Forgiveness for the Uninformed, Rage Against the News Machine / 2-6-12

Not forgiveness for the "Uniformed." That would be a very condescending post.

I kid, because defensive mechanism. In all honesty, I'm not sure what the point of this little essay is, yet. I'm going to start with a list, follow it with between one and a dozen observations, leading to a semblance of a point, perhaps gracing it all with a counterpoint, if you're lucky. I plan to offer a conclusiony item near the endy part.

(Not sure how it's all going to turn out. This is just how they teach you to operate in school. Begin to write, then think.)

Pre-thinking stage: engage.

a) Israel is thinking of starting a little war with Iran.

b) A riot killed 79 people in Egypt last week, and injured hundreds. The aftershock riot, a couple days later, killed 10 more.

c) Syria continues to knock off its citizens, day by day. Russia and China are vetoing any U.N. action.

d) Oh yeah, speaking of Russia, as hundreds of its citizens continue to die of cold, hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets in protest and support for apparent King Vladimir Putin.

e) The Republicans are choosing a presidential candidate, one state at a time. One guy seems to have taken charge, but it's been a pretty topsy-turvy ride so far.

f) Facebook is readying for what could be the largest IPO of all time. Hell, throw moderation out the window. This WILL be the largest one of all time.

g) Unemployment is dipping quickly.

h) Same-sex marriage is being considered/approved in three more states (WA, NJ, MN).

i) A Super Bowl was played yesterday. A good one, too. Record viewership for the game and the halftime show.

j) Outrage at the Susan B. Komen For the Cure's plan to defund Planned Parenthood caused the board to reverse its decision.

k) Citizens United is now two years old. The court case that paved the way for unlimited (unlimited!) donations from a single entity to a political campaign. It's being challenged everywhere, because most people are against bribery. (Unlimited donations! Pause for a second and think that one over.)

Those are just the top stories I can recite off the top of my head. A bit of shallow research reveals that a few other significant things are also ongoing.

l) Russian scientists are about to finish drilling through two miles of Antarctic ice and reach a pressurized underground lake that has not been explored for 100 million years. What's that again about the Mayan prophecy?

m) More European countries' debt ratings are in danger of being downgraded as they begin to deal with the consequences of unfunded spending programs. Like France and stuff. Big financial problems ahead, probably, with worldwide ramifications.

n) Fidel Castro was seen in public, touting a memoir. Remember him?

o) Hey, guess what: this little thing called "Occupy" is still happening, with peaceful protesters being mistreated by police every day, First Amendment be damned.

Thinking stage: engage.

First pointlet, then is that all that stuff listed above happened or continued to happen last week. How can a person possibly stay informed? Reading enough on each of these topics, just enough to rise above mal-informed to semi-informed, would take a person's entire trove of free time. No matter how much that person had! 168 hours might be sufficient, on a weekly basis, provided the person were a very fast reader. And possessed a time machine.

One could read headlines only. I have lots of days when that's all I can do. The experience is very unsatisfying, like a daily diet composed of fourteen snacks instead of three and a half meals.

I didn't even include any of the gossip "news" that bubbles at the surface -- Justin Bieber this, Kim Kardashian that, Brad Pitt this, MIA that. Best leave those "stories" to the professionals.

No sense in trying to stay up on the local stuff, either. Sticking strictly with national and international stories above, and just the big ones at that. Property taxes going up or serial killer strikes again in your town? You could hardly know that, unless it was your job to know so many things. So very many things.

That's why, today, pointlet two: I'm asking for and granting forgiveness to all uninformed parties everywhere. I am extending, right now, a blanket -- nay, a veritable quilt of mercy to all planetary inhabitants. You didn't know the city of Berkeley voted to pull out $300 million in assets from a large bank, so it could place the money in a more socially conscious place? Peace be with you. You didn't catch the headlines about the quake in the Philippines? Shalom anyway, Allahu Akbar and all that jazz. You holding on to something earth-shattering I didn't know about? I humbly beg your forgiveness.

There's too much information. It's too easy to disseminate. It's getting harder and harder to sort through it all, let alone keep up with a story for more than a day or two.

I'm not sure how this will turn out, still, but it appears a major point has stumbled into this post: We, as a nation, are bombarded with news. We've become are too adept at reporting stories. I submit that we have left the land of diminishing returns, news-wise, and have bravely set foot on a new patch of terra firma, where the amount of information available now places too much power in the hands of the aggregators and the opinion makers.

An amateur news-gatherer, or a semi-interested news reader, who has literally millions of informative blogs to choose from, is ironically more at the mercy now of news aggregators than ever before.

I can't stress enough how ironic the situation has become. There are hundreds of major news outlets slanted this way or that, and hundreds more trying so very hard to be unslanted. Old media and new media have merged -- you tell me how we should tell them apart. How do you find enough to make up your mind on any issue of importance? How do you find a reliable source, who will give you facts and analysis you can trust, and I don't mean based on ideology, but on sound thought processes and verifiable events?

For so very many of us, you don't. You stop by Daily Kos and the Huffington Post on your lunch hour if you're a liberal, catch some Rush Limbaugh on talk radio in the car and log on at redstate for a few minutes in the evening if you're a conservative. Why? Because you're not going to spend half your day researching a major issue or story, unless it's your job.

The junkiest of new junkies among us will always devour enough material to satisfy their appetites, and if they do it right, they'll turn that information into knowledge. The rest of us? Good freakin luck.

I don't think the current state of news presentation is healthy for our republic. But I also don't have a solution. Feel free to suggest one.

Stupidiocy / 10-21-10

Today, 2010 Elections Class, we learned:

That Rand Paul and Jesus Christ are the same dude.

That fearing random Muslims is profitable.

That answering questions is an optional exercise for Senate candidates.

Let's do these in reverse order, because oh my, the Paul one is so juicy, I have to make it this post's dessert.

So the appetizer first: Joe Miller is running for Senate in Alaska. After beating the incumbent in the Republican primary over the summer, why should he have to deal with the press at all? Better to handcuff reporters when they get too frisky. Better to not honor interviews.

Yeah. When 40 fellow Alaska Republicans are asking you, in an open letter, to get your act together, and calling your campaign out for "unacceptable" behavior and "not a winning strategy," you should probably not say things like "We've drawn a line in the sand. You can ask me about background, you can ask me about personal issues -- I'm not going to answer." But what do I know? I'm not trying to lose a practically unlosable election.

Entree time. Juan Williams. Ahem.

Visiting with Bill O'Reilly recently, Williams, an NPR reporter, generously offered this up: "I mean look, Bill, I'm not a bigot. You know the kind of books I've written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous."

I totally believe Williams. He isn't a bigot. He's just a guy who gets irrationally afraid that because there are Muslims with different-looking outfits on his flight from Atlanta to Chicago, the plane might end up crashing into the Pentagon instead.

That sounds sarcastic. And it is, a little, but it also isn't. It's very, very difficult to begrudge someone for admitting that the Different makes them nervous. Lots of people struggle with that. When I'm walking down a dark alley at night (one of my favorite activities!), I don't want the three guys I cross to all be 6'6", 320 pounds, with prison tattoos across their knuckles. I just don't.

(Hey, did I mention Williams is black? Not that I have a great deal more to say on that count.)

At the same time, it's worth remembering a couple things.

1. The 9/11 hijackers were wearing jeans and T-shirts.

2. Women in burqas have successfully piloted zero planes into tall New York buildings.

So I can safely pencil Williams in for irrational behavior and poor timing when it comes to honesty... but probably not much more. NPR fired him, by the way, after hearing of the remarks. I'm supposing they felt he had seriously harmed his objectivity and/or his credibility.

In any event, all's well that ends well for Williams. His friends came to his rescue.

Mike Huckabee: "It is time for the taxpayers to start making cuts to federal spending, and I encourage the new Congress to start with NPR."

Sarah Palin: "NPR defends 1st Amendment Right, but will fire u if u exercise it. Juan Williams: u got taste of Left's hypocrisy, they screwed up firing u." That might be one of her tweets, or that could also be how we're doing transcripts for her nowadays.

And then, just found out that Fox News has offered him something marginally better than an unemployment check: a 3-year, $2 million contract to join them. Good for him. Now we all know what the reward/punishment is for misunderstanding other religions (and I'm being charitable). Glad to have that out in the open.

Hope you left room for the grand finale.

KY Senate candidate Rand Paul, earlier today: "In my entire life, I've written and said a lot of things. I've never said or written anything un-Christian in my life."

Now after months and months and months talking constantly in the public spotlight, under the constant stress a campaign like Paul's surely brings, people are apt to say things, that upon further reflection, they wish they could take back. Either they misspeak, they take an analogy too far, they forget which group they're speaking to, they make up facts, they stretch the truth, they say too much, or they outright lie. (Politicians do this? Whoa.)

But I pay pretty close attention to politics, and most of those instances are explainable. The candidate thought he could get away with a falsehood. The candidate embellished a story. The candidate was on the spot, and made up some numbers. The candidate said she can't tell Latinos and Asians apart. (Go ahead, click the link. I couldn't make stuff this good up if I tried.)

Oh yeah, what Paul said. Let's get back to that. It's hard to even give him credit for what he could have and should have said, which, naturally, is "I am a Christian and always have been. I've made lots of statements, oral and written, and I've always wanted to be Christlike in everything I say and write. For my opponent to imply otherwise is tasteless and vile." He missed that perfect response by a light-year or two.

Instead of crafting a sensible retort, he claimed perfection. Not recent perfection. No no. A lifetime achievement award. Not a single word against Christian principles. In his life. In other words, godlike flawlessness.

(I guess the lie he told by making that statement, that lie must have been his first. Bummer to ruin a good streak like that, on a technicality no less.)

To be fair, Paul was baited. His opponent, Democrat Jack Conway, just put out an ad exposing a college escapade Paul took part in during his days as a member of an anti-Christian club. (The story came out in a recent issue of GQ. Take that for what it's worth.) In the ad, Paul and a buddy stand accused of tying up a woman and forcing her to worship something called the Aquabuddha.

The ad's in terribly poor taste. It's inconsquential to the issues at hand, and irrelevant at best. It's nasty and full of innuendo. It misleads. But Paul's response tells so much more than Conway's sleazy move. It tells us that when the full-court pressure is on, in the heat of the closing weeks of a contentious campaign, the Republitarian political newbie folds.

Man, election season makes people do stupidiotic things.

Yet More Proof the Brits are the Funniest Species of Human / 10-6-10

Amidst my relentless visits to the International House of Internets, I dug up this little gem.

Rather than simply link to it and make you travel microseconds away, I'm going to reprint it below, with full credit and attribution and everything.

Plus, it's effing hilarious. And if you perchance follow the link, the comments section is superb.

Plus, I'm eventually going to copy this parody, only as a political "story" late in a campaign, because why should this dude have all the fun?

Plus, that's all.

From the guardian.co.uk and author Martin Robbins:

This is a news website article about a scientific paper

In the standfirst I will make a fairly obvious pun about the subject matter before posing an inane question I have no intention of really answering: is this an important scientific finding?

In this paragraph I will state the main claim that the research makes, making appropriate use of "scare quotes" to ensure that it's clear that I have no opinion about this research whatsoever.

In this paragraph I will briefly (because no paragraph should be more than one line) state which existing scientific ideas this new research "challenges".

If the research is about a potential cure, or a solution to a problem, this paragraph will describe how it will raise hopes for a group of sufferers or victims.

This paragraph elaborates on the claim, adding weasel-words like "the scientists say" to shift responsibility for establishing the likely truth or accuracy of the research findings on to absolutely anybody else but me, the journalist.

In this paragraph I will state in which journal the research will be published. I won't provide a link because either a) the concept of adding links to web pages is alien to the editors, b) I can't be bothered, or c) the journal inexplicably set the embargo on the press release to expire before the paper was actually published.

"Basically, this is a brief soundbite," the scientist will say, from a department and university that I will give brief credit to. "The existing science is a bit dodgy, whereas my conclusion seems bang on," she or he will continue.

I will then briefly state how many years the scientist spent leading the study, to reinforce the fact that this is a serious study and worthy of being published by the BBC the website.

This is a sub-heading that gives the impression I am about to add useful context.

Here I will state that whatever was being researched was first discovered in some year, presenting a vague timeline in a token gesture toward establishing context for the reader.

To pad out this section I will include a variety of inane facts about the subject of the research that I gathered by Googling the topic and reading the Wikipedia article that appeared as the first link.

I will preface them with "it is believed" or "scientists think" to avoid giving the impression of passing any sort of personal judgement on even the most inane facts.

This fragment will be put on its own line for no obvious reason.

In this paragraph I will reference or quote some minor celebrity, historical figure, eccentric, or a group of sufferers; because my editors are ideologically committed to the idea that all news stories need a "human interest", and I'm not convinced that the scientists are interesting enough.

At this point I will include a picture, because our search engine optimisation experts have determined that humans are incapable of reading more than 400 words without one.

[This picture has been optimised by SEO experts to appeal to our key target demographics]

This subheading hints at controversy with a curt phrase and a question mark?

This paragraph will explain that while some scientists believe one thing to be true, other people believe another, different thing to be true.

In this paragraph I will provide balance with a quote from another scientist in the field. Since I picked their name at random from a Google search, and since the research probably hasn't even been published yet for them to see it, their response to my e-mail will be bland and non-committal.

"The research is useful", they will say, "and gives us new information. However, we need more research before we can say if the conclusions are correct, so I would advise caution for now."

If the subject is politically sensitive this paragraph will contain quotes from some fringe special interest group of people who, though having no apparent understanding of the subject, help to give the impression that genuine public "controversy" exists.

This paragraph will provide more comments from the author restating their beliefs about the research by basically repeating the same stuff they said in the earlier quotes but with slightly different words. They won't address any of the criticisms above because I only had time to send out one round of e-mails.

This paragraph contained useful information or context, but was removed by the sub-editor to keep the article within an arbitrary word limit in case the internet runs out of space.

The final paragraph will state that some part of the result is still ambiguous, and that research will continue.

Related Links:

The Journal (not the actual paper, we don't link to papers).

The University Home Page (finding the researcher's page would be too much effort).

Unrelated story from 2007 matched by keyword analysis.

Special interest group linked to for balance.

We Killed Him / 9-29-10

On Wednesday, September 22, 2010, we killed Tyler Clementi.

Clementi, a Rutgers freshman, jumped off the George Washington bridge last week. His body was recovered today, on the 29th.

He told us he was going to do it; he posted his plans on his facebook page earlier that evening.

Technically, Clementi did take his own life. We didn't push him off the bridge. Technically, we were sleeping, or working, or laughing with our significant other, or watching Jersey Shore, or chomping down McNuggets, or doing a million other things that didn't directly murder the fragile young man.

And you can be certain he was a tortured guy on the inside, because it takes that type of person to jump.

But we still killed him.

43 percent of us believe gay sex is morally wrong. (Poll results here.)

58 percent of us don't want to allow gays to marry. (Poll results here.)

Upwards of 90 percent of us watch videos online, including everything from Euro soccer highlights to dancing babies to classical music to Anime porn. Susan Boyle's audition for "Britain's Got Talent" garnered 100 million hits in its first nine days. It's not just because she's got talent and is British.

So when Clementi's roommate secretly filmed him having sex with another man, then posted it online, the twig he was... it just snapped.

At the intersection of omnipresent technology, voyeurism, homophobia, curiosity and immaturity, we find Clementi.

That's our address. We killed him.

And he didn't have to die. We could be a better society already, one that allows gay men and women to love each other openly in the same way straight men and women do. But we aren't. We could be a different society, one that places certain loose restrictions on online content. But again, we aren't. We could even be living in an age without the Internet. But we have it.

Indisputably, we could nurture troubled teenagers better.

Instead, when the planet dumps a Clementi in our lap, we kill him.

Mediawful / 9-27-10

(Preventative Strike: Here's the link to the full article in question. It is less than four hours old as of this precise moment. Here's the link to an analysis of the survey results being discussed.)

Stop The Presses. Never got a chance to say that in my newspaper days. Nowadays, of course, it'd be Stop The Upload, or Sever The Connection, but those have a decidedly less dramatic ring to them.

What are we press-stopping about? Why, beloved readers, it just so happens that American atheists and agnostics (informally known as the AAA) have outperformed Christians on a test of religious knowledge.

Boom-shakalaka!

By now, the three of you who are still reading despite my incomparable nerdiness, you guys will have skillfully predicted where I'm going with this. Coming up in fifteen seconds: violent rant on how Christians don't even know as much about their own faith as non-Christians! What a sorry spiritual state we occupy, even as we strive to be God's chosen people, blessed in every way and entrusted with the holy mission of showing the heathen the error of their ways. What a failure we are as a, nay, THE Christian nation.

That would be some serious ironic, sarcastic fun. But I'm not going there.

Instead, I'm compelled to rant about how this article sums up the sorry state of journalism in 2010.

The writer's opening paragraph (the "lede" for all you non-reporters):

"If you want to know about God, you might want to talk to an atheist. Heresy? Perhaps."

I know lame when I see it, and that's lame lame megalame lame. With a false equivalency thrown in for good measure. Come on. The survey we're getting to measured respondents' knowledge about religious facts. Not about the nature of God. There's a difference, pinhead.

And how is that heresy anyway? Maybe irony. Maybe.

And why is the "Perhaps" there? To hedge your bets? To not offend? To seem even-handed? To be extra-super lame?

Later in the same story:

"The Pew survey was not without its bright spots for the devout. Eight in 10 people surveyed knew that Mother Teresa was Catholic. Seven in 10 knew that, according to the Bible, Moses led the exodus from Egypt and that Jesus was born in Bethlehem."

It's a "bright spot" that 20 percent of believers can't remember that Mother Teresa was a Catholic nun?

Oh wait, that just what the writer was implying. That's not an actual correct interpretation of the data. That number was for the public at large, of which 82 percent correctly answered the question. And how is it good news for "the devout" that 71 percent of people know that the Bible claims Jesus was born in Bethlehem? What makes that good news? (Let's leave aside the fun fact that Jesus, according to most biblical scholars, was born in Nazareth. Had to mention that. Sorry.)

The article's stupid conclusion:

"For comparison purposes, the survey also asked some questions about general knowledge, which yielded the scariest finding: 4% of Americans believe that Stephen King, not Herman Melville, wrote "Moby Dick."

So the "scariest finding" of all is the comforting fact that 96 percent of the population correctly knows that Stephen King did not write "Moby Dick."

Oh good. Now I can sleep at night. (Must confess, for a while there, I was worried that maybe 4 percent of Americans were trying to check out Herman Melville's "It" from the public library.)

I feel more knowledgeable, yet dumber, for having read that story. Stop hurting my brain, mass media outlets!

Give Me Taxes Or Give Me Death / 9-5-10

There are only three options left.

Either we:

1. Raise taxes to pay for our social programs;
2. Reduce entitlement benefits drastically for all citizens, beginning now;
3. Install some combination of 1. and 2.

All other paths, including our elected officials' perennial favorite, 4. Stay The Course, lead to financial ruin and the end of the nation as we know it.

I'm sick and tired of 4.

I want 1.

I want more taxes, and I want them yesterday. I want the rich to pay more than the non-rich, because the reverse is cruel and ineffective. And I want the media to expose relentlessly how lower taxes are only possible if we aggressively slash Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security and every other bit of spending the government undertakes.

There exists no option 5., called "Cut taxes and pretend we can save money in the great 'elsewhere' of the federal budget. Like foreign aid. Or 'waste.' Or earmarks. Or pork." That plan's not viable, not possible, and it's high time its predetermined failure was properly publicized. We can't have social programs and low taxes. And anyone who claims otherwise should be ridiculed as an untrustworthy power-hungry liar. There is no room in the budget for that reckless financial fantasy.

Anyone who claims we can trim government revenues without touching the social safety net's benefits is unfit to lead the country.

I have numbers.

Medicare/Medicaid costs 779 billion annually.
Social Security costs 694 billion.
National defense and wars set us back 680 billion.
Federal pensions: 195 billion.
Foreign aid checks in between 20 and 25 billion.
Earmarks? 17 billion.

(These stats can be found all over the Internet at all sorts of nonpartisan places. You can dislike them, but you can't quibble with them.)

If every earmark and all bits of foreign aid were eliminated from the budget every year, we'd make a hole in the overall debt of less than one-third of percent, which would be instantly gobbled up the following year by the interest on our new debt anyway. That's assuming we kept tax rates stable.

The government (federal and state) receives about $3.34 trillion annually in taxes. The debt has grown by at least $500 billion annually since 2003.

We need to pay more taxes, or we need to tell our seniors and our poor to forget half their entitlements.

Or we could not go to war, ever. Or defend ourselves against anyone, ever. Or provide any basic services, ever.

Only a combination of higher taxes and lower benefits, or simply higher taxes, will save the nation from insolvency, followed by skyrocketing interest rates, followed by partition of the United States of America.

I like America. I love America. I don't wish her death. I'd like my grandkids to be Americans, not Pacificans.

Either way, if we want the country we have, we're going to get higher taxes. And if that's going to happen, I'd just as soon we were the kind of people who support their citizens appropriately in their infirmity and old age.

I am completely, unapologetically requesting to have my taxes raised as soon as possible. Well, not just mine. Everyone's. Mine don't stand much of a chance in a cage match with a $20 trillion, $30 trillion, $60 trillion national debt. (We're at 13.4 trillion and counting.)

I'm not poor. I won't win some sort of personal mini-lottery from a system that ensures survival of the safety net.

I'm also not rich. I can't afford a lot more in taxes. I can barely afford the ones I have to pay right now.

I'm also not at all bothered by the prospect of system fraud. I believe we should catch welfare cheats and Social Security scammers, make them perform loads of community service and fine them heftily, because I'm willing to let the police chase down the guy who does 55 mph in my residential neighborhood rather than petitioning to have the speed limits revoked.

I am bothered, now to the point of seething anger, by the notion that our present borrowing levels and deficits are OK.

I am bothered tenfold by the notion that REDUCING the government's revenue is somehow the answer. Especially when a politician says -- lies -- that we can trim the fat from a bloated budget while cutting taxes. Unless that politician specifically calls for steep cuts in our entitlements programs alongside those irresponsible tax cuts (and I mean steep cuts, on the order of 30 or 40 percent), then you can assume said politician is misleading you.

It is critical that persons with megaphones call out those who would lead America to the financial precipice. And that we call out the media for not doing its job in this arena. Its job, in this case? Forcing politicians to address the issue, but not in generalities. Asking the questions that expose empty promises and unrealistic so-called solutions.

Is my anger visible enough?

Anyway. When my debt reaches dangerous levels, and it has done so at times because my career path has been... voluptuous, those are the times I curtail my spending, rework the terms of the debt if I can, and find ways to make more money. If I don't end up doing at least one of those things quite well (and probably two at a time are necessary), I run the risk of losing my house, my cars, then being forced to skip two meals a day, and even then, I might still be crushed under the consequences if I'm not careful.

While I realize personal finance guidelines don't always apply on a national scale, the moral from the previous paragraph is that there is a limit to how much debt you can handle without it crippling you. If one individual finds that tipping point, trips over it carelessly and is broken by the circumstances, that's a tragedy. If that were to happen to a whole country, we'd need a new word to describe such an inconceivable event.

Why would we even want to come close to that point?

I will enthusiastically support an influential politician who realizes I can handle the truth, then tells me something like this:

"The days of easy entitlements are over. Financial realities dictate that we must cut benefits and raise taxes, or risk our very sovereignty. Prudence dictates that we start down that road sooner rather than later.

"I wish it were not so, but wishing won't make the facts go away. I am no longer willing to pretend that a crisis does not loom on the horizon. Please join me in an era of sacrifice that will strengthen the long-term financial prospects of the Unites States of America while preserving the principles for which she stands.

"If you want to be mad at me for telling it like it is, go ahead. But I'm going to be part of the solution, not the problem, and the solution incorporates, without a doubt, higher taxes for all Americans. My hope is that you, whether you consider yourself liberal or conservative or in between or neither, that you will journey with me down the road that saves our very nation. Thank you."

Of course, I'm not holding my breath.

I Slam Islam / 8-16-10

Religious puns are the best.

As you'd imagine, I don't personally have any problem with Islam. I mean, no more problem than with every other organized religion. All self-perpetuating institutions screw up every so often, go off the deep end, do some seriously f'ed-up stuff in obvious complete opposition to the purported teachings of their faith. It doesn't take a whole lotta research to find some pretty massive screw-ups by powerful people claiming to act in a religion's best interest. (As if that were even possible. If you have truth, it will win out, with or without your "help," such as it may be.)

But slamming Islam has become something of a national sport, and it's driving me absolutely crazy. People with megaphones are going out of their way to trample the Bill of Rights in a way that should shame them -- but instead, they're proud of their actions.

Case in point: the media-driven furor over the right of Muslims living in Manhattan to build a mosque two blocks from Ground Zero. City planners in Manhattan approved the project, which consists of a mosque and community center designed to improve relations between Muslims and non-Muslims. (Please provide your own ironic comment here.) Obviously, their plans didn't please EVERYONE.

"In my opinion, the prospect of a mosque right near this site of reverence and respect for lost loved ones from the attack shows a serious lack of sensitivity.In fact, the majority of the country is strongly opposed to building a mosque at the site of the most tragic terrorist attack on America." That's from Senator David Vitter of Louisiana. I chose his words because they were less inflammatory than the average politician's. (I could have quoted the usual blowhards here -- you know who you are -- but I wanted to save that for later. And Vitter's right about the "majority of the country," but we'll get to that in due course as well. Like, after about 5,000 words of snarkventarrhea. What? Is too a word.)

As I was saying. Not everyone so happy-happy joy-joy about this turn of events. So when President Obama stated that Muslims are entitled, as per the basic rules of our country, to build places of worship near their places of residence, his pronouncement was national news. THIS JUST IN: Obama Supports Freedom Of Assembly! BREAKING NEWS: Obama Consults Constitution In Crafting Opinion!

Excuse me, but Duh.

Only somehow, Not Duh.

Newt Gingrich, this past Sunday, on Fox: "Nazis don’t have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust Museum in Washington. We would never accept the Japanese putting up a site next to Pearl Harbor. There’s no reason for us to accept a mosque next to the World Trade Center."

GOP congressional candidate Elliott Maynard (W. Va.): "Do you think the Muslims would allow a Jewish temple or Christian church to be built in Mecca?"

I could point out that Gingrich just equated attending a religious service with genocide, and that Maynard thinks that we should exchange constitutions with Saudi Arabia, but I have faith that their words fail on their own, without my help. (Oops.)

Important data on its way. Aaaaaaaaaaand... go:

61 percent of Americans: "Muslims have the right to build a mosque near Ground Zero."

64 percent of Americans: "Muslims should not build a mosque near Ground Zero."

(Those figures come from a Fox News poll. That's all I'm going to say about that. Actually, their polling is not the worst in the business, as long as you)

Sarah Palin read the poll results and chimed in. (I like her. But maybe not in the way you think.) On her twitter page recently, which I really really won't link to: "We all know that they have the right to do it, but should they? This is not above your pay grade. " Sarah is awesome. She manages to say, like millions of others before and since, that freedom is fine as a CONCEPT. Just don't try and exercise it. Well, not you guys at least.

As for Democrats who deserve a flogging, I give you Senate Majority "Leader" Harry Reid, who opposes, for stupid reasons, the building of the mosque at that location. "The First Amendment protects freedom of religion," wrote Jim Manley, a spokesman for Reid. "Sen. Reid respects that but thinks that the mosque should be built someplace else."

(Like maybe in Harlem? Or Brooklyn? How far is far enough, people? What degree of inconvenience do we need to impose on Muslims to make ourselves feel better about... well, whatever it is we need to feel better about at the time?)

Now Reid I can forgive. Sort of. He's in a tight re-election race, he needs to move to the center by taking some positions to his right, to move beyond his base. Those kind of tactics are covered in Intro to Beginners' Basic Elementary Campaigning, Level Zero. I bet Reid doesn't even believe the statement his camp published. He's a Mormon, for crying out loud. He knows about religious intolerance. At least in theory.

But how is it even possible, in the first place, that party lines are drawn over this issue? How is it possible that Reid pissing all over the Bill of Rights is a "move to the center?" I so do want to write "What have we come to as a nation," but I permit myself only x+1 cliches per post.

Unless... unless... the right wing is the side that stopped believing in freedom of religion. Which would be an interesting stance for the party which depends on fundamentalist Christian votes to survive.

RNC Chair Mike Steele: "Mosques are a luxury. We Christians will decide where they may be built, if we allow them at all."

Fundamentalist Stooges: "OK."

Steele: "We'll do the same for the synagogues."

Stooges: "Well, all right."

Steele: "And no more parishes. Until I say so."

Stooges: "Er."

Steele: "Oh, and Rush says no wards outside of Utah."

Stooges: "Uh-"

Steele: "Also, let's say, no-"

Stooges: "Later guys. Let's go make our OWN party."

(Wet dream ends.)

Does it occur to nobody that if the situation were reversed, that the Christian fundies would howl -- and rightfully so -- that their rights were being denied by an oppressive Islamic majority? (It occurs to me. I've thought about it, and I'm only six or seven times more intelligent than your average cable news host or candidate for office, so you'd think some of them would have caught on by now. Or decided that they've been pretending too long to not catch on.)

(Holy punctuation overload, Batman. If this keeps up, my parentheses keys are going to fall off.)

Other Western countries are playing the I Slam Islam game, too. France's congress banned the burqa last month. Canada isn't donating to disaster relief in Pakistan at nearly the rate it gave to Haiti. For a disaster affecting 14 million people in Pakistan, Canadians have cobbled together $200,000 dollars in the first week. Haiti received 17 times more -- $3.5 million in the first seven days. Even more stats: Haiti's TOTAL population is 70 percent of Pakistan's 14 million flood-displaced humans. Phood4thot.

However this ends up playing out, I believe Obama can make some serious hay here. I earnestly -- if naively -- believe that if he were to spend the next few days emphatically driving home the point that people of all faiths are welcome to build houses of worship near their houses of sleepship, and that this is what religious freedom is all about, that he could convince a vast majority of Americans that he is right. Not because he says it's right, but because the guys who wrote the Constitution said so. But he has to be clear, forceful and he has to call out the opposition for putting themselves above the Founding Fathers. (I'm not hopeful here: he's already gone back once on his opening statement, to add that "I was not commenting, and I will not comment, on the wisdom of making a decision to put a mosque there. I was commenting very specifically on the right that people have that dates back to our founding.")

Even so, forget for a moment that he'd be constitutionally correct in defending religious freedom. (God, do I REALLY have to write that sentence??) Consider instead that the number of non-Christian believers in this country is holding steady or increasing while the number of Christians is dropping precipitously. (Here are the numbers and the pretty charts: visit infoplease.com and religioustolerance.org.)

If he can establish that non-Christians and non-Christian believers have no home in the GOP, and let the demographics work in his favor, he and his party can reap the electoral benefits for years to come.

Although it's probably OK, in the short run, to do the right thing because it's the right thing. That's acceptable too.

Or if desperate measure are called for, Obama could always buck up and quote his predecessor, who, somehow, once said this: "Al Qaeda's cause is not Islam. It is a gross distortion of Islam."

If Bush were president today, and my brain just died a little from typing that, I'd like to think we'd hear him spout something similar. Something like: "Well, um, if Al Qaeda wants to build a mosque dedificated to worshipping terrism, and they want to, uh, build it two blocks from Ground Zero, then I say, Nuh-uh, No Way Hossein. Now them Musslems, theyk'n build whever they wanna. That's Merica. Land of the brave, home of the free, and all that, y'know."

That's probably enough for now.

(Although, honestly, there are so many other angles to take on this issue.

A) Why should peaceful Muslims pay for the sins of hateful terrorists who desecrate the name of Allah with their actions?

B) What's next to be politicized and debated? Trial by jury?

C) What is the significance of Ground Zero, and how are the various political forces using to their benefit? And is this OK?

D) Scapegoats are forever.

E) How is it possible that the party that defecated all over habeas corpus and now freedom of religion continues to be viable?

F) That's it for me. I'm moving to New Zealand and becoming a Hobbit.

Discuss amongst yourselves.)

How Long / 12-15-09

I promise, this post is tangentially connected to politics, so it's not off-topic.

Because breaking my own self-imposed rules would be rude. To me.

Below lies a list of institutions present in our society. Next to each rests two figures; the first one is that institution's age, while the second is the percentage of the lifetime of our nation that the institution has existed. Finally, I post a bit of trivia about each item.

(I count the "birth" of the nation as the moment all 13 states ratified the U.S. Constitution. That was in May 1790, 209.5 years ago.

Enjoy!

Google / 11.25 yrs / 5.4 percent
"Originally the search engine used the Stanford website with the domain google.stanford.edu. The domain google.com was registered on September 15, 1997. They formally incorporated their company, Google Inc., on September 4, 1998 at a friend's garage in Menlo Park, California." (Culled that from wikipedia. Didn't google it.)

Twitter / 2.67 yrs / 1.3 percent
"The [company's] projections for the end of 2013 were $1.54 billion in revenue, $111 million in net earnings, and 1 billion users." (OK, again from that wikiplace, gotta find a new source.)

Ratification in Mississippi of the 19th Amendment, allowing women to vote / 25.67 years / 12.7 percent
Text of the highly objectionable amendment: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation." (Hey, that's the actual text of the amendment, NOT from wikiwiki.) Oh, incidentally, Mississippi legislators also generously made some time to ratify the amendment declaring slavery illegal... in 1995.

50 U.S. States / 50.33 yrs / 24 percent
Hawaii's state flag includes a Union Jack in the upper left corner.

"The Simpsons" / 20 yrs / 9.6 percent
The first episode aired 12-17-89 and was named "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire."

"The Price is Right" / 53.5 years / 25.5 percent
More than 7,000 episodes have aired.

High Fructose Corn Syrup / 44.67 yrs / 21.3 percent
"The average American consumed approximately 28.4 kg (63 lb) of HFCS in 2005." (Yes, wikipedia, you got me.)

Social Security / 74.33 years / 35.5 percent
The program has collecting its own check for a little more than nine years now!

The Federal Income Tax / 96.83 years / 46.2 percent
I know, sometimes it feels like 46.2 percent. But from 1952-53, if you made more than $400,000, your tax rate was... wait for it... oh yeah... 92 percent. Good times. (Incoming President Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican, predictably lowered it to 91 percent through 1960. Tax cuts. Sheesh.)

Socialist Networking / 10-29-09

I conducted a little experiment earlier today. Used my friends. The willing ones. Although they might not have known what they were getting into.

I asked any facebook friends of mine to word associate with the term "socialism." Give me your first thought when you see or hear the word, I asked. And no repeating what the person before you said.

It seemed like a worthwhile little game. After hearing foaming-at-the-mouth politicians / commentators / Fox "News" pundits call out the Obama administration and the president himself for "socialism," always in a tone reserved for war criminals, I decided I should decode what they mean by "socialist." Or should I say, what they want other people to hear when they use the term.

I know what socialism actually signifies in theory - I've done a smattering of research on the topic, and there is the fact that I lived for under a president who belonged to the Socialist Party, under a government headed by a socialist prime minister, and for 10 years at that. (Granted, that was in France. But it counts.) The real definition of the word does not elude me. No, I wanted to know what it means in perception. Which is the only reality that counts, given the way the word has been tossed around in the past year.

Anyway, on with the facebook buddy results.

"control"
"Bread lines"
"De-individualization"
"communism (in drag)"
"Denmark"
"facebook"
"despair"
"healthcare"
"Communally mediocre, shared averageness, mutually middling."
"England... probably due to their socialized healthcare""
"homogeneity, incentiveless, boring, lowest common denominator, unwieldy, inertia, 'for your own good,' involuntary, lazy, shackles, one size fits all"
"dreamslayer, freeloaders, demotivator, entitlement, behemoth, fear, control, bureaucracy, big government, security over potential, lack of competition"
"Capitalism's Yin"

Lots of good stuff there. Let me give out some awards, before I pretend to attach some substance to this post.

Most Ironic
Ryan G. with "facebook"

Most Scenic (tie)
Rob R. for "bread lines"; Amy J. for "communism in drag"

Most In Need of Hug and/or Attention in General
Mason V. for "despair" and assorted other entries

Most Erudite
Kim F. for "mutually middling" and "de-individualization"

Most Continental (tie)
Angie B. and "Denmark"; Christine S. and "England"

Most Timely
Elena S., "healthcare"

Quickest Draw
Noah S. with "control"

Best In Show
Matt L. with "Capitalism's Yin"

The short of it: Socialism appears to get generally a bad rap in the highly representative and oh-so diverse subset of humans known as "John F.'s bored thirtysomething facebook friends of mostly Caucasian descent, many of whom live in one of the reddest states in the union."

So if the cries of "Obama's a socialist!" are aimed exactly at people afraid of socialism creeping into public policy, that sounds like an effective tool. The accuracy of the charge is irrelevant. The tactic appears sound. As long as you're trying to rile up the troops.

(*Tangent Warning* By the way, folks using "socialist" as an insult are of course following in a long tradition of misuse of the word. Who can forget the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics? The bad guys from the Cold War get double points for using two misnomers in the name of their country. Republics? Not so much. Socialist? Puh-leeze. They could have done us all a favor and called the whole thing the Flimsy Union of Communist Kremlin Egomaniacal Russian Sociopaths, although that would have looked really bad on their sports uniforms. My real-life favorite: The Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.)

Amy J. touches tangentially on this semantic issue with the "in drag" comment. As evidenced by 30 seconds of research, communism and socialism differ substantially, but socialism sounds less threatening, so purportedly Marxist governments embrace it for their public face. It's more benign. Less incendiary. (Unless Sean Hannity is using it.) And while it's true that Chucky Marx himself envisioned socialism as a bridge to communism, which makes it fair to call socialism a kind of communism in disguise, or a communism-lite, that's not the way it's played out historically in Western Europe, where socialist governments have coexisted with capitalistic market forces for decades.

Which brings us to Matt L.'s delectable image of socialism as the Yin to capitalism's Yang. And so it has been in our nation's history. While we let the free market do its thing in many areas, we also have redistributed wealth as long as taxes have existed. Not with the aim of bringing about perfect equality between the rich and the poor, or of ushering in a worker's paradise, but with the notion that government intervention is sometimes necessary to rein in the excesses of unbridled capitalism. I present to you the IRS, Medicare, the coming shape of health care reform and FDR's body of work. Oh, and the FCC, the FEC, the FDA, food stamps, Medicaid, the estate tax, and a gwillion other things.

Just as the Yang would cease to exist without the Yin, and vice versa, our democratic society would come apart at the seams without the key socialistic principle of "public control of productive capital and natural resources." It's imperative that certain amounts of capital and resources be controlled by the government. So they can be managed not for profit, but instead redistributed out of compassion for our poorest and most helpless segments of our population.

On the other hand, clearly the state may not control all capital, unless that government's goal is to enrich its leaders while paving the way for an economic meltdown.

We've come to the time for a brief definition of socialism, so I visited that Wiktionary place, whose definition neatly mirrors the Webster's one, and happens to be the clearest one I could drudge up: "Any of various political philosophies that support social and economic equality, collective decision-making, and public control of productive capital and natural resources." Terrifying stuff. Economic security for all citizens. Power not concentrated among the few, but spread among the many. Safeguards in place to prevent the rape of the environment. Gotta steer clear from that anti-American madness.

I'm all out of sarcasm. So I'll leave you with this bonus fun fact: Bernie Sanders, the independent junior senator from Vermont, describes himself as a democratic socialist.

Netrality / 9-28-09

More evidence that it matters who occupies the Oval Office.

By and large ignored by the mainstream media is the highly important issue of Net neutrality, or the obligation of an Internet service provider to act as a gateway, not a gatekeeper. In a setback for ISP giants such as Comcast, Verizon and the like, the FCC ruled last week in favor of the little guy, in favor of net neutrality, blocking carriers from interfering with your online experience by selectively slowing traffic or blocking sites.

The new chairman of the FCC is Julius Genachowski, an Obama appointee. (That's part of the perks of being the Chief Exec - you can pick the guy you want to effect the change you want. In this case, Genachowski represents a welcome change from Bush-era big-business-friendly consumer-ignoring policy.)

Predictably, at the increasingly partisan-hacktastic Wall Street Journal, the action was dismissed: "In recent days, more than one has referred to the proposed rules as 'a solution in search of a problem,' " writes blogger Andrew LaVallee. (In a story posted four days ago that has drawn exactly one, yes, one comment.)

I reserve my right to differ.

“These regulations will not significantly change the industry landscape given that wireline providers currently do not block any traffic,” an Oppenheimer Funds analyst is quuted as saying in that same WSJ bit.

He might be right. But what's being done here is preventing the carriers from doing so in the future. And that's how you solve problems, with proactive measures such as this, with clear, sensible regulation AHEAD OF TIME so you don't have to take out a trillion-dollar loan from China to bail out an entire out-of-control industry a few years later. But the lessons of (recent) history are SOOOO hard to learn.

The Days of Swine and (Runny) Noses / 9-10-09

Oooo! The swine flu!!

Run away!!!

H1N1 will infect plenty of us this winter. It will kill some of us. Just like the regular flu does every year.

That's because it IS a regular flu, complete with - brace yourself, a terrifying revelation awaits - flu-like symptoms. It has some peculiar characteristics, like how it tends to targets young people instead of old. It's going to reach a pandemic stage. It will spread like crazy. You or someone you know WILL get it this fall or winter. Oh, did I forget to mention: It also causes little squiggly piggy tails to sprout from your forehead.

All right, so it's not exactly Ebola. Although the next wave of deaths, coupled with a certain shortage of H1N1 vaccine, will test that theory in the media. I hate to sound so callous, but I just can't get worked up about it and it annoys me heavily that reporters do. I guess it just doesn't rise to the level of news I'd drop everything to watch. It will be costly, in terms of lost productivity in the workplace, but otherwise... pfff.

Still, the kids will be washing their hands and covering their coughs with a passion this fall. I'm such a paranoid hypocrite.

(Is this post's title too obscure of a joke? Just curious.)

Same old, same old? / 7-25-09

As I touched on in yesterday's post, I've been with Obama from the beginning. Initially, I hoped he WOULDN'T run in '08 because as a matter of principle, people should finish what they set out to do, and he was only two years into his first Senate term. Plus, if you're applying to lead the free world, it's nice to have as much political experience as possible.

But once the Iowa caucuses approached, I concluded Obama was the best the Democrats had to offer this time around, and I threw myself passionately behind his campaign. I read "The Audacity of Hope." I deeply lamented that I was not 22 and a senior in college with mountains of free time I could dedicate to volunteering to his historic campaign. I sent money instead, in small, non-sequential bills in unmarked briefcases. And I devoured every piece of campaign news I could get my jaws around. Shoot, I went through eleven computer monitors last calendar year alone.

All hysterical witticisms aside, I glommed on to Obama for three main reasons: future Supreme Court appointments, the need to repudiate eight years of Republican mis-rule, and most fiercely because I believed BHO was a different kind of politician. A guy who might follow his conscience, not his ideology. A guy who invited competing points of view instead of squashing dissent. A guy with some gray matter.

I still believe most of that. But a measure of disappointment might be settling in over the land as the president is forced to put his money where his mouth may or may not be.

Try these Google search results on for size.

"disappointed liberal blogger" yields 41,100 hits.
"buyer's remorse Obama": 195,000
"disappointed Democrats": 242,000
"disillusioned Democrats": 261,000
"disillusioned with Obama": 608,000
"disappointed Obama": 4,060,000

Granted, the last number just barely covers every Republican left in America, so it's no smoking AK-47 (used for deer hunting exclusively). But you get my drift. People all over them internets sure is gettin' antsy. What if our Dear Leader is just another politician, clothed in conciliatory biracial Rorsachness? Let's do some more fun irrandom searches, and pretend they're useful.

(Before we do that, please acknowledge that nobody in the history of the world has typed a paragraph even remotely resembling the one you just read.)

"pleased liberal blogger" yields 40,200 hits.
"no buyer's remorse Obama": 48,100.
"pleased Democrats": 1,850,000
"energized Democrats": 2,170,000
"satisfied with Obama": 3,370,000
"pleased Obama": 4,760,000

Interesting. A media narrative that's been flowing as a persistent undercurrent lately is how Obama supporters are, well, disillusioned en masse after six months of his administration. Since journalists are trained (in J-School, by their editors, by the ratings) to seek out conflict and report it, not harmony, color me unsurprised. The numbers don't bear out a nationwide backlash against the President. Yet.

Still, all that near-nonsense having been said, I do find myself channeling my inner Dennis Green, and wondering if HE IS WHO WE THOUGHT HE WAS! (Repeat until self is worked into a lather.) I mean, he cuddled up to antiwar protesters, built the foundation of his candidacy on undoing Little Bush's warmongering ways, and now we're diving deeper into Afghanistan... And he pledged to close Guantanamo, but results on that one are hard to come by... He railed against immunity for phone companies who played along with dubious wiretapping practices, then changed his mind on that one... He touted the stimulus bill as a buffer against 9 percent unemployment, and here we stand today at 9.7 and rising... He promised his administration would be a model of openness, but last week the White House fought a request to release a list of visitors related to health care reform... It's not pretty.

On the other hand, as I wrote in my last post, his ambitious plans could save America as we know it. That's worth something. OK, I feel better.

Celebrity Deathmatch / 6-6-09

I'm on Google news, at 7:30 p.m. on a Saturday night, browsing for stories to blog about. (I acknowledge there are two problems with my opener: I ended it with a preposition and it contains the embarrassing confession that I have no life.)

I glance at the headlines to the left of the page; there are 4,293 stories at my disposal covering the mysterious death of actor David Carradine.

Since I'm a math geek, I notice that four of the surrounding headlines display a total of related stories somewhere in the 4,000 range. I notice their sum ends with the digit 3, so I chuckle at the possibility that the numbers might match. I do the math. (You'll recall I have no life.)

4,283 is the grand total. I kid you not. Ten more stories out there on a has-been actor's suicide/murder/accident than on the president's approach to health care reform, the launch of new Palm Pre, the day in major league baseball, and a little thing we like to call the demise of the U.S. auto industry.

I'm disturbed. Which I kind of shouldn't be, since this kind of "creative" prioritization happens every single day. But then again, I'm relieved that I'm still disturbed.

Venting complete. Carry on.

(OK, one P.S., but just one: God help us if any serious calamity should befall Jim Carrey or Angelina Jolie. Ever.)

Swine Song / 5-4-09

It's like I said yesterday.

Homeland Security Director Janet Napolitano at a press conference on Monday: "We have started to see encouraging signs that this virus may be mild, and its spread may be limited." And also: "What the epidemiologists are seeing now with this particular strain...is that the severity of the disease, the severity of the flu -- how sick you get -- is not stronger than regular seasonal flu."

Someone should tell CNN.

To be fair (but not balanced), Napolitano and others offered the caveat that a mutated H1N1 may return in the fall to wreak additional havoc. With the headlines, at least.

Fight H1N1 hysteria... what, with facts? / 5-3-09

Don't think of me as the guy who glosses over the so-called danger of swine flu, or the death it has caused.

But do think of me as the facts guy on H1N1.

U.S. Deaths from swine flu, 2009: 1
Mexico deaths from swine flu: 19
U.S. deaths from non-swine flu, typical calendar year: 36,000

Total hospitalizations in U.S. due to regular old flu flu, typically: 200,000
Total cases of swine flu in Mexico: 506
Total cases of swine flu in U.S.: 226

Quote from Center for Disease Control chief Dr. Richard Besser:
"The good news is when we look at this virus right now, we're not seeing some of the things in the virus that have been associated in the past with more severe flu. That's encouraging, but it doesn't mean we're out of the woods yet."

Mexico Health Secretary Jose Cordova on the lethality of H1N1: "The attack rate is not as broad as was thought." Only about 1.2 percent of those hospitalized with "acute respiratory symptoms" were dying, he said.

More info: CDC page on swine flu is right here.

Just so you and I have the facts.