IRC POLITICS

net neutrality and the "best of the web"

2008-01-16T07:18:00.001-05:00

An image I recently found while using StumbleUpon:

First of all, this isn't an actual service being provided by any company; it's a satire of sorts.

This is probably the most important image in all of the Net Neutrality debate (please click to enlarge). It captures what advocates of Net Neutrality fear of the day when telecommunication companies are allowed to regulate which websites get to be on a higher "tier." Take note of the small print at the bottom.

There is nothing on the books right now that prevents a company from offering a "Best of the Web."

So what's the big deal about a "Best of the Web" plan anyway? If a company wants to offer this service, and if you only use about 45 of the biggest web sites on a monthly basis, what's the big deal? That's the free market at work!

The problem is this: If one company does it and finds it profitable, then another company will do it too. Then others will follow suite. Soon after, full internet access will seem silly to everyone when only the "best" web sites get fast access because those have the highest demand and need the bandwidth. The smaller websites will still be out there on the "full" internet, but crippled on a bandwidth level.

Right now, you experience the free internet, otherwise known as a "neutral" internet. No company, to our knowledge, shapes traffic based on how much a web site can pay. Customers get the speed they pay for, be in 56k modems, DSL, cable, or any other level of speed. When we start hearing about telco companies giving any sort of preferential treatment to some web sites in any way, we will then know that legislation to maintain the free internet is necessary.

buffet and the inheritance tax

2007-11-19T13:25:00.000-05:00

From AlterNet.com:.

Billionaire Warren Buffett testified before the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday in defense of the federal estate tax, the nation's only tax on inherited wealth.

Buffett invoked the historical roots of the estate tax, established in 1916 during the Gilded Age to put a brake on anti-democratic concentrations of wealth and power. "Dynastic wealth, the enemy of meritocracy, is on the rise," Buffett told the panel. "Equality of opportunity has been on the decline. A progressive and meaningful estate tax is needed to curb the movement of a democracy toward plutocracy."

Buffet gets it. This taxation is needed as a means of preventing the rich from passing their throne down to their children, and then their grandchildren, and then their great grandchildren. In the past our culture knew of the risks of allowing too much private economic power to accumulate in the hands of the few; so many of us have lost that lesson.

Republican Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, complained that "the death tax" was "fundamentally wrong." Buffett responded that use of the phase "death tax" was "intellectually dishonest" and "clever, Orwellian and dead wrong."

Has Buffet been reading Lakoff? The theory is that the phrase "death tax" cuts out the reality of this taxation by putting the emphasis on taxation following death instad of taxation preceding inheritance.

who did cookie really call?

2007-11-19T09:02:00.000-05:00

From ThinkProgress:

Last week, House Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) announced that he will hold a hearing after Thanksgiving recess to investigate discrepancies between statements on Blackwater by State Department Inspector General Howard Krongard and those of his brother. Howard Krongard’s lawyer has now written to Waxman and asked him to cancel the hearing. “There is no legitimate purpose to be gained by publicly pitting two brothers against each other,” Barbara Van Gelder wrote.

This is clearly just an early effort by Krongard's lawyer to put a spin of irrelevency on Waxman's investigation. If there is a discrepency where two individuals of such close ties are seen as possibly coordinating activities between private and public institutions for personal gain, there's simply no way it should be left uninvestigated.

Of course, assuming Waxman does the work of the people and invetsigates these clowns, we can expect that they're going to plead to plausible deniability. I'm willing to bet that if we looked into Howard "Cookie" Krongard's phone records, we'd find out that the call he made during a break in a congressional hearing was not to his brother, it was to his lawyer, and he was seeking pre-emptive advice on how to avoid go to prison.

olbermann on nbc

2007-08-21T11:22:00.000-04:00

MediaBistro.com reports that Countdown with Keith Olbermann will be getting a tryout on NBC before a preseason Eagles vs. Steelers game. I can't wait for this and hope Olbermann does one of his infamous Special Comments to really set the tone for what people can expect on his show. There's so much for him to choose from as a topic-- everything from killing health care initiatives for kids to broad spying programs. The show with air on August 26 at 7 p.m.

e. coli conservatism in the news again

2007-08-21T09:00:00.000-04:00

From the New York Times:

The Bush administration, continuing its fight to stop states from expanding the popular Children’s Health Insurance Program, has adopted new standards that would make it much more difficult for New York, California and others to extend coverage to children in middle-income families.

So much for state rights. This is also a sign that the right wingers in the White House are going to do everything it can to prevent the expansion of healthcare, even as Americans demand it. It should be an interesting in '08, since every Democratic candidate is going to be talking about healthcare.

(h/t to C&L)

democrat[ic] party

2006-08-23T13:02:00.000-04:00

As someone who believes language is central to winning political campaigns, I'm dismayed that the phrase "Democrat Party" is now becoming more common in the mainstream media. This phrase has been commonplace for conservative talk radio for years, but its now being pushed heavily into mainstream, and if the Democratic party wants to maintain its identity, it would counter this tactic.

What the language shift does is rob democrats of their entire platform: that they stand for democratic principles; it's an effort by the right wing to lay claim to the one thing democrats all over the world stand for: democracy. We've heard countless political speeches by the right about creating democracy in the Middle East (when we all know they're probably going to be closer to corporate fascist states, but that's besides the point) and the destruction of the term democratic to describe the Democratic Party. Conservatives are now trying to claim they're the party of democracy.

I've begun tracking the proliferation of the term "Democrat Party" along with "America" by searching for it on google. As of today, there are about 897,000 entries. Watch for this number to go up if the left doesn't counter the "Democrat Party" shite. I'll update this number some time in the future.

the institution of torture

2006-06-21T17:08:00.000-04:00

I just got done reading most of the RAWSTORY interview with a former detainee of Guantanamo bay. I can't really say that anything in the account shocked me. We've known about all of this for literally years now.

But whenever I think about things like torture and anything with government or political implications, I try to find an conservative point of view to examine what I'm reading and have it make better sense from their perspective. I know there are people out there who know every bit of information that I know about the torture and abuse of American detainees, and that they still approve of it.

There has to be a reasonable justification for supporting torture. Are conservatives so afraid of being attacked again that they approve of anything that makes them feel powerful enough to bear the burdon of the realisation that America will most likely be attacked one day? Are these things that make them feel better about their position in the world completely arbitrary when considered along with the larger picture, the entire worldview?

I believe conservatives simply feel good about torturing detainees. It raises sentiments of security in knowing that people different than them are feeling pain and suffering, and it doesn't go much deeper than that. They justify their blind hatred and bigotry with stories about bombs in city squares, and how torture is the only way we can find those bombs; this gives their bigotry cover.

Torture has become an institution for the right wing of American politics. It's a right wing tradition, reborn. They want pain and suffering of their perceived enemies (even though this status is questionable among many American detainees) just like how older regimes wanted to see criminals drawn and quartered in public. If you stop torturing detainees, it would be like taking a security blanket away from right wingers.

One day we can only hope torture supporters will see their bloodlust not as the reaction of a rational reaction to an enemy, but for what it really is. The civilised among us will have to excuse them for their additude... they simply got caught up in their fear, their bloodlust, and their emotional and irrational attachment to the institution of torture.

2006-06-21T16:57:00.000-04:00

"Why is it that when marriage or sex comes up, the Republicans always bring up sex with animals? Normal people do not think about sex with animals this often."

-JoshA on a RAWSTORY comments section.

What is conservatism and what is wrong with it?

2006-05-10T09:14:00.000-04:00

I just found this excellent essay from a student or perhaps a teacher at UCLA...

From the pharaohs of ancient Egypt to the self-regarding thugs of ancient Rome to the glorified warlords of medieval and absolutist Europe, in nearly every urbanized society throughout human history, there have been people who have tried to constitute themselves as an aristocracy. These people and their allies are the conservatives.

The tactics of conservatism vary widely by place and time. But the most central feature of conservatism is deference: a psychologically internalized attitude on the part of the common people that the aristocracy are better people than they are. Modern-day liberals often theorize that conservatives use "social issues" as a way to mask economic objectives, but this is almost backward: the true goal of conservatism is to establish an aristocracy, which is a social and psychological condition of inequality. Economic inequality and regressive taxation, while certainly welcomed by the aristocracy, are best understood as a means to their actual goal, which is simply to be aristocrats. More generally, it is crucial to conservatism that the people must literally love the order that dominates them. Of course this notion sounds bizarre to modern ears, but it is perfectly overt in the writings of leading conservative theorists such as Burke. Democracy, for them, is not about the mechanisms of voting and office-holding. In fact conservatives hold a wide variety of opinions about such secondary formal matters. For conservatives, rather, democracy is a psychological condition. People who believe that the aristocracy rightfully dominates society because of its intrinsic superiority are conservatives; democrats, by contrast, believe that they are of equal social worth. Conservatism is the antithesis of democracy. This has been true for thousands of years.

It even gets into how conservatism works, and how conservatism can be defeated. Frigging well worth the lengthy read, which I haven't done yet in its entirity.. I'll pull out more exerpts as I have time.

ExxonMobil chair, CEO to NBC: No 'help' is on the way

2006-05-07T14:43:00.000-04:00

I recently read this article on RAW STORY. An interview with the Exxon/Mobile chair and CEO Rex Tillerson, where the guy says exactly what people have needed to hear for a long time:

"We work for the shareholder," Tillerson told the anchor. "And the investors who own our stock are over 2 million individual Americans and a lot of pension plans, a lot of teacher retirement plans. And our job is to go out and make the most money for those people so that their pensions are secure, so that they see the benefits of our work."

That pretty much sums it up, folks. That's a right wing corporatist ideology being explained in its purest form. Corporations, and their corporatists pals in Washington on both sides of the aisle, cannot and will not do anything that takes away from profit.

In fact, I don't want a corporation that I'm invested in to act as a social player. It isn't what it's there for, and I acknowledge that. I may sometimes sound like I'm 100% anti-corporate, but I'm not. The corporation exists primarily to make me and other investors money, and that's all it should be expected to do.

The concept of a corporation sounds great in theory. A bunch of people get together and decide they want to make money with their money, and they want it to be with limited liability for any negative actions that occur. It's a beautiful thing, really. I can invest my money, and the only thing that I'll ever have to worry about is losing that money. Compare that to investing in say, the mob, where if someone I know owes money, and dies, I can have a horse head put into my bed until I pay back the money that someone I know owes.

So I don't hate a corporation simply for making money; that's not the point.

What we, as human beings, have to do is make sure those corporations don't go hog-wild trying to make money for us. I may be happy about the money I'm raking in from Corporation-X, but if Corp-X is doing things that are harmful to me or the environment I live in, that's a fucking issue isn't it? All things end up coming back to you in the end, and you have to live with the repercussions of the actions that your preferred corporations take in persuit of your personal gain.

Oversight and regulation is a requirement.

I don't care how it gets done, just as long as it gets done. If you're one of those goofballs that thinks the worse way to do it is to have a centralized government take care of this for us, then show me a better way. Personally, I like the accountability of government regulation. Like this situation we're seeing right here with the high gas prices. There's great concern all over the country that these prices are being achieved by these companies through price gouging, meaning these companies are collaborating (albeit extremely loosely, I can only assume..) and driving up the cost of gasoline.

Now, I don't know if it's really happening. But you're seeing some people in congress calling for investigations into the matter. I'm cynical enough to say that it's only happening on the right side of the aisle because of election year pressures, but that's my point entirely. Since gas prices are hitting people so hard, and people don't want to be screwed over so heavily for such an essensial resource, we look to those we've elected to make sure we're not being screwed. And if they aren't going to act in our interest, then we make sure we find someone that will.

And if you're about to e-mail me and tell me that I'm some big government liberal type, just save yourself some time and effort and simply write "BIG GOVERNMENT LIBERALS SUCK" in the topic of the e-mail and send it with no body whatsoever. I've heard your argument a million times before, and it never, ever impresses me.

air america helps privatize the rebuilding of new orleans

2006-03-21T12:06:00.000-05:00

So I was listening to the Air America stream and I heard an ad voiced by host Randi Rhodes. It's all about getting listeners to put up money in order to help in the rebuilding of New Orleans. And I got to thinking... isn't that exactly what conservatives want; a bunch of relatively inefficient charities doing the former work of a centralized government? Hmm...

resources

2006-03-15T17:27:00.000-05:00

So today I got an e-mail at the office; it was a request for workers for an assignment from the management level. The weird thing was that all of the references to people were exchanged with the word "resource." Which makes me think that the management doesn't think of workers as humans, but resources that have to be allocated and used.

Put in a broader context, this gets really interesting. In America, corporations are referred to as "human beings" on a legal level, and human beings are referred to as "resources" on a corporate level.

This attitude is directly linked to the American cheap labor conservative/corporatist ideologies. When you think of human beings only as another resource that has to be cultivated, you simply cannot have respect for them on a personal level. They're as useful to you as a pair of scissors, or a board of wood, or any range of time, be it a week, or a month, or a year.

Resourse, as defined by Answers.com:

- Something that can be used for support or help: The local library is a valuable resource.
- An available supply that can be drawn on when needed. Often used in the plural.

When you think of an employee as a resource instead of a human being, it becomes that much easier to lay one off and send their job to India or the sweat shops overseas. When you think of employees as resources, you make judgements about him or her based another much more liquid resource: money. While I'm not saying that a manager should just hire a bunch of employees and never consider the cost of their hiring, it goes without saying that it turns into a situation where you view employees only as a set of skills that can and should be purchased at the lowest market value, regardless of any other factor.

Employees are not simply sets of skills, and they're not resources.

This mindset probably isn't a problem for the direct management for any given employee. My boss above me and his boss are a part of my working life every single day. But when you start getting higher in hierarchy, where management doesn't even see many of its employees, doesn't know any of its employees, and wouldn't even know half of its employees if it saw them, you start getting into the "employees as resource" mindset. The closer the management gets to the stockholders and the further it gets from the day to day workers, they're suddenly forced to make decisions that are going to call for the cutting and culling of resources.

And so management will arrange meetings; and with pie charts, flow charts, line graphs, lists of expenses in any number of arrangements, and they will make decisions. They will purchase stationary resources from a different, cheaper company. They will purchase software resources from another, cheaper software vendor. And they will purchase their skill-set resources overseas in a different, cheaper country.

Next time you hear about a company closing down a factory or two, just remember, they're not thinking about the laying-off of human beings. They're just reallocating their resources.

ten scariest words in the english language

2006-01-21T15:25:00.000-05:00

"I'm from a corporation, and I'm here to maximize profits."

me & karl: two peas in a pod.

2006-01-20T19:11:00.000-05:00

On January 11, I argued that Republicans and conservatives are making the same mistakes that the left did over a decade ago, when we got comfortable in our position as the bonafide leaders of America and never questioned whether or not liberalism would ever be the lesser of the poltical ideologies.

Either Karl Rove and I are thinking the exact same things, or Karl owes me a commission fee for plagiarizing my post, or it's becoming clear to everyone with a political mind that conservativism is crumbling into a pathetic pile of used and dirty rags, in spite of its decades of preparation. Today CNN.com reported that last Friday, Rove said the following at an Republican National Committee meeting:

"The GOP's progress during the last four decades is a stunning political achievement. But it is also a cautionary tale of what happens to a dominant party -- in this case, the Democrat[ic] Party -- when its thinking becomes ossified; when its energy begins to drain; when an entitlement mentality takes over; and when political power becomes an end in itself rather than a mean to achieve the common goal," Rove told Republican National Committee members ending a two-day meeting.

"We need to learn from our successes," he said, "and from the failures of others."

Mr. Rove, you can send my payments to your preferred progressive think-tank.

Look at that admission in the second sentence. What Karl is saying in that sentence is that, in spite of its success, the conservative movement's failure is a cautionary tale in what can happen to a dominant party. Nevermind that he tried to juxtopose it with what happened to the Democratic party; he made his case before he stated what his case was. The second half of the statement just further clarifies. Just like with the Democratic party a decade ago, the conservative movement is making the mistakes of a dominant party that gets too full of itself.

kellogg co. in the courts

2006-01-18T22:26:00.000-05:00

From Reuters:

A consumer group wants to keep Tony the Tiger from promoting sugary cereals on the SpongeBob SquarePants cartoon show, or anywhere else kids are watching.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest on Wednesday announced legal action to try to stop the Kellogg Co., maker of cereals like Frosted Flakes, and Nickelodeon cable network Viacom Inc., from marketing junk food to children.

A planned lawsuit will ask a Massachusetts court to stop the companies from marketing junk foods in venues where 15 percent or more of the audience is under age 8, and to stop marketing junk foods through Web sites, toy giveaways, contests and other techniques aimed at that age group.

The planned lawsuit in Massachusetts is the latest attempt to use the courts to try to battle the growing obesity crisis in the United States. (Read more...)

For me, this goes beyond battling obesity.

According to James McNeal's kids as consumers, "over a billion dollars is spent just on advertising to children," and that children should be referred to as "Kid Konsumers," that are "materialistic" and have an "economic power punch." The preface to the book proudly proclaims how this is a terrific book for those advertising to "four-to-twelve year-olds."

That billion dollars is a modest estimate from 1992; according to the American Psychological Association, that number is estimated at 12 billion dollars as of February 2004. Th APA reccommends that advertising to children under the age of eight be restricted, seeing as children aren't "[a]ble to critically comprehend televised advertising messages and are prone to accept advertiser messages as truthful, accurate and unbiased."

This boom in advertising targeting children is a direct result of the FCC lifting resctictions in 1981; rescrictions that had been in place since the 1960's. According to Mark Fawler, who was the chairman of the FCC at the time, the television was just another household appliaance, a "toaster with pictures" that didn't have to have any special regulation (Bakan, 2004). This is thrown right in the face of concerned child psychologists and consumer groups, whom acknowledge a reality that's apparently unknown to anyone that's actually in charge of what is allowed on our televisions. APA says that viewing television advertising can "lead to unhealthy eating habits as evidenced by today’s youth obesity epidemic."

Notice a theme here?

Of course, this ignores the current wisdom of this culture of "choice" that currently dominates American politics. Parents are sopposed to be the only ones that should be concerned about their children; government be damned. Children don't buy anything unless their parents put down the dollars for it, right? This fails to take into consideration a common bit of marketing genius called "Nag Factor," which basically is a technique used to urge children to "nag" their parents into taking them to fast food restaraunts, toys stores, et cetera. Naturally, for a corporation, a parent trying to make their kid shut the hell up for five minutes is seen as a perfect opportunity to make sales. Once you recognize a weakness, you exploit it as much as you can, to the chagrin of anyone trying to be that responsible parent that you hold up as your justification for the very same exploitation.

But conservatives and corporatists will be shouting in the streets about statist control of the markets if any sort of advertising restrictions are ever enforced, and how if you decide to limit the ways in which children can be manipulated by advertising today, you're likely going to be a communist nation tommarow.

This is all consistant with the conservative view that America isn't a society. Any nation is viewed by the modern conservative menace as a large collection of people, and that this is an invitation to exploit them in as many ways as can be imagined.

Nobody's looking to turn our businesses into state controlled outlets; we just want to let our five year olds watch a half hour of Sponge Bob Squarepants without having to wonder if they're going to be screaming about McDonalds or some variety of chocolate milk or whatever bullshit contraptions they're selling that they call "toys." Is that so much to ask?

2006-01-13T22:57:00.000-05:00

"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to challenge our government in a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country."

-Thomas Jefferson

a welcome

2006-01-12T11:05:00.000-05:00

I realised a few days ago that I never gave a formal introduction to this web site. I thought I'd catch up on this necessity tonight, seeing as five hours of sleep is probably more than anyone's ever needed to work a ten hour computer programming shift.

Let's get one thing straight. I'm no political wonk in any way. I have a couple of topics that I read up on quite a bit, like poverty and corporate policy, but after that, I'm kind of lost. It's embarassing, I know. You'd think I'd rather spend my time doing things other than claiming the "ircpolitics" blogspot url as my own in an attempt to take on the politically savvy right wingers in an IRC chat room called <a href="http://www.ircpolitics.org" />#politics</a>, but one has to do what one can. When a guy is watching his country turn into something strange, something he doesn't recognize, he can't just sit back and watch it happen without doing taking any small part that he can.

And I'm starting to not recognize my country. I see my countrymen approving of torture. I see them approving of having their phones tapped without oversight in the name of security. I see science playing second fiddle to creationism and faith based initiatives, and falling altogether at being politicized. I'm seeing a woman's right to choose an abortion being chipped away, and the progressive ideas of inclusion and diversity with the interest of equality basically falling off the page entirely.

So, in the interest of fighting the good fight, I make this small contribution to the debate. I've been a blogger of a few different styles, from social commentary to humor, and if I can handle creative writing, why the hell can't I handle politics?

So, here's to the online revolution, and here's to progressive politics.

Cheers.

the mistakes of the right, the mistakes of the left

2006-01-11T23:26:00.000-05:00

At one time in history, liberals thought they were unfallable.

They simply didn't take conservatives seriously. We thought that their agenda was universally hated; we thought their ideas were considered universally regressive, and therefore, universally considered bad. We thought that the momentum was ours, always would be ours, no matter who took office of the presidency or how long conservatives took ahold of one or both of the chambers of congress. We didn't think we'd ever be in the position we are today.

As David Brock writes in his book, "The Republican Noise Machine," we always assumed Limbaugh, Hannity, and Coulter, and so on, were all self-discrediting. Not worthy of anyone's time, and therefore, irrelevant. We thought people just listened to them for amusement, and to have a good chuckle at what those defenders of the old and the ridiculous seemed to believe was relevant about the world.

We thought the conservatives were primative knuckledraggers that couldn't build a movement to save their lives, let alone their ideology. We didn't think anyone could ever take these old men in their surrogate youngster bodies seriously. And as it turns out, we were wrong.

What we once took for granted is now the subject of fierce interrogation. We assumed science would always be one the most important voices in our assessment of the world; now there is cases of creationism dressed up in a suit as "intelligent design" cropping up in schools across America. We thought there would always be a desire to move more ideas about life and culture and ways of living into the mainstream; instead we're seeing so much progress pulled backwards, like how gays are being chastized for wanting to marry, and white supremecy groups are taking a peek at the world again.

Let's just be honest, folks.

We fucking dropped the ball.

But the interesting thing we're seeing is that the right hasn't learned from this lesson of the left. They're still thinking the left is just a bunch of know nothing hippies who are too stoned out of their minds to ever pose a threat to them.

You're seeing this thinking all across the board, and the parallels are startling.

You have conservatives refusing to take liberal talk shows seriously. Air America Radio is just something to laugh at to them, just like how Limbaugh was just something for liberals to laugh at fifteen years ago.

You have them assuming, as I've already said, that we're just fools with liberal arts degrees, all of us. They're assuming we're just know-nothing dreamers that really don't have any ideas and really don't have any plans.

You have them scoffing at science just as we once humored religion about the seperation of church and state, and how such a wall could never be eroded. Just point to a single one of the literally dozens of conclusive studies that say global warming is real and humans are, in part, causing it, and you'll see a conservative gut laughing at the prospect.

And finally, you see a ridiculous oversimplification of our position on President Bush. I've literally seen people in #politics, a chat room that I consider to be a perfect example of extreme right-wing views, saying that liberals just hate President Bush simply because we're sore losers from 2000 and 2004, and that we just hate him because of his "last name" or because we think he "stole an election" or two. Compare this to how the left used to always assume the right was just a bunch of meatheads throwing stones at the unfallable ideas that made up liberalism.

They're not taking us seriously.

This is the time in history where the left has to have its rebirth. The old hippie style of fighting (or, more specifically, thier style of not fighting) is being abandoned. The left is waking up from thirty years in a drug-enduced slumber from the sixties, and we're putting the pieces of our ideology back together.

So here's some advice, conservatives. You should probably take us progressives seriously. If you want to hang onto this little backlash movement of yours, you'd better stop assuming your opposition is composed of a bunch of fools.

But, as my first two posts pointed out, this isn't your strong point, conservatism. You're making the same mistakes liberals made decades ago; you assume that your backlash on its own will carry on no matter what. You assume your enemies simply won't show thier heads, or aren't smart enough to get around your methods, yet you expect to win in spite of this.

Good luck with that plan. Be sure to post me a comment about how I should "keep dreaming," or how us "poor liberals" will "never learn."

Looking at the history of how an ideology can fall, it seems that conservatives are the ones that haven't learned anything.

"to have [conservatives] running your government is like asking the termites to fix your house."

2006-01-11T21:26:00.000-05:00

Joe Conason, author of The Raw Deal, a book about conservative motives to deconstruct Social Security, speaks about the conservative movement. This video is well worth the watch, which is over and hour long. It also has FDR's grandson for the introduction.

Go watch now!

conservatives and the "choice" of homosexuality

2006-01-10T22:26:00.000-05:00

Any time a conversation in modern politics turns to whether or not homosexual couples should be allowed to marry or have a "civil union" or what have you, the conversation inevidibly turns to whether or not homosexuality is natural. You'll get progressive-minded individuals claiming that that's just "how they are" and "who are we to tell them who they can and cannot marry," and you have conservative-minded individuals, who insist that people who are gay are attracted to people of the same gender by their own choice.

I look at the development of a human mind as an immensely complex outcome of an immensely complex equation. To say that homosexuality occurs simply because you watched too much homosexuality-enducing cartoon characters, or because of any one influence is just absurd. To me, it's just how a series of perceptions resulted in a sense of sexuality that's the opposite of the standard practice.

But that's not what I'm here to write about.

What I'm interested in today is why so many conservatives like to call homosexuality a choice.

See, the thing about this line of debate is that conservatives are always throwing it at homosexuals, saying that they made a choice to be gay, and that its sinful to do so, and what have you. But you never have them reflecting this line of reasoning on the straight population.

Why is that?

When they hear about someone being straight, they never say that they "choose" to be straight, no, it's just what they are. This is because once they acknowledge that they believe everyone is "choosing" between being gay and straight, then they have to acknowledge that they are themselves "choosing."

But see, the problem is that, as any normal straight person will tell you (and when I say "normal" I mean "not conservative"), they aren't choosing. It really is what they are. Truth be told, I have never woken up one day and wondered if I should "choose" homosexuality for that day. Never crossed my mind.

So, what is up with these conservatives thinking we're all making this choice, when clearly, it's not the case? I mean, if homosexuals are choosing to be gay, then heterosexuals necessarily must be choosing to be straight, right?

Let's get into this a little more. Who is it, in reality, that really is making a choice when it comes to homosexuality? It's a gay person, when they are deciding when, and if, they should let their sexual preference be known to their family and friends.

So let's juxtopose these interesting, interesting items. On one hand, we have conservatives who think that we're all "choosing" our sexual identity. And we have gay people, who are choosing their outward, public sexual identity, but that they are, without a doubt, gay. And on another hand yet, we have straight people, who know for a fact that they have no desires for anything having to do with being gay, and it isn't a choice in any way.

Could it be that these conservatives are so stricken with anguish over their own homosexuality, and their choice on whether or not to act publically on it?

I mean, clearly, homosexuality-is-a-choice-conservatives have something different in their brains that have them convinced that every single one of us is on the brink of turning gay at any moment. This seems like quite a bit of projection, wouldn't you say?

One definition of projection goes as follows:

The attribution of one's own attitudes, feelings, or desires to someone or something as a naive or unconscious defense against anxiety or guilt.

Bringing this up in debate will most likely win you a black eye or two, but it'll definitely be a great time watching a conservative's brain flip backwards while he or she tries to figure out a defense for this line of logic. They won't be able to simultaniously defend their homosexuality-as-a-choice reasoning and maintain that they aren't an in-the-closet gay themselves. Good times to be had.

Just because we're stuck with this conservative menace ruining our country, it doesn't mean we can't have a bit of fun at their expense.

bremer's revelation

2006-01-07T23:46:00.000-05:00

I wrote my very first post on this blog with the thought in mind that I had written quite an irreverent post. I thought maybe I stepped out of line to some extent when I said that the conservatives running our country are fools, and that they are proving it by underestimating our enemies. I declared that you can't trust a conservative to run a campaign against terrorism because they have absolutely no idea where to start, since they think that our enemies are using standard landlines and cellular communications, instead of something more obscure or more sophisticated. I thought maybe I was being a little tough on the people trying to save American lives, and maybe I wasn't giving credit where credit was due. Maybe they aren't so dumb, after all.

Then, I read this.

WASHINGTON, Jan 6 (Reuters) - Paul Bremer, who led the U.S. civilian occupation authority in Iraq after the 2003 invasion, has admitted the United States did not anticipate the insurgency in the country, NBC Television said on Friday.

Bremer, interviewed by the network in connection with release of his book on Iraq, recounted the decision to disband the Iraqi army quickly after arriving in Baghdad, a move many experts consider a major miscalculation.

When asked who was to blame for the subsequent Iraqi rebellion, in which thousands of Iraqis and Americans have died, Bremer said "we really didn't see the insurgency coming," the network said in a news release.

Oh. My. Non-existant God.

You've got to be kidding me. These are the people that conservatives trust with winning wars?

On one of the last nights prior to the 2004 election, I remember someone in #politics saying "elect a Democrat during war time? that's dangerous thinking." Dangerous thinking, folks.

You know what's dangerous thinking? Assuming you won't be meeting any long term resistance. That's dangerous thinking.

Assuming you won't be needing the best body armor money can buy for our troops. That's dangerous thinking.

Assuming that if you drop the corporate tax rate in Iraq to 15%, allow foreign companies to pull 100% of thier profits out of Iraq without any reinvestment, and create those same conditions for foreign banks, Iraq would explode with business, and companies would be rushing in to create a business boom*, like bees to sweet, sweet honey. You also have to go and assumed that there would be no resistance to the rebuilding, and therefore, nobody blowing up the investments that these companies are sopposed to be pouring into this nation. You did all of this forethinking with the assumption that, in one of the most dangerous regions in the world, there would somehow be no resistance.

Dangerous, dangerous thinking.

These are the fools that are running our nation, my kind reader. They've underestimated every single aspect of the war, from how much troops would be needed to how much in rebuilding funds would be needed to how much body armor would be needed. They thought that, after easily rushing American troops into Baghdad and topping the statue and regime of Saddam in no time, that this would be a cakewalk.

How much has the green zone expanded, I ask you.

How many American fast food restaraunts are lining the streets of Anbar, I ask you.

Where's that Wal-Mart that was sopposed to crush, for the assumed better, the local businesses and basically take over the economy of Iraq?

What about the web page for "New Bridge Strategies," one of the major consultant firms that was sopposed to be facilitating the rebuilding Iraq "after the U.S. led war," because the "opportunities evolving in Iraq today are of such an unprecedented nature and scope that companies seeking to work in that environment must have the very best advice and guidance available." They still say on the rebuild page, "When Iraq is ready to rebuild, we will be there." This web page hasn't been updated since 2003.

This was their "plan." This is why they didn't think to use the best body armor for our troops; they simply assumed there wouldn't be any need for it. Just plow out the bad guys and make the conditions in Iraq so favorable to business, they'll simply be falling over themselves to get a piece of the action, and the country would practically rebuild itself, and we'll be out of there in no time.*

And this all ties together into a conservative mindset of faith and assumptions. Just like how they underestimated and assumed that there would be no resistance to American occupation in Iraq, they also assumed that the terrorists are using common technology instead of something more obscure or even more sophisticated. These are seperate occurances of shortcomings from the same school of geopolitical thought.

Did they get anything about this war right? I'm waiting; I want to believe, I want to see through what conservatives call my "blindness" and understand how this is a resounding success.

It's just that reality keeps blocking the view.

*CORRECTIONS*
In the original wording of this post, I claimed that conservatives relied on their "favorable business conditions" to create the infrastructure for Iraq. This claim was incorrect. As this USAID paper circa February 2003 recognizes:

Complete reconstruction of the economic and institutional capacity of 1980 (conditions prior to the Iraq/Iran war will require years of public investment.

(My emphesis added.)

But we do know one thing about today's conservatives, and that's the unfallable faith in the private sector. It can only be assumed that eventually, all public services would be privatized. I made the wrong assumption that they would be making efforts towards this at the first swing of the bat.

the dale m. volker questionnaire

2006-01-07T17:25:00.000-05:00

My state senator sent out a legislative agenda questionnaire inquiring about our opinions on variety of subjects. Dissatisfied with the Yes/No responses that my senator made available to me, I responded in an e-mail. While this may have immediately disqualified my opinions, because it didn't serve his interest of a simple tally of what he can garnish support for during the year, I felt it was the right thing to do, as I explained to him in my e-mail.

I also thought this would be a great way to get a bunch of my opinions out quickly, and with purpose, on this blog. So, with no further delay, I present my 2006 Legislative Questionnaire.

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

Senator Volker,

Recently I have received a Legislative Questionnaire that presents a number of questions that regard areas in which I have some interest. Your questionnaire left little space for those who would like to elaborate more on their answer, as a simple "Yes" or "No" should not be a conclusive answer to complicated questions such as the ones you've asked your constituents to respond to. It is with this in mind that I have decided to send this email as my official response to your questionnaire. Since I have taken the time to go beyond what you have expected of me in presenting my opinion about what should be your legislative priorities for 2006, I hope you will respond to questions that I have, in kind. Simple redirections to web pages that could inform me on these specific matters would be appreciated and more than sufficient a response.

This is the first time I have participated in the New York state political process in a way that goes beyond a simple cast of a vote.

1. Do you believe that New York State should continue to give tax cuts and finance incentives to new startup companies located in New York State?

This question fails to give some important caveats that I feel are required to furher clarify which businesses you mean. Specifically, I'd like to know how a "startup" company is defined. How many years and/or months does a company have until it no longer is considered a startup company, and is the size and expansion of the company considered at all in this process of qualification? I do support giving as many advantages to local businesses as is reasonable, but I feel a "Yes" on this matter with the reasoning your question currently presents would be irresponsible.

2. The New York State Court of Appeals has mandated that the New York State Legistlature must increase school aid by billions of dollars for New York City. The request could mean huge increaes in state taxes and real property taxes in upstate New York. Do you think the Court of Appeals has overstepped its jurisdiction?

This is another question that I think diserves more clarification. What kind of increases will we be seeing in state taxes, and who will be impacted the most? Seeing as your question seems to imply that there will be /devistating/ impact on Upstate New York, I think I need a better idea of what and who, exactly, would be affected by changes enacted by the NYSCA, and to what degrees.

3. Do you think teachers should be re-tested to ensure that we have quality educators?

You seem like the type of legislator that doesn't like seeing the government mucking around in people's lives. So in response to this question, I have to say "No." I think that school supervisors should make the determination as to whom is and isn't competant to be teaching. While your question makes it seem like I'm against having "quality educators," it does so by presenting a false choice, a logical fallacy I find offensive. The question seems to imply that if I care about having "quality educators," then I will support retesting, and if I don't care, then I won't support retesting. But, getting back to why I responded as I did, I think that any teacher is certified in the first place is for a reason, and it is because of their competence. Once again, your questionnaire has failed to provide any reason why I should believe otherwise, and so I'll continue to believe that, while failing students continue to be a problem in New York, it isn't because of teachers. It is because of this view that I believe retesting is unnecessary and that a different approach to education reform should be persued.

4. Would you support the State of New York assuming the local share of your county's Medicaid program as some government officials, business leaders, and editorial boards have suggested, even if it meant your state taxes would increase by billions of dollars?

The questionnaire has once again failed to specify who would receive the brunt of the impact from the "billions" of dollars in tax increases. Your question should instead tell us how much, on average, each of us in each different tax bracket would have to endure in tax increases, as well as impact on new startup companies as compared to established businesses. Like other subjects that this questionnaire presents, I'm not an expert on the economics of taxation. So, if this request is considered unrealistic or unreasonable, then please respond instead with an explination as to why presenting the tax increase as simply "billions" is somehow more reasonable and more realistic.

5. In terms of school vouchers, do you support allowing students and parents to choose a private school over a public school at taxpayer expense.

I would say "yes" to this question, in part. I think that a limited amount of the expenses for private schooling would be okay. This amount should be determined by income of the parents, as it is, I feel, the only reasonable way to balance giving parents and students a choice over where they go to school and maintaining public financing of public schools. To pay for private education based on any other criterium, such as the student's ability to learn, is setting the stage for a two-tier education system where advantaged kids get even more advantages over other students, by pulling away inappropriate amounts of money from public schools in addition to keeping less advantaged kids that come from impoverished environments from being able to attend private schools. In closing, I certainly hope this charter program is done with the interest of targeting less advantaged students.

7. Should small businesses be given a tax cut for providing health insurance to their employees?

As I have already stated, I feel that local businesses should receive as many benefits as is reasonable. However, I would like to know how much of a tax cut would be given to small businesses that provide healthcare to employees, and how this tax cut will be paid for.

8. Do you support a universal health system that would provide health care coverage under a government program (As opposed to the current employee-based system) even if it means higher taxes or repealing tax cuts?

I've often considered such a proposal, but the current wisdom that floats around the subject implies that a universal health care system would be detrimental to our health care. I've never understood how socially subsidizing our current healthcare system would suddenly, and necessarily, turn it into a mess; although I do appreciate that additional bureaucracy could muck things up to some extent. You opinions and insight into such a system would be appreciated, and any resources about the subject would also be appreciated. For the moment, based on how I currently understand the debate, I say "No" to this question.

9.) Are health care costs, not health care benefits, your chief health care concern?

Simply, no. I've always been of a mind that believes that a dollar of prevention prevents ten dollars in expense. With that in mind, I say that almost any amount spent in healthcare is money well spent, which implies that benefits are more important than costs.

10.) Should New York State continue to dedicate financial resources to provide health care insurance to the uninsured?

Yes.

11.) Should New York State residents be required to pay a New York State sales tax for items they purchase over the Internet?

I feel this is a complex question that diserves a complex answer. I feel that a consumer's money is best spent when it is spent as close to home as possible. New York consumers purchasing from another state, or worse yet, from another country, is detrimental to that interest. With that in mind, I am also against more taxes that are against consumers. Furthermore, I can't understand why New York State should benefit from purchases that originate from another state. I would say that, from my point of view, that a tax could be imposed on sales originating /in/ New York. This however, causes the problem of causing a detrimental effect of online buyers not wanting to shop at New York-based internet stores. A national Internet sales tax that is imposed at the state level that uses the /national average/ of state sales taxes would be interesting, but may be oversimplified to the point of being offensive. Due to this myriad of arguments, I'm going to say "No" to this question.

12) Do you support the protection of "traditional marriage" between a man and a woman?

Yet another question that deserves more than a Yes/No response. I'm an athiest, but I respect the religious traditions of others. I also support non-religious traditions, as well. I feel that it is an American tradition to be progressive and more inclusive as the times change. This, I feel, is a non-religious tradition that diserves the support of anyone with the opinion that America should be more inclusive as it ages, indeed, that all men are "created equal." With this in mind, I am against gay marraiges, but I support civil unions that give all of the legal benefits to gay couples, an entirely reasonable position that I can't see you disagreeing with in any way. I'm open to a differing opinion, but I doubt I will ever be swayed on this matter.

13) In response to the question regarding assault rifles:

Everybody is a law abiding citizen until they break the law. If someone decides they want to do something unlawful, I'd like to know that they aren't toting one of these "so-called" assault weapons that they were formerly using just for "hunting, recreatinal, and personal protection use." Let's be reasonable, Senator.

This argument, of course, assumes guilt, and I realise that. But, your own question states that only the "majority" of assault rifles are used for legal purposes. You, as well, are assuming some degree of guilt when you say that the minority will be used for illegal purposes. I'd hate to devolve into emotional pleas, but how many people have died in this minority of illegal uses you speak of? And how many of those illegally used assault weapons were purchased legally? In conclusion, I respond "No."

14) Regarding Erie County Legislature replacement.

No.

15) Should New York State provide funding to assist farmers in protecting food products from tampering and from potential terrorist activities within our food chain?

Indifferent.

16) In your viewpoint, which is the most important issue facing New York Stat government?

I feel that Education always is and always should be the most important legislative consideration. Educational issues feed directly into the other issues listed, in the long run, and in a myriad of ways.

17) Are you able to easily access your State government and its agencies?

Honestly, I've never tried.

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In conclusion, I'd like to express some more concern about the questionnaire itself, which is the original reason why I decided to write this e-mail instead of responding by mail.

The questionnaire you sent to your constituents was highly biased to a certain point of view. Almost every question made a disagreeing opinion sound like a really, really bad response. In future inquiries of your constituents, I would like to see references to web sites that provide detailed information regarding the subject matter. In addition to this, I'd like to see more encouragement for elaboration on responses, and ample room for doing so.

Thank you for your time and consideration of my views.

are we underestimating the enemy?

2006-01-02T14:26:00.000-05:00

One of the worst defenses of the spying program that has been implemented for the last few years is this emerging attack on whomever it was that leaked the spy program.

From the Washington Post:

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), speaking on Fox, agreed that finding out who leaked details of the spying program is crucial "because whoever leaked this information has done the U.S. and its national security a great disservice."

But he said the investigation may be more appropriately handled by the Senate Intelligence Committee, where many discussions are held behind closed doors. "We're talking about this entirely too much out in public as a result of these leaks and it's endangering our efforts to make Americans more secure," McConnell said.

Bush has said that “the fact that somebody leaked this program causes great harm to the United States" and that "[t]here’s an enemy out there.”

The problem I have is that conservatives are underestimating the very enemy Bush speaks of.

Conservatives honestly believe that al Qaeda doesn't already assume that we are making as many efforts as we can to intercepting as much of their communications as possible. Conservatives think that the leak of the spy program is somehow shocking to our enemy; Cons think that the terrorists know they are taking on one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world, but we aren't using any of that technology to track thier communications.

I'm not even considering anything like whether or not the wiretappings were indeed legal or constitutional or not. I have no interest in that debate, as it is already being throughly examined. My concern is that the people who are controlling the campaign to minimize terrorism have no respect for our enemy. The thought that terrorists are using your typical, household land lines and cellular communications is laughable. One conjures up images of bin Laden sitting on the back porch of a cave in the middle of the desert, kicking it back with a lemonade and twisting the phone cord around his finger while gabbing about the latest al Qaeda plots. This simply isn't happening.

In chess, a player is taught to never assume that your opponent doesn't know everything that you know about the position. You're sopposed to presume that they know you know that they know that you know, basically. Yet here we are, assuming that our opponents never thought we'd be tapping their communications. Bushies are assuming terrorists don't know that we know they know what we know... or something.

Maybe conservatives don't play chess...