4.15.2013

Happy Tax Day, folks.  Enjoy some awesome stuff thanks to our tax dollars.

This is going to be a wind-y path, so try hard to buckle up and stay with me.

So, let’s play a game.  The setting is that it’s nearly election time, and the political rhetoric, grandstanding, and mud-slinging is in full swing.  One of the candidates calls the other a socialist.  There’s an audible gasp in the crowd.  Oh, the horror; the humanity.  Why won’t someone think of the children?

What people don’t often realize is that the America that they love, the America that they dream about, the America that we sing about, is primarily Socialist.  The American dream wouldn’t be possible without Socialism.  There are no “White Picket Fence”, “a car in every garage, a fridge in every kitchen”, “2.75 children” fantasies without Socialism.  So I for one am happy that we have it.

Let’s look really quickly at some infrastructure stuff.  We have interstate highways.  Those are federally funded, but they are used privately.  The purpose of them was for convenience during the Eisenhower era, and the ability to move military supplies and equipment across the country as quickly as possible in the event of an enemy attack on American soil.  Eisenhower signed this into effect.  This was his plan.  In fact, the official name for the Interstate Highway System is the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways.  Just sayin’.  A quick Wikipaedia search states that the construction system is estimated at about $425 BILLION (in 2006 dollars), the most expensive public works system since the Pyramids.  The system is also credited with shaping America into a world economic superpower.  (Note, if you’re thinking about commenting on the veracity of Wikipaedia, then kindly go fuck yourself.  It’s a perfectly good place to find some information on something, look up the sourcing, determine its truthful nature, and comment about it.  That’s all.)  So, now we’ve all agreed that the financially second largest socialist system in the history of the world is a good thing.  Pretty good place to start.

Staying in infrastructure, we have phones, power, water, internet, cable, etc.  All are controlled and legislated by the government.  However, it goes even further.  Police, firemen, hospitals, ambulances, all socialist.  The military is a socialist concept, and THEN, inside of the military, is a separate socialist system.  The FDA, USDA, AFT, and FCC are a few.  Do you like eating food you know is not poison?  Do you like knowing that the gun you just bought has to adhere to a standard, and is therefore considered safe?  Do you like knowing that although you just bought a cell phone, some other carrier can’t just override your frequency, making your phone worthless?  I certainly do.  But if you answered yes, that makes you a Socialist. 

If you’ve ever used food assistance, medical assistance, or money assistance, you’re a Socialist.  OSHA, minimum wages, work conditions, all fixed thanks to Socialism.  If you’ve ever gotten a government backed mortgage, that’s Socialist.  If you file taxes as a married couple, that’s Socialist.  In fact, filing taxes is Socialist.

Here’s the short point I’m trying to make:  We’re all Socialist.  We believe in social spending and social programs.  Now, here’s where things get a little tough.  Here’s where I’m going to start saying things that aren’t as nice.

People don’t dislike Socialism.  They dislike people that they consider beneath them.  See, people LOVE benefiting from Socialist programs.  Every day, I get to work on I255/270 to I55, and then home again on those roads.  I see tons of people using those roads.  Some of those people even have bumper stickers that would cause me to believe that they frequently use the rally cries of the ignorant, Stop Welfare payments!  Stop Entitlements!  The Best Social Program is a JOB (unless there aren’t any, in which case that’s a really shitty social program)!   And so on.  They’re stupid.  Using that system of highways is using a Socialist handout. 

But back on topic, people don’t dislike using welfare programs.  People don’t dislike using Socialist programs.  People dislike other people, people that they find disgusting, be they poor, a different gender, a difference race, a different ethnicity, a different religion, etc. getting the same chances that they get.  It’s like that in all walks of life.  All people like to imagine themselves exempt from the same strict rules that they place on everyone else.  I even do it at work.  But, no matter what, withholding pennies from a family that is starving is a pretty horrible thing to do as you talk on your FCC regulated cell phone, driving down the Socialist interstate in your government standard regulated automobile, while knowing everyone else is insured because of federal laws, with your windows down, enjoying moderately clean air, drinking a water from the bottle, knowing that the government regulates water quality.  Sorry, but your anarchist nonsense isn’t going to work here.  But that’s just my opinion.

4.7.2013

Below, I’m going to list and discuss some quotes by Antonin Scalia, Supreme Court Justice, regarding sexual orientation equality.  Now, this topic is going to get heated.  I couldn’t care less in this blog about states right vs. federal rights, federalism, the Madison v. Marbury case, the 14^th Amendment, or any of the other reasons that it is legally wrong for DOMA to exist or for California’s Prop 8 to exist.  What I’m concerned about here is a Supreme Justice of the Law in America expressing these bigoted opinions in his dissents and statements.  I’m not certain how this is legally or ethically acceptable in America.

Following a SCOTUS decision illegalizing sodomy laws (making sodomy laws illegal) in 2003, the State Supreme Judicial Court gave the Massachusetts legislature 6 months to enact a law granting homosexuals the right to marry.  Justice Scalia had this to say: "State laws against bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality, and obscenity [are now] called into question. The court has largely signed on to the homosexual agenda. The court has taken sides in the culture war."

So his opinion is that homosexuality is on the same level as incest, prostitution, or bestiality?  Also, in what way does a government have the right to legislate masturbation or fornication?  Or OBSCENITY?  Does this asshole live in the 1950s Midwest America?

People like him have been phased out.  They are no longer relevant.  They do not provide any substance to America except for hate and ignorance.

The problem that I have with a hate-filled statement like this is that as a SCOTUS Justice, all laws should always be in question.  If the Marbury case is the law of the land, and judicial review is the way that we operate, then it is his obligation to the USA to question all laws at all times.  But that isn’t convenient for his pseudo-Abrahamic outdated hate. 

"Of course it is our moral heritage that one should not hate any human being or class of human beings.  But I had thought that one could consider certain conduct reprehensible—murder, for example, or polygamy, or cruelty to animals—and could exhibit even 'animus' toward such conduct. Surely that is the only sort of 'animus' at issue here: moral disapproval of homosexual conduct [.]" It's true that people generally disapprove of murder, but there's more going on in laws banning murder than mere disfavor—the rights of the person being murdered, for example.”

This gets interesting now.  So, homosexual acts are like murder.  Also, and I could be wrong here, but he is comparing society at large being “exposed” to homosexual activity to a victim of murder.  I have several issues with this.

Firstly, I absolutely hate when people try to trump up their emotional call-out of one situation by comparing it to a much more extreme situation.  What ends up happening is that the injustice that really exists, i.e. the victims of murders, are then marginalized and trivialized.  It’s the standard move of the bigot, to try and compare apples to oranges.  They move the goal so that at no time can anyone predict which hateful angle they are going to try next.

The second issue that I take with this statement is that someone’s shitty, misplaced, hateful, mean-spirited, selfish, and ignorant morals do not get to drive lawmaking in America.  It is one of the things in the Constitution that still holds up in the modern era.  Just because some mythology book written starting about 3000 years ago, by thousands of different people, translated into dozens of different languages before English, scribed by hundreds or thousands of scribes, with books voted on by counsels of leaders over time, with several books removed and destroyed makes a vague reference or two to gay sex does not mean that in 2013 you get to create legislation based on that.  Freedom does feel good sometimes.

A third issue that I have is the link to polygamy here.  Now, I might be the minority, but I believe that polygamy should be legal, as long as all members in the relationship are consenting adults, there is a means to provide for a family that large, and there is no indication of abuse.  Maybe that’s a pipe dream; maybe it’s a silly concept.  But I do believe in the right to choose your own path in life, I believe that it is not my place in the world to decide what is right for people to do that I do not know.

And of course, there’s another statement regarding animal-fucking.  It’s like the Christian extremist Neo-cons just cannot get away from talking about fucking animals.  I mean, that’s about as wrong as it gets, and people do it.  But here’s the really messed up part: as long as you identify as a heterosexual, you can fuck all of the animals that you’d like for your entire life, and when you or your spouse dies, if you were married, you get 1138 more federal benefits than someone who was a monogamous, loving, intelligent, homosexual partner.  Sick, huh?

"[Colorado's ban] prohibits special treatment of homosexuals, and nothing more. [I]t would prevent the State or any municipality from making death benefit payments to the 'life partner' of a homosexual when it does not make such payments to the long time roommate of a non[-]homosexual employee."

This one is hard to even comprehend.  I’m guessing that what he is saying here is that he doesn’t even believe that what two homosexuals experience could be anything more than just a friendship and maybe some late night accidental sex following a bad breakup and some cheap Merlot.  Really.  Antonin Scalia is such a bigot that he doesn’t believe that homosexuals can experience love in the way that straight couples can.  And he says it casually, as though that’s the generally accepted scientific fact.

I know that anecdotal evidence isn’t worth a pot to piss in, so I’ll try and stay away from it…but suffice to say…anyone that’s met some of the amazing people that I know know the complete falsehood that this statement is.

"[A job] interviewer may refuse to offer a job because the applicant is a Republican; because he is an adulterer; because he went to the wrong prep school or belongs to the wrong country club; because he eats snails; because he is a womanizer; because she wears real animal fur; or even because he hates the Chicago Cubs." 

Here we are with the classic “it’s a choice” argument that bigots love so much.  If it was a choice, would so many people choose to have their lives in shambles?  To have their loved ones ridiculed.  To be bullied and beaten?  I doubt it.  But to someone that’s always had a pretty easy go at life, if you continue to keep your head in the sand, you wouldn’t know that.

"It doesn't say you can't have—you can't have any sexual intimacy. It says you cannot have sexual intimacy with a person of the same sex."

"Men and women, heterosexuals and homosexuals, are all subject to [Texas'] prohibition of deviate sexual intercourse with someone of the same sex."

These two statements are doozeys.  It takes a brave man to bring up literal arguments used in the civil rights movements AGAINST racial equality in 2013 and use them against another minority.  This is the same argument used to DEFEND interracial marriage bans, by claiming that they affected whites and blacks equally. 

But, everyone that watches Scalia knows that he’s a racist and a bigot.  He recently called the Voting Rights Act a racial entitlement.  He truly believes that bringing anyone up to the level of the straight Christian white wealthy male is granting entitlements.

Now, this is the one that makes me the most angry because he SAID IT FROM THE BENCH just last week.

“If you redefine marriage to include same-sex couples, you must — you must permit adoption by same-sex couples, and there's —­ there's considerable disagreement among — among sociologists as to what the consequences of raising a child in a — in a single-sex family, whether that is harmful to the child or not. Some States do not — do not permit adoption by same-sex couples for that reason.”

Now, just to clear something up:  there is NO considerable disagreement among scientific evidence except for fringe crackpots that do not use actual scientifically approved processes. The AMA and the APA both endorse and support it.  These groups call homosexual parents qualified: American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the American Psychiatric Association, the National Association of Social Workers, the Child Welfare League of America, and the North American Council on Adoptable Children.  Here's a great article to read.  Links and references to the information really help understand how wrong this standpoint is.

I didn’t really get into it, because I didn’t have time.  But here in America, our generation, Generation X or whatever, is maturing.  We are getting into office.  We are making policy.  We are undoing the mistakes of our forbearers.  We can’t make it all right over night.  And we can probably never truly make it up to the groups that we insist on persecuting and walking all over.  But hopefully, in my lifetime, everyone will walk around as equals, and we can begin to eliminate hate from our society.  But, then again, this is just my opinion.

4.5.2013

I'm going to talk about some things that bother me about modern conservatism, and namely the idea that conservatism and Christianity somehow go together.  My position is that that idea is without a doubt false, and here's why.

In modern political discourse, Jesus would be called a socialist, a towel head, a hadji, a terrorist, a RINO, a communist, a Marxist, a libtard, anti-freedom, a taker, or worse.  The Messiah of the belief system claimed to be central to the extreme right wing radical political party would be the most reviled and hated person they could imagine, to even ascend in the hate model above President Obama himself.  Jesus of Nazareth was a Humanist, if he was a completely real person.  He was a progressive the likes of whom had never been seen before. 

I say these things because the hateful rhetoric has to stop from the right.  Some of the issues that the Tea Party has in direct conflict with the teachings of Jesus are their stance on immigration, their stance on poor people, their stance on taxes, their stance on healthcare, their stance on welfare, their stance on war, their stance on charity, their stance on foreign aid, their stance on marriage equality, and even more.

For example:

Mark 12:29-31,

29. And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord:

30. And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.

31. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.

So, love your neighbor as you love thyself.  Not love thy neighbor as you love thyself as long as thy neighbor is like thyself or is in agreement with thyself's belief system.  Man that sounds libtarded to me.  Like marriage equality.  Welfare reform to not perpetuate generational poverty.  The elimination of hunger.  Immigration reform.  Less war.  All of these ideas are those of loving thy neighbor, or as I like to call them, Humanist. Jesus of Nazareth and by proxy based on the tenets of Christianity, God, is a Humanist.

What he does not say is to threaten violence if someone disagrees with you.  He does not advocate name calling and belittling.  There is no intent of violent overthrow of the government if the government doesn't protect your wealth from the needy or if the government doesn't give you the right to violently attack the needy. Read this pathetic story  Jesus advocated the payment of taxes.  He advocated giving away your money and worldly goods.  He advocated against building wealth.  He advocated for treating everyone equally.

Focusing more on the helping the poor aspect of his teachings, he said things like this:

1 John 3:17 “If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?”

This is a fun one as well:

Luke 6:33-34 "And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' lend to 'sinners,' expecting to be repaid in full.”

These do not sound like the ravings of a lunatic Tea Party member raging on and on about taxes, how bad humanism is, how we need to revolt against the government for offering government assistance. 

I also read this little piece right here:

“Another thing to note about these verses is the lack of caveats-- the lack of excuses. None of them add ‘...once a year’ or ‘...when you feel you can’ or ‘...if they're moral’ or ‘...unless they're black’ or ‘...if they speak English’.  We have plenty of reasons (I'm sure you can think of a dozen) why we can't go out and feed the hungry, why we have to turn away the needy borrower-- and God help us, how many of us have sold so much as a lawnmower in order to have money to give away?” (Here) Check out this website if you’re a Christian, it will definitely put some things into perspective.

The scriptures also do not claim that there should be no government help in these issues.  The scriptures say nothing about a minimalist government.  Jesus never said "Do not allow thy government to give to the needy.  Attempt to pass legislation to lower your taxes so that less of your money goes to the needy.  Also, make sure that the taxes of the needy remain high in relativity."  If I take a poll of who helps the needy and the poor more, who feeds them, clothes them, takes care of their health, houses them, and more, individuals or government, guess who wins that poll?  That’s right.  Government does, and that's by a massive landslide.

Jesus wasn't a conservative; he's a revolutionary.  None of his teachings coincide with modern conservatism.  He would despise and condemn modern conservatives.  Not that he would like modern liberals much more.  But the idea that conservatism carries on the traditions of Jesus is just untrue.  Jesus could have been a tremendously wealthy man.  He became impoverished on purpose.  He wanted to place himself into the situation of the poor.  To share in their plight.  Some of his followers today act as, presumably, they feel Jesus should have acted, building multi-million-dollar cathedrals, earning millions on television, or even on a smaller scale, by making a good living and not contributing to helping the poor. But Jesus came as a poor man.  He wanted his poverty to be the cornerstone of his teachings.  There was only one commandment above helping the needy in importance to Jesus, as were his own words.

Now, I’m not preaching, I’m only clarifying, because I see a very scary amount of people joining forces with the Tea Party.  That party is the party of the Sadducees.  It is the party of the wealthy, those that leach from the poor, instead of helping them.  This is just something that’s been bothering me with the recent shift from moderate politics in America to this extremist fanatical Tea Party conservatism that violates every single principle that it claims to adhere to.  Of course, this is only my opinion.

4.2.2013

So, I've finally decided to try out a blog. I sincerely doubt that very many people are terribly concerned with my opinions and thoughts, but I think that it might be therapeutic for me to put everything down, get some things off of my chest, and maybe help someone along the way. So, without further ado, I give you my blog...just my opinion.

Today is April 2nd - World Autism Awareness Day. With this day, as pretty much everything else in the world in modern times, comes a certain amount of polarizing charge. By that, I mean that this issue of childhood Autism, much like almost every other topic in today's discourse, is full of people on two opposite sides. On one side, we have the Anti-Immunizers. This group of people believe a study from 1998 in the UK's former science journal, The Lancet, that has been thoroughly debunked and discredited. This study claimed a link between the Measles, Mumps, Rubella (MMR) vaccination and the rising rate of Autism among children. Read the CNN story here. On the other side, we have the people that realize that this published paper was scientific malpractice, and is nothing more than conjecture at best, but more or less, it is an issue of correlation not being causation.

However, this is not what my blog is going to be about. There are plenty of places online to find good scientific discourse on this subject, and I am neither a scientist, a doctor, nor a journalist. Therefore, I urge you as the reader to become current with the merits of the discussion. No, the issue I want to talk about is how does a person that has intelligence, that has information, that has knowledge inform someone who does not currently possess those things without sounding like a pompous asshole?

The issue in my mind arose as I was explaining to someone that I think highly of that the myth of the vaccination-Autism link had been thoroughly debunked, that there was absolutely no link whatsoever that would indicate causation, and that we need to start trying to discover the real issue instead of spending our time and money chasing around false stories. I made a few analogies that sounded good in my mind, such as my standard religion debate weapon of choice. That weapon is as follows: If I told you that I had a magic pendant that will prevent tiger attacks, and you buy it, and never get attacked by a tiger, it isn't the fact that you bought the tiger pendant that saved you from tiger attacks. Correlation is not causation. I also compared the myth spreaders to 9/11 "Truthers", or the group of people that claim that our American government was behind the 9/11 attacks in order to justify getting America into war...all while continuing to live in the nation ran by the government that they believe murdered 3000 people in one day to justify getting another 6600 American deaths overseas. Yet, after I read the entire passage that I wrote, I couldn't help but feel like an asshole, as though I'd been talking down to her the entire time. But that wasn't my purpose; that wasn't my intent. 

This is what I wrote:

That's actually a myth. One that was debunked, the journal that published it has been discredited, the scientist that wrote it has been shunned by all of the rest of the scientific community. Now, that myth is continued by 9/11 truthers, other whackjobs, alternative medicine-ists and Jenny McCarthy.

The evidence is correlation, not causation. If I told you that I had a magic pendant that will prevent tiger attacks, and you buy it, and never get attacked by a tiger, it isn't the fact that you bought the tiger pendant that saved you from tiger attacks. The same goes with the autism-vaccination myth. Just because a kid got his MMR shot and has Autism doesn't mean that one led to the other. There's only been one actually published journal entry on it, and that was completely debunked. All other scientific literature points to vaccines being generally safe.

In fact, the rate of autism, while startlingly high, is not even in real correlation with the rate of the MMR vaccination (which is the only immunization that is actually discussed as being dangerous). While we are almost fully vaccinated in America except for some loonys, the rate of Autism just doesn't fit in with the rate of vaccinations.

However, there is something. And scientists and researchers and educators, and tons of people are looking into it. I hope that they find it, because this is a growing epidemic among children.

I guess that I just do not know how to speak to people.  It's not like I want to be a pompous jerk.  It's not like I want to act like have more knowledge than other people.  It's just that I just cannot physically stop myself when I believe that someone has something wrong.  I try.  Oh man, do I try.  But I've come to realize that the only way that I won't use the internet to continue to correct people is if I don't use the internet at all.  And let's face it, as a child born in the early 80s, after growing up watching video games and PCs become a real thing right in front of my eyes, the internet and I are not parting ways any time soon.

Like I said, I never mean to come across as rude.  I never mean to come across as crass.  But I just can't stop myself from debating, arguing, correcting, and generally being an asshole on the internet.  Maybe things will get better, but as I get older, I tend to believe that I'm only getting more "get-off-my-lawn"ish. Who knows, it's just my opinion.