jollyreaper2112
jollyreaper2112's JournalHere's how we get jail time for torture
We need to get Hannibal Burress to mention the Bush administration and Darth Cheney are guilty of unprosecuted war crimes. Bring it up in his next show.
Proposition: the leadership of the Democratic Party is happy the way things are
Writer Charlie Stross is commenting on the British system but it seems to be relevant for what we are experiencing here as well: The Beige Dictatorship talks about how political parties come to resemble each other and how their positions hover around the status quo.
As far as America goes, here's my take on why we are where we are at.
1. This is a one-party country, the Corporate Party. There are two branches, Republican and Democrat, but they basically offer the same thing.
2. Republicans offer corporatism that's conservative on social issues. Down with gays, minorities, etc. Democrats offer corporatism that's a bit more liberal, but not too liberal. Hooray for gays and minorities. Either way, you're getting corporatist policies.
3. The Democratic Party today exists to occupy the place that would otherwise be taken by a real opposition party. If you love corporatism, vote Republican. If you are against it and want change, vote Democrat, only nothing's going to happen. The Democratic Party is a blast deflector, something meant to take the white-hot desire for change and reform and channel and cool the incandescent plume until it's spent and harmless.
4. The Democrats continually sabotage their means of getting any real reform done because real reform is NOT their agenda. This is a policy set at the top of the organization and not ever talked about so it leaves all the democrats outside of the DC Bubble confused and angry about how the team never seems to get their set together, the Miami Dolphins of politics.
There is little incentive to change the system because the people who are in charge of it are well-taken care of by the monied interests. Anyone who turns against the system will be crushed and discarded. Anyone trying to change the system from within will become so compromised and tarnished by the process of gaining power that they will be left incapable of accomplishing anything if they ever get it.
At this point we are looking at something less like a government and more like a corruption engine. Public resources and money are transferred to private interests, favorable access to markets and laws are granted. The corporations and the oligarchs are getting what they paid for. In turn, the politicians are well-compensated with campaign contributions, seats on the board, and so forth. It is a spectacularly successful and lucrative system for them and there's seemingly no need to ruin a good thing.
All of the cable news bullshit we see with pundits doing battle is nothing more than kayfabe, professional wrestling shtick. It's like Sam and Ralph from the old cartoons.
Talk of what the Dems should do is wasted effort. The leadership is happy with the way things are. The better question is whether or not control can be regained over the party. If not, what needs done to create a real opposition party?
yeah
I know about Poe's Law but this is clearly satire. If not, I would eat a shoe.
On dissipating the future impact of malicious psychopaths, a story premise
Imagine we have invented a chronoscope that allows us to see the future. Imagine that we are able to learn who will be the next Adolph Hitler, the next Ted Bundy, the next Dubya Bush.
Would it have been ethical to shoot Hitler in the head at age 16 for pre-crimes against humanity? What if consensus says no? What, then, to do with him? The best path would have been to call up the dean of the art school that wouldn't let him in and convince them to reconsider. Just imagine how beautiful those paintings would be, each one representing tens of thousands who who would no longer have to die. Of course, removing Hitler just clears the way for some other charismatic type to take the opportunity. Perhaps his outlet would be music school or perhaps a comfy and lucrative VP slot in a bank that carries no real responsibilities. There's talk of the banality of evil. It's not just that but the context of power. My girlfriend has relatives who are minor nobles back in Africa. They live here in the States in a modest house but they have thrones in the living room and want to be seated at the high table at any event they go to, be addressed by titles, and treated with a deference and respect they have not earned. It struck me how laughable they are here in the States. They have no power over me. Put them back home and with the power the family had fifty years ago, surrounded by young men with machetes and guns, they would be terrifying. Charlie Manson in jail is just a crazy old man. Charlie Manson on the outside with followers who would do whatever he ordered them to, that's terrifying. And really, what's the difference between your crazy right-wing uncle who says all liberals should be shot and the dictator who actually has the liberals shot? A death squad, that's all. Sure, there's a combination of ruthlessness and opportunity that puts a dictator in the position to have a death squad in the first place but I think that's less of a gap than we might imagine.
I look at today's inexplicably successful, the Justin Biebers, the JJ Abrams, the Lil' Wayneses and imagine that such a device might already exist, that there are teams of dedicated humanitarians seeking to find our most dangerous future psychopaths outlets so that their dark furies might be spent yelling at people in reality shows rather than signing death warrants in future totalitarian states. I think it's a fun guessing game to imagine the monsters we're preventing these people from becoming by remaking them into celebrities. Would Simon Cowell be a murderer, a dictator, a great swindler? What greater evil was Rush Limbaugh steered away from so that being a poisonous radio host is a fair alternative?
Where do your rights end and mine begin?
"The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins."
Zechariah Chafee
I think that's pretty sound in principle. If someone's behavior isn't harming me, it's none of my business. Two homosexuals want to go at it, none of my business unless they're noisy, same applies to heterosexuals. That's reasonable. If they're having sex on the front lawn, that's indecent behavior, same goes for a heterosexual couple or anyone parading around in the buff.
The kicker seems to be imaginary wrongs. I can prove a harm if a neighbor is dumping motor oil in the backyard or burning tires or running a meth lab. There's a code violation if he fills has backyard with livestock or turns his house into a daycare. But imaginary wrongs, that comes down to faith. Blacks in the neighborhood lowering property values, the mere presence of gays threatening to increase incidents of homosexuality among the children, there's no more factual basis to those beliefs than religious dietary laws. Show me the scientific test that indicates this steak came from a kosher-slaughtered cow and that steak came from a halal-slaughtered cow. Ok, with property values there might be a drop due to hysteria, the same as if people stop shopping at a business rumored to be owned by a witch but that's just ignorance.
If your identity, cultural or religious, is predominantly about who you hate, you are fucked. You have nothing to offer the world. The only positive contribution you can make is dying childless and letting your ignorance follow you to the grave.
What I think is being missed here with people in these debates is the question of public and private behavior. Nobody is legislating that you have to like people. If you don't like gay sex, don't fuck someone your same gender you don't believe in divorce, don't have one. If you don't like black people, you don't have to be friends. That's private. But in public you have to suck it up.
The one difference, I think, is between customer and proprietor. You don't have to shop at a given store but if you do, they're obligated to serve.
Chrysler Olympics ad so god damn American stupid
I don't know who the actor was but he's making fun of Europeans taking a month off in August and Americans being so driven and smart. We went to the moon and brought a car and left it with the keys because we're the only ones going back.
This makes me want to punch Lee Iacocca in the soul and he's not even with the company anymore.
Anyone else see this bullshit?
What I learned today about celebrity pedophiles
If you want to get up to anything hinky with kids, you need to be a famous director. Woody and Polanski have made this clear. The Lost Prophet's frontman should have been a director and not a musician. Unless you're as big as the King of Pop and even then he had to go to court. So maybe musicians should live in countries without extradition treaties.
Murder is easier to get away with. Even a B-list actor and sports celebrity can kill two people and get away with it. But I wouldn't advise OJ do anything sexual with kids. He's not famous enough to get away with it.
And near as I can figure, you can abuse all the drugs you want as a celebrity without any legal consequences. But if you OD, that's your own damn fault.
There's a sliding scale for sexism and racism -- you can get away with it if you're charming enough about it -- but antisemitism never goes over well. Tom Cruise is just as crazy as Mel Gibson but not antisemitic. Important lesson to be learned here.
But the other takeaway: you really can't mess with the IRS. See Willie Nelson and Wesley Snipes about that. They didn't know how to cheat on taxes all legal-like. It's called sheltering if you do it proper.
For all other mortals who are neither rich nor famous, you better watch your asses.
Rich people don't create jobs; customers do
http://www.businessinsider.com/rich-people-do-not-create-jobs-2011-12It's a great read. The basic point is the boss always goes on about how he isn't running a charity. That's right! He's not going to employ people when he's not turning a profit. That's charity thinking. So he may start a business but if people aren't buying, he's folding.
The comparison made in the article is a tree. The seed didn't become a tree all by itself. Without the right soil, good air and sunshine, it's going to sprout and put forth its first leaves and die. So yeah, you couldn't have the tree without the seed and the DNA inside but you also can't have the tree without everything else.
One other point about businesses. They aren't in the business of providing jobs unless its for idiot nephews. They are in the business of being as efficient as possible. Anything that sheds jobs and maximizes profits is fine. If they can get rid of every American worker, they'll do it in a heartbeat.
Businesses are about creating jobs every bit as much as they are about paying taxes: they want to do as little of it as possible, use every trick to avoid it and regret every dime spent on it.
The Ukranian protests are known as Euromaidan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EuromaidanThe Euromaidan (Ukrainian: Євромайдан, literally "Eurosquare" is a wave of ongoing demonstrations and civil unrest in Ukraine, which began on the night of 21 November 2013 with very large public protests demanding closer European integration.
Euromaidan?
That it all.
Has PBS really come to this? Deepak Chopra infomercials
I tend not to watch PBS much. Saw them doing a fundraiser the other day, the usual pledge drive stuff. But this time it was different. Usually they're just going on about arts and news and their programming and offering tote bags and DVD's of the shows for pledges. Well, this time they had on Deepak in the studio and were banging on about how wonderful it was to have him involved and would keep cutting to canned infomercials about his line of woo products. $150 value, plus membership on his woo website. They'd cut back to him and blather on a bit more, then cut to the infomercial.
I'm already offended that PBS is airing full-length, standard commercials in their primetime segments but this really takes the cake for me. This is a step far, far beyond where they've been before.
Anyone else miffed or has this become so common it doesn't even register?
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Deepak_Chopra
"As Deepak Chopra taught us, quantum physics means anything can happen at any time for no reason!"
—Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth
Deepak Chopra is the most visible public proponent of "mind-body" woo and alternative medicine. He is also a writer of New Age/self-help spiritual books, that say things like "Look around you at the beauty of the Earth...Wooooo!" and "Look into the beauty of yourself...Wooooo!" Chopra sells something called ayurvedic medicine, which is apparently traditional Indian medicine filtered through the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and mixed with bad "physics" in order to treat the dangerously low levels of money in Chopra's wallet.
Chopra is a favored contributor at the Huffington Post, and was one of Michael Jackson's sketchy friends.[1]
Almost anything can be cured if you rub enough woo on it, especially if you likes you some quantum woo. If woo alone won't do the trick, it means you've forgotten to put on the Yanni CD.
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