Epic Sex

In line at Albertsons yesterday, I saw Cosmo had this headline. I think it has something to do with Beowulf, but the truth of the matter is that I always find Cosmo a bit confusing.

Is Censorship Really A Bad Thing?

Living things respond to conditioning. What happens to a society conditioned on a popular culture filled with things like this?

It used to be that you couldn't show a murder in a movie unless the murderer was apprehended and punished. That was a long, long time ago. Now our murderers are heroes and played by top notch stars.

In unrelated news:

CHICAGO—Violence over the weekend resulted in Chicago's 400th homicide this year -- that's up 25 percent from the same time last year.  

On Sunday, Jose Escobar, 25, was shot and killed after a fight near a fast food stand at 35th and Morgan in Chicago's Bridgeport neighborhood. His friend was left paralyzed. Escobar's family says he was a gang member, but was trying to change his life.  

“In Chicago, the epidemic of violence is spreading all over the place,” said Ceasefire Illinois director, Tio Hardiman.

Cheezburger of the Day

If I Ran Through Compton, Wearing A Klan Outfit, Would You Feel Sorry For Me When I Got Shot?

Would you?

Der Spiegel has the standard article and photo essay today of crying grandmas from Gaza and, for me, it was the last straw. One of the grandmas has this caption:

The mother of Zaki Qadada, who was killed in an Israeli air strike, weeps during an interviw with SPIEGEL in Gaza City on Nov. 21. "We hope that God will take revenge on these people," she said.

Seriously? How about if you hope that God grants you a tiny portion of a brain instead? Maybe having your national leaders in Hamas swear to commit genocide against a militarily superior nation, founded after their people survived the Holocaust wasn't the best idea in the world. Did you think that was going to end well?

What's the disconnect here? I just finished listening to Judaism and one of the primary themes is how the Holocaust redefined what it meant to be Jewish. Survival trumps all differences. After living next to a Jewish state for a few decades, shouldn't you be able to figure that out? If they've got the Bomb, do you think they're going to let you overwhelm them and exterminate them, assuming you can somehow manage to get past their top-notch army?

If it comes to a real, live war of extermination, do you think they're still going to be using smart bombs and targeting leaders, or are they just going to kill every last one of you with indiscriminate, superior firepower?

Even assuming there was some amount of moral justice in their cause, is screaming genocidal threats at the Israelis and launching rockets on them endlessly anything other than stupid?

For crying out loud, this was perfectly predictable. How much sympathy can you work up for people who continually bring this on themselves?

I Can't Believe That He Believes

Right now, I'm listening to Paul Johnson's Intellectuals. It's a glorious polemic of anecdotes, character analyses and flat-out ad hominem attacks on a variety of wacky braniacs including Marx, Sartre and Chomsky. I haven't gotten to Chomsky yet, but both Sartre and Marx reminded me of Robert Reich.

In the last Reich piece that I read, he scribbled this nonsense:

Europe offers the same lesson in reverse: Their deficits are ballooning because their austerity policies have caused their economies to sink.

The best way to generate jobs and growth is for the government to spend more, not less.

That bugged me at the time because it was so transparently false. Spain and Greece are undergoing austerity because no one will lend to them and interest rates have shot up. It's not like they had a choice. They had a choice five years ago and chose to do what Robert suggested. The result has been riots and financial chaos.

He certainly must see that, right? So what's the angle here?

Marx and Sartre wrote gibberish. Marx never bothered to actually meet the proles and his partner, Engels, doctored the facts to help Marx continue spouting trash. Sartre was a self-promoting egoist, blathering about "action" while he himself did whatever got him money and attention. It wasn't about the truth or developing a better understanding of the world, it was all about them.

So that's where I am with Robert Reich. His work is so transparently deceitful that the only thing I can think is that he doesn't actually believe it himself. He just loves to get his speaking fees and to appear on talk shows. He loves it when his books make the best seller lists. He loves it when he is quoted. I grant that he could be a little deeper than that. Like Marx and Sartre who talked themselves into believing at least some of their own idiocy, the little man might really be a Peronist fascist at heart.

If that's the case, is he really an economist after all, or is he a particularly data-driven propaganda minister?

Link of the Day #2

Dean continues the rationale for a single-payer health care system.

Link of the Day

Go check out W C Varones' Remedial Investing.

Cheezburger of the Day

Is Aristocracy / Peasantry The Nature Of Things?

In the middle ages, noblemen rode around on horses, eating good food. Peasants rolled in the mud*.

Here, a noblewoman rides along with a full silver service and fresh Turbot Eugenie in her saddlebags.

There was this really huge gap between the rich and the poor. It happened because the noblemen oppressed the peasants with the help of the Catholic Church, which heated their massive cathedrals by burning heretics - mostly scientists.

This is the world to which the Rethuglican Theocons long to return. It's a world where the rich oppress and exploit the poor.

In modern California, progressives hold sway. They now control every aspect of the government and can implement everything they've ever dreamed up, whether that's putting an end to the tides or making sure kids eat enough organic endives.

In California, there is this really huge gap between the rich and the poor. It's happened because the super-rich coastal elite oppressed the peasants with the help of the government and Planned Parenthood, one striving to eliminate self-reliance, the other trying to make responsibility-free orgasms a universal right.

This is the world which the Demoncrat Communists long to spread to the four corners of the globe. It's a world where the intellectual elite oppress and exploit the poor.

His Mac has a wood-grain finish. He doesn't know what wood grain is.

So after about 1500 years, the West has come full circle. We've gone from the Theocon paradise where the underclass is trampled by the nobility to a progressive paradise where the underclass is trampled by government social programs.

Doesn't that make you think this is the way things were meant to be?

* - Well, that's what they teach in my daughter's public high school history classes. To be honest, there's not much time to get into it as they have 3 months of diversity studies to get through.

A Written History Would Probably Make A Difference

Clicking around the Wampanoag site yesterday, I came across the history of their tribe, which starts with the standard Indian self-pity party.

1616 Traders from Europe bring yellow fever to Wampanoag territory. The geographical area affected was all of the 69 tribes of the Wampanoag Nation from present day Provincetown, MA to Narragansett Bay; the boundary of the Wampanoag and Narragansett Nations. Fully two thirds of the entire Wampanoag Nation (estimated at 45,000) die.

The truth of the matter is that their history didn't start in 1616, it's just that they have no idea what happened before then because they couldn't write. As I pondered that, I wondered how big of a difference that made in their perception of their interactions with the Europeans. For all they knew, they'd spent the last several hundred years engaged in sporadic, vicious, genocidal warfare with neighboring tribes. Given the inter-tribal conflicts the settlers found all across the land, that's a really good bet. Maybe not the genocidal part, but who knows? They may have survived a plague like the Black Death that swept Europe, but you don't know that, either.

In Europe, written history goes back 2000 years or more. Because of that, it's pretty hard to get worked up about the Siege of Constantinople when you consider what happened to Carthage and the Sack of Rome, just to pick three brutal events off the top of my head. Because the written history shows how each group was a pack of scurvy knaves in turn, there's no mantle of innocence to drape about anyone's shoulders as they whine about this event or that.

For all anyone knows, this was the fifth such forced migration in 2000 years, the first four happening long before the Europeans arrived.

Getting In Touch With My Inner Wampanoag For Thanksgiving

The Wampanpoags were the Indians that shared noms with the Pilgrims on that very first Thanksgiving. You can find their website here and a screen cap below.

They've melded the Old Ways with the New Ways pretty nicely.

On the occasion of Thanksgiving, and in concert with the Wampanoags on that website, here are some of the things I'm thankful for:

• Web servers
• HTML
• Digital cameras
• Photoshop
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Siding for houses
• Asphalt shingles
• Cars
• Machine-woven cloth
• Machine-washable garments
• Smartly-tailored suits
• Casinos
• Baseball caps
• Hoodies
• Foldable nylon / aluminum chairs with coverings
• Chain link fences
• Home Depot / Lowe's garden department where they sell flowering shrubs

On this day, I thank God for old traditions and new technologies, whether they came from "my people" or yours.

How Very French

A friend turned me on to a different video in this series, but as it was tied to Halloween, this seemed more appropriate to post now.

It's worth noting that, in contrast to Henri in the video, here in the Catican Compound, relations between all parties have never been more cordial. Our Maximum Leader can be grumpy sometimes because of her arthritic knee, but she has grown affectionate* with everyone, even attempting to touch noses with the smaller of the two Catican Guards. Being a wiggly nincompoop, our little dog didn't understand the gesture and ran off, afraid of receiving another full-claw swatting.

* - Well, affectionate in her own way. She's never been a lap cat and takes petting only when the time is right. Her way of showing affection is to simply be with you. She likes to be in the same room as the rest of us, with everyone relaxed and laying around quietly. Movement is an anathema to her and our family times work best while watching TV.

Slouching Towards Single Payer

Over at Ricochet, Pejman Yousefzadeh notes how a New York community college is cutting hours for teachers to get them under the 30 hour limit wherein the college would have to meet Obamacare health insurance requirements.

Community College Of Allegheny County will cut the hours some instructors to avoid paying for their health insurance coverage under new Affordable Care Act rules.

CCAC President Alex Johnson announced in an email to employees last week that the school would cut course loads and hours for some 200 adjunct faculty members and 200 additional employees.

The Affordable Care Act — nicknamed Obamacare — classifies employees who work 30 hours or more per week as full-time, and CCAC would be required under the new law to provide employer-assisted health insurance to those employees.

This isn't a bug, but a feature. As more people get cut below 30 hours, more will find themselves on a government health care plan. That plan, subsidized by the taxpayers, will grow and displace commercial insurers. Good luck competing with that.

Patria Socialista!

Cheezburger of the Day

Benito Mussolini, Tim Geithner And Robert Reich

Il Duce was the father of fascism. He defined it in his lovely little book, Fascism. You can find it at that link. Benito's intellectual heirs, the Democrats, are bringing Mussolini-style fascism to fruition here in the US. Don't believe me? Well, here's Benny on fascism.

The keystone of the Fascist doctrine is its conception of the State, of its essence, its functions, and its aims. For Fascism the State is absolute, individuals and groups relative. Individuals and groups are admissible in so far as they come within the State. Instead of directing the game and guiding the material and moral progress of the community, the liberal State restricts its activities to recording results. The Fascist State is wide awake and has a will of its own. For this reason it can be described as " ethical ".

At the first quinquennial assembly of the regime, in 1929, I said “The Fascist State is not a night watchman, solicitous only of the personal safety of the citizens; not is it organized exclusively for the purpose of guarantying a certain degree of material prosperity and relatively peaceful conditions of life, a board of directors would do as much. Neither is it exclusively political, divorced from practical realities and holding itself aloof from the multifarious activities of the citizens and the nation. The State, as conceived and realized by Fascism, is a spiritual and ethical entity for securing the political, juridical, and economic organization of the nation, an organization which in its origin and growth is a manifestation of the spirit. The State guarantees the internal and external safety of the country, but it also safeguards and transmits the spirit of the people, elaborated down the ages in its language, its customs, its faith.

Here's Tim Geithner telling us we shouldn't have any restrictions at all on how much the government can borrow. Here's Robert Reich letting us know that government spending needs to grow, grow, grow!

Remove the militarism from Mussolini and replace it with "social justice" as Juan Peron did in Argentina and you end up with the State defined through economic activity. Instead of impressing young men into an army and invading other nations, you spend, tax and regulate without limit. Both Geithner and Reich advocate just that. Endless expansion of government powers with everything else secondary to the growth of the State. In fact, in Reich's essay, I'm not sure anything other than the State is even mentioned.

And the spiritual part? That one is easy.

I am the State thy god and thou shalt have no other gods before me.

To Infinity And Even Farther Beyond!

Our favorite little fascist intellectual, Robert Reich has penned lovely piece on why we should stop worrying about the deficit and simply spend our way to propserity. Here's a few tidbits.

Europe offers the same lesson in reverse: Their deficits are ballooning because their austerity policies have caused their economies to sink.

The best way to generate jobs and growth is for the government to spend more, not less. And for taxes to stay low -- or become even lower -- on the middle class.

And where should we spend it? I don't want to keep seeing the same hands, class!

In fact, if there was ever a time for America to borrow more in order to put our people back to work repairing our crumbling infrastructure and rebuilding our schools, it's now.

Here's the best part of all.

Public investments that spur future job-growth and productivity shouldn't even be included in measures of government spending to begin with. They're justifiable as long as the return on those investments -- a more educated and productive workforce, and a more efficient infrastructure, both generating more and better goods and services with fewer scarce resources -- is higher than the cost of those investments.

Fantastic! We should spend whatever we want with no concern about where the money comes from and for Holy Infrastructure, we shouldn't even count it among the money spent!

Patria Socialista!

Meanwhile, in totally and I mean TOTALLY unrelated news, France's credit rating has been cut.

Skyfall

... otherwise known as War of the Robots.

Yesterday afternoon, we went out to our local multiplex and took in the new Bond move, Skyfall. It's received great reviews and has been hailed as the best Bond movie ever.

I was willing to walk out before the end.

No one enjoys themselves in this movie except the villain. Everyone else is grim and emotionless. The movie starts with Judi Dench's* M character backseat driving Bond and a fellow agent during a dramatic chase and fight sequence. Bond is little more than an appendage, and a pretty small one at that as we learn throughout the movie how M has watched this or that agent die or rot in prison.

There are plenty of opportunities for the characters to let their guards down and let us get to know them, but they never do. Instead of being human, they are simply more efficient models of ourselves, running, fighting and mating with greater speed and determination than we normal humans. At no time do they display any passion.

The lack of passion made me think of Huxley's Brave New World where the rebellious characters long for a time when their bodily hungers weren't sated immediately and they felt some longing for something, anything to make them feel more alive**. As I watched Skyfall, I couldn't help thinking that was the problem with not just the movie, but the whole production crew.

Like the normal people in Brave New World, they can't comprehend anything other than sating bodily pleasures. Real passion, real longing for something or someone is alien to them because it comes from self-denial. Hollywood is the land of do-what-feels-good and the result is emotionally barren rubbish like Skyfall.

At 0:11, you can see Judi Dench, thousands of miles away, directing things by phone, telling agents when to shoot. The result is disastrous. Symbolic of our modern political system, perhaps?

There's a secondary recurring theme throughout the movie of older people who still have what it takes being shoved off the scene by young whippersnappers. It's supposed to make you sympathize with Dench and Daniel Craig, but as they are both nothing more than robotic killing, calculating and mating machines, you don't. Instead, I found myself thinking back to Sean Connery and Roger Moore who looked like they were having fun throughout their movies. In Skyfall, no one has any fun at all.

* - Love Judi Dench. Hate her as M. I know it was done for shock value - a woman controlling Bond! - but the shock has more than worn off as women are taking traditionally male roles throughout society while men take seats on couches in front of porn and video games.

** - Here's the chapter. Search on passion to find the dialog. Context: Bernard is a rebel who wants to experience life, not live it through endless sated desires. He wants to love Lenina, not simply mate with her. She's no rebel and can't see what he's on about.

Update: One of my favorite YouTube creators, Father Robert Barron, liked the movie.

AMERICAblog

So one of my relentlessly political lefty friends on Facebook posted something about the demise of Hostess. Apparently, the CEO (or was it the departing CEO?) took a pay raise while the company was going through bankruptcy and ended up with $2.5M. That's chicken scratch compared to the company's real problems.

Hostess, IBCIQ on the market, was delisted a while back so the financials are a bit old, but here they are going up to 2008. The place was grossing $2.5B a year, so the CEO was bringing in 0.1% of gross. I dunno, that doesn't seem like a death blow to me and I'm sure the guy had other opportunities. It seems stupid to expect someone to go through the trauma of trying to work a turnaround for free.

That's not quite the point of this post, but it's illustrative. My friend and his lefty buddies couldn't read a financial statement if you held guns to their heads, but they all think they should be able to get the government to force corporations to do what they want. There's lots more of that kind of thug thinking at AMERICAblog, the source of the guy's rage.

Screencap from AMERICAblog. Race and envy, 24/7.

It's all pretty much the same kind of thing and a good read if you want to get a line on the intellectual foundations of such thought. As Jeff Burton said in a comment on this blog, "This is not an exercise in math or accounting. It's the satisfaction of envy." They're not even trying to understand things, they're just drunk on power - the power to elect goon squads of politicians who will go out and punish the people they hate.

Something for a future blog post: There's a serious risk deliberately cultivating racial tribalism in a time of an impending, massive fiscal crisis. When the checks start to bounce or the prices are being raised on a weekly / daily basis, people will fall back to the way they've been taught to think. If you've culturally carved up the country on the basis of skin color, don't expect a financial collapse to bring people together in racial harmony. See also: Yugoslavia, breakup of.

To Infinity! And Beyond!

Oh yeah, baby. Now we're really talking.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner says he believes the U.S. debt ceiling should be eliminated in a new interview with Bloomberg’s Al Hunt.

“Do you agree with Alan Greenspan that we ought to just eliminate the debt ceiling?” Hunt asks Geitner.

“Oh, absolutely,” he replies.

Print money endlessly. There's no reason not to! Just hand out money to the poor morning, noon and night! That's what real compassion is.

Restraints are only OK if you're talking about sadomasochism. And in that case, they should be Federally funded!

A Statistic

While noodling a post looking back on 2012 as a year of ignorance and denial, I Googled "single mother poverty" and found this site wherein was this statistic.

Income: Half of single mother families have an annual income less than $25,000. Median income for single mother families ($24,487) is only one third the median for married couple families ($77,749).

Under the hypothesis that we theocratic prudes don't have enemies, just future converts who need to be educated, that might be a decent stat to throw around the next time someone brings up the issue of income inequality. It's simple and to the point.