETA's "animal shelters": here we see the kill rates of animals accepted to a PETA-run shelter in Virginia. For an organization that wants to put off a hippy-dippy, good feelin' drum circle vibe, they sure do like killing their "friends". I guess their plan to "phase out" companion animals is to literally phase them out of life by the thousands. How 'bout that. Just think about where your money's going next time you buy one of their "I'm Not A Nugget" necklace charms: is it going to buy body paint for sidewalk protesters? Will it be used to purchase euthanasia drugs for pets that wind up in their shelters? Perhaps fake blood to lob at runway models? Or will it go towards their decades-old campaign to pull hapless celebrities into an arguably-misogynistic image campaign of posters and magazines usually reserved for garages and covert bathroom cupboards? The world may never know, because even though PETA releases annual financial statements, I'm no accountant and therefore have no clue what most of the numbers and labels on this thing even mean, much less what it tells me about their funds allocation strategies.

Now I see where some of you could get me wrong. "What?" I can hear you saying. "A liberal who hates PETA?! The nerve! He must be a closeted gun nut!" Actually, you couldn't be farther from the truth. I have no problem with vegetarians and vegans (more bacon for me!) and especially take no issue with religious people who abstain from meat for doctrinal reasons. I just hate PETA for being a scummy organization that uses scummy tactics to openly manipulate the public. They want to regulate away my bacon and I will fight them tooth and nail (hurr durr it's an animal pun) to preserve my bacon-consumption rights. I'm fairly certain that pre-publication drafts of Thomas Paine's Two Treatises of Government listed the natural rights of man as "life, liberty, property and bacon", though I have yet to prove this conclusively.

Additionally, I agree with them to an extent on the ethics of sport hunting. While I'd never begrudge a hunter his or her ability to hunt for food, mostly because bison and elk are delicious animals, I have yet to come across an argument for sport hunting that doesn't sound like "ME MAN, ME BIG AND STRONG, ME KILL PUNY ANEEMAL WITH STICK DAT GO BOOM". Are you a sport hunter? If so, prove me wrong in the comments section. Until you do, I will continue to look at you the way I do.

I will also keep eating burgers. Lots and lots of burgers.

Marriage Equality Compromise

Debating is awesome. I love it almost too much to be a part of a coherent society. Some could say that my study of logical fallacies, winning tactics, applications of philosophy and the opposing views of a lot of different issues has probably consumed an inordinate amount of my time, but I could argue that it hasn't. See? I'm debating already and I haven't even written more than four sentences. All I'm basically saying is that debating is awesome. Why? Because it is. It's hard to quantify or describe fully, because not everyone likes it and not everyone who likes it is good at it. In fact, some people are really bad, and that's what this post is all about. Let's proceed, shall we?

Issue de jour: MARRIAGE EQUALITY

FYI, keep in mind that if I alternate between "marriage equality" and "gay marriage", it's only because the main thrust of the marriage equality movement is rights for homosexuals, as anti-miscegenation laws are thankfully a thing of the past. As American readers should recall, Propositions 8 and 102 passed, though not without controversy. While the existence of controversy is understandable, the extremes of the debate were not. I mean, check out this commercial here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wp76ly2_NoI

For those of you not willing to go the extra mile and click the link, it's the National Organization For Marriage's "Gathering Storm" commercial. You know, the one where the "rainbow coalition" of "average people" are standing in front of a green screen making vague references to storms and clouds and stuff. Well, they also make some passing mentions that legalizing gay marriage will take away the rights of said "average people" and generally lead to the downfall of Western Civilization and/or Judgment Day, but you can just ignore a statement that unverifiable, right? Um, no. Normally, a responsible citizen/viewer of a commercial such as this would request some data that would prove beyond all doubt that the legalization of gay marriage would lead to the above. I'm sure plenty of people actually did this, so if you did, let me know how that turned out. Anyway, if you haven't done so yet, let me tell you what'll happen- nothing. NOM won't give you this data because none exists. Their debate is an entirely moral argument based mostly on speculation and- it could be argued for some, though certainly not all- bigotry. That's right, I said it, bigotry. OOGITY BOOGITY. Not the B-word! Yes, the B-word.

Now let's talk about the B-word. It exists. I don't discount that, and anyone who does is deluding themselves. However, it shouldn't be the go-to rebuttal every time an opponent presents a contradictory argument. Otherwise, we spend too much time looking at maybe-bigots when we could be worrying about actual-bigots. Just like it doesn't help the debate for opponents to say "You're taking away my rights!" (they aren't), it doesn't help the debate for proponents to say "You don't want gay marriage because you hate me and all I love!" (they don't). Both sides are making what they believe to be moral arguments, which is pretty much the only argument you can make about this kind of thing. Yes, opponents, the proponents have morals. They may not be a carbon-copy of yours, but calling them "amoral" or "godless" won't get you anywhere. They probably aren't, because only Alex Delarge from "A Clockwork Orange" is amoral and calling an atheist "godless" would be counterproductive to your argument in that you're implying that some have a god and others don't.

Since both arguments are based in what is considered morality and both sides believe that there really is no argument because they are, in fact, right, you'd think reconciliation would be impossible or at least improbable. That's what both sides tell me, so it must be true, right? HAHAHAHAHAHA no. That's where I come in.

The problem is that homosexuals would like to marry each other, claiming marriage as a Constitutionally-recognized civil right, and most evangelicals would have us believe that gay people caused the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and say "no". The matter is complicated by the fact that civil unions and gay marriage aren't recognized everywhere, civil unions are kind of a cop-out, and both sides know "with every fiber of their being" that they're right.

Constitutionally, the proponents are correct; ever since the 14th Amendment guaranteed equal protection under the law and Perez v. Sharp in California ruled bans on mixed-race marriages unconstitutional, marriage has been a recognized civil right. This is great for me; anyone who's read my earlier posts knows that I'm so white I reflect and my girlfriend is a paragon of Filipina beauty. This is important because the same California law that prevented Andrea Perez and Sylvester Davis from marrying  (the unfortunately-named "Section 69") also prevented marriages between a white and a "Negro, mulatto, Mongolian or member of the Malay race", meaning my girlfriend and I would be out of luck in CA. This situation is known in legal terms as no bueno. That case and further developments in the early 1960's led to the repeal of a similar law in my home state of Arizona which specifically banned marriages between whites and Filipinos (among others).

Based on this assessment, the only recourse is to move for marriage equality on a national scale. But this is a compromise, remember? There has to be a caveat in a compromise, so here it is: gay marriage would be legal, but no church would be forced to perform a gay marriage against the will of their leadership. But wait! That defeats the point, right? NO, for three reasons:

1. There are churches that push for marriage equality.
2. In case a given religious leader isn't willing to cooperate, Justices of the Peace, ship captains and Elvis impersonators nationwide will still be able to perform legally binding marriages for homosexuals.
3. The separation of church and state would dictate the government not force any church to perform a marriage it doesn't want to perform as long as those rights to marriage equality are available elsewhere. 

Yeah, I said "separation of church and state"; what about it? Doesn't feel too awesome when it's used against you, does it, secular humanists? Take that! Ahem... Back on topic.

"Separation of church and state" works both ways: churches don't try and enact undue influence on the government, and the government doesn't tell churches what to do unless what they want to do infringes upon the rights of others. Therefore, any religious organization that objects to gay marriage doesn't have to perform them, since the marriage could just be performed elsewhere and be just as legal. I'm also sure that someone out there will bring up the recent scandal involving a predominantly white church in Mississippi refusing to marry a black couple because the congregation disapproved. Does that case have bearing on what I've discussed here? Yes, but in some ways no.

Yes, because this is a case of a local church refusing to perform a marriage that conflicts with their standards, however warped those standards are. This case, however, lacks certain similarities with Perez v. Sharp. For one thing, Perez and Davis were an interracial couple, whereas Charles and Te'Andrea Wilson are both black. That, and the fact that their marriage was opposed by a vocal minority of a local congregation of a few hundred as opposed to the entire church membership or a state government, makes the circumstances different enough that- if brought to court- I would imagine the verdict relying more on the merits of the individual incident and less on the Perez v. Sharp decision. Of course, I'm not a legal scholar in any way and while I hope the Wilsons can reach a conclusion without having to sue, I'd be interested to see the results.

Additionally, if we assume that gay marriage were legalized nationwide and a given church (let's use the Catholic Church as an example) were to abstain from performing gay marriages, we would be presented with at least two problems. First, the legal battle to change Catholic policy, and doctrine by extension, would be a logistical nightmare that neither side would enjoy. First off, there are nearly 1.2 billion Catholics in the world, and while individual diocese and so on can make decisions regarding their own jurisdiction, they aren't allowed to contradict established teachings. That would take an Ecumenical Council from the Vatican to change their policies on homosexuality and marriage, which in terms of likelihood is about the same statistically as you spontaneously combusting while getting hit by a chunk of space debris and ball lightening at the same time while standing at the end of a rainbow with an actual pot of gold in a patch of four-leaf clovers, all while watching a total solar eclipse and a supernova. It's not gonna happen.

Not to say that the fight for civil rights and marriage equality can just be given up because the odds are steep; on the contrary, its importance merits national legalization to extend these rights as quickly and efficiently as possible. However, we need to bear in mind that a 1700-year-old, multinational organization with over a billion followers doesn't stop on a dime, nor will it cave to a US Supreme Court ruling. Legally, we need to think about this like General MacArthur thought of the Pacific Theater: why take every Catholic diocese in the country to court- thus incurring hundreds of millions of dollars in legal fees and years of litigation- when a nationwide policy of legalization would effectively do away with the problems of spotty legal protection for gay couples?

Finally, the argument can and will be made by Catholic officials that a homosexual Catholic who wants to marry another homosexual is a bad Catholic. This is a point on which the Vatican will not capitulate, so don't get all worked up about it if you can't do anything about it. The issue here is legal protection for gay couples, which is something that only the government can guarantee by virtue of their authority in the Constitution. If the Catholics or any other church doesn't want to recognize a gay couple's marriage on a doctrinal level, that's fine. Yes, it's fine. After all, why do we argue for separation of church and state in the first place, if not to emphasize that ours is a nation that protects government from religion and religion from government? Once marriage equality is protected constitutionally and gay marriage is nationally available, would the Catholic Church really be taking away the rights of homosexual couples?

Think of it like a capitalist. If you want jeans, you could go to the Levi store and buy a brand-new pair off the rack: there's at least $50 right there. However, you could hit up a thrift store or outlet mall and get the same jeans for $5. Either way, you've got the same pair of jeans on with less hassle and less cost. The Levi store is the Catholic Church; it's been around forever, and there's a lot more pomp and circumstance involved with getting married there than with a marriage elsewhere, but in the end you're still married. Remember the Elvis impersonators from a couple paragraphs ago? Yeah, that's the Ross of marriage. You're still married, but was the shame of the proceedings really worth it?

Anyway, that's my Opinion. I think it's rad, but I'm biased in its favor, so what do you expect? Feel free to express your Opinions below so I may tell you how wrong they are.

The Red Menace

Today's history lesson will come a little later in the post- first off, let's discuss context. According to Republicans and others, the Democrats are mislabeled. In an effort to combat this, a lot of them have started calling us the Democrat Socialist Party. Think about that- this isn't just some cutesy nickname they gave them, this is what they use in their official literature. Apparently, the combination of "opinion about a certain party"+party name=true colors. Now, why don't the Democrats pick up on this? Their claims that the GOP is too exclusive could totally take a whole new angle if their party literature started using the term Republican Bigot Party or something. Why let Republicans have a monopoly on defining their party's public image? It would also produce some juicy irony/drama considering the GOP's long and vaunted history of trust-busting in the TR days and its more recent history of enabling a private health care monopoly, but that's just beside the point.

My real point is that the term "Democrat Socialist Party" is silly for a couple reasons. First, there's already a Democratic Socialist Party in America. Why don't the Republicans ask them how they feel about all this? I'll tell you right now that the real Socialists don't approve. Second, they seem to think that "socialism" is either intrinsically evil or a label that can be used interchangeably with things like "fascism", "communism", "Marxism" and so on. Well, guess what, guys- it's time for a history lesson! Well, etymology too*.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Socialism
1 : any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods
2 a : a system of society or group living in which there is no private property b : a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state
3 : a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done

Looking at this definition, I find it hard to believe that America is a socialist country, or even that it's on the road to becoming one. In the context of the health care debate, it makes even less sense, since a government-sponsored health insurance option is hardly a means of production. Sure, I'd like to be informed if Obama collectivizes all private property- I like my iPod a lot- and I'd appreciate a phone call or something when this happens. Until then, quit throwing "socialism" around like it's some kind of Frisbee.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Communism

1 a : a theory advocating elimination of private property b : a system in which goods are owned in common and are available to all as needed
2 capitalized a : a doctrine based on revolutionary Marxian socialism and Marxism-Leninism that was the official ideology of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics b : a totalitarian system of government in which a single authoritarian party controls state-owned means of production c : a final stage of society in Marxist theory in which the state has withered away and economic goods are distributed equitably d : communist systems collectively

This is more specific than socialism, making claims of an imminent communist America even more dubious. Again, I kind of have a vested interest in non-collectivized economic systems- because I like the personal property that I own- and would certainly be worried if Democratic stormtroopers showed up at my door demanding my cell phone and coin collection for the good of the State; however, I'm not counting on that occurring. Of course, I could say that about any party, since not only is there a real Communist Party here in the US, but claims of Communistic leanings get bandied about by every party at every other party. The identity of the party wouldn't really be that important, as they would singularly control all means of production and things would suck regardless.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Marxism
: the political, economic, and social principles and policies advocated by Marx; especially : a theory and practice of socialism including the labor theory of value, dialectical materialism, the class struggle, and dictatorship of the proletariat until the establishment of a classless society

I understand Marx's angle; you don't have to look hard to see exploitation of workers by the wealthy elite. I mean, have sweatshops really gone away, despite American Apparel's claims to the contrary? No, and they probably won't ever, at least not until machines supplant human beings as a labor force. Of course, we all saw how well that went over on Battlestar Galactica, so no need to go there now. Even though I get where he's coming from, that doesn't mean I agree with him about, well, anything else. Sure, his dialectical class struggle model seems to fit pretty well, and yeah, exploitation sucks, but as it is, I'm kinda sitting in the middle of the same white-collar world he wanted to eliminate in a violent, proletarian uprising. Ouch. Also, who has the time to read Das Kapital? Definitely tl;dr. Plus, the Manifesto has all the juicy parts about the workers of the world uniting, massacring the bourgeoisie (you have no idea how hard it is to spell that word without a dictionary) and living in Utopian forest communes, so I'd just suggest you pick that up first. The filthy capitalist pigs at your local bookstore will gladly rob you of your wages and dignity for a paperback copy printed by the sweat and tears of the repressed working class.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fascism
1 often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition
2 : a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control

Oh noes, Rahm Emmanuel and David Axelrod don't like FOX News! Well, it shouldn't really surprise anyone, much less FOX and their viewers. By and large, I'd say that the only people who like FOX are the people who watch it. Of course, this doesn't imply that only those who watch FOX like it, because I watch it occasionally just to stare in utter amazement as Hannity and friends shove not only their collective feet down their collective throats, but their collective head through their collective rectal sphincters. It's quite fascinating, really. Anyways, the White House has apparently "declared war" on FOX because they present opposition. Two things: explain Shepard Smith and "The Daily Show". "You mean Jon Stewart, a liberal, makes fun of and/or critiques the Obama administration? But he's a liberal!" Yes, I do and yes, he does. Why should this shock anyone? Because he made fun of Bush? Everyone made fun of Bush. Anyways, let me know when the Black Shirts come marching down your street and I'll agree that there's some pretty fascistic stuff going down. Until then, I fail to see how verbal scoldings of FOX News can be called "forcible suppression of opposition" or how this could even be considered a step towards such a thing. If anything, I saw more fascistic tendencies demonstrated by the home-school parents and youth pastors in "Jesus Camp" (the kids pledging allegiance to the Christian flag, fawning all over a cut-out of George Bush and general hyper-zealousness) than in the Obama administration.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Stalinism

: the political, economic, and social principles and policies associated with Stalin; especially : the theory and practice of communism developed by Stalin from Marxism-Leninism and marked especially by rigid authoritarianism, widespread use of terror, and often emphasis on Russian nationalism

This is basically the biggest, baddest socio-economic system out there. I mean, you can't beat Stalinism as far as scariness goes, hence the heavy anti-Stalinist critiques in a little book called 1984. Unfortunately, Stalinist-era technology never advanced to the point where Yakov Smirnoff could truthfully say "In Soviet Russia, television watches you!" As a matter of fact, the Stalinist-era Yakov Smirnoff didn't even exist, since he was born in 1961, but I digress. So it's basically communism, but with jingoism, state-as-god policies and personality cults added for extra flavor. As examples, just look at the Soviet Union, North Korea, China, Cuba (to some extent) and- according to some deleted scenes from "A New Hope" I found on YouTube- the Galactic Empire.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On a side note, I think now's the time to mention my absolute hatred of the aphorism that "trying the same thing expecting a different result is a definition of insanity". I don't hate it because it's used against me (it isn't) or because it's incorrect (it's not), but because everyone uses it all the time. Literally, if someone mentioned this phrase in a political context to a room full of mixed ideologies, the Republicans would take it to mean "the Democrats keep trying to implement socialistic policies and they fail every time hurr durr" and the Democrats would take it to mean "Bush got elected twice and he was dumb hurr durr". It's stupid. Seriously- I don't care if you have to wait twenty years to hear this phrase again, but look around next time you hear it and watch literally everyone's face light up because they just applied the phrase to their political opponents. Works every time.

Well, I hope you learned about some definitions. Now you can call BS on people who throw the above terms around too much. I know I will.

*All definitions copied in entire from Merriam-Webster.

All Hail Mitt Romney, King of Trolls

I used to think that Herman Cain was the king of trolls. In fact, I once said as much on his page. There are plenty of videos out there to prove it, with even an online channel featuring things that can only be termed "humor" and "political commentary" with the most skeptical of quotation marks. He even made a speech channeling Bill Pullman's stirring monologue from "Independence Day", the greatest bad action flick of all time. Surely, a troll to be reckoned with! He reigned supreme upon the Intertubes for many a day, until- suddenly- the new king arose.

As we all know, in matters of this magnitude, there can be only one. To prove that Mitt has what it takes to take on the King in true Immortal fashion- that is, a single combat sword battle ending in a gruesome decapitation scene that would allow Mitt to claim Herman's Quickening- he embarked on a World Destruction Tour with his own mentor, a man who spends almost as much time with women in casinos as Sean Connery does: Sheldon Adelson. With Adelson as his guide, the Mittster prepared himself for his epic duel with fate by honing his trolling chops on not just the English, the Israelis and the Palestinians, but also the Polish. In the face of such monumental failures, the press (especially the British press) lavished Mitt with such praise as "[w]orse than Sarah Palin" and "Obama! Obama!"

Of course, we can only imagine the look on Barack Obama's face when he heard about this. He had to have been laughing harder than the rest of us, because to all observers Mitt's trip was an absolute disaster. Right?

Right...?



WRONG.

And here's why.

That speech in Israel about "the hand of Providence" giving the Israelis an inherent advantage over the Palestinians in every way imaginable? Yeah, that wasn't for the Israelis. Sure, they were there, and they listened to it, but it wasn't meant for them. You know what I mean. It was for the Dominionists back home- the guys who can't let the word "Israel" come out of their mouth without gushing about how much they support it and would support it in the event of a strike by or against Iran.

How about when he stood up and decried Russia as "our number-one geopolitical foe", or when he pledged his support for the Polish Solidarity movement even though that group takes issue with Mitt's anti-union stances? Yeah, that wasn't meant for the Poles; it was meant for Romney's anti-communist buddies back home. The Poles in the audience who may have approved of his rhetoric were only incidental.

Finally, what about Paul Ryan? The only thing that put him in the news over the last couple months was has budget, which even his own Catholic Church described in this manner:

“Simply put, this budget is morally indefensible and betrays Catholic principles of solidarity, just taxation and a commitment to the common good. A budget that turns its back on the hungry, the elderly and the sick while giving more tax breaks to the wealthiest few can’t be justified in Christian terms.”

 But that budget wasn't for the Catholics. Or the poor, or the starving, or the old, or anybody else in need of actual help. Infrastructure, general services, sanitation: all get shafted by his budget plan. The only ones who make it out on top if his budget plan were to pass are those who are already out on top. With the choice of Paul Ryan as VP candidate, the GOP has added seniors to the long list of Mitt's troll victims. Only fitting that his budget plan would see social services cut while raising and then maintaining defense spending at no less than 4% of the GDP.

After all: who wants to live forever?

That is, other than seniors, military-age Americans, the poor and overseas brown people with funny clothes...

I Hate Economics (No, Really)

As much as I tell myself I don't like economics or that I shouldn't try to become an economist, I keep catching myself making posts about economics. Why is that? If I knew, I would probably be a successful economist, and that would be bad because I lack the necessary levels of misanthropy for such an occupation. On a scale of "Buddha" to "economist", I come in towards the middle at "sarcastic musical satirist". That says a lot more about economists than it does about musicians.

Anyways, today's post is about a fundamental economic principle that many in the American public don't seem to understand: JOB CREATION.

Here's a little more info about me that you probably didn't care about but will now know regardless: I work a crappy job with crappy pay. Maybe I'm being a little unfair... It's an OK job and the pay is certainly more than I get from writing pointless blog posts on the internet, but the worst part is the scheduling (or lack thereof). For you non-business majors out there, all companies have a little thing they like to call "payroll", which is a big list of all the money that the law mandates them to pay to their wage slaves. Sometimes it may seem as if the payroll is endless because we, the consumer and/or wage slave, never see it. Everything just magically appears in our bank accounts via direct deposit from the massive Gringott's vault that is Corporate HQ. For instance, I work in retail; my store's payroll- and thus scheduling- is directly related to my store's income. The correlation is roughly 5 extra hours of work distributed per $1000 of sales. With a smaller staff, this is all fine and dandy: my store income averages around $45,000 a week.

However, my corporate masters seem to have arrived at the conclusion that adding 15 more employees per store during the summer (our slow season) is a good thing. Now some of you may be confused about what I'm getting at. I mean, who says more jobs isn't a good thing? I do. That's right, I do. At least in this situation. You see, thanks to years of government regulation and union action, we aren't forced to live in Michele Bachmann's Serfdom Wonderland wherein hourly pay for menial jobs (like mine) would range from "slave wages" to "no wages". I appreciate the fact that there is at least a  lower monetary limit to the inherent shame associated with fast food jobs, shopping cart wrangling, movie theater cleaning, and toilet scrubbing. That being said, when a company hires more employees, wage and payroll constraints demand that those hours have to go somewhere, and that someone has to lose out. The only answer is that since these companies can't make the minimum (or other industry-standard) wages go away and neither can they magically inflate their income (no matter how much they may want to), they should just stop hiring- at least for the time being.

"But this is a recession!" you say. "We need more jobs!" you say. That's all true. Theoretically speaking, the total amount of "jobs" in the world is only limited by human ingenuity. In all honesty, I kinda thought Newt Gingrich's moon base idea was pretty sweet. Just think about it: space is infinite and thus filled with infinite resources in the form of metals, gases, even habitable planets (this would be an infinite subset of infinity, but humor me a little). If we wanted to effectively end unemployment forever, space exploration is the way to go. However, we run into the same problem as before: payroll.

We're still dealing with the same old supply-and-demand model we learned about in school, except in this case the demand is quantified as "corporate payroll" and supply is represented by "number of employees". If demand outpaces supply, a perfect world would see workers with higher wages dictated by higher income. If the opposite is true, you'll experience what I have at my job: all the slightly-higher-than-minimum-wage peasants like me get stuck with less hours after scheduling.

Let's look at this on a national scale. Assuming that employers maintain current wage levels and consumer spending stays constant, increased hiring as a solution to the economic crisis won't be very effective at leveling wage gaps. Based on what I've discussed above, the total amount of work hours allocated (let's call it X) would remain the same, but instead of being divided among the current workforce (Y), it would be divided by the increased workforce (Z). Payroll would be distributed more evenly, but all that would mean is that with X/Z, everyone is getting screwed over equally instead of in X/Y, where only some are getting screwed over.

We also have to keep in mind that corporations have no intention of increasing wages unless there's some sort of calculable gain on the side. If corporations are people, then they're cranky old misers with smoking jackets and scotch breath. They ain't givin' you nothin'. Bearing that in mind, the only variable in this equation is consumer spending. Now even though the only thing proven by "trickle-down" theory is that the rich can make up economic theories just as easily as amateur bloggers like me can, this post isn't supposed to be a tome. If you want a tome, go read Das Kapital or The Wealth of Nations. We could get into complicated arguments about where your money will go after you spend it, but the point is that hiring alone won't solve our problems. Either we spend more and we spend intelligently, or we wait around for Congress to pass a massive public works/infrastructure employment package à la the Civilian Conservation Corps, but we all know that that ain't gonna happen. Not with our present Congress, at least. This is a shame, because the construction of a trans-continental, electromagnetic bullet train network would not only provide thousands of jobs (I won't even guess at how many thousands, but I'm sure it would be a lot) but would be at least one thing we could do better than the Japanese or the Germans.OK, maybe not better, but definitely bigger. 

Whatever.

I hate economics.

Dear Democratic Party

I'll say it upfront so there's no confusion: I'm a Democrat. True blue, all the way, with no Republican or Tea Party sympathies to speak of. But truth be told, I have a bone to pick with my party. A rather big one. Because I liked your page on Facebook, I get emails on my personal account from various Democrats, always with a gripping headline like "so close!" or "the nerve!" about how, if we aren't careful, those dastardly Republicans will out-raise and outspend President Obama! I'll tell you this from one Democrat to another: stop it.

Seriously. The Republicans may have a short memory when it comes to their own misdeeds and previous positions, but they sure have no problems remembering what Democrats do, whether wrong or right. They remember that not too many months ago, during the GOP debates, that our party was ever so smug that we not only had a fundraising advantage, but that whatever Republican candidate made it out of the primary would be too battered to pose any sort of threat. What they didn't count on was that, once the other contenders bowed out, Mitt Romney would be able to raise as much money as he has.

This is your problem. Now that the fundraising tables have turned, your pleas for donations- "even $3!"- are looking more and more desperate. By constantly begging for money instead of playing up the strengths and accomplishments of the party and the Obama administration, which- much to the dismay of the GOP- are real and numerous, it makes us look just as petty as we accused the Republicans are being. Make no mistake about it, I and the rest of Ameria are under no illusions that there are billionaires who support Democratic candidates. I mean, just look at the way George Soros and Warren Buffett get dragged through the mud by partisans! To imply that the 1% only support Mitt Romney is inaccurate and dishonest.

What we need is a party that is known for standing on its principles rather than just being known for opposing the principles of others. What we need is a party that isn't afraid to play up its strengths and its popular support over Mitt Romney, not one that gloats about its monetary advantages, or that turns around and harasses the other side for having the same fundraising success. You are playing their game and only lending credence to their line that the Democrats only attack the successful. Well, the truth is that we have been successful on several fronts, the Affordable Care Act and Equal Pay Act being not the least of these.

I may just be one person saying this, but I know there are others who agree with me. I can only hope that enough people agree with me to let this letter reach you.

Sincerely,

Liberal Crusader Blog

The Philippines as White Conservative Male Paradise

I had the opportunity to live in the Philippines for a couple years. Not in Manila, mind you, but in the provinces. Think endless rice fields, beaches galore, and only a handful of privately-owned automobiles in town. I can speak three Filipino languages and love their food, including balut. Even my girlfriend is Filipina, and I honestly believe that doing better than her is a physical and theoretical impossibility. That being said, I got to see a side to the Philippines that most foreigners either never get to or never want to see. I've been to neighborhoods so filthy, just to describe the sights and smells would give you convulsions. I've seen such poverty as would make you drop to your knees instantly and praise your deity of choice for every single bite of food, piece of clothing, breath of air, and drop of clean water you've ever had.

All that notwithstanding, the Philippines is still overflowing with white people, particularly men. As infrequently as I went to the mall nearest to my apartment, I always always always saw all shapes and kinds of white guy patrolling the mall with either a girl on his arm or a creepy gleam in his eye. This got me to thinking: what is it about this place that makes it so appealing? With the exception of typhoon season, the weather is perfect for most of the year. Additionally, I'd be lying if I didn't say that my girlfriend is a dazzlingly beautiful paragon of Filipina beauty, not to mention the fact that we have a very good, open relationship on a personal level. I knew all this, and yet... I knew there had to be something more. That's when it hit me. The appeal of the Philippines wasn't just one level, nor was it general for all white guys. Its appeal had very specific underpinnings, which I will now discuss.

Think about it:  a tropical, free-market paradise, full of English speakers and beautiful women! A place so obsessed with light skin that the only dark people with any modicum of influence or power are Black NBA stars! A place where all your deepest, darkest desires can be yours for only 42 Php/US dollar! A place where Muslims are generally derided and discriminated against, and Christianity unquestionably rules government at all levels! A place where the rich are rich, and the poor keep to themselves!

This last point highlights the main problem in the Philippines, something that would make it very appealing for the white conservative man: except for portions of Manila and other large cities, there is effectively no middle class. While unemployment sat at 7% last year (US unemployment at the same time was around 9%) over 32% of the population, or around 30 million people, lived below the poverty line. For all our talk about wealth distribution here in the US, 2011 statistics tell us that the bottom 10% of the wealth distribution scale held 2.4% of total income, whereas the top 10% claimed 31.2%. I see no reason why our current economic circumstances would have improved that at all. This problem is compounded by the government-encouraged Filipino tendency to go overseas for work at the earliest convenience. Currently, there are over 9 million Filipinos working abroad in various occupations. Maybe you know one: they're typically employed as nurses, care givers, crewmembers on cargo and cruise ships, and IT positions.

Here's what's wrong with that. With so many of the younger, educated, and upwardly-mobile generation leaving for greener pastures overseas, only the top and bottom of the wealth distribution continuum are left. In other words, no middle class = the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. Now let's take a look at why this would appeal to the white conservative American man. The Philippines is popular with retired expats because thanks to an exchange rate that hovers around 42 Php/$1, they can maintain or increase their spending habits from back home. For businessmen, the appeal is even greater: not only has the economy been largely shielded from global fallout, but rampant government corruption makes regulatory enforcement incredibly difficult. In conservative terms, we're looking at the kind of capitalist environment that would make Ayn Rand pass out in ecstasy.

Speaking of Ayn Rand and her virulent hatred of all things communist, the Philippines has seen over 800 cases of extrajudicial murder in the last 10 years, mostly against journalists or members of leftist organizations demonized by the government as "communist fronts". Because the previous presidential administration, that of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, made the destruction of the communist New People's Army and Islamic extremist groups a top national priority, attacks against individuals and groups with leftist backgrounds are as frequent as they are unprosecuted.

So why is this important? The answer is simple: the wealthy classes of the US and the Philippines seem to want (subconsciously, at least) to turn their country into the other, and vice versa. Allow me to explain in bullet points:

• White Americans want to be tan, and Filipinos have been convinced by the media that success and popularity is directly related to the whiteness of one's skin.
• Wealthy American conservatives want an unregulated economy, one that will lead to an ever-widening wealth gap.
• Shared Filipino experiences with poverty and foreign invasion have led to an attitude of passive tolerance when dealing with hardship, meaning the poor persevere without rising up and demanding their fair share.
• 80.9% of the population is Catholic and almost 95% is Christian, leaving secularists and the Muslim minority effectively out of power in the national government.
• Government-sponsored fear of and attacks against communist and Muslim ideologies mirrors the rhetoric of Michele Bachmann, Allen West, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, etc.

What we're dealing with here is not a comparison/contrast between American and Filipino social values, but political and economic conditions. While I would love to have some of that Filipino resourcefulness and resilience, I want no part in the economic environment the American religious right seems to be aiming for, one which bears striking similarities to the Philippines. While I wouldn't go so far as to label it a fascist theocracy quite yet, Filipino politics is absolutely owned by religion and the wealth disparity grows wider  every year. I fear that this is the America we will be looking at if we let the fanatical wing of the religious right, particularly the Tea Party, to have their way at any level of government.

Remember that in November and beyond. In the meantime, do yourself a favor and make friends with a matronly, middle-aged Filipina who will feed you delicious food until you die (albeit happily) from it.