Ebon Bear's Cave

The View From Across The Pond

2011-11-13T19:47:00.000-08:00

...or The Rich Versus The Rest.

Politics is, at some level, about tribalism. To what degree varies from one individual to the next but, at some level, party politics is about cheering on our side and condemning theirs. Henri Tajfel proved that the very act of dividing people into groups, or them dividing themselves, creates prejudice against the outgroup and for the ingroup and that happens even when the differences are minimal, trivial or outright random. This is called Social Identity Theory and we can train ourselves to look past it but we cannot prevent it happening in the first place. So, at some level, party politics is about tribalism, us versus them.

Republicans know this. Their entire political machine is set up to exploit it. It's easier to exploit SIT with conservative politics because, while Democratic politics often tries to encourage us to look past that us against them instinct, Republican politics doesn't bother. Republican politics is entirely about "us" (the good, small-town, heartland, conservative America) against "them" (the pointy-headed elites on the coasts who think too much). Divide and conquer. Not the newest tactic but a time-tested and reliable one. What makes them Republican machine different is that they play this game of us against them for the benefit of another them: The "malefactors of great wealth", the monied elite, the Powers that Be by whatever name you choose to call them.

The PtB have a dream, you see. They've had the same dream for a long time, to create a society where the people are so desperate that they'll work for pennies, where workers can be hired and fired at will for any reason they see fit and where their employers owe nothing to the employed. It's not a complicated dream. It's the same "me first, last and only" dream that the PtB have always had. That's why so many of them love the works of Ayn Rand, because she was engaged in mankind's oldest philosophical pursuit, finding a moral cover for naked greed. And that's why the Republicans have spent so long attacking the safeguards society has in place. Because as far as they are concerned, anything that stops you falling into poverty is something that both costs them tax money and prevents you being forced to work yourself to death for them. "I owe my soul to the company store". Since the fall of feudalism, politics can be mostly summed up as the rich versus the rest and, for the least thirty-odd years, the rich have been winning. For that time period, productivity has shot up while wages have stayed flat and the tax burden has been shifted from the rich to, well, you. Yes, I've heard the excuse that "the rich pay most of the taxes" but here's the thing, that would be true even under a flat tax. They have more money coming in so even a flat tax system will take more from the rich than from the rest. I have also heard that excuse that "47% pay no taxes" and I have to laugh at that, purely because the kind of mind that could hear something that absurd and not fact-check it will believe anything. And then I think a little further and realise that what is being promoted there is yet another call to tax the poor and I stop laughing.

America doesn't treat it's poor very well. Nor does my own UK and I could do a whole essay about that but it's besides the point here. America tends to still be stuck on the Victorian notion that the poor are poor not through bad luck or simply because capitalism is designed to have winners and losers but through some moral fault of theirs. You can see this notion underlying all the myths about the poor; that the poor are lazy, fat, drug-addled (all statistically untrue); that they don't deserve medical care. It's the same notion that underlies the arbitrary time limits on welfare too. Again, don't think I'm saying that the UK is immune to this stuff (we're just as bad but it takes a slightly different form here because we have a slightly different culture), I'm just talking about the US on this occasion. The US tends to be rather anti-poor. I suspect that's because, in the fifty-odd years of the Cold War, capitalism became a sort of national religion in the USA. You can see that in the use of "SOCIALISM!" as an otherising epithet. The very idea of anything contrary to capitalism (and specifically, to unrestrained capitalism) is taken as some sort of heresy, the word "SOCIALIST!" proclaimed in much the same way as "WITCH!" was a few centuries ago. And, naturally, the label of socialism has been expanded now to cover all left-wing economic thought. The same people who would whinge like banshees if you labelled them fascist (the furthest right position), think nothing of labelling anyone of the left a socialist. Except they'll now insist that fascism was on the left and much the same as socialism. And if you can't see how that works to the PtB's benefit, you're not paying attention.

Incidently, don't think I'm propounding some grand conspiracy here. I'm not saying that the PtB work in concert. I'm using the term as a kind of shorthand for those who are both rich and politically-active. It's not a conspiracy so much as it's the case that those who are both rich and politically-active tend to see the world in a similar way (although there are exceptions, Warren Buffet being one example) and tend to work toward similar goals. Nor am I a socialist except in the manner mentioned above where everyone on the left is a socialist. Personally, I'm for a system where most things are left to private industry but a few key sectors that society relies upon (utilities, mail, healthcare and maybe telecoms) are either socialised or have a state-run competitor to provide a bottom-floor of service for price. In the US, you might call that Democratic Socialism. In my old PoliSci class, it was called a "mixed" economy. So, that's where I stand.

The last few years haven't been easy on anyone. They've been frustrating for those who think as I do. We've seen banks fall and while the solution was obvious (nationalise the damn things!), it was never mentioned by those in power. We've seen unemployment skyrocket and a too-small stimulus that helped some but not enough. And we've seen the GOP all but abandon any claim to not being the political arm of the PtB. Obama has been something of a disappointment. While always better than the Paleolithic/Pathetic ticket he ran against and always better than whichever maniac will end up representing the GOP this time (which will probably be Romney), he hasn't been the kind of transformative president everyone was hoping for. In fairness, he's also had to contend with unprecedented vitriol and obstructionism from the GOP. Obama is clearly going to be re-elected, barring massive fraud from the GOP and that too was predictable. One thing I never saw coming was the "Occupy" movement. Even now, I'm not sure if it will stick around or, really, what it wants. I understand that they're protesting economic injustice but not what they propose to rectify that, if they propose anything. Maybe, at 35, I'm too old to understand it.

Still, things are always worse on Main Street. Unemployment is high. Shops aren't selling much because no-one has money to buy anything. The GOP's control of the airwaves has turned piddle-down economics and "free markets uber alles" into common wisdom. They've waged all-out war against Keynesianism, re-written history to claim that it doesn't work. And yet, it does work. Not always and not perfectly but it does generally work. Obama's stimulus was only room-temp Keynesianism. Too large a portion of tax cuts for it to really qualify. His Jobs Bill was a good step in the right direction but that should have been proposed back when it was likely to pass but then, Obama wouldn't have been able to campaign for his second term on it (I like Obama but he is still a politician). And the GOP still push their master's agenda: Lower wages, no unions, no benefits, no entitlements. On Main Street, jobs are the most pressing issue. Without jobs, people can't buy and without people buying, businesses can't sell. Jobs are the main issue. But you'd never know it listening to Republicans. According to Republicans, the main issues are abortion, sharia and something called a "war on wealth". That last one is possibly the most disingenuous phrase concocted since "the death tax". Very few people actually resent people being rich. What we resent is them becoming rich at our expense.

In a way, I pity Americans. Not just because you have another year of campigning to sit through (campaigns here last four-to-six weeks) but also because your public debate about economics is so limited. You are not allowed to suggest alternatives to capitalism or even major modifications to it or you're marked down as a "socialist", a kook, a heretic. And it's going to take a very long time to alter that, if you can alter it at all (which will require overturning that bloody Citizens United decision). I wish it was going to be easier but I doubt it will be. But two things Americans have in abundance are energy and ingenuity and really, that's all you need.

The Backstop Theory

2011-08-24T20:31:00.000-07:00

A lot of the time on here, I'm ranting about the excesses of the capitalist system. This may have led some people to believe certain things about my position on economic issues. In the interests of being hated for the right reasons, let me explain where I stand: I am not a Communist (in the Marxist sense). History has proven that full-blown Marxist Communism doesn't work. It looks nice on paper, it sounds very reasonable but, like a lot of reasonable ideas, it falls apart when you try and apply it to actual people. I'm not going to bother defining it further because it's failed and only complete idiots still think there is any great support for Communism. It can work for small groups, where the emotional tie between each individual prevents exploitation of the system but it doesn't work en masse. Nor am I a socialist. Now, before we go any further, we need to define what a socialist is. Contrary to the current view of the American right, socialism doesn't mean "anyone who opposes letting the poor starve in the streets". In the urge to label every single person or idea on the left as "socialist", the word has been broadened beyond use. No, actual socialism is where the people (usually through the mechanism of the state) controls all or most of the means of production and distribution. I'm not a socialist. The full-blown socialist system is both inefficient and creates a labyrinthine beurocracy.

However, I'm also not a great lover of capitalism, especially not in the "free markets uber alles" fashion currently en vogue in the USA. Capitalism is also often inefficient but, more importantly, the capitalist system inherently creates winners and losers. And while the winners are often admired far beyond any actual talents they have, the losers are too frequently despised. We call the losers "unemployed" or, if we're conservative and wish to blame them for their misfortune, "the jobless". Capitalism creates those losers. It has to, it needs the losers because their existance keeps wages down. I don't want to turn this into yet another rant about how our culture treats the unemployed but their existance is both a necessary part of and the inherent result of capitalism.
So, I find myself a nominal supporter of capitalism but only for the same reasons Sir Winston Churchill supported democracy, it's better than the other systems we've come up with.

When it works (and is properly regulated, which people like to forget), the inherent competition of capitalism works to keep prices low and standards high. However, there are a small group of sectors which pure capitalism does not and, indeed, cannot work for. These are the essential services: Water, gas, electricity, telecoms, retail banking, mail and healthcare. I call them "essential services" because living in the modern world requires using, or at least having the option to use, those services at all times. And that's why pure free-market capitalism cannot work for them. Because you cannot remove yourself from that market sector without, at least, massive inconvienience, the companies that supply those services are able to push up prices and slash standards with little to no repercussions. You can move between the various companies but you cannot easily remove yourself, you are a "captive market". These sectors do not work like others. If the price of, say, a Big Mac gets too high, you can go to Burger King (switch supplier) or you can skip lunch (remove yourself from the market altogether) but with the essential services, you do not (realistically) have the second option. Removing yourself from those market sectors is so inconvienient or, in some cases, dangerous, that you are effectively obliged to deal with them.

Since you are effectively obliged to deal with those market sectors, I thought up what I refer to as the "Backstop Theory". The idea is that, in those sectors, the state should set up and operate it's own business. A bare bones supplier from which you can buy your essential services from at the lowest possible cost. That provides a backstop, a bottom level of price for service that private companies must then compete with either by beating the price, providing a better service or both. Maybe I'm being naive but I always thought that was the essence of capitalism. I have heard various objections to this idea but most seem to amount to either ideaological objections such as the insistence that government can't do anything right (in which case, use the private competitors, what's the problem?); deranged conspiracy theories that claim the populace will be forced to use the government service in time (as an article of faith, this is unfalsifiable) and ranting about socialism (it's not socialism because the government-run services would still have private competitors).

In some of these sectors, the US and UK already have a backstop in action. In Britain, the NHS, Royal Mail and the retail banking services offered by the Post Office act as a backstop in their respective sectors. You can still use the private alternatives but, because the public companies provide a minimum of price for service, competitors must be notably better in some way to compete. In the USA, the Post Office provides the backstop mail service but, as far as I'm aware, none of the others. Healthcare would be one of the easiest to create a backstop by simply expanding Medicare to everyone (which would also make it a de facto universal healthcare system).

So that's my idea. It's not perfect and I'll be the first to admit that I have zero training in economics. The idea just comes from a lot of reading and thought on the subject.

Another Study Telling Us What We Already Knew

2011-08-19T06:32:00.001-07:00

A new study featured in the New York Times ( http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/17/opinion/crashing-the-tea-party.html?_r=2 ) tells us exactly what we already knew about the Teabaggers: They are, and always have been, the conservative base. The Teabagger "phonomenon" was only ever a Koch-funded rebranding of the same coalition of groups that make up the GOP's base: Racists, borderline fascists, outright fascists, anti-government kooks, backyard anarchists/Libertarians (I'm aware that the two have differing meanings but the Teabagger's variety of Libertarianism is essentially just anarchism), Randroids, single issue anti-gay and anti-abortionists and theocrats, united by living in a completely manufactured reality supplied by Faux News and the talk radio barkers.

The Teabaggers will take offence at both the study and my description of them. They'll dismiss the study the same way Bill O'Lielly dismisses studies he dislikes: By repeating the main points in a sarcastic tone (which stupid people think is a rebuttal) and describing the conductors as far-left radicals or extremists. It's so predictable as to be laughable, a worldview immune to self-knowledge or self-examination, "pay no attention to the nasty man" for grown-ups.

But this is the reality the Teabaggers live in, one where the way things are morphs into The Way Things Ought To Be and the teachinjgs of Jesus are filtered through Ayn Rand. This is a world where the left were just as bad to Bush as the right are being to Obama; where fascism and socialism are pretty much the same thing and Glenn Beck is a prophet. Where Reagan shrank government and balanced the budget while Clinton did the opposite, where Bush was a liberal (yeah, I only just heard that too), Social Security adds to the debt and Obama is a far-left socialist.

Now, none of the above is actually true. In most cases, they're the exact opposite of truth. The fact, for those of us living in a reality where facts matter, are that the left were nowhere near as bad to Bush, that fascism is corporate control of a nation and directly opposite to socialism; Reagan both grew government, never submitted a balanced budget and exploded the debt while Clinton shrank the debt and submitted several balanced budgets; Bush was ultraright and Obama is a fairly wimpy moderate.

But the Teabaggers, who are now the majority of Republicans, have a seperate world manufactured just for them. It's a world which not only tells them the above non-facts but provides a source they can quote. They have think-tanks like the Heritage Foundation that pushes absurd reality-denials from the right fringe into the mainstream; they can turn on their TV and listen to Fox tell them, they can turn on their radio and hear the barkers repeating their preferred "truths" all day long. Often, they can listen to them from an increasingly conservative mainstream media (in fact, the flat denial of reality that insists the most conservative media in the free world is actually liberally biased was probably the forerunner to all of this). This is a world where facts are not decided by things like verifiability or accuracy but purely by whether they agree with what Republicans are saying. If something agrees with a Republican talking point, it is revealed truth, gospel and unquestionable. If something disagrees with a Republican talking point, it's a scandalous lie and everyone knows it to be a lie. It's a completely self-insulating world where the gate-keeper of truth is purely convienience, whether it accords with the talking points or not.

One cannot reason with these people. It is a mistake to try because you are approaching the discussion from two completely incompatible angles. You, being relatively liberal, are approaching from a position of using verifiable facts. They, being conservative, are approaching from a basis where talking points are automatically gospel truth because they are talking points. Anything which disagrees is, by definition, a lie and can be disregarded. You're not just speaking a different language; by questioning the talking points, you're speaking heresy.

The BDFL Fixes The USA

2011-06-23T10:17:00.000-07:00

For those who haven't read these previously, BDFL stands for Benevolent Dictator For Life, a position where I assume absolute power over the USA to correct the problem. It's an "if I ruled the world" flight of fancy. All dollar figures are in current dollars and shall be inflation-linked.

CONSTITUTION AND GOVERNMENT

- 2nd Amendment reworded to remove the words "and bear"; define "arms" to include only single-shot or semi-automatic firearms; restrict the right to ex-cons from owning firearms; establish national minimum age and mandatory firearms safety testing and ban control of a firearm while intoxicated.

- Create a right to an education through high school.

- Reaffirm right to abortion, subject to lawful restriction in the second and third trimesters.

- Create a Court of Constitutional Review, a three-judge panel nominated by the American Bar Association and confirmed by the Senate, who shall rule on the constitutionality of each law before it goes for the president's signature.

- New Constitutional Amendment clarifying that corporations are NOT Constitutional "persons" and are NOT entitled to Constitutional protections. Corporations are not persons for the purposes of the Constitution. They are fictional constructs used for legal simplicity and convienience, nothing more.

- A complete and blanket ban on any and all businesses spending a single penny on any form of political activism, whether through campaign donations, PACs or political advertising. Any violations of this law may be punished by a fine of up to one full year's profits (worked out as an average of the previous decade's profits) for a first offence. A second offence will see the maximum fine doubled and a third or subsequent offence shall trigger "election tampering" charges against the board members who made the decision.

- Blanket ban on all for-profit lobbying. Lobbyists exist to bugger up the democratic process, that is their whole reason for being. If possible, I would prefer to get rid of for-profit lobbyists and keep the concerned-citizen kind but, if necessary, I am prepared to accept the loss of the concerned-citizen lobbyists as the expense of getting rid of the for-profit ones.

- Automatic voter registration upon reaching the age of majority. This is relatively easy to do due to the Social Security rolls. Convicts do not have the right to vote but the right to vote shall be automatically reinstated upon release.

- Votes for cloture in the Senate set at sixty. It shall be lowered to fifty-five two weeks after the first cloture vote and to fifty-one (not counting the VP) a month after the first cloture vote. This is intended to curtail the rampant abuse of the filibuster.

- Bidding on federal contracts shall be open only to companies paying American taxes and all bids shall be available for public viewing unless judged to be a risk to national or federal security (a decision which WILL have to be justified to a court). No-bid contracts may only be used by the military and then only in circumstances where open bidding would constitute a security risk.

EDUCATION

- No Child Left Behind Act scrapped.

- Remove most formal tests (tests done by teachers for their own assessment still allowed).

- Impose national curriculum, setting general outlines and concepts which children in each age group should be familiar with. Individual schools and teachers can still decide how to teach them but have proven they cannot be trusted to come up with a curriculum.

- Teaching of "intelligent design" banned until it can come up with some peer-reviewed studies to assess.

- Sex education becomes mandatory from age twelve. The sexual health of future generations overrules the squickishness of parents. Such education shall obviously be taught in an age appropriate manner and shall include acknowledgement of homo and bi-sexuality, preferably making clear that both exist, deserve human dignity and will not cease to exist if someone disapproves.

- Teacher's will now be considered civil servants for purposes of working out pay and benefits (including pension options).

- Each school allocated funds for classroom expenses, removing that from the out-of-pocket teacher expenses.

- School libraries now funded through the newly created Department of Humanitarian Services.

HEALTH

- Commission created to study existing methods of providing universal healthcare around the world. 1 year for studying those methods, followed by six to nine months to create a model for universal healthcare in the USA. In theory, coming late to the party should be an advantage since you can study the methods other nations have tried, using the best parts and avoiding the worst until you come up with a special and uniquely American system. The USHS (for lack of a better name) shall focus on preventative health and shall provide healthcare to all citizens, regardless of age, race, class, employment status or anything else, funded through taxation. This includes abortion through the first trimester or when considered medeically necessary to preserve the life or health (including mental health) of the mother.

- Doctor's office and hospitals shall provide condoms free of charge to the public. This is intended to prevent and reduce STI rates.

- As the USHS is rolled out, it shall absorb both Medicare and Medicaid, leading to a cessation of both those programs.

- Having a prescription filled shall attract a small fee, initially set at ten dollars. This is not intended to cover the cost of drugs, it's intended to stop you from bothering your doctor with minor shit that just needs a couple of asprin or a roll of antacids.

- Legislation preventing the US government from negotiating drug prices repealed, legislation obliging the government to negotiate on drug prices substituted.

- As the health care and abortion services of Planned Parenthood will no longer be required due to the USHS, funding for them shall be removed.

MILITARY

- 20% reduction in military budget, targetted toward obsolete and/or unneeded weapons systems.

- Veteran's medical care rolled into USHS.

- Mental health added to veteran's care.

- New requirement that troops be given at least two years at home for each year in a combat area (may be waived in times of national invasion or rebellion).

- Ban on sending troops to war without full kit for each and every trooper (again, may be waived in cases of rebellion or national invasion).

- Remaining troops out of Iraq as soon as logistically possible, out of Afghanistan within the next eighteen months and out of Libya as soon as logistically possible without a Congressional authorisation.

- Minimum age of military active duty raised to eighteen. Recuits may enter training at seventeen but may not be deployed until eighteen. This may be waived in the event of national invasion or rebellion.

ECONOMICS

- New top tax rate added of 50% on household incomes above $1 million annually.

- Capital gains taxed as income with the exception of one (1) house, designated as the primary residence. If the household only owns one house, that shall be designated as the primary automatically. If more than one is owned, the designation may not be moved more often than once in every five year span.

- Nationwide network of JobCentres created. New legislation that every job for which application is open to the general public (i.e. headhunting not included) shall be notified to the JobCentre which shall display such jobs in each Centre and on their website. Each Centre shall also have phones and computers available (free of charge) for the purpose of applying for jobs and will even mail in applications upon a jobseeker's request. Short courses shall also be provided in such job-seeking skills as CV/resume writing, interview technique, basic computer literacy and so on. Advice shall be available for those interested in opening their own business and small loans shall be available for such things as buying an interview suit, attending interviews and relocating for work.

- Welfare "reform" enacted under Clinton repealed. Welfare goes back to being a non-time-limited entitlement but administered through the JobCentre and contingent upon actively seeking work (we leave Congress to work out the details of what "actively seeking" means). Legislation introduced obliging all businesses to firstly, respond to job applications (nothing more disheartening for a job seeker than companies that just ignore applications) and secondly, respond to JobCentre enquires about interview attendance (too many horror stories of people who lose their welfare because companies couldn't be bothered replying).

- The BDFL's administration has no intention of rewarding the lazy or workshy but if you genuinely cannot work or if you genuinely cannot land a job despite your best efforts, we will look after you.

- Creation of the Rebuild America Corps (name up for debate since I don't much like it). This is a central plank of the BDFL's platform. The RAC shall offer employment to unemployed persons (starting with the long-term unemployed) and ex-convicts (if we want people to reform, they have to be given the opportunity) to rebuild the USA's crumbling infrastructure along with various community enhancing projects like clearing graffiti, building low-income housing or beautifying countryside. Wages shall start at minimum wage and, so much as is possible, respect worker's religious/philosophical commitments (For example, Muslims will be given time out for their required prayers). So much as is possible, workers existing skills shall be respected (i.e. administrative slots shall be mostly filled by unemployed clerical workers). However, workers can request assignment to alternative areas if they wish to broaden their skills (for example, a bricklayer can request assignment to a weatherising team to broaden his skills) and can earn on-the-job certification in that area (i.e. our bricklayer can earn his certification in weatherisation). The RAC shall work with local charities and government in assessing local needs and desires. Since the USA currently has both a crumbling infrastructure and a high percentage of unemployment, the creation of the RAC will address both problems. As time goes on, the RAC will become a beloved institution, it provides teenagers with their first real jobs, allows the unemployed to retain their dignity with the feeling that they are contributing to society and earning an honest wage doing so and allows ex-cons the opportunity to rebuild their lives with an honest trade. Social perception of the unemployed turns around when the average citizen can see teams of RAC workers in hi-vis vests rebuilding the local community.

- Once the economy is back under control (which we estimate at 5-8 years), our administration will introduce free tuition at college and/or trade schools for anyone who does not already hold a college degree or professional certification.

- Estate tax reinstated on estates above $2.5 million. All family-owned farms, the property designated as primary residence and any works of art or historic import which are exhibited to the public shall be exempted when working out each estate.

- Congressional committee instituted to examine the corporate tax code for loopholes and write legislation to close them.

- Moratorium on foreclosures, to be reviewed after six months. Legislation that if the company holding your mortgage cannot produce the legally required paperwork in court, your home is signed over to you and they have to swallow the loss.

- NAFTA/CAFTA renegotiated with a view to limiting both agreements to goods which cannot be produced in the USA.

- Any company which moves it's production facilities overseas for the purpose of maximising profits (note, this is quite different from a company getting out of a particular sector or closing a money-losing division) shall see their import duties doubled for the next ten years AND must pay it's redundant workers a minimum of two year's salary (worked out as an average if wages vary) as severence.

- No board member may be paid more than fifty (50) times the wage of the companies lowest paid employee, including bonuses and benefits. This encourages the raising of wages across the board, channels more of the profits to the stockholders who actually own the company and prevents the board voting themselves exhorbitant pay and benefits packages. This shall not apply to sole trader and partnership businesses on the grounds that they are risking their own time and money.

- Minimum wage raised to $10 an hour for small businesses, $12.50 an hour for corporations nationwide. Individual states may raise it further if they choose.

LAW & ORDER

- Cannabis consumption legalised in private residences. In public areas (such as bars), it shall be at the discretion of the owner. Buying and/or growing cannabis for personal consumption shall be legalised for those of or above the age of 18. Selling cannabis shall require a sales license for selling intoxicants in the same way as alcohol. Like any other adult pleasure, cannabis is age-restricted (initially set at age 18) and driving while under the influence is banned (driving under the influence of anything which alters perceptions is a bad idea). In other words, if you want to smoke a fat doobie in your living room, it's no business of the law. If you grow your own for personal consumption or with a few friends, that's equivelent to brewing your own beer and, again, none of our business. All persons imprisoned for simple possession or consumption of cannabis shall be freed as soon as logistically possible.

- In the case of drug charges for simple possession or consumption, there shall be a presumption against imprisonment and toward rehabilitation. It is cheaper, more effective and more humane to rehabilitate addicts rather than imprison them where possible.

- We shall create a commission of chemists, scientists, sociologists and criminologists who shall be charged with assessing the effect of various drugs (including alcohol, nicotine and caffeine for comparison purposes) on both the individual and society and making recommendations on the legal status of each drug which shall, except in exceptional circumstances, be made law.

- Moritorium on the enactment of the death penalty while racial disparities in sentencing are studied and resolved to the BDFL's satisfaction. Outright ban on enacting the death penalty on anyone with an IQ of or below 75 or with a physical or mental age of below 18.

- Option of sentencing prisoners to LWOP (Life Without Possibility of Parole) shall be introduced in all cases where the death penalty would be available.

- Mandatory drug screening and, if necessary, rehabilitation shall be introduced in all prisons, starting with and concentrating on soon-to-be-released prisoners (more effective that way).

- Nobody under 18 shall be tried as an adult without the concurring opinions of two psychologists that the accused is mentally an adult.

- Enactment of the "Romeo & Juliet" law. Where both partners are within both four years of one another AND the junior partner is within 18 months of the age of consent, sexual intercourse shall NOT be considered rape and neither partner shall be considered a sex offender.

- Top-to-bottom ongoing review of criminal law to ensure constitutionality. This will take years but needs to be done.

- Nominations for the SCOTUS shall henceforth be made by the American Bar Association (who shall nominate those it considers moderate in their views and cast-iron adherents to the principles of law). Nominations shall be considered/confirmed by both branches of Congress, requiring a passing vote in both chambers. Recess appointments shall NOT be allowed for the SCOTUS. Confirmation shall be for a term of twelve years, upon which Justices must either retire or be re-nominated and re-confirmed. There shall be no limit on how many terms a Justice can serve and Justices may retire at their own discretion at any time.

- A new Ethics Committee shall be created to police the SCOTUS Justices. The current Justices have proven they cannot be trusted to act ethically without a watchdog.

- The Citizen's United decision overturned and quashed.

- Gambling legalised for over-18s nationwide. Premises and persons whose business is gambling (i.e. casinos, bookies, arcades, etc) must be inspected and licensed for the usual safety checks and for keeping out the underage and/or the intoxicated. Businesses and persons engaged in the gambling trade have the usual freedom to refuse service but are obliged to refuse service to anyone they consider underage or intoxicated. Repeated violations of that rule may result in the revokation of the license. Providers are also obliged to provide a receipt of placed bets and to pay out on production of a valid slip for a winning bet. It's at their discretion whether they pay out if you don't produce it so keep hold of your betting slip. There shall be a 5% tax on bets or winnings (gambler's choice) in sports gambling.

MISCELLANIOUS

- DOMA overturned.

- DADT overturned straight away, military integrated tommorrow.

- Civil marriage extended to same-sex couples within the next six weeks. The law shall be written in such a way that in all respects but the very, very technical (such as exactly how "consumation" is defined), same-sex marriage shall be considered legally identical to hetero marriage. The six-week delay is purely for logistical reasons. Military granted a three-month delay to prepare (for example, by building additional married couples quarters).

- Israel gets six months to sort out some kind of reasonable compromise with the Palestinians (or make what the BDFL considers a good faith effort) or we cut off aid.

- We institute the BUSA (Benefactor of the United States of America) medal. This conveys no additional rights or priveliges but is intended to be the highest civilian award the USA can bestow and equivelent to a British Life Peerage, a way for the USA to single out and appreciate those civilians who have made a remarkable contribution to the country. All US residents shall be eligible for nomination but a maximum of twelve medals can be handed out each year (save for the first year, to allow the nomination of all the Founders) and there is no minimum number. Being awarded a BUSA should be the highlight of anyone's life, an honour equivelent to the Noble Prize and a way for the country to say a secular "well done, thy good and faithful servant". No publically elected official shall be eligible for nomination until thirty (30) years after their death (intended to prevent both the pro forma nomination of past presidents and using the BUSA to make political hay). These are intended to be the greatest civilians the USA has ever produced and should be recognised accordingly.

- Federal purchases of goods must be spent within the USA unless no American company produces the required goods. For example, if the USHS wishes to purchase ambulances, they must purchase from a US company unless there is no US company producing suitable ambulances.

- Creation of the Department of Humanitarian Services. This department shall be the agency responsible (or co-responsible in some cases) for bettering the citizen's condition. In other words, their job is to fight for the improvement of the citizen's life in all areas. Sometimes, they shall be acting alone (for example, library funding now falls under their remit) and other times, they will be liasing with other departments (for example, with the Department of Justice in formulating rehabilitation recommendations). Other departments have a complex agenda where different pressures must be evaluated and weighed, the DHS has only one: The improvement of citizen's lives.

One Moment In History

2011-04-02T20:44:00.000-07:00

March 30th was the 10th wedding aniversary of the world's first legally married same-sex couple. They are two Dutch women, married a decade ago and they're still together and still in love.

I rant and rave a lot on this blog and that's because there's a lot of injustice in the world. As far as gay rights go, we have promises to keep and miles to go before we sleep but just for once, let's take a moment to warm our hearts with a love that has endured.

Congratulations, you two. May it be only one of many happy aniversaries.

http://www.news.com.au/world/worlds-first-legally-wed-lesbian-couple-celebrates-their-10th-wedding-anniversary/story-e6frfkyi-1226030866529

Fascism And The USA

2011-03-28T21:33:00.000-07:00

Let's get a few things straight before we get going here. Firstly, fascism is on the right of the political spectrum. In fact, it's the furthest right position possible. It's left-wing analogue in Communism. In very simple terms, the difference is that in Communism, the state (in theory) serves the people while in Fascism, the people serve the state. Granted, the two look similar to the person suffering under them because both are authoritarian and authoritarian regimes always look somewhat similar but they have very different reasons for being authoritarian. Secondly, despise whatever lies you may have been told, fascism and socialism or communism have nothing to do with each other. While the mental picture of Fascism tends to bring to mind Hitler's Nazi party (it's not a Godwins if you're talking about legitimate history) which was called the "Socialist Worker's Party", the plain facts are that firstly, the "Socialist" appelation pre-dates Hitler's rise to leadership; secondly, the insertion of "Socialist" in the name and a couple of socialist points in the manifesto were a fairly cynical attempt to bring in extra members and thirdly, upon Hitler's assumption of power, all the Socialist aspects except the name were dropped under Hitler's instructions (the Nazi party being run under fuhrerprinzip or "what the boss says, goes").

Fascism as a political ideaology can be attributed to Mussolini, who invented (or possibly stole, it's unclear) the ideaology sometime between 1915 and 1920. Mussolini variously described the ideaology as being "the union of corporate and state power" or "corporate control of the state". It's clear that, while under Communism, the state would control business; under Fascism, business would control the state. Depending on which version of Fascism you're talking about (Mussolini's is Classical Fascism, Hitler's was Racial Fascism, there are many other variations), you can sometimes add that the state would curtail or encourage various business practices depending on what industries it considered valuable (this was far more prevelent in Hitler's version than Mussolini's). While Communism envisions the state gradually withering away entirely to leave a collectivist utopia, Fascism concentrates power into the state and the state prostrates itself to business.

Now, the topic of this essay is whether the USA can be considered a Fascist state. To that end, we shall start by looking at Dr Lawrence Britt's list of Fascism's fourteen defining features but before we start, a word of caution about Dr Britt's list: While I'm sure that Dr Britt does not intend to promote misinformation with his list, he has a tendancy to use "Fascism" as a generic term for authoritarianism and, in my opinion, misses a few pointers and gives too much weight to others. However, his list makes a good starting point so here we go.

1 - Powerful and Continuing Nationalism. This is one of the major features of Fascism and one where it can be easily distinguished from socialism or Communism. While Socialism and Communism are explicitly transnational (think of the Communist Internationale), Fascism is powerfully nationalist and, usually, nativist. The flag is seen everywhere and the nation is identified with the party. On this one, the USA is guilty as sin. The USA has always been more nationalistic than many nations. Think of popular slogans like "love it or leave it" or "my country, right or wrong". Think of how often any American criticising an American policy or historical act has to stress that they love their country. In other nations, that would just be assumed. Think of the doctrine of "American Exceptionalism" or the uproar when Michelle Obama said she was "really proud of her country" for the first time. In the USA, patriotism is not just expected but socially enforced by public approbation.

2 - Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights. Because of Fascism's use of scapegoats and fearmongering and the glorification of the state, rights are seen not as due simply for being human or granted by the divine but granted by the state, which may withdraw them as it wishes. Frequently, rights are first withdrawn from official scapegoats with the rationale that "they're only terrorists/communists/Jews/Gypsies, they don't deserve rights". Here, the USA has a mixed record. The Bush administration's hatred of human rights is well known (and their escape from accountability will forever be a stain on Obama's record). The withdrawal of habeus corpus rights from anyone accused of terrorism (including at least two American citizens) is notorious. While it's unclear whether Bush's reputed description of the Bill of Rights as a "goddamn piece of paper" was actually true or not, it's clear that they acted as if it were. The Obama administration has not gone any further in destroying humans rights than the Bush administration did. However, they have also not reversed much of the damage. Most provisions of the Orwellian-named PATRIOT Act remain in force, Gitmo remains open. So a mixed result.

3 - Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause. Fascist regimes always single out something to unite against. In this, Fascism understands human nature far better than many political ideaologies. It is vastly easier to get humans to unite and stop grumbling when you convince them that they're under attack. It's also the case that humans love to play the victim. You will rarely find any societal group, no matter how repugnant, that doesn't claim to be under attack. White supremacists claim to be under attack by race-mixing, Fred Phelps claims to be under attack from "sodomites", even Hitler claimed to be defending Germany against Polish forces (no, I'm not kidding). Here, again, the USA has a mixed record. Historically, one could mention the crazed panic of "Reds under the bed" and McCarthyism (as it turned out, while the USSR would doubtless have loved to undermine US society, they never came close to having the capacity to do so). In recent history, the Bush admin used terrorists as a unifying scapegoat (although, credit where it's due, they never equated terrorists with Muslims despite many fellow travellers doing so) while the Obama admin hasn't used it half as much. In fact, this is a far more pronounced tendancy on the American right than the left. While outright hatred of Obama in particular and liberals/progressives in general has become a cause celebre on the right and the Teabaggers sole defining characteristic, there is nothing similar on the left (no, Baggers, liberals were NOT this bad to Bush). So, mixed again.

4 - Supremacy of the Military. In Fascist regimes, the military is always given a disproportionate amount of funding, military service is glorified and glamorised. Now, is the USA guilty of this one? OH HELL, YES! The USA spends more on it's military than every other nation in the world combined. The yearly budget increase alone is more than the entire military budget of your nearest competitor. The USA has enough firepower to render the planet devoid of life several times over and that's without even using the nuclear arsenal. And military spending is sacrosanct. Even when the economy is supposedly in trouble, no-one is seriously talking about cuts in military spending. Likewise, joining the military is not just seen as performing a valuable and necessary service , as it is in other nations, but as an automatic act of heroism sufficient to give one additional gravitas even in unconnected areas. John McCain's entire campaign for president was contingent on his having spent five years as a PoW in Vietnam and, while I respect that service, one must ask how it gives him any additional insight on, say, economics or foreign relations?

5 - Rampant Sexism. In Fascist regimes, power tends to be controlled almost exclusively by males. Women are exhorted to breed, to be homemakers. Traditional gender roles are socially enforced. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are surpressed. Here, again, the USA has a mixed record. While no-one would claim that the USA is free of sexism, it has become both less prevelent and less tolerated in recent years. Divorce is relatively easily available and while gay rights still has a long way to go, things are slowly moving in the right direction. The rampant sexism often claimed by supporters of Hillary Clinton's campaign for president turned out, on inspection, to be mostly untrue (mostly, there were some seriously sexist attacks on her though). The exception is abortion. Abortion rights in the USA have always been under attack. While the Supreme Court legalised abortion under most circumstances with Roe V. Wade, the American pro-life movement (which is concentrated on the right but not exclusively so) has never conceded their loss. Challenges to the law by both individuals and state legislatures are frequent and campaigns of threats, intimidation and sometimes outright terrorism have forced many abortion providers out of business.

6 - Controlled Mass Media. The USA is innocent of this one. Fascist regimes tend to have a controlled media, either through outright state control (interestingly, the BBC, which is state controlled, is considered the global standard of scrupulous impartiality) or through sympathetic media figures and censorship is common. Here, the USA can hold it's hands up and say "not us". While the media in the USA is controlled by it's corporate ownership and therefore, the USA has the most conservative media in the free world (anyone who genuinely thinks the US media is liberally biased should shoot themselves to remove their stupidity from the gene pool), the state exerts very little control over the media itself. Regulation consists mainly of dividing up the available TV and radio bandwidth and ensuring against monopoly (although even that is very often ignored). The FCC, an organ of state, attempts to control content to ensure appropriate broadcast times (and is sometimes absurdly restrictive on sexual grounds) but censorship on political grounds is entirely absent. One must mention Fox News here. Fox News is dedicated to attacking Democrats and liberals/progressives in general and President Obama in particular. As much as they may bleat about Obama's supposed "fascism", their continued operation proves otherwise because such a 24/7 attack/smear machine would never be allowed in a Fascist regime.

7 - Obsession with National Security. This one goes in cycles. In general, the sequence goes that there is a terrorist or international incident. Then the USA goes batshit crazy about national security for a few years, stripping back rights, inconvieniencing the average person and arresting anyone who looks sideways at a landmark. Then gradually, the panic wears off and things go back to more-or-less normal and the cycle repeats.

8 - Religion and Government are Intertwined. This is another one much more true of right-wing administrations than leftish ones. It's easily observable that the USA is one of the most religiously extreme natiuons in the western world, not as a matter of policy but as a matter of the public psyche. In right-wing administrations, the state tends to push religion as much into state power as it legally can (and, in some cases, further). Again, the Bush admin should be our guide. Bush instituted the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives (as one wag pointed out "9/11 was a faith-based initiative"), positions were commonly staffed by graduates of Pat Robertson's university. Monica Goodling, a Bush appointee who ended up smack in teh middle of the US Attorneys scandal, routinely made staff recomendations based on religious views and Whitehouse prayer meetings and Bible study were, while not enforced, an expected part of life. While Obama is a Christian (or claims to be anyway, it's not my job to play No True Scotsman) and has continued the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, he has been noticeably more circumspect about bringing his faith into his public life. Partly, that can be attributed to the attention whoring of his former pastor, Rev Wright.

9 - Corporate Power is Protected. Another biggie. This, and the following entry, are two of the defining features of Fascism. The industrial and business leaders are both those who put politicians into power and those who benefit from their policies, creating a mutal cycle of corruption (in fact, if not in law). And on this one, the USA is guilty. The tremendous deference shown to wealth in the USA is easily observable, both by the almost deification of business leaders and by the public outrage shown when the Obama admin suggested raising the top rate of income tax by 3.5%. Suddenly, a wimpy moderate of a leader became "SOCIALIST, COMMUNIST!". While Obama has been less deferential to wealth than Bush, he has still been far more accomodating than most Western leaders.

10 - Labor Power is Suppressed. Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed. This is another one where there's a real left/right divide. The right, which has become simply the political arm of Big Business, is ruthlessly anti-labour and routinely presses for lower wages and benefits or, lately, the outright banning of the union's power of collective bargaining ("First, they came for the trade unionists"). The left tends to be more supportive of labour power and while teh cynical would say that's because trades unions donate mainly to Democrats (and there's an element of truth to that), they rarely ask why unions mainly donate to Democrats.

11 - Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts. Another one where the divide is pronounced. The right in teh USA is fiercely opposed to both intellectuals and the arts and has been for many years. There is a very, very strong streak of anti-intellectualism to the right which is not only suspicious of intellectual achievment but outright hostile to being taught anything. If you took a shot every time Sarah Palin bashed intellectuals, you'd almost be as wasted as Sarah Palin. On the other side, the left has a tendancy to listen to intellectuals only selectively (see for example, the fact that scientists have been ringing giant alarm bells about global warming for years) and ignore the arts altogether.

12 - Obsession with Crime and Punishment . This is another one the USA is guilty of. Of the countries which release statistics, the USA has the highest population of prisoners in the world. Red China locks up less people than the USA does. The US has over seven million people either imprisoned or on parole, around 730 people per 100,000. The nearest comparison is Russia which has 584 per 100k. And there is a marked racial disparity. 70% of US prisoners are non-white. In fact, of the three major ethnic groups in prison, whites make up the least populous group and blacks the most (Hispanics are in the middle). The USA is also one of the very few western nations which retains the use of the death penalty and by far the western nation which uses it most. In 2009 (2010 records unavailable), the USA executed 52 people. Compared to China (which executed at least 1700), that's not too bad but it stands in marked contrast to the rest of the western world which executed none. I don't want to argue the merits of the death penalty here but there is often a disturbing level of glee seen in teh USA when someone is executed. The execution seen less as a terrible necessity than a cause for celebration.

13 - Rampant Cronyism and Corruption. We're using "corruption" here in it's non-legal sense. That is, the influence of personal advantage or nepotism in policy. And here is another where the USA is guilty as sin. The revolving door between politics, business and media doesn't need any further ranting from me, one needs only examine Dick Cheney's personal history. Fox currently has at least three possible Republican candidates for president in 2012 under contract. Bush was the son of a former president, Hillary the wife of another. In itself, it doesn't prove nepotism but it is an uncomfortable observation for a country which supposedly has no aristocracy.

14 - Fraudulent Elections. Now, this one is complicated. I will go to my grave knowing that the general election of 2000 was stolen. That is known, it is proven (by the Florida Ballots Project) and it is not up for dispute. The 2004 election, I don't know. The 2006 and 2008 elections clearly weren't stolen but they may have been tampered with. What's more concerning is that the US's use of unaccountable "black box" voting machines makes it impossible to be sure of election results. That such machines are absurdly easy to corrupt is well known and has been demonstrated numerous times but what is less well known is that the state is not even allowed to examine or certify the software they use. It's proprietery software, considered "trade secrets" so the companies that manufacture the machines have to simply say "Trust us".

That's Dr Britt's list. I consider it incomplete. I would add:
- Rural populations are exhorted. Within all Fascist regimes, the simplicity of the common volk is glorified. Granted, this is also a feature of Soviet Communism (to the extent that Soviet artwork has been described as "girl meets tractor"). On this, the American right is clearly guilty. Witness Bachmann's paens to small-town America, "real America, if you will"; Palin's pride at coming from a state with the population of San Bernadino. Fascism always comes from such rural populations or, at least, seeks to identify itself with them.

- Obsession with productivity. In the words of the Nazis "Work will make you free". Work is held to be the reason for living and those unable to contribute are derided as "freeloaders" or "scroungers". The USA is guilty on this one but so is much of the rest of the world. The British ConDem government (evil, evil bastards) have made it the cornerstone of their entire economic policy.

- Looks back to a "glorious" past. "I want my country back!". How often have you heard that in recent months? This is another feature where Fascism and Communism are directly opposed. While Communism always looks forward to a glorious future, Fascism always looks back to a glorious part, a (usually imagined) Golden Age. For Mussolini, it was the Roman Empire. For Hitler, it was the Holy Roman Empire (which was neither holy, Roman nor an empire). For the American right, it's the 1950s. An era where minorities, women and children knew their place, everyone had a job that paid decent wages and the USA bestrode the world like a collossus. The irony, of course, is that much of their perception of that period is based more on Happy Days than actual history and the Democratic policies they so bitterly oppose are the ones more likely to help get back to that employment level.

So, those are my additions and we're up to 17 points. Taking those into consideration, I would say that the USA is NOT a Fascist nation (yet) but that the country is in danger of becoming so and teh American right, the Teabaggers in particular, very much are Fascists. What I hope I've demonstrated through this essay is that "Fascism" isn't just a nasty name to call someone or a synonym for all authoritarian regimes. It is a specific set of reasons and principles, a defined and identifiable ideaology.

Things We Should Have Learned By Now

2011-03-11T20:54:00.000-08:00

Earlier this evening, I was having a conversation on one of Scott's posts with a nice chap called Lars who I don't think I've met before. And we ended up talking about the need to put some decent funding into space research so we can get off this damn rock. Not everyone, just the vaguely sane people (I realise that a mentally ill guy calling himself part of the "sane people" is just dripping with irony). And the new society we'll set up. Our new society will have it's problems, as any society does but in contrast to what we have right now, we'll have learned from our mistakes. The mistakes we've made in this society, mistakes that are now so embedded as to be near-impossible to correct, we'll already know to avoid them. Oh, for sure we'll find all new mistakes to make but we'll know to...

Keep carbon emissions below 350 ppm.

Three hundred and fifty parts per million is the scientifically established safe level of carbon emissions. Above that level, the earth gets warmer and we're all in trouble. Below that, the temprature stays the same or, just possibly, even drops. Granted, the new planet we set up house on will have a slightly different safe level but we don't know what that will be yet so I've just used the earth's limit. We'll have to do this on our new planet because this one is already fucked. The very concept of climate change is now so politicised that it's impossible to do anything about it. In the halls of power, they're not talking about how to deal with this problem, they're talking about whether the problem even exists. The cap-and-trade program that Obama's endorsed won't help the problem and might even make it worse and even THAT is too much for too many. And that's something else we'll have learned:

Don't let politicians decide science by vote.

Science is done by scientists. The second politicians start discussing science,. it becomes politicised and that inevitibly means it becomes a matter of party affiliation. The politicians we have now refuse to do a damn thing about the fact that our planet is melting. Abstinence-only sex-ed clearly and provably doesn't work but politicians keep funding it because they think it should work. Stem-cell research, which could save or improve countless lives, doesn't get funded because politicians know shit about the science involved. A basic rule of humanity is that humans are, by and large, fucking dense. We have this really cute idea that one side makes their decisions by emotion and the other side makes theirs by cold, hard reason. It's a cute theory and, like most cute theories, it's bollocks. Research done with people who actually can't feel any emotion (mainly due to brain damage) shows them to be utterly indecisive and that's because humans rarely make decisions by reason. We use reason to rationalise decisions we make by emotion. And one of these days, I'll write one of these essays about how terrifyingly easy it is to manipulate the human mind. Point I'm making is that most people make their decisions by emotion and politicians, who have very well-paid staff who know that, know how to manipulate those emotions. And nowhere is that more apparent than with science. Because most people don't understand science and don't really want to.

Don't let everyone think they're an expert on everything.

I might catch some flack for this one but I studied law and I'm currently studying criminology with psychology. Law is a subject where everyone instantly considers themselves expert. Some case comes before the SCOTUS and everyone thinks they understand the issues at stake. Plain truth is, law uses specialist language and principles and most people don't have the experiance or training to understand them (or why "activist judge" is a nonsense phrase). Medicine is the same way. I'm mentally ill, I have been for some time. As soon as you admit that, especially on the internet, you get a bazillion orders from everyone and their dog that you should take vitamins, take excercise, stop taking your meds. Advice like this gets people killed. Among my many other problems, I have Major Depressive Disorder. Telling someone with MDD to stop taking their meds drops their life expectancy to a matter of weeks. The climate change "debate" is the same way; people without a day's training or experiance in climate science who instantly think they know better than trained professionals who have devoted their lives to studying the subject. Biblical literalists (they like to call themseloves "Bible-believing" like literalism is the only form of belief) who think they know better than paleontologists who've spent their whole lives immersed in study and will still tell you that they don't know everything about the subject. And it's because we've eliminated the concept of expertise. We've gone from "your opinion is valuable" (which it is) to "your opinion counts as much as anyone else's" (which it doesn't). Yes, the experts in a subject can occasionally be flat wrong, no arguments there, but they are a damn sight more likely to be right than muggins off the street who thinks Glenn Beck is a prophet and The Sun is a newspaper. When people who have studied the subject are talking, either ask some sensible questions or shut the fuck up. If Gordon Ramsay is trying to teach you how to cook, shut the fuck up and listen. If John Dicey is trying to teach you law, shut the fuck up and listen. If Kurt Angle is trying to teach you how to wrestle, shut the fuck up and listen. Asking intelligent questions and taking notes is also encouraged. Our society has become terrified of telling people that they don't know what they're fucking talking about. It's said that the more you know about a subject, the more you become aware of how little you know. I'm sure that's true but I think someone needs to add the caveat: The less you know about a subject, the more likely you are to think yourself an expert in it.

People are people are people.

This one really should be a no-brainer but our society still has problems with it: Treating everyone the same, giving everyone the same rights. And yes, I'm talking partly about letting gay people get hitched. Now personally, I don't see why anyone would want to marry but that's besides the point. Usually, at this point, some dickhead starts saying that gay people have the same right to marry someone of the opposite sex as everyone else but that's bullshit, that's playing fucking word games. If that worked, we could shut down every church except mine. You still have the freedom to be a Satanist like any rational person after all. There is a reason the phrase "one size fits all" appears in no known Constitution or Bill of Rights anywhere and that's because you don't have freedom if the state bans everything else. Loving V. Virginia defined marriage as a "fundemental human right" and sorry, wingers, there is nothing so extraordinary about same-sex marriage that the ruling has to add "this includes the queers too" (yes, I believe in reclaiming unpleasent words. I also believe in hitting people who use them unironically). Likewise, I can't see why any gay person would want to join the military especially right now but if straight people have the option of getting their nuts shot off, gay people should have that option too. Gay people are exactly the same as straight people in almost every regard; same plumbing, different wiring. That's the only difference. Some guys want to shag Johnny Depp, some girls want to shag Angelina Jolie. I'm bi so I'll take both (because I'M HARDCORE! and only fans of old-school ECW will get that joke). Look, humans are pretty simple and we're mostly much the same. We almost all want the same things. We want shelter, food and drink and we want someone to share our lives with. Yeah, I'm talking about love. Love is what redeems us, it's what makes us something more than just a super-evolved ape and love, real love, is so rare in this world. Every seer and visionary down through the ages has told us the same thing. Buddha, Mahatma Gandhi, Jesus; all of them said the same thing, the same thing John Lennon said: Love is the answer and you know that for sure. Are we really stupid enough, petty enough and spiteful enough that we would shut off someone's chance at happiness (or permanency, depending on your experiance of marriage) just because a guy likes cock or a girl likes pussy? A lot of us are that petty and that spiteful and that baffles me. I'm not a very nice guy (despite this rep I've bafflingly acquired) but even I'm not that much of a bastard.

Don't let megacorporations buy news providers

Another one that should be a no-brainer but has become so deeply embedded that we'll never get it out. Wingers love to trot out that survey where most reporters admit to having liberal social views (although they always ignore the part of that same survey that shows reporters generally have conservative economic views). Thing is, reporters don't decide what goes into news media, editors do and editors tend to be conservative and part of the reason editors tend to be conservative is because they're the ones accountable to media owners and the corporations that generally own the media tend to be conservative. In fact, corporations generally tend to be conservative and that's entirely logical. To be conservative means to be opposed to, or at least wary of, change and corporations that are successful enough to own media outlets don't want change, they've already got the world arranged just the way they like it. In fact, corporations generally want change rolled back, preferably to the Gilded Age when workers were desperate and had zero protections (see, Scott Walker). That anyone could actually believe that the US media is predominantly liberal simply proves what I was saying earlier about how easy it is to manipulate humans because the US has the most conservative media in the free world. Even the channel considered most liberal, MSNBC, has a Republican former elected official for three honkin' hours every morning.

Don't let them buy politicians either

Oh boy, the Citizen's United decision was a fucking catastrophe. The US system of funding political campigns is perilously close to outright bribery. The politicians would have us believe that the millions fuinnelled to them by corporate donors doesn't affect their votes. You have got to be kidding. Look, basic human nature dictates that if someone plays a big part in placing you in a position of power and priviledge, a position that if you're careful, you can extend into a lifelong gravy train (see Gingrich, Newt; see also "crook"), you are at least going to feel warmly about that person. And politicians are no different. If Exxon helps get a pol elected, he is, at very least, going to give Exxon more of a hearing than he would of a company that hadn't given him millions of dollars. Now, Republicans have given up any pretence of being anything other than the political arm of Big Business but the Democrats aren't a great deal better (although there are a few notable exceptions, take a bow Dennis Kucinich). We are asked to believe that politicians are both "just like you" and also such a rarified breed that basic human emotional drives don't apply to them. Of course, if they didn't apply, they would be psychopaths which is scarcely more reassuring. And speaking of psychopaths...

No Ayn Rand.

Do I even need to justify this one?

Corporations are not people.

First off, a corportion is not a person. The basic definition of a human being can be found in any encyclopaedia, while a corporation is a piece of shorthand we use purely for legal convienience. Now, "personhood" is, to some extent, also a legal construct but from it's very beginnings, it has had a specific meaning: A (born, although that came later) human being. Not an automaton, not an animal and not a legal construct. A corporation has all the advantages of being human but none of the drawbacks. A corporation cannot starve, feel cold or wet or have it's heart broken. A corporation doesn't have to worry about paying the rent or keeping the electricity turned on. In a lot of ways, a corporation is closer to a vampire (the traditional folk tale version) than a human; it's sole reason for existing is to generate profit which it then uses to generate even more profit. Indeed, legally, that is the only duty of the corporation and it's directors. Humans are not so simple. Humans have numerous competing needs and desires. If you could look inside the head of even a mentally healthy person, you would see a constant struggle between desires for basic survival needs, for status, for companionship, for a hundred things. Not the corporation. It has only one desire.

Secondly and politically, an individual is limited to a campaign contribution of (I believe) $2,400 per cycle. A corporation may, however, make limitless donations in kind (another legal construct, in kind means that the receiver enjoys the benefit even though no cash changes hands) by buying tv time. Since tv time is likely to be a, if not the, major outlay for campaigning politicians, that amounts, in effect, to unlimited campaign contributions. And because a corporation is an automaton (lacking self-direction), those contributions will be made at the behest of the board of directors. By filtering the contribution through the corporation, the limit on contributions has effectively been abolished for directors. The US system of campaign financing is already perilously close to outright bribery. Whether we wish to alleviate that complaint rather depends on whether you plan your future to include elections or auctions.

Thirdly, this creates an unholy mess of legal principles. A human may commit crimes and, if caught, may be fined. Fair enough, a corporation may be fined as well (although they rarely are and never enough to make a difference). However, a human may also be imprisoned or, if the crimes are severe enough, executed. A corporation cannot be imprisoned and while it can be executed after a fashion by being wound up, those responsible for the crimes of the corporation walk away, free and clear and quite possibly to commit the same crimes at another corporation. Further, the law depends on a balance of rights and responsibilities. The responsibilities are usually implicit but they are there nonetheless. For example, your right to keep and bear arms carries the responsibly to do so responsibly. We might quibble over precisely what "responsibly" means but we do not deny that we have that obligation. Your right to free speech carries the rsponsibility to excercise that right with some care (the "yelling FIRE! in a crowded theatre example) and so on. Well, if a corporation is a legal person and has rights, what are it's responsibilities? It has only one responsibility: To gorge itself, to profit just as much as it can. That is it's only consideration. Legally, that can be it's only consideration. This is roughly equivelent to raising a child to believe that his only responsibility is to satisfy himself, come what may. We call people like that psycho or sociopaths. Ambrose Bierce once remarked that a corporation was "an ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility".

Fourth, a corporation is a psychopath. I touched on this above but it needs spelling out. Some humans have, for reasons we do not yet fully understand, a conscience and sense of empathy which is either extremely minimised or absent entirely. These people are called psychopaths ("sociopath" means the same thing, both are covered by Antisocial Personality Disorder). Contrary to popular belief, they are not automatically violent but because they lack conscience, because they feel no empathy or remorse, if one decides that his personal desires will be best satisfied through violence, he will act to satiate those desires as soon as is practical. A corporation also has no conscience, no sense of empathy or remorse. The people in charge of that corporation may do (or may not, a surprising amount of business leaders test out as psychopaths) but because decisions are made at a distance from the subject, that conscience may well not be sufficient to prevent a decision from causing damage. When you see your customers every day, when it's actual people coming into your store (for example), your subconscious marks them down as human, like you, and therefore beings you can feel empathy toward. However, if your only contact with your customers is as numbers in a book, account names on a profit and loss record, you don't think of them as entirely "real". That's not a unique thing, it's a perfectly normal human trait. It's the same reason why Americans were more emotionally affected by 9/11 than the London Tube bombings, it's the same reason I was more emotionally affected by the Tube bombings than by 9/11. Because I've visited London many times and used the Tube frequently, it was more emotionally real to me than the destruction of a landmark on another continent that I'd never visited or seen or known anyone who was there. That reduction of emotional impact for things with which you are not personally familiar is entirely normal. It is also entirely normal for humans to feel less concerned about the plight of someone distant from them (among others, it was observed by Milgram in his famous experiment). That's absolutely textbook human normal (note: "normal" does not mean "nice". Humans are a lot less psychologically pleasant than we like to believe) but when you combine those two perfectly normal psychological mechanisms, you end up with teh simple fact that, for the CEO atop his ivory tower, most of his employees and customers barely emotionally exist for him. It doesn't take a psychopath to poison the Gulf or dump hexavalient chromium into the water supply, all it takes is those two psychological mechanisms and the constant pressure to profit. If you are only barely emotionally aware of your employees and customers, why not drive them harder, why not slash their benefits and wages (real wages have been mostly stagnant for years), why not skip the safety testing?

I haven't brought you on this little journey to rant about the evils of corporations (although I could do that too). Rather, I am making the point that the corporation insulates it's controllers from the consquences of their actions to a great extent and thus, the corporation is able to take tremendously harmful actions without the soul-searching which a (mentally normal) human would be subject to. And thus, it can buy politicians to enable it without any second thoughts. And that's when politicians (especially Republicans) are not already doing it's bidding under the common misaprehension that being pro-capitalist necessarily means being pro-corporatist.

Fifth, and finally: If corporations are persons, why can't they vote? No, I'm serious. If corporations are legal persons, then they are covered by the protections of the Fourteenth Amendment. That makes them citizens and that entitles them to vote.

And I haven't even gotten into the politicisation of the courts yet...

DADT Goes Down For The Three-Count

2010-12-19T08:44:00.000-08:00

So, Don't-Ask, Don't-Tell is officially dead. Gay/bisexual people already in the military and those looking to enlist in the future can now be honest about who they are and who they love and poor Dan Choi can re-enlist. And that's great. Really, it is. I can't see why anyone, gay or straight, would want to elist under current circumstances but that's besides the point. I can't help but be suspicious that real political effort to repeal DADT only came when the US was stuck in a seemingly intractable war and having trouble recruiting people like translators. "Enlist your gays for we need the cannon fodder"?

Still, a step forward for equality. And everyone who pushed for, proposed and agitated for this change deserves congratulation. Congrats guys, have a drink and take a short holiday.

There, did you enjoy it? I don't want to rain on anyone's parade but the fact is, getting gay people their right to risk life and limb for the Stars & Stripes was only part of the battle and, given the USA's near worship of the military, probably one of the easier parts. The Department of Defence (and really, what are they defending? The US has been on the offensive for years) wants warm bodies in uniform, and at a certain level, they're not overly picky about who they are. The military has accepted neo-Nazis, assorted racists and a slightly worrying amount of organised fundementalist Christians (small note: Christians in general, no problem. Christians who want to remake the military into a crusading force for Christendom, that's a problem) so why not gay people?

But don't think everything is wine and roses now. There are still going to be problems integrating the military in the same way as there were with racial integration and the larger war for full equality still goes on. Gay people still don't have equality in marriage rights, hospital visitation, taxation, employment and a bazillion other things I don't have space to list right now. This is a start, a step in the right direction.

That's not to take away from the importance of this step. The good guys won one for a change, enjoy that, revel in it for a little while. But only for a little while because we won a battle but the war goes on.

That's It, I Give Up On Humanity

2010-11-22T05:39:00.000-08:00

I've been working on an article for a while now on how the BDFL (my fictional me-as-dictator flight of fancy) would handle the US's current state but what grabbed my attention today was this article from PinkPaper.com ( http://news.pinkpaper.com/NewsStory/4319/18/11/2010/countries-vote-to-accept-execution-of-gays.aspx ). In case you're not aware, the UN has a list of things people should not be executed for, what it lists as "discriminatory reasons" for execution and for about a decade, sexual orientation has been included on that list. Makes sense, right? Well, a few days ago, the UN narrowly voted to REMOVE sexual orientation from that list. There are still 76 countries that criminalise homosexuality and five that treat it as a capitol offence (not counting Uganda's kill-the-gays bill which hasn't been ratified yet) and the world can't even agree that this is a moral outrage?

That's it. I give up on humanity. We officially lose any right to be the dominant species after this. Seventy-nine countries voted to remove the ban (actually a condemnation, since the UN has bugger all actual power). Seventeen abstained. Abstained? How the fuck do you abstain from that vote? Killing guys just because they like to suck cock (or girls who like to eat pussy) isn't something you can be undecided on. This isn't an issue where you can say "Hey, to each his own" because we are talking about fucking killing people for who they fall in love (or, at least, into bed) with. "Beef or chicken?" is something you get to not have an opinion on, killing gay folks isn't.

Now, I'm not opposed to the death penalty in principle (my views on it in practice are in flux right now) but when I think of people who deserve to be executed, I think of people like Richard Rameirez, Jeffrey Dahmer or Robin Gecht, not Freddie Mercury, Elton John and Graham fucking Norton (and I can't stand Graham Norton). The fact that there even needs to be a list in the first place is depressing enough but the fact that better than half the world's countries voted to remove homosexuality from it, to say killing people for being queer is acceptable? There's a bullet through the heart of any sense of pride in the human species. I mean, Jesus fucking Christ, if we can't at least agree that executing people for being gay is a moral outrage, what fucking hope is there for humanity?

Britain, sickness and evil bastards

2010-10-19T20:01:00.001-07:00

Sparked by this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11580332

"They have bombarded us with massive scary numbers and whispered not
so quietly about Greek-style riots if the international markets were to
lose confidence in the British economy and government.
Second, they have gone to enormous lengths to persuade everyone that the cuts
...will be fair - hitting everyone from the rich to the poor. "

They are, of course, lying through their teeth on both counts.

The "debt crisis" is illusory. Britain doesn't have a debt crisis. We have a significant downturn because our government, like many others, listened too much to Austrian magical thinking economics for the previous twenty years but we don't have a significant debt problem. Even if we did have a debt problem, austerity cuts are exactly the wrong way to address it. The "debt crisis" is a phantom, a spectre the Tories and their media buddies have summoned up to justify their real aims. That is, taking an axe to the welfare system.

The second part would be laughable if it wasn't so disgusting. Of course the cuts won't be fair. If you wanted them to be fair, you shouldn't have voted in Tories. Tories don't do "fair". They're big money bully boys, fascist financiers. Vote in Tories, you get government for teh sake of the rich. That's just how it is and always has been.

When the coalition were voted in five months ago, David Cameron said that, of course, the most vulnerable would be protected from the cuts. Was that a cold-blooded lie? Naturally. The most vulnerable are the people who will be targetted by these cuts. Again, that's what Tories do, it is their natural function in life. Tories stomp on those at the bottom for the sake of those at the top. This is as normal and predictable as the sun rising.

Want proof? Solid reports coming out of the coalition indicate that £2.5 billion is to be cut from ESA. ESA is what the government gives you if you're too sick to work. The system is already designed so that virtually no-one can claim it but still, they want more cuts. The state has been trying to get rid of sickness benefit entirely for years but, knowing that people wouldn't accept that, they've settled for making the box you have to fit in to claim it smaller and smaller. It's hardly a king's ransom. I get £125 a week and that's because my partner is listed as a dependent. And I'm on the "partly fit for work" section because ATOS (the private company who "administer" the tests, lie their asses off at every opportunity and are corrupt to teh core) don't think the "unfit for work" category exists. When ATOS were contracted to do the work, it was estimated that about 40-50% would be found unfit. Actual number was less than five percent and I'd be willing to wager that the majority of those got it on appeal. £125 a week comes to £6,500 a year and they want savings of £2.5 billion.

That's a whole lot of dead people. And that's the intention, to get people off teh rolls by any means necessary. If you can work, work. If you can't, die. Whole lot of dead people.

And I'll probably be one of them. Having Major Depression means struggling not to kill yourself all day, every day. And then there's the additional knowledge that, as an unemployed person, you're part of the single most despised group in the country (yes, more than child molesters, it's approaching societal pathology). And then there's the state trying to kill you as well. And it becomes ever more difficult to hold on or know why you should.

£2.5 billion. At £6,500 each. Lots of dead people to come. I'm tempted to leave early to avoid teh rush. The depths of this government's cold, unmitigated evil are only just starting to become obvious.

Now Here's Something I Can Really Get Behind

2010-10-19T10:04:00.000-07:00

I think I have a problem with the campaign for same-sex marriage / marriage equality. No, not that it exists or is "going too far", that the movement is being far too civilised. Don't misunderstand, trying to get your human rights recognised through the courts and public opinion is very noble, very admirable. It speaks to the inherent civility of the movement that it is still being so restrained. But there's something about humanity that seems to only recognise a right when it's torn from the bloodied fist of the oppressor. Would Martin Luther King (whom I have the utmost respect for) have been so convincing if white society hadn't been so terrified of Malcolm X? I don't know. But I do know that when your other option is Magneto, kindly old Professor Xavier starts to look a lot more reasonable.

In other words, I think getting in people's faces can achieve a valuable goal. That's easy for me to say; I'm a big guy, trained to fight and confrontational by nature but let's be honest, a good firm smack in the mouth ends a lot of arguments. Occasionally, when discussing gay rights, I make the call to have some fucking riots. Usually, I'm not serious about that but I do think there's a lot to be said for standing and saying "this is who I am, this is what I do and fuck you if you can't take it". Why should gay guys be allowed to marry other guys? Because fuck you, that's why.

See, the public awareness campaign and the lawsuits, they do a nice job of reaching the undecided but some people, you're never going to reach. You're never going to be able to reason with them because they left reason behind years ago. And for people like that, something a little stronger is needed. Maybe I'm just not as nice a guy as some people think but my urge to yell "we're here, they're queer and if you got a problem with that, let's step outside" peaked a few years ago.

With that in mind:

About bullying, we need to talk

2010-10-11T00:02:00.000-07:00

Advance notice: Forgive me if I get emotional here.

So, I've been away for a while. What's brought me back now has been the recent spate of kids killing themselves because they were being bullied. In discussing it with someone on another forum, I was asked if bullying was actually worse now than it was before and yo yo yo, let me speak on this 'cos I got something to say:

It's worse. Far worse. Partly, that's because there are so many more avenues for bullying now. When I was a kid, cellphones were the size of a house brick and only the wealthy or those with very demanding professions owned them; the internet didn't exist and DARPAnet (which would eventually evolve into the internet we have today) was only in it's formative stages. The only time you saw bullies was at school to a large extent. Today, pretty much everyone has a cellphone (which is not to argue that cellphones are a bad thing) and there's MySpace, Facebook, LiveJournal. There are so many more avenues of communication today. That has it's upside that I've talked about before at great (and probably boring) length but it also has a downside because there are so many more openings for bullies to get through now.

So it's worse now but it was always pretty bad. Remember that kid in school who didn't fit in? The one that most people pretty much isolated and ignored? I was that kid. I was slightly overweight, bookish, dyslexic (I know that seems a contradiction but dyslexia has many forms and mine only really affects my writing) and, hard as it may be to believe for those who know me now, rather timid. So I was bullied. I was beaten down pretty much every day between the ages of about seven and fourteen (when I suddenly gained fifty pounds and discovered wrestling). And there's the dehumanising taunts, name-calling that targetted my intelligence, my sexuality (years before I was even aware of it), my ethnicity, everything. Kat tells me that girls are just as bad, they just use taunts instead of beatdowns.

There's some stuff about bullying that adults believe that really needs to be debunked because I got told it as well. If you stand up to the bully, he doesn't back down, he hits you. If you hit him back, he goes and gets his mates and they all hit you. Bullies aren't necessarily stupid or insecure or underachievers. In my experiance, they're likely to be of normal intelligence and the exact opposite: So cocky, arrogant and overachieving that they believe they have the right to dominate others. The bully isn't socially isolated and without close friends. They're usually charismatic and collect friends eager to do their dirty work for them. And while I'm sure some of them are abused kids, many aren't. The bully doesn't pick on you because he's jealous of you or threatened by you or anything like that. A few individual cases might be all of those things but for the most part, the bully picks on you because he can.

A couple of years back, two girls here committed suicide due to bullying and teh press threw a fit. Stories about the "hidden cancer of bullying", big tearful headlines, the full works and I can remember feeling outraged. No, not because of them in particular. I'm sorry for them, of course but I've seen the story too often to be unusually moved by one or two cases. No, what outraged me (apart from the ever-present, maddening use of "cancer" as a metaphor. Guys, you're trained writers, FIND A NEW WORD!) was that it was only now that people noticed. It was only when the victims were photogenic little girls whose portraits could be splashed across front pages and you could concievably envision as reincarnations of the Christ child, only when there was actually blood on the classroom floor, only then did people actually pay any attention. Where the fuck were they for the previous thirty years? Were where they while hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of kids were having their lives destroyed? Where were they when those kids carried the damage that shit did to their minds into psychologist's offices around the world? Where were they when the victim wasn't some photogenic little angel, when the victim didn't have a straight A average and doting parents who thought the sun shone out of their blessed little behinds?

And, of course, I know where they were. I know exactly where the bleeding hearts and self-appointed moral guardians were. They were sat at the back of the class. Maybe they were laughing, maybe they were cheering the bully on, maybe they were hoping the bully didn't notice them but they didn't do a damn thing. And when some little angel (excuse me while I spit) tops themselves, they cry "oh, the humanity!" and rend their garments and tear at their hair and say how awful it is, someone should do something about it. And then tomorrow's paper rolls around and there's some new outrage and they go quietly back to sleep and forget about it because there's always a story important enough to go on the front page. And across the country, the kids that they just gave up on, the ones they think should brawl with the bully and his pack; those kids cry themselves to sleep every night if they can sleep at all or they sag off school or they cut themselves while their parents dismiss their emotions as teen angst, shoved their feelings in a little tickbox that they can safely ignore. And if the parents care at all, the advice they give is useless. My parents gave useless advice. It was Grimmer who bothered herself to go and raise hell about it.

Kids are animals, you see. Vicious little balls of spite and entitlement, all Ego and Id. It's the job of parents, of families and schools to train them to be something better. But, as Larkin said, "they fuck you up, your mum and dad". A lot of us aren't doing so well with raising kids these days and the old familial structures that meant kids were raised by an extended family, they're gone now. Thirty years of live to work and stagnant wages and shorter vacations and shrinking social safety nets, they've destroyed those family structures. And the schools, well, they're too busy pushing Little Johnny (who's a decent kid but a little slow) through this week's high-stakes test to get concerned about their student's life. The attitudes that allow bullying to happen, that cause it to happen, begin with families and you can't support lower wages, shorter vacations and a shrinking safety net and call yourself "pro-family". I was trying not to involve politics in this but fuck it, there it is.

Bullying is a weird thing. Everyone knows it happens but no-one's willing to acknowledge how much it happens or how deeply it affects people. Some people get over it, they go on to live perfectly normal lives. But a lot don't get over it, not entirely and not ever. I'm 34 now and I started cutting back when I was a teenager as a way of dealing with my emotions. I'm a bright guy, IQ somewhere between 152 and 165 depending on the test and with the mental clouding my meds cause and, when I let things get to me, I can still hear those voices calling me stupid because I could barely write (in fairness, dyslexia is much more recognised these days). I'm mentally ill, I know that and so, I'm maybe an extreme example. Most bullied kids probably won't become mentally ill or, if they do, it'll not have any connection (I'm very, very unclear on how much connection the two had in myself) but they'll carry the emotional scars of it. And still, no-one wants to expend time or money to tackle the issue. They want to teach kids how to cope with bullying instead of stopping the bullying itself. This is somewhat akin to shooting the looters in the aftermath of Katrina; it might help the immeadeate poblem but it doesn't exactly tackle the cause.

Anyway, that's me said my piece. Went on longer than I wanted, got more emotional than I intended and probably swore more than I should. But there it is, the die is cast.

Today Was A Good Day

2010-08-05T01:45:00.000-07:00

So, did you hear? Prop 8 got overturned in California. Isn't that awesome? Equality and the rule of law win out over the momentary whim of the mob, fantastic stuff. Still, this would be a pretty dull entry if all I did was praise the ruling so instead, I thought I'd vivisect Michael "Savage" Weiner's article on the ruling (no link to hate sites, find it yourself). For context, Weiner is a notorious closet case who's semi-autobiography included his literary avatar being beaten for "acting like a sissy". This is pretty obviously what turned him into the self-loathing closet case we all know and, well, know. For several years now, my holiday wish for Mikey has been a course of extra-strength therapy to convince him that being gay really is ok and a subscription to Gay Times so he has something to do with his sexuality. Essentially, Weiner is about two steps from being an outright fascist and one of those steps is getting over his attraction to strong men in uniform. Oh, and he posted his tirade in full CAPS, sorry.

Title: FROM BLACK SHIRTS
TO BLACK ROBES

Instantly, the association with fascists. The fascists were on the political right but Weiner, like many ultraconservatives, maintains the sick lie that they were leftists.

TODAY, A LEFT-WING JUDGE IN A BLACK ROBE RULED THAT YOU HAVE NO VOTE. JUDGE VAUGHN WALKER WHO WAS APPOINTED BY GEORGE BUSH SR

First off, he didn't rule that at all. He ruled that no amount of votes can override the federal Constitution. Secondly, if he's "left-wing", why was he appointed by Bush Sr and nominated by Reagan?

IN A 138-PAGE DECISION, HE ASSAULTED AND INSULTED THE VOTERS OF THIS STATE.

That's a complete and utter lie which Weiner pulls straight from his ample backside.

THIS LITTLE CAESAR CLAIMED THAT PROPOSITION 8 PLACES THE FORCE OF LAW BEHIND STIGMAS AGAINST GAYS AND LESBIANS.

Which it did, blatantly.

THIS LITTLE CAESAR CLAIMED THAT THE RIGHT TO MARRY PROTECTS AN INDIVIDUAL’S CHOICE OF MARITAL PARTNER REGARDLESS OF GENDER.

Which it does. Marriage is a "fundemental right" according to Loving.

THIS LITTLE CAESAR CLAIMED DOMESTIC PARTNERSHIPS DO NOT SATISFY CALIFORNIA’S OBLIGATION TO ALLOW PLAINTIFFS TO MARRY.

Dude, what's with the "little Caesar" thing?

ALL OF THIS IS WRONG. BUT WHAT’S MORE IMPORTANT TO KNOW IS THAT JUDGE VAUGHN WALKER HAS STOLEN THE VOTES OF 7 MILLION PEOPLE.

All of this was absolutely correct except in the upside-down, black-is-white world of Savage Weiner. And again, he didn't steal their votes at all, he ruled that those votes cannot overrule the federal Constitution.

NOW LITTLE CAESAR JUDGE WALKER, THIS HAPPENS TO BE GAY. THIS IS A FACT THAT THE MEDIA REFUSES TO REPORT TO YOU.

Because it is utterly and entirely irrelevent. If Weiner is making the argument that a gay judge cannot be impartial in this case (which he is), then he is also arguing that black judges should be recused from cases involving black people and white judges should be recused from cases involving white people.

AND HE HAPPENS TO BE A RADICAL LEFTIST.

Who was nominated by Ronald Reagan, re-nominated and appointed by Bush Sr. But why bother with that, Weiner (like Bill Orally) declares everyone who disagrees with him a "radical leftist".

IN 1999, HE REJECTED ARGUMENTS FROM THE PARENTS OF A BOY WHO CLAIMED THEIR RELIGIOUS RIGHTS WERE VIOLATED BY PRO-GAY COMMENTS THEIR SON'S TEACHER HAD MADE IN THE CLASSROOM.

And he was right to do so because their religious rights hadn't been violated.

IN 2005, HE SIDED WITH THE CITY OF OAKLAND AGAINST TWO EMPLOYEES WHO PLACED FLIERS PROMOTING "NATURAL FAMILY, MARRIAGE AND FAMILY VALUES."

And since the city took issue with it, you know damn well there was more to the case that Weiner gives you here.

THIS IN NOT AN IMPARTIAL JUDGE. THIS IS AN DICTATOR IN BLACK ROBES.

This is an entirely impartial judge who made a decision that closet case Weiner dislikes.

IN THE 1920S AND 30S, MUSSOLINI, THE FASCIST DICTATOR OF ITALY, SENT THUGS IN BLACK SHIRTS OUT INTO THE STREETS TO BEAT UP ANYONE WHO MIGHT OPPOSE HIS TYRANNICAL REGIME.

Mussolini, like all fascists, was a right-winger. And while the history lesson is welcome (if unnecessary), how is it relevent?

BUT NOT EVEN HE HAD THE AUDACITY TO STEAL 7 MILLION VOTES TO ACHIEVE HIS ENDS.

Weiner is obsessed with this idea. The judge, of course, did nothing of the sort. He just said that those votes could not overrule the federal Constitution. Interestingly though, Weiner had absolutely no problem when Bush's 2000 election team actually did steal loads of votes or when the SCOTUS installed Bush in the most activist decision in history.

PROPOSITION 8 WAS PASSED BY THE VOTERS OF CALIFORNIA IN 2008.

Which is entirely irrelevent. Lots of states had anti-miscegeny laws too.

EVEN THOUGH THE STATE VOTED FOR OBAMA

Also irrelevent.

ON OVERWHELMING MAJORITY OF CALIFORNIANS SAID THAT MARRIAGE WAS JUST BETWEEN A MAN AND A WOMAN

1) Five percent is not "overwhelmingly" unless you consider Bush's two percent 2004 victory a "mandate". 2) Many of those Californians would now vote differently. 3) Still irrelevent because no amount of votes can overrule the federal Constitution.

7 MILLION CALIFORNIA VOTERS SAID THAT. AND NOW, ONE BITTER, LITTLE CAESAR HAS VOTED TO THROW ALL THOSE VOTES OUT THE WINDOW.

He's obsessed with this "little Caesar" thing. And, yet again, Judge Walker has done nothing of the sort, he has, blah, blah, you know the rest by now.

SO THE QUESTION IS THIS – IS JUDGE VAUGHN WALKER 7 MILLION TIMES MORE IMPORTANT THAN YOU ARE?

1) Yes, that's how the law works. 2) He's at least seven million times as important as Michael Weiner.

ONE JUDGE HAS NULLIFIED THE VOTES OF MILLIONS: IS THIS CONSTITUTIONAL?

Yes, entirely.

MICHAEL SAVAGE SAYS NO.

Actually, Michael "Savage" Weiner says "RARGH, dribble, dribble, LIBERALS, buro, PUDDING!" because he's absolutely out of his mind.

Here's the thing: It is not a judge's job to enforce the tyranny of the majority. The whim of the braying mob is utterly irrelevent to the law. All 300 million odd Americans could have voted for Prop 8 and it would still be irrelevent to the law. A judge's one and only duty is to interpret that law (and anyone about to say one word about "activist judges making law" can go fuck themselves, the principle of stare decisis means judge's can't avoid making law). Judge Walker observed the letter and spirit of every legal principle and procedure from beginning to end. His lengthy written decision is a textbook shinging example of judicial reasoning. See, what people like Weiner don't get is that judges do not just pull their opinions from somewhere under their robes (apart from Clarence Thomas, who does and Antonin Scalia, who has them dictated by the ghost of Adolf Hitler). Judicial reasoning is a very specific mode of logic; it has it's own rules, principles and assumptions and it takes law students months, if not years, to fully understand it. Judge Walker made no less than EIGHTY findings of fact in his decision. This decision will go down in history, not just for it's role in what will (hopefully) be the legalisation of same-sex marriage but as a teachable example of how to write a judicial ruling.

Contrary to Weiner's ranting, the US is not an Athenian democracy, you do not vote on every issue. Your Founders, who were actually rather wary of democracy, set up a very careful system to ensure that the whom of the mob could not take away the rights of the people. According to teh decision rendered in Loving, marriage is a "fundemental right" (and no, morons, there is nothing so special about same-sex marriage that the ruling has to say "this includes the queers too"). Article XIV of the Constitution says, in effect, that the rights of the people cannot be abridged by popular vote. If an Amendment to the federal Constitution was formulated, passed and ratified in the described manner, then that would be a different matter but thus far, it hasn't and the chances of that happening are fairly slim.

A Meandering Rant About Sexuality

2010-07-26T23:35:00.000-07:00

Today, I'd like to talk about sexuality a little.

I am a bisexual man. For those lacking a high-school education, that means that I am sexually and romantically attracted to both men and women. My current (and hopefully, last) partner is female. Unlike most bisexual people, I don't have a gender preference. Most bisexuals have a preference for one gender or the other so it's pretty common to see bisexual people describe themselves as a quarter hetero or seventy percent gay or whatever, that's very common. I'm slightly unusual in that I'm a pretty straight-up (forgive the pun) 50-50 who doesn't noticeably skew toward either gender. If I list the people I am sexually or romantically attracted to, it contains a roughly even number of men and women including a few (such as Clea Duvall) who are themselves gay.

Being bisexual is not the same as being gay. It's not the same as being straight either. I think a lot of people who are gay or straight forget that. It's not the same as being a gay man who occasionally likes pussy (forgive the vulgarity) or a straight man who sometimes like cock. I'm a part of both worlds but, like the half-native kid in the fable, not truly a part of either because our society places so much emphasis on who you sleep with that neither side entirely "gets" the bisexual person. And that causes all kinds of misunderstandings and preconceptions.

We are not just greedy. Yes, as Woodly Allen said, being bisexual automatically increases your chances of getting a date on Saturday night (although really, not even that since gay men are rarer than straight women). Yes, I have a lot more options for porn than most people but human desires are not controllable. I can choose whether I act on those desires but the actual desires themselves aren't somethign I can control. More to the point, nor can anyone else. In our society, it's still something of a stigma to be gay (although, granted, things have improved a lot in recent years). Up until a few years ago, it was still illegal in Texas to be gay. Since this didn't make any notable difference in the number of gay people from Texas, we have to assume that our desires are in-born and, to some extent which we don't entirely understand yet, inate. Looking at that world, why on earth would anyone choose to be gay or bisexual? They wouldn't. Unless that desire was something inate about them. And just like gay people, my attraction to both genders is inate.

However, that doesn't mean that I must have a mate of both genders to be satisfied, that really would be greedy. Straight men and gay women, I'm sure you see dozens of girls every day that you find sexually attractive; straight women and gay men, you must see dozens of shaggable guys every day, right? Well, it's the same for us. Yes, men and women feel different, having sex with each is a completely different experiance but newsflash, that's true of individuals as well. Thinking back on the women I've slept with, each of them felt completely different and utterly unique and the same is true of the men I've slept with. If you can manage to avoid sleeping with the unique and attractive girl at the office, why should it be any different for us? Being attracted to the guy in the bookstore doesn't mean I am any more inclined to cheat on my partner than anyone else (although Johnny Depp, if you're reading this, you're on my list so gimme a call). And while we're on the subject of different tactile sensations, there are these things called sex toys which people can buy and simulate a whole range of sexual experiances. It's not like the days where the only way to simulate gay sex was to buy your girlfriend a fake moustache, there's a cornucopia of dildos, vibrators and costumes in a rainbow of colours. Seriously. Some of them even ejaculate. And for the phonomenally paranoid: No, a liking for taking it up the ass, fabulous though it is, does not mean you're gay anymore than a liking for blowjobs does. If you like shagging people with tits, no matter how you like shagging or being shagged by them, you're either a straight man, bisexual or a gay woman and a quick look down in the shower should enable you to figure out which. Unless you're into tranny porn. In which case, hey, whatever floats your boat, no judgements here.

No, I'm not confused about my sexuality and I'm not going to quietly place myself in a checkbox as I get older. I used to be confused about my sexuality. When I was a small child, I was sexually molested by a male relative. No, that didn't cause me to be bisexual but it did make me very screwed up about my sexuality for years. Because I associated guy-guy sex with being molested, I buried that attraction for many years. It was only when I got to university in my mid-twenties that I felt able to start dealing with that. It took some years to sort the attraction that I felt toward guys from the rage and humiliation I felt as a result of the molestation but you didn't read this to plumb the depths of my psyche so all you need to know is that I eventually dealt with it. Now, doubtless there's someone reading this and asking themselves why I couldn't have stayed repressed about guylove all my life, why I had to sort out my attraction to guys. Because fuck you, that's why. Something anyone acquinted with me should know by now is that I think sexuality is incredibly overcomplicated by our culture and that I have a pretty combatative nature (I worship the original rebel, for goodness's sakes). I won't be repressed, not by faux-morality, not by self-appointed moral guardians and not by the infirmities of my psyche either. More to the point, love is a rare thing, transcendent and pure. Love is what makes us more than just a super-evolved ape. Every spiritual visionary worth his or her salt has said the same thing from the dawn of time. Ghandhi said it, Martin luther King said it, even Jesus said it. The same message every time: As John Lennon put it "Love is the answer and you know that for sure". Nothing dignifies humanity like love, nothing else makes the shit of this world, the war, death, hatred and pineapple on pizza, worthwhile like love does. And it is so rare, so vanishingly unusual, to find that one person. That person who can celebrate your triumphs and comfort your tragedies. I don't believe in "you complete me" because I don't believe that being alone necessarily makes you incomplete but it is so rare in this universe to find that one person who feels like home that if there was any chance of finding that person in your own gender (and I'm not talking about completely straight or gay people, they're incapable of being romantically interested in their own or the opposite gender, that's just understood), wouldn't your response to those saying you shouldn't even look be "fuck you" as well?

Personally, I think sexuality is mainly about what feels good anyway. That's not a value judgement, it's a suggestion that the human sex drive is inately hedonistic and that's not a bad thing. For some people, girls feel right and that's good. For others, guys hit their sweet spot and that's good too. Look, if you're a straight guy, you're not going to enjoy having sex with another guy. It's won't feel good to you, no matter how good he is at sucking cock because you're straight. Likewise, a straight woman is not going to enjoy having sex with another woman, no matter how firmly she straps her boobs down or how skilfully she pilots a strap-on. It's about what feels good and that's fine. The only rules worth any notice about sex are so obvious that rational people usually just take them as read (but, for the terminally dense: No kids, no animals, make sure everyone's consenting and if you're even slightly unsure of anyone's sexual history, use rubbers. Oh, and the host picks the music). Beyond those aforementioned guidelines that should be so obvious anyone of age automatically assumes them, it's not like there are rules. Somewhere in the myriad complexity of human chemistry, there's some kind of switch that says if you're gay, straight or somewhere in-between. Most people end up being straight because humanity needs them to be straight to ensure the continuation of the species (the evolutionary process is dumb and doesn't understand things like IVF), somewhere between eight and twelve percent of people turn out to be gay and an unknown percentage turn out to be bisexual and it's all ok. But most of our views of sexuality date from the Victorians and a time before we learned to control our fertility. We feel we have to justify our sexual choices constantly. An example is the debate about whether being gay is a choice. Now, all the research (which is not entirely conclusive yet but very nearly so) says it's not a choice but why should that fucking matter anyway? Yes, I know the idiots use it to beat you over the head with a stick of "choosing to be immoral" but the idea depends on the preconception that there is something less desireable about being gay than there is about being straight, it's a justification for something that doesn't need a justification.

Why some people are gay is a question of only academic interest. It's an interesting question for biologists, psychologists and geneticists but beyond the halls of academia, it doesn't matter, it's irrelevent. If you start from the viewpoint that being gay or being straight is as morally neutral as having green or blue or brown eyes, then who cares why some people are gay? Even if being gay is a choice (and, again, it's not), why should we discriminate against it? I'm not discriminated against because I choose to have a beard (with the exception of a very radical feminist I once knew who said I was "aggressively asserting" my masculinity and thereby reinforcing the patriarchy), my partner isn't discriminated against because she chooses to dye her hair so why the hell should we discriminate against someone because of why they like to have sex with even if it was a choice (yet again, it's not)? It's stupid, an irrelevent distinction that should only be of interest to the individual and the person they're sleeping with. Now, some idiot Crusader (and boy, are you on the wrong blog) could make some noise here about being gay damning you to stinky hellfire but that's a threat only convincing to people in the rowboat with you. My chosen holy book says that some will love the same sex and some will love the opposite sex and it's all good. You have to assume that being gay is immoral in order to make the case that being gay is immoral. That's called circular reasoning, buddy, and it's not welcome here (although Conservapedia will love you). No-one is offering to legislate the moral precepts of my faith, nor should they and I would fight them if they did. A few obsessed morons might say here that some people might choose to fuck kids and if I think all choices are acceptable, how can I discriminate against them? Well, firstly, look up the phrase "informed consent" and learn why children (and animals for that matter) are incapable of giving it and secondly, fuck off to another blog and be thankful we aren't having this discussion in person.

See, another area where we overcomplicate sex is when we talk about explaining it to teenagers. Conservatives love to play this card, "if you allow gay people, you'll have to explain sodomy to kiddiewinks". Talk about begging the question. Since you already explain to them that mummy and daddy love each other very much, where's the problem in telling them that some boys love other boys and some girls love other girls? And as for the ones who don't even want their kids to know gay people exist; well, firstly, they're going to find out eventually, no matter what you do. My mother owned lesbian cats, gay people are openly in media these days and if they've got an internet connection, five seconds is going to teach them way more than they were ever curious about. Secondly, fuck you, you shouldn't even be allowed to raise kids. No, I'm not being hyperbolic. You can raise your kids to have any kind of values you'd like but when you want to selectively edit reality because of it? Yeah, I think Child Services is justified in taking your kids away at that point because you're no different than the bigot who said they didn't want their kids to know black people existed (and if you're going to use the word "choice", see above and fuck you too). You get to have your own opinions and your own values but you don't get to have your own facts and the fact is, gay people exist, they are only different from you in irrelevent details and you don't get to make a shitstorm about that.

And while we're on the subject of the sacred little bastards (yeah, I don't like kids, does it show?), if your kids are even interested in sex at that age, they have bigger problems than the existance of gay people. Fact is, the reaction of small children to seeing naked people is much the same as their reaction to seeing a parrot for the first time: "Mummy, what's that?". Dirty jokes sail completely over their heads until they hit puberty so unless you set out to make it something shameful, your kid is not going to be damaged by knowing that Brian and Tom love one another. By the time they do hit puberty, Google and Playboy have already taught them the basics anyway. Parents tend to think that kids are way more innocent than they actually were anyway. They like to think their darling little bundle of joy convieniently discovers sex when they get to the age of consent and they don't even like to consider that their kid masturbates underage. They can't fool themselves completely with boys since the basket full of soiled Kleenex is a dead giveaway but, hey parents, little Fiona is probably rubbing one off right now, you better rush off and stop her! See, this is such a stupid waste of time and it's largely because we've internalised the idea that sex is something to be ashamed of. We try to train kids to think that giving themselves pleasure is a terrible thing. Hell, when I was at the age when I was discovering masturbation, my parents moved me into a room without a door. Seriously, normal room, open doorway with no door there. I'm not trying to turn this into a rant about the various ways my parents did their level best to mentally cripple me (and, in fairness, they were pretty screwed up themselves and didn't have a clue what they were doing) but the fact is, masturbation is normal, it's part of the pleasurecruise of self-discovery we all go on during our teens and it should be. Masturbation is sex without the dangers. You can't get pregnant, catch an STD or even get stood up by your hand at the prom. It's sexual pleasure with literally no drawbacks. Way I figure it, parents should be singing the praises of masturbation to their kids. OK, you're within the bounds of reason to ask Tommy to shut the door but at least he's not fucking in there. In fact, if you want to delay your teenagers first full coital bonk, you might want to extoll the virtues of mutual masturbation while you're at it. You'd be surprised what teenage boys will settle for. Your kid would literally sell his soul for a quick feel of boob through clothing and you think he's going to turn down a quick handjob? No, he's going to agree very enthuasiastically, enjoy it enormously and be exceedingly grateful. If he's got any brains, he'll also keep his mouth shut about it (teenage girls, the single best threat is "If you tell anyone, you'll never get another one"). Full blown sex can lead to pregnancy, STDs and complicated family gatherings, mutual masturbation just leads to Kleenex, snuggling and a desire to raid the fridge. There's a shitload of things people can do to get their rocks off without actual penetrative sex and I would suggest mentioning all of them. When you should start singing the virtues of handjobs and dryhumping is a question I'll leave to your discretion, you know your kids better than I do. Just make sure it's not too late and be sure to point out, repeatedly if necessary, that just because you can doesn't mean you have to. If you don't like them, don't want to go that far or even if you're just not in the mood, saying "no" is not only acceptable but required (and if you're an adult, "no" is your only acceptable response). Sex play, even the kind that stops short of penetration, is a game for two or more players and it's a lousy game unless everyone is enthuasiastic about playing. And if you find a copy of Hustler in your kid's room (either gender), just quietly put it under their pillow and forget about it.

A lot of conservatives like to imagine some golden age (almost always, the Fifties or earlier) where sexuality was something that seemingly didn't exist. If you're into that kind of thing, it might be a reassuring fantasy but it's a fantasy nonetheless. Fact is, our attitudes toward sexuality are actually pretty recent. And I don't mean "recent" as in the Sixties either. the sexual revolution of the Sixties was actually very dependent on class. If you were middle-class, not much changed for you. You still fucked at drive-ins but you were still quiet about it. In the counter-culture, we've actually gone backwards since then. According to the recollections of some of those who were around at the time, the liberalisation that the birth control pill allowed was such that for many women, it would be as simple as seeing someone they liked the look of and asking "Do you want to fuck?" (small note, I am applauding the women who were that up-front with their sexuality). Our attitudes toward teenage sexuality are no more than a century old and, in many cases, much younger. Shakespeare made Juliet all of thirteen years old (another note, that play is about the short-sightedness of young love, stop holding it up as a romance when it's a tragedy). The accounts of coppers from Victorian London are full of reports of having to move along children as young as elevn or twelve from copulating in gutters and yes, child molestation is as old as humanity as well. We are unique not because we are the first generation to have such things happen but because we are the first generation to be aware of it, we are the first generation to both know the extent of the problem and be in a position to do something about it and prevent it. Porn is as old as humanity too. In fact, our porn is relatively tame compared to that of ancient peoples which included incest (Egyptians), pederasty (Greeks), bondage (Romans) and bi or homosexuality (absolutely everyone). Again, it was really only in Victorian times that we even bothered trying to control porn. The sexually adventurous woman of the Sixties mentioned above wasn't really doing anything which men haven't done since the beginning of time (and the only reason women haven't done it just as long is because of the danger of pregnancy which the pill liberated them from). Hopefully, the generation of girls now being raised will understand that men love sexually direct women, it removes all the guesswork. The old system of putting out subtle signals if you were interested in screwing? Yeah, some men (including me) are absolutely hopeless at reading them. So we don't dare make a move, Either we are entirely oblivious to those subtle signals you put out or we don't trust ourselves not to be misinterpreting them. She just put her hand on my knee, is that a green light? No, maybe she's just being friendly. No, don't chance it. And we talk ourselves out of intimacy that way for years. So the advent of women who were clear and unambiguous that they liked sex and they would like to enjoy it with you, women like that were a miracle to me and men like me and not just for those reasons. The idea that someone would actually want to have sex with us, would find us sexually attractive and be prepared to say so, unambiguously, with no room for misinterpretation... The women who did so live forever in our memories, not just as masturbation material (although sometimes as that too) but because, when we have been rejected far more often than we have been accepted, punched far more often than we have been kissed, when the reaction of virtually everyone to you has been one of mockery or disgust, to be able to summon up a memory of someone in your head who clearly, vocally wanted you is something that lives forever in your mind.

We're going to back away from that subject now because I've realised that I'm revealing rather more about myself than I feel comfortable revealing or subjecting my readers to.

I'm not just looking to save sanity here but adjusting our attitude to sexuality to be less royally fucked up might literally save lives too. See, 99.9% of us have sexual desires (a miniscule number of people, for hormonal reasons, have no sexual desires at all) and every single last one of those people will find some way of releasing those desires. No exceptions, this is a biological impeartive engraved deep in our lizard brains. Some way, sometime, everyone will find a way to release those desires, even if they're celibate. Hell, especially if they're celibate. Even priests and nuns will masturbate and even if they've got Batman's willpower and don't, tough shit, your brain will give you sexy dreams and pretend to fuck while you're asleep anyway. Surpressing your sexuality your whole life is simply not an option and guess what happens when people try? Yeah, they get fucked up. Seriously fucked up. In my meatworld life, I'm partway through studying for a degree in Criminology. It's slow going and I have to do it by distance learning because of my mental problems but it's fascinating stuff in a horrifying way. Here's a little snippet: Did you know serial killers are subdivided by motivation? And did you know what the single largest subcategory of serial killers is? Yeah, it's sexual sadists. Now, we don't entirely understand the psychology of serial killers yet but there are certain things that sexual sadists have in common. They all exhibited the "unholy trinity" of bedwetting beyond the age where that's common, animal abuse and arson. Traumatic head injuries during chilhood or adolescence aren't present in every case but they crop up more often than coincidence would allow and there's one more thing which every last one of them has: Their sexuality was warped beyond recognition. Some were sexualised very early in life, some were raped by family members continually (Fred & Rose West, a highly unusual case of true folie a deux serial killers, both came from families where incest was common) and, in many cases, their sex drive was surpressed as it developed. I could go into why surpressing the sex drive would lead to sexual sadism (and I may do so in a future essay) but for simplicity, it's like trying to force a wedge into a rock; either the wedge gets warped or the rock breaks. If you don't let a sexuality develop on it's own and in it's own time, it will either warp the person's sexuality or it will break their mind altogether. Human sexuality is an incredibly powerful force and it is near-enough relentless. Sometimes it drives us to distraction, sometimes it drives us to crime (look up the psychology of arsonists sometime) but it cannot be denied.

And it doesn't need to be denied, not really. We've been doing this since before we were really humans, it's just sex, not launching a space shuttle.Sex isn't a matter of debate, it's not something you need an instruction manual for (although you might need an instruction manual for good sex). We needn't be ashamed of doing what makes us feel good (yes, annoying conservative, subject to the guidelines above obviously) and I think that's something an awful lot of people need to learn: Just because it feels good doesn't make it wrong.

Republican Lies, Part 12,397

2010-07-20T08:56:00.000-07:00

Just three for today...

Claim: "The left compared Bush to Hitler too!"
Rebuttal: Some did, sure but not to anything like the same extent or with the same visibility. Yes, a few bloggers and some people at protests made the comparison but no-one with national exposure did. Keith Olbermann didn't, nor did Rachel Maddow or Ed Schultz and that's pretty much it for openly liberal TV hosts because that's about all of the openly liberal TV hosts. Also, the accusation just plain doesn't make sense. Fascism is on the extreme right of the political spectrum so while comparisons with Bush were vastly overblown (and vastly overrepresented in right-wing recollections), at least they were on the same side of politics (and the comparison with the Joker was even sillier, the Joker was an anarchist). Now, you could claim that those protesters carrying Bush=Hitler signs prove the equivelence but if that were true, then we could indict the whole Tea Party movement of racism on the grounds of the racist signs carried at rallies. Speaking of which...

Claim: "The Tea Party is so not racist!"
Rebuttal: I'm actually kinder than many liberals, I tend to assume that most of the Teabaggers (they chose the name, they don't get to unchoose it just because it's embarrassing) aren't racist. I think the vast majority of them are extreme-right nutjobs but that doesn't necessarily make them racist. However, the Teabaggers have to deal with the fact that there is a racist element to their coalition. The witch doctor posters, "Lyin' African", the fact that so many are also Birthers (and that really is just racism), these point to a vocal racist element among the Teabaggers. Contrary to Teabagger claims, these didn't come from liberal provoceteurs, most of them came from before stuff like crashtheteaparty existed (and that pretty much fizzled out anyway). Blaming this on liberals is just blame shifting. Do these people represent the whole of the Teabaggers? Probably not but the failure to disavow them speaks volumes about their willingness to trade principles for power (and yes, the same criticism can be levelled at many lefties). A lot of this is based upon the Republican canard that more Democrats voted against the Civil Rights Act than Republicans. Which is true but wildly misleading. The fact is that prior to integration, the Republicans were the more liberal party and the champions of civil rights. As Republicans often point out, Martin Luther King Jr was a Republican during this period. However, what they leave out is that after Johnson forced integration, the majority of the racists left the Democratic party and moved first into George Wallace's segregationist American Independent party and, when that collapsed, into the Republican party.

Claim: "Fascism is on the left!"
Rebuttal: No, wrong, lie. This is a fantasy invented by Jonah Goldberg in his excremental book Liberal Fascism (which might as well be titled Everyone I Dislike Is Exactly The Same). That Goldberg had to rely on The Pink Swastika, a book no less revisionist than David Duke for his claim that Nazis had no problem with homosexuals says just about everything one needs to know about his scholarship. It's not difficult to confirm that the Nazis massacred gay people, they kept records. Sure, there were a few closeted gay people in the Nazi heirarchy but that's nothing unusual, there are plenty of closeted gays in the Republican heirarchy too. More to the point, Goldberg has to re-write the entire political spectrum to make his "argument" and confuse the aims of Communism with it's results. To start with, he pulls the assumption (seemingly straight from his ass) that moving to the left means more state control and moving to the right means less state control. This is flipping the entire political spectrum on it's head. The traditional spectrum assumes that the further you move to the left, the more you assume that people should be equal and the further you move to the right, the more you're ok with accepting inequalities. Now, we could have a reasonable discussion about how much state control should be involved in that but that's categorically not the same as "left=state power". In fact, that definition is unique to the USA. Further, Goldberg confuses the aims of Communism with it's results. Granted, the result of Communism in the USSR was state control of pretty much everything but the eventual aim of Communism was collectivist anarchy, the complete absence of a government. Again, this is not difficult to confirm, The Communist Manifesto outright says so. And while we're on the subject, Communism and socialism are not the same thing. Socialism is an economic theory about the distribution and ownership of the means of production. One can agree or disagree with that theory but it has bugger all to say about politics. Communism takes the economics of socialism and combines it with an anarchist political ideaology. No, the USSR didn't end up as a collectivist anarchy, nor did any other Communist state because Communism doesn't work. That doesn't change what they were aiming for. All Communists are also socialists but not all socialists are also Communists. Finally, on this subject, Goldberg makes a great fuss over praise for Mussolini and/or Hitler from a few (presumed) liberals such as Cole Porter. This is one of those cases where context is everything. Firstly, the reference to Mussolini in "You're The Tops" is actually from PG Wodehouse's revision, not from Porter's original. Secondly, and more importantly, in the early 1930s, there was a great fear that Communism would overtake Europe (much as the same was feared of Asia in the sixties). As the Fascists were explicitely and violently anti-Communist, some liberals looked upon them as a bulwark against Communism, a kind of "enemy of my enemy". While most didn't agree with the precepts of fascism, they viewed it as preferable to Communism and so, fascism became briefly fashionable among the educated class. Like virtually everyone else, they dropped any allegiance the second World War II broke out.

The Tories Are Trying To Kill Me Again

2010-06-28T07:38:00.000-07:00

Well, not me specifically (although never discount the possibility that one's paranoia is fully justified) but the sick and disabled generally.

Because of my wildly unstable mental condition, I am unable to hold a job. In the UK, that means I am eligible for two benefits specifically for the sick and disabled: ESA and DLA. DLA is the Disability Living Alliance and is only available to some of the disabled. ESA is the Employment & Support Allowance. In order to claim this, your doctor has to consider you unfit for work. Then, because the system assumes your doctor is a liar, you're examined by a notoriously corrupt company called ATOS. In theory, you can then be classified as "fit for work" (remember, you got ESA in the first place because your doctor considers you unfit), "partly fit for work" or put you in the "support group" (meaning utterly unfit for any kind of work). Except that as far as ATOS is concerned, the third category doesn't exist. ATOS considers me "partly fit for work". The rather more through DLA test considers me not just utterly unfit for work but an active danger to myself and others if I try.

When we had an election last month, the Tory party (which won by the skin of their teeth and was forced to form a coalition with the Liberals to take power) promised there wouldn't be a return to the tyrannical greed-is-good policies of Thatcher (think of her as Ronald Reagan in a dress and minus the charm). Having achieved power, they've interpreted it as a mandate to re-enact all of Thatcher's policies. The ones that have or will affect me are a re-examination of all ESA claimants (due to ATOS's "everyone can do something" attitude, we are already examined at least every six months), extending the same test to DLA claimants (test is notoriously bad at evaluating mental conditions and administered by a profoundly corrupt company). In future, all JSA (unemployment benefit) claimants will have their housing benefit cut by 10% after the first year. Seems that everyone knows we are in a recession and jobs are hard to come by until the subject of benefits comes up. Then everyone forgets we're in a recession and assumes jobs grow on trees.

This morning, the Tory Chancellor (finance minister), the frankly sociopathic George Osborne, announced that ESA will be cut. He claimed that he will protect those in genuine need but encourage those who can work into work. Remember, the whole reason you're on ESA in the first place is because your doctor says you're unfit for work. Under the current system, AFTER your own doctor considers you unfit for work, 68% are classified as completely fit for work and 23% are classified as partly fit for work. Only 9% are classified as unfit for work. As I said, ATOS think that category doesn't exist. Prior to the election, the Tories claimed that one in five ESA claimants were fit to work (again, and I'm repeating this to stress it, your own doctor has already certified you as unfit for work). According to those close to Osborne, he thinks many more are fit for work. I know what he's saying. He means every single one of them. As far as the Tories are concerned, there is not and never has been any such thing as someone incapable of work. If the horrendously biased test judges you fit for work (decision makers are supposed to take other evidence into account. They never, ever do), you're moved onto JSA, amounting to a massive cut in benefits which are already pitiful. After a year on JSA because, despite what the completely misleading and biased test says, you're unfit for work, your housing benefit is cut by 10%, presenting you with a choice between rent and food.

Osborne is simply lying. There will be no attempt to protect the most vulnerable. In fact, the vulnerability of the sick and disabled is exactly why they're being targetted for cuts. Based on a right-wing media campaign that there is masses of fraud in the benefits system (a complete lie), the public have now become vicious advocates of social darwinism and the Tories, who always were social darwinists, are more than happy to play along. Of course, libertarians and anarchists have a simple attitude to this which is "fuck you, it's your fault for being sick". Mental instability is already heavily stigmatised and being a benefit claimant has become the social equivelent of being a child molester thanks to the weekly two-minute hate of the tabloids. Now, it seems the already small amount of money we get is to be taken away as well. Of course, everyone (especially the Tories) can see what the result will be: Suicide and homelessness will skyrocket but then, that was their intention to begin with. My mental condition means that I am fighting every single day to fend off suicide. It seems that the Tories are determined to systematically encourage me to give in.

The Tories are also talking about offering the unemployed "incentives" to move to areas where employment is more plentiful. Of course, that's also going to lead to the further fracturing of an already shattered communal society (Thatcher, famously, didn't believe society existed) and the creation of ghettos and a class of job-seeking migrants criss-crossing the country. Which is entirely the Tories intention. Desperate people with no support structure are easy to abuse. I don't like to use Nazi comparisons much (primarily because I think they're overused and usually misused) but the creation of ghettos for the jobless? Yeah, I'm prepared to call that fascism.

Of course, I'm not ignoring the general publics viciousness here. For years now, the right-wing press (which is most of it, our media being largely owned by right-wing tycoons) media have been spinning the lie that all benefits claimants are workshy scroungers who live a life of luxury on the public tab. It's something similar to Reagan's welfare queen who drive a Caddy and just as fictional but the public, so spiteful, so stupid, have swallowed it whole. If you ever want to see the full outpouring of human bile, viciousness and hatred, start a discussion on the unemployed. It's truly amazing how everyone knows we are in a recession and jobs are hard to come by until teh subject of the unemployed and benefits comes up. Then everyone knows that jobs are ten-a-penny and you must be actively avoiding work to not have one. The general public believes that it's possible to get more money on benefits than from full-time work. Assuming a healthy single person with no dependents and on the average rent, benefits amount to just over seven grand a year. The passage of the minimum wage (which the Tories opposed and still do) means that it is factually illegal for a full-time job to pay less than that. Even if it were not, the general public thinks the solution is to cut the already pitiful benefits amount, not to actually raise wages to a decent level. You have the same phonomenon in the states, in the form of the working class people who constantly argue for cutting wages and eliminating minimum wage laws. In both our countries, the right has won the battle to recast unions (which exist in the first place to protect their members from abuse by business owners) as the enemy of the worker. In fact, the US and the Tories have succombed wholly to the psychopathic Randroid model that business is morally entitled to do whatever it likes and any form of protection for the worker is too much. I actually had some anonymous idiot on my blog yesterday make a comment that seemed to be arguing against the concept of worker's comp. Boy, is he in the wrong place (hey, braintrust, I think corporations are the outright enemy of the common people). As an unemployed, disabled person, I am a member of the most hated social group in Britain. Right now, I can be pretty sure that someone reading this is thinking "Well, you can type, why can't you work?" and the answer is because this is me on one of my better days. My better days are fairly rare and entirely unpredictable. I don't post on my worse days. Moreover, I have no control over when my mental state will suddenly do a nosedive. Even if, somehow, I could take a job where I could only work on my better days (and good luck finding one of those), how is my employer going to take it when my mind suddenly snaps and I start trying to hack my wrists open with a ballpoint pen? And no, that's not hyperbole, that has happened.

Moreover, when did society move from the dignity of human life to dignity of life only for the employed? There are people, lots of them, who wholeheartedly believe that if you can't work, you should be allowed to starve. They're called Social Darwinists or Libertarians and the Tory party is full of them. So is the Republican party. The BBC's "Have Your Say" message board is dominated by them, as are most open political boards. Their belief is fairly simple: If you can't contribute to society (by working, other forms of contribution are ignored), you deserve to die. While they usually won't outright state that or actually execute the unemployed, they will happily, gleefully push policies that will kill such people in droves. Our parents and grandparents worked hard for a living wage. We work like slaves for less (in most sectors) than they earned. We no longer work because we have to. Now, we work because we have been brainwashed into believing it is our duty to work for the good of our masters. We have been brainwashed into believing that our benefit as a society is the same as the benefit of the corporate class that rules over us. Right about now, some fuckwit is about to describe me as "anti-capitalist" or some synonym thereof like socialist or communist (or both since they rarely understand that the two are different things). I say, as I have said many times before, that I am not anti-capitalist. I am anti-corporatist. I am anti- the pervasive belief that capitalism should be treated as some sort of unassailable holy writ. I am anti- the belief that wealth should be valued more highly than labour. Most of all, I am anti- the belief that there is no inherant worth to a human life than their market value or how much they add to the bottom line.

Huckabee Is A Moran

2010-04-12T19:17:00.000-07:00

OK, we already knew that. But in a recent interview with a College of New Jersey student publication called "the Perspective", he described same-sex marriage and civil unions as "not necessary". The full quote is even worse:

"You don't go ahead and accommodate every behavioral pattern that is against the ideal. That would be like saying, well, there are a lot of people who like to use drugs, so let's go ahead and accommodate those who want who use drugs. There are some people who believe in incest, so we should accommodate them. There are people who believe in polygamy, so we should accommodate them."

Now personally, I have no problem with polygamy but I can see practical reasons for banning it but more to the point, Huck is just jumping on the old slippery-slope fallacy here. Incest and polygamy have nothing to do with homosexuality or same-sex marriage. Incestuous relationships are (almost) always unequal, for a start. When idiots like Huck say "where does it end?", every nation that has legalised same-sex marriage or some comparable arrangement has said it ends at two consenting unrelated adults. This isn't rocket science. People like Huck like to that if you accept one thing, you must automatically accept everything which he says must come after (most of the right does this with socialism too) but reality and legislation don't work like that. It is perfectly possible to say "yes" to same-sex marriage and then, when the sister-fuckers turn up asking to legalise incest, tell them to go to hell.

His views on same-sex raising of children are scarcely more sensible: "Children are not puppies. This is not a time to see if we can experiment and find out, how does this work?". Oh, Mikey, the ship has long since sailed on this one. See, there's this miraculous resarch tool available called "Google" and if you used it, you would discover that there has already been an awful lot of research done into the effects on kids of being raised by same-gender parents. That research says that kids of same-sex couples grow up just as healthy and happy as kids of opposite-sex couples. Besides, if you were really concerned about kids, you would be doing more to promote the raising of children by extended families. Researchers have known for years that the single best arrangement for child-rearing, the one most likely to result in a happy, wall-adjusted child, is the extended family of parents, grantparents, aunts, uncles and cousins who all pitch in to help. There are a number of ways to encourage that. But I don't see Huck pushing them.

In the end, it's becoming increasingly obvious that one simply cannot be both Republican and pro-family. The stagnation (and in many sectors, actual lowering) of real wages has had a devastating effect on families, forcing both parents to work every hour available. I'm not a fifties-nostalgia guy, I don't think a woman's place is in the kitchen but I do think that it's pretty important to have a parent (or other member of the extended family above) at home with the kids. Exactly which parent or family member is for them to work out but yeah, I think it's important that when a kid comes home from school, there's actually someone there. A lot of conservatives claim to think the same thing but they seem incapable of taking the logical next step: That the reason both parents work these days isn't some metaphysical "career woman" demon, it's because the decent working/middle class wages of the fifties which allowed parents to stay home with their kids are a thing of the past. Since the Sixties, unions have been demonised and wages (in constant dollars) have, on average, dropped by around 13% (much more in some sectors) while prices have zoomed upward (utility bills, in constant dollars, verge on outright extortion). You think THAT might have something to do with the growing number of latchkey kids? Here, the state tried to handle that by instituting Child Tax Credit and naturally, the media have now invented the myth of women who make a career out of having babies.

Where was that concern for families during the Prop 8 campaign? Gay people married, formed families and the right campaigned to prevent more families being formed. Some even campaigned to forcibly divorce those who had already married (which would have been a legal nightmare if it had passed). Here where a bunch of morans trying to split families up in the name of being pro-family. And these morans accuse the left of being anti-family.

You cannot claim to be pro-family while also acting as a pawn of a corporate class which is raping the modern family. There exists this prevailing mythology that if you give the corporate class a tax break, they'll expand their business and hire more workers, thus aiding families. It's bollocks, a complete myth. The corporation employs the exact number of people it needs to do the work it needs, at the lowest wage it can get away with paying. If it chooses to expand, it will do so by using the existing business as security and leveraging assets and that's discounting the VAST sector of the economy that doesn't actually make anything physical in the first place. Tax breaks make no difference to what the corporation chooses to do with their business. They're nice, sure and the corporation would like to have as many as possible but they don't actually affect the way it does business. But I digress.

My point is that supporting the destruction of the working and middle class simply cannot be reconciled with a claim to being pro-family. Being pro-family means supporting a decent wage and healthcare. Corporations will not give those things if they can avoid it. They will not comply with the safety regulations which ensure the breadwinner's safety if they can avoid it (and they often can, as the disaster at Big Branch demonstrated).

For Gits And Shiggles...

2010-03-15T11:10:00.000-07:00

I present to you, the one provable faith, the Church Of Google!

The Church Of Google homepage.

The Psychopathology of Ayn Rand

2010-03-01T01:51:00.000-08:00

You've probably heard of Ayn Rand. Most people have these days. She was the author of such inexplicably widely-read "novels" (really, barely-disguised political diatribes) as "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged". Her books are currently enjoying something of a boom among those who misguidedly believe they would be in the self-righteous community of "Atlases" at Galt's Gulch. The novels themselves are of only passing interest, being long, melodramatic and mediocrely written. Rather, it is the "philosophy" at the core of the novels which bears attention.

Hear ye, hear ye, I come to bury Rand, not to praise her. While numerous conservative thinkers (and, oddly, Neil Peart) have lauded Rand as a philosopher, few academic institutions include Rand or Objectivism as a philosophical discipline. Conservatives, such as Chris Sciabarra, tend to believe that the academic left decries Rand due to her anti-communist, pro-capitalist slant. Like much of the witterings of conservatives who presume to know what the left things, that presumes firstly, more power than the academic left has had in decades; secondly, assumes that the left was universally pro-communist and anti-capitalist, something which has never been true and thirdly, that Rand was saying anything worth studying. She wasn't. Rand's "philosophy" was the same defence of endless greed which mankind has been engaged in for eternity, the same attempt to place a moral cover on pure selfishness that has long been pursued by any number of exploiters down the centuries. Nietzche was, and is, pilloried for saying "God is dead", Rand is lauded for effectively saying "the self is God". There is nothing new here, save perhaps for the self-delusion that allows so many professed "Christians" to adhere to a philosophy that glorifies greed and athieism. There is also a cult-like deification of Rand by her followers and "swarming" of those who dare criticise her which reminds one very strongly of Scientology (and Glenn Beck followers but that's another matter).

There is another name for those who hold that the only proper moral consideration is the happiness of the self; for those who view empathy and compassion as weakness; who view selfishness as the only virtue: Psychopaths.

Contrary to popular belief, the psychopath is not automatically violent. Rather, the psychopath is defined by a near-complete lack of empathy. Robert Hare (who created the widely used "Hare Psychopathy Checklist") describes psychopaths as "instraspecies predators" who use a combination of charisma, manipulation, intimidation, sexuality and violence to satisfy their own desires. The more human qualities of conscience, empathy, remorse or guilt are either completely absent or extremely limited. It must be repeated that the psychopath is not necessarily violent. Indeed, many are not because their lives have never placed them in a position where violence was the only means to satisfy their desires. Many businessmen (and therefore, many politicians) profile as psychopaths because they exhibit the core characteristics or some section thereof. Ayn Rand should also be considered a psychopath.

Hare's checklist lists certain personality factors as indicative of psychopathy. The average person will perhaps exhibit one or, at most, two. The psychopath will exhibit all but on or two. In no particular order, these items are Glibness/superficial charm. After her writings became popular, Rand collected around herself a group of cultists who virtually worshipped her. However, shallow affect, the psychopath's charm is only ever superficial. As one comes to know and understand the psychopath more fully, the charm which initially attracted one to them is revealed as only skin-deep. In this, Rand was entirely textbook. She was described by most who knew her best as a bitter, friendless child who grew into an equally bitter and acidic woman. Grandiose sense of self-worth would certainly fit Rand. A woman who names her beliefs "Objectivism" out of a belief that any reasoning person who observes the objective truths of the world would necessarily come to full agreement with her would probably qualify. The fact that her little cult were required to memorise her works and discounted as "imbecilic" and "anti-life" if they asked questions simply seals the deal. Her sincere belief was that thinking freely would automatically lead to total agreement with her views. The ruthless policing of her cult would also qualify her under the Cunning/manipulative qualifier. Patholigical lying is one that Rand is probably innocent of. So far as we know, there is no reason to believe she was a pathological liar. Lack of remorse or guilt and Callous/lack of empathy could be described as "Ayn Rand syndrome". These two qualifiers are really the core of her books, philosophhy and worldview. In one of her books ([i]The Fountainhead[/i]), her "hero", Howard Roarke, blows up a housing project he designed when a minor alteration is made and then orders the jury to acquit him (the fact that, as an architect, Roarke was presumably contracted for his work and therefore, it wasn't "his" anymore piddles all over the supposed respect for property too). In Atlas Shrugged, her ode to the super-rich which imagines them going on strike against progressive taxation, Rand describes the rest of the world (without whom, let us not forget, the super-rich would be unable to make anything) is such niceties as "savages", "refuse" and "immitations of living beings". When one of the strikers engineers a train crash (because they don't just strike but commit acts of terrorism too), Rand makes it clear that she believes the murdered victims deserved their fate because they supported progressive taxation. A stewing hymn of Nietzchean will-to-power, misanthropy, failure to understand economics, feudalism and sexual politics verging on the obscene, Atlas Shrugged is full of this stuff. Her heroes spend their time both insisting that they are the heroic producers (and without labour, what are they producing exactly?) and bemoaning that others do not worship them as such. In her spare time, Rand was an admirer of serail killer William Hickman (I'll spare you the details of his crimes save to say that they were brutal even by serial killer standards), describing him as "a brilliant, unusual, exceptional boy"; "other people do not exist for him and he does not see why they should" was her evaluation of his crimes and Rand considered this worthy of praise. Finally, on the personality factor, there is Failure to accept responsibility for one's actions. Since our record of Rand's life isn't fully detailed, it's difficult to say how much she satisfied this one. Certainly, when her lover Nathaniel Branden found another partner, she blamed him rather than herself or her increasingly poisonous views. We shouldn't sympathise with Rand as injured party too much here, she was herslelf married to someone entirely different and cruel enough to carry on the affair without regard to discretion. Indeed, if the only duty of the superman is to please himself, Brendan was acting according to Rand's ideals and she should have applauded him. She once said the the USA should be a "democracy of superiors only" with "superior" being defined as "rich". One scarcely needs to point out that such a system wouldn't be democracy at all but oligarchy and interestingly elitist for all her followers claim to despise elitism.

One doesn't need to work very hard to diagnose Rand. Her life and writings paint a vivid picture of psychopathy so clear and obvious that it is only surprising so many miss it. She was a phonomenally damaged woman for whom one can feel an element of pity (an emotion that disgusted her) even while aware of how terrifically dangerous she and her philosophy was and are. Rand herself died alone except for a hired nurse. Her deranged views had driven away anyone who might have been close to her. Like L. Ron Hubbard, however, her lunatic ideas have spawned a cult that would turn all of us into happy little psychopaths; a cult that includes many of the world's foremost economists, politicians and rabble-rousers (Beck again, although "intellectual terrorist" might be more appropriate). Like George Orwell, Rand imagined a dystopian world characterised by the powerful's exploitation of the powerless. Unlike Orwell, Rand wanted to live there.

The Republican Reality Gap

2010-02-16T06:40:00.000-08:00

Ann Coulter once said that liberals "take a perverse joy in lying", that liberals actively enjoy telling untruths. She was, of course, wrong about liberals (as she would have difficulty even understanding a thought process so different to her own) but I am increasingly of the opinion that her remarks were correct if applied to conservatives (projection, in other words). How else can one explain the warped version of reality which so many conservatives carry around in their heads? I'm not talking about subjects which reasonable people can disagree on, like the existence and disposition of god(s) or the merits of direct democracy. Those are issues without clear answer which reasonable people can have a discussion about. I'm talking about believing and not just believing but vehemently defending beliefs which are provably, factually wrong. Believing something which is untrue would be understandable if it were done out of ignorance but such people, when exposed to the facts, will vehemently attack or dismiss them and often the messenger as well. In an individual, this would be considered mental illness (and in the case of some, such as Glenn Beck, that would be an accurate description) but the mental health community is understandably reluctant to label whole swathes of the public as crazy. If someone believes they are being followed by a man-eating hedgehog, you can just give them a heavy stick and a chair to stand on and let them get on with it but when a whole section of the public is holding beliefs which are no less crazy, those beliefs somehow become an accepted part of the public dialogue. For example:

- Fascism is a left-wing ideaology
I think it was Goldberg who started this one. Since the end of WWII, fascism has been identified as a right-wing (right-fringe, really) ideaology. There has never been any significant doubt about that. It's only fairly recently that some conservatives have decided that everything unpleasent is teh fault of the left and so, fascism must be a left-wing ideaology. Partly, this is based on the mistaken belief that state control of everything was the aim of communism, rather than the result of communism being unworkable in the real world. It's the same mentality which claims that because I dislike legal abortion, child molestation and homosexuality, all those things must be caused by the teaching of evolution, which I also dislike. One can find the same mindset in those who tout that the Weather Underground proves that the left is more likely to be violent while forgetting, for example, Timothy McVeigh. It's rewriting history, stealing history really, for use as partisan political points. And while we're on the subject:

- Obama is a socialist/communist
This one is based on a misreading of history so obvious that it must have been deliberate. To claim that Obama, a wimpish moderate in any sane world, is socialist in any way is not just wrong but outright insane and yet, it persists. And it persists because most people don't actually know what "socialism" means. They don't understand that when socialism says "communal ownership of the means of production and distribution", it means ALL the means, not just an interest or equity in a few firms which would otherwise have collapsed. But the right-wing media machine doesn't like that reality and so, they endlessly promote the lie that any communal ownership of anything is automatically socialist. Part of me wonders if this societal case of the fallacy of the excluded middle is the result of decades of Cold War rhetoric or simply the decades of propoganda on behalf of capitalism or if there is even a difference between the two.

- Republicans have been better for minorities
There are two strands to this one. The first is based on a very selective misreading of history. There certainly was a time when Republicans were the better party for minorities, that's inarguable. The Democrats, pressured by a group of conservative Southern members known as "Dixiecrats" were rotten for minorities for some time. But this reading of history ignores everything that's happened since integration, when the Dixiecrats almost universally defected to the Republican party. Since then, the Democrats have (overall and in general) been better at minority rights. And minorities know it. There was a time when black people almost universally voted Republican, seeing it as the party of Lincoln. These days, better than 90% of black people vote Democrat. Which brings us onto the second strand of this argument. This strand holds that minorities typically vote for Democrats because Democrats give them more "government hand-outs". Now, firstly, let's remember that it was Bill Clinton who ended welfare as an entitlement program (for which, I don't think he's been criticised enough) but secondly, notice the inherent bias and racism in the allegation. It assumes that A) government can never do anything good and B) that black people will vote for Democrats because they're all lazy work-shys who depend on "government hand-outs". Sometimes, for those less overt with their racism, some vague theory about a "culture of dependence" will be added.

Those are just three examples of what could be dozens. Indeed, so devoted are conservatives to their alternate universe view of reality that I could write a book on the subject (and may yet do so). To be a conservative, it seems, is to be a conspiracist; to believe that there exists some secret cabal of leftie elites constantly rewriting the world in their favour (at which, the leftie responds "have you seen us? We can't even keep a radio station running"). This is what psychologists call "projection", the seeing of one's own faults in others and it is agravated by the conservative trend toward "purity" i.e. calling oneself a Republican means accepting all these points wholesale or we'll call you a RINO and make you a non-person in the party. A whole faction of the populace believes that Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and President Obama are left-fringe radicals (and "left-wing radical" now means anything to the left of Bush who really was a radical) and if you call these people crazy, which would seem the obvious reasponse, they start screaming about Stalin labelling people insane and protesting their patriotism (every kook, crank and domestic terrorist in American history has proclaimed their patriotism). You cannot reason with these people because they have left reason entirely behind. Rather, their allegiance to this talking point version of reality is closer to that of a religion or cult, their accusations of liberals worshipping Obama as a messiah just more of their endless projection (and nowehere is this more true than of Glenn Beck's acolytes who swarm liberal publications whenever an article is unflattering of Dear Leader). The conservative model is well established by this point: Lie about something until you convince a small portion of the populace, force publications to label well-established facts as controversial and then shout "teach the controversy!" and rely on social pressure to do the rest.

So, how can they be beaten? I'm honestly unsure. Education would be an obvious point but children spend far more time learning the talking point reality at home than they do learning the reality-based version at school and the textbooks of those schools are now largely drawn to Texas standards and already corrupted anyway. Conservative control of the media is now so pervasive and so entrenched that we should expect no help from that quarter either. I wish I had an answer but every future I envision ends up with the USA accepting a version of reality entirely at odds with the one the rest of the world accepts.

Just Occasionally, It's All Worthwhile...

2010-02-10T22:10:00.001-08:00

So, I have this thing set up to email me when I get a comment. Mainly, I do this for spam-filtering services. You know the kind of thing; fake rolexes, boner pills, that kind of stuff. This morning, I'm sat here reading news and just pondering the idea of hitting the hay when an email drops into my inbox telling me that someone has commented on an old post (this one, if you're curious: http://ebonscave.blogspot.com/2009/10/ever-get-feeling-you-just-cant-win.html ). "Odd", thinks I and open it. THIS is the message I find:

Man, you are a freaking monster!
If you want to see what happens to humans when they stray from God and indulge their perversions, look into the mirror.
There are not enough psycotrophic drugs in the world to quiet the monsters in your head.
Know this:
God does NOT hate because you are a sick perverse queer liberal, rather you ARE a sick perverse queer liberal BECAUSE God hates you.
Get help and not from those Tools Of Satan at the DUmp!

There is only one possible response to this: BWA-HA-HA!

This comes from "Anonymous" (because apparently, when you're an obnoxious Christian crusader, you don't have the guts to even use your handle) who apparently thinks that a tirade of abuse from him would make a real impact on me (and no, Anon, reproducing your mail to mock you is not the same thing) and it has; it's massively brightened up my day. Not as amusing as the guy who sent me a formal anathema (I have that printed and pinned to my wall) but pretty good all the same.

See, I'm not usually someone who likes to divide the world into "types". I have a little more respect for the wonderous variety of humanity than that. But there is a certain type that I know well and loathe; self-righteous ultraconservative bigots and I figure that if they hate me, I must be doing something right. It's kind of like Hitler cussing you out (pardon my Godwins), you automatically know you're on the right side. Now, some Christians like to point to lines like that and sarcastically say "oh, how tolerant of you" but firstly, that's just playing word games and secondly, not to go all schoolyard on you, but he started it.

But, my dear Anon, you did get one thing right. I AM a tool of Satan. Matter of fact, I'm a worshipper of Satan, I willingly pledge my service to the lord of darkness and shadows and unlike your god, mine doesn't forbid sorcery. Are the shadows around you getting a little deeper, Anon, can you smell something odd? That's brimstone, my sweet little zealot. I should run to bed if I were you. Snuggle yourself up and pretend you don't feel anything unusual. Go on. We couldn't think any the less of you than we do already.

The United States Died Today

2010-01-21T22:27:00.000-08:00

The ramifications of yesterday's Citizen's United decision are difficult to comprehend. In one fell swoop, in a decision which relied on no precedent or legal rule, the Supreme Court of Justice Roberts destroyed any and all limits on corporate financing of campaigns. No, it's too big. Let's walk back a little and take a brief look at how we got here.

In a decision in the nineteenth century, a no less misguided Supreme Court decided that corporations were, in certain important respects, persons and thus entitled to some of the protections laid out in the United States Constitution. Too much ancient history for you? OK, perhaps you'd feel better if we only went back about thirty years. It was about thirty years ago that the public began to be fed an endless diet of anti-union propoganda. Not coincidently, that coincided with the rise in Washington of a class of politicians who believed Ayn Rand was right; that corporations should be entirely unregulated. My opinions on Rand are fairly irrelevent here (although I believe she may be the most evil woman in history) but what that led to was a systematic dismantling of the limits on corporate activities that had been put in place after the Great Depression (also caused by corporations). Those politicians, in union with a media almost completely controlled by the right-wing, preached that the corporation was your friend and the public, so forgetful, so endlessly trusting, believed them.

Perhaps you would say that, since today's decision was made by judges, not politicians, that political movement is irrelevent. Sadly, that's untrue. Judges are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Congress. Because of that, the only judges considered for selection are those whose worldview matches that of their selector. President Reagan would not have even considered a judge who was pro-choice, for example. Confirmation is a little more complex but, given the Republican minority's effective current veto power (via their unprecedented lockstep filibuster on absolutely everything and no, wingers, the Democrats were nowhere near this bad to Bush) can be worked around. Bush just went with recess appointments (and it's unclear whether that was even meant to apply to judicial nominations). The lifetime appointments given the Supreme Court justices were originally meant to insulate judges from political pressures. In reality, they've done exactly the opposite and simply given a lifetime term to any justice's political biases.

Ah, now we can get to the ramifications of the decision. Keith Olbermann did a good job of scratching the surface in his special comment yesterday but, given the time limits of his medium, he could go only so far. Let's start with these: A lowering and eventual abolition of corporate taxes and, shortly thereafter, of taxes on the rich who run those corporations. How about the abolition of minimum wage laws? From now on, your salary will be whatever the corporation decides to pay you. Think you can go to another corporation and get paid better? Good luck. With corporations in control of Congress, expect ever more incentives to move jobs overseas. You're going to be competing for jobs with ever more people and if you won't take that job for fifty cents an hour, there's someone who will. Oh yeah, your taxes are going to go up as well. With the lowering and elimination of corporat tax and taxes on the wealthy, the money has to come from somewhere and it's going to come from you.

Oh, you think the politicians wouldn't go that far? Sorry, you will now choose your politicians from a pool of candidates funded (and therefore, vetted and approved) by the corporations. The corporations now control whether your politicians get elected and that means that politicians will do whatever the corporation demands. From now on, you don't have a senator from California, you have a senator from Aetna or Wellpoint or... Well, pick a corporation.

The dream of the corporations is and always has been to have a class of people rich enough to buy their crap and a much larger class poor enough and desperate enough to work for pennies to make their crap. So you can kiss any form of healthcare reform goodbye. If you get sick, tough luck, you're fired and out to starve in the gutter. Any and all forms of employee protection will go. You will now be employed for as long as the corporation wants you, at whatever wages they want to pay. Forget workplace safety laws, forget employer funded healthcare. Forget the enviroment too. The corporate sector has always resisted enviromental protections and now, they're in a position to do something about it. Forget same-sex marriage, some red meat thrown to the evangelicals while the corporations take over. Reproductive choice will go the same way and, since the corporation always wants to lower wages, ever more people competing for ever fewer jobs is always in their interests. Forget banking reform too, there are few corporations more powerful. Credit card reform is the same story. Oh, and forget consumer protections as well. So your drugs may or may not work anymore. Expect more wars, expect a draft or "national service" because the corporations that manufacture bullets and bombs and all that fancy equipment are still corporations, after all.

Think I'm being too alarmist? Perhaps. But look up the position of the average person during the Great Depression, or the Dark Ages or any age where those with the gold ruled openly. Your wages have already stagnated for years. Now, with nothing to stop them, they're going to start falling. Expect the few remaining rules on media ownership to be swept aside as well. The corporations need to control those to control you, to keep you distracted.

So who can you turn to to save you? Sorry, there's not much better news here. A Supreme Court decision, through the doctrine of stare decisis, establishes enforceable law for all courts within US jurisdiction. Through the principle of judicial review, any law passed by Congress will have to be compatible with this decision or it will simply be overturned, either by the Supreme Court or by a lower court with no choice but to follow this precedent. You could try for a Constitutional amendment, the Supreme Court can't overrule that but the chances of getting a Constitutional amendment through Congress with the current Republican veto are nil and if you think a lter Republican Congress will do so, you're dreaming. The Republican party has become the political arm of the business lobby and, through the right's control of the media, has managed to convince much of the populace that that's a good thing.

Enjoy your remaining time to complain about this on the internet as well. Because Net Neutrality will shortly become a thing of the past. And if you think "the people" are going to rise up and institute a revolution, forget it. History shows us that revolutions only happen when people's basic needs are threatened or removed and even then, it's only fifty-fifty. Bread and circuses. If the bellies of "the people" are full and they have, say, American Idol to distract them, they may grumble but, chances are, they won't do anything about it. They'll go to the polls every few years and cast their vote for the corporate-approved shill who sounds slightly better than the other corporate-approved shill. The people of Germany didn't rebel against Hitler, nor did the people of Rome rebel against Nero. Until the food stops coming, there will be no revolution and even if there was, who do you think makes your guns and bullets? I can make ammo, as can a lot of firearms hobbyists but the gun you need to fire them comes from those same corporations and, incidently, the chances are fairly good that you'd be too busy fending off the poor bastards now starving in the streets to take up arms against the corporations.

Amid all the accusations of socialism and communism the right has been throwing around lately, it seems that fascism has snuck in by the back door (shh, don't tell the wingers, they think fascism was a left-wing ideaology). Mussolini, the original fascist leader, once said that fascism should more properly be called corporatism as it represented the union of state and corporate power. "The people" or, as I like to call them, "the mob" may not know this because their education has been woefully limited and they have been lied to their whole lives but corporate control of the political sphere is the very definition of fascism. There might not be tanks in the streets (as people seem to believe fascism requires) but it's fascism all the same. You now live in a fascist country.

Let me put this in simple terms so that it cannot be misunderstood: The American experiment is over, it failed. Government of, by and for the people is done. Legislators are now for sale to the highest bidder. Government is now (as Olbermann brilliantly said) of the people, by the corporation, for the corporation. If you want to know what the future looks like, read some William Gibson or the rulebook for the roleplaying game Shadowrun (although, sadly, you won't get the magic). You have, generously, five years to destroy this monstrous decision, to save your country and the dream of America. If this decision is not overturned, cut down or otherwise circumvented, your entire way of life is over.

Get to work.

"Saint Peter, don't you call me 'cause I can't go / I owe my soul to the company store" ~ Johnny Cash

More lies from Prop 8 trial.

2010-01-17T22:53:00.000-08:00

The majority of this article was written way back when same-sex marriage was initially legalised in California. With the current court battle over the constitutionality of the ban on same-sex marriage and the anti-marriage side's odd decision to drag homosexuality itself into the dock, it seemed like a good time to revise and reprint this article.

“The judges overturned the will of the people” ~ It is not the job of the judicial branch to uphold the wishes of the majority. There is a very good reason why very few states and virtually no civilised nations elect judges and that is because it would open them to the same pressures as politicians face. Judges are deliberately insulated from the political process to ensure that they don’t have to follow “the will of the people”. The judges were asked to rule on whether the state’s ban on same-sex marriage conflicted with the state constitution’s ban on discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation. They decided it did. making that decision was their only responsibility. Not enforcing the will of the people, not following the prevailing political winds, simply stating the law as they understood it. If the judiciary’s only function was to rubber-stamp “the will of the people”, there would be little point having them. The judicial branch is independent to guard against the tyranny of the majority, not to enable it. UPDATE: If the current case leads to the decision that the ban is unconstitutional, then we can expect to see this argument and the one below used ad infinitum by the right but it still doesn't change the fact that it is not the judiciary's job to enforce the will of the people. Not least because "will of the people" is so often so close to "whim of the mob".

“Activist judges / legislating from the bench” ~ The phrase “activist judges” has only ever meant “a decision I disagree with”. Of the seven judges who made this decision, six were appointed by Republicans and California currently has a Republican governor, not the kind of people normally slandered with cries of judicial activism. As anyone who has ever studied law knows, it is utterly impossible for a judge to avoid legislating from the bench. In any case at all (except Bush V. Gore), the decision establishes a legal precedent. By the principle of stare decisis (roughly “the court stands on it’s previous decisions”), that precedent then has the force of law to all lower courts unless and until it is overturned, thus establishing law and thus, legislating from the bench. That is how the legal process is supposed to work. It is, in a very real sense, the essence of what judges do. Further, the cry of activism can only ever have any weight (beyond the previously mentioned “decision I dislike”) if a decision is made without firm legal reasoning. In this case, the legal reasoning was entirely sound. The wording of both the State Constitution and the marriage act were exceedingly clear and the court also drew on the decision made in Loving which established the right to marriage as a fundamental right. That is a well-reasoned, well-thought out judicial opinion. UPDATE: Not much to add to this one as the above comments still hold true but an additional point should be made. Laypeople often believe that judges have a great deal more lattitude in their decisions than they actually do. In fact, judicial decisions are constrained by a legal doctrine called stare decisis. Stare decisis is legal shorthand for the principle that similar cases will be decided in a similar manner (mutatis mutandis, obviously). What that means is that courts are divided into strict heirarchy. If, say, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals renders a decision, every court in that jurisdiction below them is obliged to render the same decision in same circumstances. This was part of what caused the Ricci case which got Justice Sotomayor in such trouble. Standing precedent (i.e. a case which established the policy of how a particular point of law is treated) said that tests which produced a disproportionate response could be thrown out, even if the disproportionate response was unintentional. Justice Sotomayor rightly applied the existing precedent in that case and kicked the case up to the SCOTUS so they could revise the precedent (which they duly did). The point here is that judges do not make their decisions by consulting a Magic 8-Ball. The law is a complex system of competing precedents, rules of procedure and presumptions. When the layman doesn't understand how that system works, the correct response is to ask for an explanation, not scream "ACTIVIST JUDGE!".

“Now people will be able to marry children/dogs/box turtles” ~ First off, there is no evidence whatsoever that gay people abuse children any more frequently than hetero people and a certain amount of evidence suggesting exactly the opposite. Secondly and more importantly, marriage is (shorn of the religious connotations) a state-sanctioned contract. Children cannot consent to a contract, nor to sexual intercourse so when one is asked “where do we draw the line?”, the appropriate answer would probably be “at people who are able to give consent”. While we’re on the subject, animals are also judged unable to give consent so leave that one at home too. UPDATE: This one is still true as well. Despite the pro-8 side's constant attempts to hammer it into the public mind, there is still no credible evidence that gay people abuse children any more than straight people.

“They’re free to marry someone of the opposite sex, like anyone else so same-sex marriage is a special right” ~ There is a reason the phrase “one size fits all” appears in no known constitution or bill of laws anywhere. If you wish to apply that argument, one can as easily shut down every church except the Satanists, not our fault if you choose to be something different or we could enforce vegetarianism, not our fault if you like a steak. Quite apart from the absurdity of the argument, it becomes rather more sinister when you flip it around: If the government can say I only have the right to marry a woman, why can it not say I only have the right to marry some women? Or this woman? Or this aardvark? A reasonable argument can be made for limiting marriage to two people out of sheer practicality and the need to maintain a tax base but beyond that, allowing the state to decide which people can marry sets a dangerous precedent. UPDATE: This one is still around, although people are becoming more aware of how absurd it is. The "special rights" argument is still ridiculous. If same-sex couples get the right to marry, it won't be limited to gay people. You, average straight person, will have the right to marry Bob from the office if you want to as well. What, that's still a special right because you wouldn't want to? Welcome to the gay couple's current position.

“Marriage has always been between a man and a woman” ~ So was child labour, so was miscegenation, so was slavery. Everything is “always” until we decide it’s something else. The satirist Terry Pratchett once described tradition as “the name we give to something daft we’ve been doing a long time”. His point was not that tradition is inherently a bad thing but that holding a tradition simply because it had always been a tradition was absurd. Until quite (shamefully) recently, it had “always” been legal to force sex upon one’s wife. And then the world grew up and realised that was foul and changed it. Humanity is not static, what was done does not have to continue to be done. If humanity had stuck with what it had “always” done, we would be eating our meat raw and living in a tree. Respect the last by all means but don’t be a slave to it and, when necessary, be willing to learn from it’s mistakes. UPDATE: Since Rick Warren was stupid enough to insist that marriage had been "one man, one woman" for "five thousand years", it's worth debunking that. For most of human history, polygamy was the rule, largely to cope with epidemic child mortality rates. In certain cultures, polygamy is still the rule. For example, Islam allows a man to take four wives (many Muslims do not do so but the option is clearly allowed by the Qu'ran). Then, in the western world, marriage became an exchange of property. The groom purchased the bride from the bride's father. In ancient Egypt, incest was common among the ruling class. In fact, the current arrangement of one-man and one-woman as relative equals is quite recent. Further, many cultures have or had same-sex marriage or local equivelant. Same-sex unions were recognised in ancient Greece and Rome at various times, parts of China and various parts of Europe. The emperors Nero (who was admittedly insane) and Elagabalus (who wasn't) both married men. While records from this period are patchy, the practice was evidently widespread enough that the Roman emperor Constantinius II felt the need to outlaw same-sex unions in 342ad. Finally, one only needs to look at the Sacred Band of Thebes (who also destroy the argument against gays in the military). The Sacred Band were an elite force of around 300 men in the 4th century Theban army. What made them unique was that the entire force consisted of around 150 bonded gay couples. The rationale was that, while a man may abandon his comrade, he would fight through hell to protect his love. It worked. The Sacred Band defeated a Spartan army three times their size at the battle of Tegyra. The one time they were defeated, at the battle of Chaeronea, they had to be massacred almost to a man. The Theban army, outmatched by Macedonia's invention of the phalanx, broke and fled the field with it's allies but the Sacred Band refused to surrender. They held their ground and fell where they stood. The only members of the Sacred Band taken as prisoners were those too injured to fight on. When Phillip II encountered the corpses of the Sacred Band (virtually the entire company, remember), "piled one upon another", he said "perish any man who suspects that these men did or suffered anything unseemly".

“God says it’s immoral” ~ Got God’s fax number? Willing to share it? Then it’s just your opinion. You may have an elderly book that says your god feels this way but I have a book which says otherwise and since neither of us can prove our case or disprove the others, let’s just leave everyone’s gods out of the equation. Or, to quote Sir Francis Walsingham: “Is your god such a worldly god that he must play at politics?”. UPDATE: As "Prop 8: The Musical" reminds us, the Bible also codemns homosexuality in exactly the same language as it condemns eating shellfish. The Bible also allows stoning one's wife, selling one's daughter into slavery and slavery in general.

“It’s unnatural” ~ So is wearing clothes, driving cars, modern medicine, corporations and American Idol. The life of man in a state of nature is nasty, brutish and short. The entirety of human existence has been a flight away from nature, a drive to modify nature to our own ends. That is what has made us the dominant species on the planet and, because we never know when to stop, is killing the planet. Homosexuality has been observed in at least a hundred species (last time I checked, it may be even more now). If animals in the state of nature do it, it is natural by definition. UPDATE: At time of writing, homosexual behaviour (that is, choosing to engage in same-sex coupling even when a mate of the opposite sex was available) has been observed in around 1500 species. In about a third of those, homosexuality is both common and well-documented. It's not difficult to find examples of this. From the German penguins who formed same-sex couples to near-uniformly bisexual bonobos to gay bison so common that Native American peoples have distinct names for them, homosexuality is natural. Case closed.

“It will encourage homosexuality” ~ You can’t encourage an inborn trait. All the
evidence, while not entirely conclusive yet, indicates that homosexuality is almost certainly innate. More to the point, what do you think is going to happen? Are otherwise hetero kids going to notice two guys getting married and think “I’m cured, I want the boys!”. If gay people have been being gay and living as gay and coming out as gay despite the ban on same-sex marriage and despite the phenomenal pressures to be straight and conform and despite the (decreasing but still very prevalent) threat of physical violence, we can safely assume that suppressing gay people hasn’t worked. UPDATE: Still true.

“It will destroy the sanctity of marriage” ~ OK, first off, let’s talk about that sanctity. Last time I checked, the divorce rate was around fifty percent and around eighty percent of married people (men and women) will cheat at some point in their married life so marriage doesn’t currently seem to be very sanctified anyway. Secondly, do you honestly believe that gay people getting married will have any effect on hetero marriages (beyond the minuscule effect on tax revenues)? Straight people are not going to stop getting married purely because marriage is no longer exclusive to them, the human mind doesn’t work that way. UPDATE: This one seems to be what the pro-8 forces are basing their argument on. Hilariously, they've run into a judge who seems determined to make them prove it. There are an increasing number of nations which have legalised same-sex marriage or (as my own UK has) an indentical-in-everything-but-name arrangement. Surprise, straight people in those nations are still getting married. The world keeps turning.

"If gay people can marry, they'll be raising children" ~ This one's a new entry with the prop-8 trial. And the only rational response is "So?". There's quite a lot of research on the effects that being raised by a same-sex couple has on children (just Google it, it's fascinating stuff) and, while the nature of sociological research means that uniform agreement is impossible, the vast preponderence of the research says that children raised by same-sex couples do just as well in every way as kids raised by hetero couples. In certain areas, they actually do slightly better (for example, kids raised by lesbian parents are less likely to develop mental illnesses). There's a tendancy among anti-gay people to claim that children need role models of both genders and that part's true, kids really do need role models of both male and female genders. Where they screw up is assuming that those roles have to be filled by parents, they don't. The child of a lesbian couple (for example) can just as easily gain a male role model from an elder sibling or relative, an involved teacher or coach or their parent's friends (few couples have friends exclusively of one gender). I was raised by my grandmother for most of my formative years and turned out fairly masculine, I even have a beard (the kind that grows on one's face). Moreover, if such people were honestly concerned about a child's wellbeing (rather than just having a convient excuse to be anti-gay), they would pay more attention to the plethora of research which says that the single best model for childrearing is the extended family. It has been proven time and again that the extended family, the traditional close-knit collection of parents, aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents where everyone pitches in to help raise a child, turns out the most well-adjusted children. That was the normal method of raising children for most of human history although now, as families now live apart more often, it's becoming rarer. Of course, one could also point out how much this argument is based on socially constructed gender roles but I have no desire to turn this into an essay on gender roles and societal expectations.
Further still, one could point out that, due to biology, most gay couples who have children choose to have them. Unlike a straight couple who can concieve a child by accident, a gay couple either has children from a previous relationship who they have chosen (and normally, had to fight) to keep with them or have gone through a very long and trying process to adopt or concieve a child. Thus, that child is very much wanted and loved. A child who feels loved, regardless of the gender of his/her parents will always turn out better adjusted emotionally than one who does not.

Here's How To Win Hearts And Minds

2010-01-02T20:13:00.000-08:00

Sponsor the local baseball team: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/72174.html

Sports, especially team sports, have an ability to bring people together which is second only to music. And every time an Iraqi watchs their baseball team play a game now, they're going to know that some nice people in the USA donated the equipment. For the price of some sports equipment, you just won more hearts and minds than you have in the entire occupation so far.

So, me being me, let's take it over the top and sponsor the entire Iraqi sports community. I'm sure Iraqis play football (soccer to you on the wrong side of the Atlantic), the whole world plays football so let's send them some of Dunlop's best balls, a bunch of studs (cleats) in assorted sizes and some shorts and shirts. I'm pretty sure Iraq must have a basketball scene so lets send them some hoops and balls, a few pairs of Nike's best. In fact, let's help Iraq organise a Pan-Islamic Games. I'm 99.9% sure that the cost of sending a few plane loads of assorted sports equipment is going to be a fuckload cheaper than keeping troops there until the end of time. A lot of Arabic countries have a great deal of national pride. You're not going to change that, you're never going to grind it down so let's channel it into something positive.

The Year Of Living Cautiously

2009-12-26T14:33:00.000-08:00

Back when the Democratic primary was in full flame, I supported Dennis Kucinich. Kooch (as he is affectionatly known in some areas of the webway) is considered a kook-end radical leftie in the States, someone one step away from Mao but I'm English and, odd personal habits aside, he'd be a perfectly respectable LibDem here. But the American electorate are stupid (as is the electorate in every country) and, unlike most countries, the American media is entirely corporate owned and led and tilts so far right that they can make people believe the centreist Obama is further left than Stalin. So Kooch was out pretty much before the race started. Then I supported John Edwards because he was the only one saying anything much about poverty. But Edwards was removed (and, as it turned out, fatally compromised anyway).

So that left Hillary and Obama. And for a long time, I thought either would do. By their own admission, their policies were virtually identical. Hillary's healthcare plan was better but she seemed to have a rather hawkish foreign policy. Hillary has very high negatives but Obama had almost zero experiance. Obama had Rev Wright (Ayers was never an issue) but Hillary had made some really fucking moronic comments about violent video games. So, not much to choose between them. In the end, it came down to that wonderful speech Obama made about race to end the Rev. Wright fiasco. No, not because it was some transformative political experiance. I'm not that naive. No, that changed my mind because it was the first time in about twenty years that I can remember a politician (apart from Kooch) addressing the public as if they were adults who could understand nuance, subtlety and context. And that swung me for Obama. Not by much, not a die-hard supporter by any means but he would do. Decent guy, no real skeletons in the closet (no, Fox's 24/7 attempts to turn Ayers and Wright into skeletons don't count, Fox would have personally murdered Obama by now if they could), policies about as liberal as is possible in the US and certainly as possible as the ultraright American media (that is, all of it bar about four hours a day on MSNBC) would allow, kids are cute as a button. Yeah, he'll do. So I supported Obama but not with any great enthuasiasm. I'm a die-hard liberal and there are only about a dozen liberals in the entire US government and Obama isn't and never was one of them. But of the unappetising options, I went for that one. I was pleased when he brought Hillary into the Cabinet since I thought that would be the best of both worlds although I thought she would have fit better at HHS than State (remember, I think her healthcare plan was better) but still, good move.

So why am I now wondering if we've been hoodwinked here?

Well, there's a lot of reasons but let's start with gay rights. Now, personally, I think gay marriage (or an identical-in-everything-but-name arrangement like we have here) is a moral must. I think it is utterly immoral to deny gay people the chance to marry (or have the previously mentioned all-but-identical legal option). But Obama doesn't agree and we knew that going in and, with the exception of Kooch, nor did anyone else so we shouldn't have expected agreement on that one. What Obama did say he would support though, was civil partnership, the repeal of DOMA and the repeal of the asinine Don't-Ask, Don't-Tell. Current score is that DADT is still on the books, Obama hasn't ordered it to stop being enforced pending a full repeal (which could be done by executive order fairly quickly) and he hasn't mentioned repealing DOMA in months. His administration has actually defended DOMA (their obligation, as I understand it) and done so in the most repulsive terms (certainly not their obligation). Oh yeah, and he invited Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration but I'm willing to let that slide as just a tin-eared mistake.

But perhaps you say Obama has been too busy trying to stop the economy imploding to devote time to gay rights issues? That's a reasonable arguement. So what has been done about the economy? The stimulus package passed was far too small and too much of it was tax cuts (in terms of stimulus, tax cuts are exactly the least effective method). Tim Geithner was installed at the Treasury and the right instantly tried to drum up the story that he was a tax cheat. Actually, all they proved is that the tax code is impossible for humans to understand. That's not my problem with Timmy. My problem with him is that he's a Wall Street bootlick, he's inculated in that Wall St culture where, as Michael Douglas said (and incidently, summed up Ayn Rand's entire "philosophy" in three words) "greed is good". Maybe the bailout was necessary, that's certainly a reasonable argument (albeit, one I disagree with) but were the collosal bonuses really necessary? Was there any reason not to pass legislation limiting those bonuses to, say, a figure one human could concievably spend in a lifetime? Don't misunderstand me, there's a lot of blame to go around for the financial implosion. Reagan's decimation of the middle class and stripping the Republicans of their few principles started it; Clinton did little to repair the damage and DimBulb made it even worse and numerous CongressCritters on both sides bear some blame as well but Timmy is currently in the hot seat so he has to carry the can.

How about healthcare reform? Well, how about some? The leadership of the Obama admin on healthcare has been lacking to put it very mildly. Now, I live under a single-payer system here (the NHS). All my care, both physical and mental, is covered by taxes. That's the real left-wing option, that's what real "socialised medicine" would look like but that option was taken off the table even before the election. So, instead, the public option (which was the compromise position in the first place) has been painted as to the left of Stalin. The bill currently winding it's way through Congress includes a public option that very few people could get but that would save money (the right, as usual, are just plain lying when they say it would cost money), eliminates the pre-existing conditions barbarity and incorporates a few efficiency measures. It's better than nothing but not by much. I'm leaving the atrocious Stupak-Pitts amendment aside because, as disgusting as it is, the Obama admin had no input whatsoever on that. Why hasn't Obama been out front twisting arms (both literally and figuratively) to get this bloody thing passed? The bill which, as of writing, just passed the Senate, has no public option, no Medicare buy-in and, most importantly, no competition or incentive to lower prices. What is included is a mandate, an obligation to carry some form of insurance. Hooo boy, this is a mistake. Now, apparently, there will be subsidies for the poorest to purchase insurance (which I'd be willing to bet will be far too little) but, with no public option or Medicare buy-in, the premium you will be forced to buy will cost whatever the insurance company feels like charging.

On foreign policy, Obama can claim some successes. While Republicans keep harping on about "a worldwide apology tour" (they seem to take it as a badge of pride if the rest of the world hates them), the foreign policy team (and Sec. Clinton has been a shining example here) has been mostly successful. Iran has refused to abandon their nuclear ambitions but they would have been immovable regardless. More importantly, the majority of the western world now holds a favourable view of the USA again. That's important and not for any conservative-baiting touchy-feely reason but because it makes the rest of the western world more likely to back the US's plays.

Another minor victory was the signing of the Lilly Ledbetter Act. The Act amends the Civil Rights Act (1964) in a minor, but very important, way. Previously, those discriminated against in pay had a 180-day "window" in which to file suit. In many cases, that would mean that the window expired before the victim was aware of the disparity in pay. The Ledbetter Act alters that so that the 180-day period "resets" with each discriminatory paycheque received. That's a relatively minor change which will make life that bit better for numerous people across the country. Congress can also be rightly proud of the Credit CARD Act, a catalogue of minor changes to credit card regulations which will, taken together, make life for users of credit cards a little easier. Predictably, the credit industry loathed it but that was to be expected. One surprise in the bill was Tom Coburn's attaching an amendment which allowed firearms to be carried in natural parks. This serves to illustrate hos ridiculous the system of unlimited amendments can get. I personally don't have any problem with the rule change but what the hell did it have to do with credit card regulation?

One last thing must be touched upon with regard to Obama's first year: The refusal to bring prosecutions, or even investigate, the war crimes committed by the Bush administration. The logic of refusing to pursue this is obvious, it would monopolise political debate in the US and allow Republicans to claim that the Obama admin was criminalising policies they disagree with (although they're already doing that). Morally, however, there is no excuse. Failing to prosecute such obvious and admitted crimes for political reasons is the height of moral cowardice.

Finally, no discussion of Obama's first year (even one as rushed and circumspect as this) would be complete without a quick examination of the right's breakdown. That the Birther's racist claims are still being voiced was perhaps to be expected; the redefining of "socialism" to mean "anything remotely on the political left" was predictable in light of how rightward the political spectrum in the US tilts but what could not have been predicted was the healthcare mobs, the "Tea parties" (whose only uniting principle seems to be hatred of Obama), the climate of intimidation and violence. All of which is rationalised by the right, excused. While a few marginal figures on the left compared Bush to Hitler, those few marginals are now used by the right to excuse the constant comparison between Obama and Hitler (ignoring that Nazism, and fascism generally, are extreme-right ideaologies). In my spare time, I study criminal psychology. Part of that is learning the difference between psychopaths and psychotics. Dick Cheney was and is a psychopath: Lacking conscience or remorse, uncaring of anyone but himself and his loved ones (psychopaths can feel love although not in the way that we do). Michelle Bachman is a psychotic, she is suffering a clear and discernable break from reality. Not in terms of things that reasonable people can disagree with like the existence or nature of God or the proper role of military force but believing in things which are provably, factually untrue. When observing the "tea party" crowd, one has to ask if it's possible for a whole segment of society to suffer from a psychotic break. Because the things this crowd believe, from "death panels" (which Palin is now attempting to claim meant a reference to rationed care) to "pulling the plug on grandma" to "taxed enough already" to the ubiquitous claim that Olbermann and Maddow are the same as Glenn Beck are immense. They can't be reconciled with reality. Moreover, they take the same form of self-preservation as many psychotics: The accusation that those pointing out the illness are themselves agents of the conspiracy against them. How does one reason with such people?

The Healthcare Bill: One Part Awesome To Four Parts Suck

2009-12-16T15:11:00.000-08:00

There are things to celebrate in this healthcare bill. Not many but there's a couple. The major one's are a ban on pre-existing conditions and recission. The pre-existing conditions thing has been an immoral, lunatic clause for years. Quite apart from anything else, it made people with lifelong conditions (diabetes, for example) either impossible or prohibitively expensive to cover. So that's a good thing. Likewise, the ban on recission is a plus. If you don't know, "recission" is a very nasty trick that insurance companies use all the time where they cut off your insurance as soon as you need it. You pay your premiums for years and, as soon as you get something expensive (cancer, say), they cut off your care. That's not insurance, that's a lottery. So that's gone too and that's a gain. Last I heard, there was also a cap on profits at 10%. That's good and 10% is reasonable but I don't have much faith it'll make any difference. I'll get to why in a second.

Now, let's get to the suck.

First off, the Medicare buy-in is dead. So is the public option. The former can be laid on Joe Lieberman, the latter on conservative Dems and Republicans generally. We'll get to them later. What isn't in the bill is even more important. There is nothing in this bill which will control costs. No additional competition for insurance companies (and I've never been convinced that would do much good anyway) and no cap on premiums. This is why I'm doubtful that a cap on profits will make any difference. If your premium was, say, $500 and insurance companies are only allowed to take 10% as profit, what's to stop them doubling your premium to a cool thousand and skimming a tenth of that? Is your care going to be twice as good? You're kidding, right? The insurance industry is not set up to pay claims. Much like the British benefits system, it's set up to deny any claim it can.

And then, there's the mandates. Now, when there was a public option, the mandate could be justified because there would have been a non-profit national option to join. But without the public option, a mandate just funnels epic amounts of cash to the insurance companies who caused this mess in the first place. Granted, there will be some subsidies but, knowing how governments do business, those subsidies won't be anything like enough.

Why is funneling people to the private insurance companies a bad thing? Doesn't the free market work? Well, it works fine for hamburgers or running shoes but it doesn't and can't work for certain things. Four or five services; water, gas, electricity and healthcare; comprise what are called "captive markets". What that means is this: When the price of a Big Mac gets too high, you just skip lunch, that's fine but with captive markets, you don't have the option of walking away from the market because without those few sectors, you cannot live in any kind of meaningful way.We all need these things and we need them all the time. Because we cannot walk away from the market, the companies which control the market can game the system, pursuing a race to the lowest common denominator at the highest price. We saw this here in England when Thatcher (and Major and Blair to a lesser extent) privatised everything in sight. The result was always the same. In every single case, prices exploded, service collapsed and standards were taken out back and shot. Now, some especially stupid conservatives will try to tell you that if this is true, why shouldn't that argument extend to food, running shoes, etc? They are either stupid or insane. That argument fails because A) it's stupid and B) food and running shoes are things which can be easily produced by individuals or small groups whereas the essential services cannot. So, there is nothing in this bill which will control prices and, indeed, every incentive for insurance companies to continue their skyrocketing prices.

Now let's play the blame game. And there's a lot to go around in this edition. On this day which bloody well should live in infamy, it would be very easy to speak of crucifying Joe Lieberman (who's being figurative?) but nailing a Jewish guy to a cross this close to Christmas would confuse the right no end. And really, Joe is just being Joe. He's a self-serving, lying little weasel and we've all known that for years, ever since he felt so entitled to his Senate seat that he started his own party rather than respect the wishes of the Democratic caucus. He's never forgiven liberals for that and, right now, he's in the "if they're for it, I'm against it" area of blind spite. But we knew this, it's a little like saying motherfuckers do indeed fuck their mothers.

We could say much the same for the Blue-Dog Democrats. I wish the media would cease calling this lot "moderates". They're not moderates. First off, the American political scene is tilted so far to the right that Obama (who constantly gets called "socialist" by stupid people) is centre-right in reality so being to the right of Obama puts you NOWHERE NEAR the centre. That's like saying halfway between Obama and Rush Limbaugh makes you a moderate. No, it still makes you bugfuck insane. And they're not moderates even by American standards, they're corporatists, brought-and-paid-for corporate shills. If the Congressional Republicans are 100% the voice of the Mega-Corporations (and they are), the Blue-Dogs are the Corps contingent in the Democratic party although, really, both parties are cults of wealth-worship. American has become a mixture of Ayn Rand's celebration of naked greed and Bill Gibson's dystopian vision of a nation run by and for the convienience of corporations. And no, conservatives, corporations are not your fucking friend.

Harry Reid has to take some blame as well. Taking reconciliation off teh table was a fucking stupid move. While reconciliation was available, Republicans and conservative Democrats had some incentive to be reasonable and compromise because if they didn't, they might just find the bill rammed through against their wishes. Without reconciliation, the conservative coalition pays absolutely no political price for naked obstructionism. They can afford to just say "NO" to everything because, without their cooperation, without "compromising" with them (and the Republican idea of compromise is "we don't budge an inch and you come to us"), nothing gets done. Conservatives like to say that if Democrats could keep their own party in order, they could pass anything and there's an element of truth to that. But it ignores that, firstly, Democrats only have 58 Senators. The two independents who caucus with the Dems are Sanders, who votes Democratic much of the time and Lieberman, who takes a perverse glee in fucking up Democratic plans. Secondly, it ignores that, outside of Congress, the media leads the people around by the nose much of teh time and the media is, for the most part, conservative (anyone who talls you there's a liberal bias in media is either lying to you or is too stupid to realise they've been lied to). Third, what the fuck have the party whips been playing at?

Finally, Obama has to take a fair amount of blame. While Obama talked a good game about healthcare reform during the primaries and campaign, he has conspicuously failed to lead while the process has been ongoing. I think his rationale was that, if he got personally involved, the bill would become about him and thus, a way to attack him. That's either charmingly or dangerously naive on Obama's part. The bill was always going to be identified with him and the Republicans were always going to lockstep vote to filibuster and/or kill absolutely anything that he wanted to see passed. Even leaving aside the numerous, mostly reliable reports that the Whitehouse (and Rahm Emmanuel especially) have repeatedly been trying to "compromise" away real reform, one has to accuse Obama of a failure to lead during this process. Instead of coming out and laying out a case for X, Y or Z reform, Obama has been passively willing to accept anything passed by Congress. Bill Clinton managed to lead his party in getting some reforms passed (not always to the good). Cheney organised the Republican party like a cult of personality and got virtually everything he wanted. Obama has been weak and failed to either lead or push his party. In general, I've been disappointed in Obama's first year. But that's a story for another time (and conservatives, that's doesn't mean I think McCain wouldn't have been worse. I don't want to be on your team, pick another kid).

So that's it. The healthcare bill is a couple of good things wrapped in a pile of suck. Is there enough good there to justify the piles of suck? I don't think so. Howard Dean (an actual doctor, so he has some credibility on this issue) doesn't think so. But it looks like it's going to pass anyway. And that's it. Healthcare won't be revisited again during Obama's presidency and probably not for another ten to fifteen years.

Oh, and did I mention that it's not going to save anything like as much money as the public option or single payer would have?

On Faith

2009-12-12T21:58:00.000-08:00

My friend Buffy ( http://gaytheistagenda.lavenderliberal.com/ ) recently emailed my a rather amusing assumption about Satanists. What's worrying is not this particular display of non-joined-up thinking but that people still seem to have these ideas so let's go through some of the myths about Satanists.

(UPDATE: Two corrections: The first is that, while I have heard followers of the Temple of Set refered to as "Setites" (although never by members of the Temple), the correct term is actually "Setians". Secondly, I have been informed that members of the Temple do not consider themselves Satanists. To save me rewriting this whole article and because people (including me) often think that they do, I'm leaving the article as is but let's remember that in future. Apologies and thanks to Magister Robert Adams for those corrections)

Satanists worship the Devil - Both true and false. This depends on which denomination of Satanists you're talking about. The LaVeyans (followers of Anton LaVey) don't believe in a devil and don't worship anything (except, possibly, the self). The Temple of Set (aka Setites or Setians) don't worship but do seek to emulate Set (Satan) as a model of philosophical enlightenment. Luciferians (the denomination I follow) [i]do[/i] worship Lucifer (Satan) whom we see as the kinder, fairer deity. The remaining catch-all category (which has a dozen names, mostly derogatory but which I call "Dabblers") of teen posers, shock rock musicians and the mentally unstable have a wide variety of beliefs.

Satanists sacrifice animals - Categorically false, at least with regard to the three main denominations. While animal sacrifices do happen on occasion, they are invariably linked to teen posers with no real understanding of the belief system or stoned rock muscians (Ozzy Osbourne will never live that down). In my adult lifetime, I have owned one rat and four cats. The rat died of old age. One of the cats died of conplications from FIV, which she already had when we took her in. Another died of a massive heart attack caused by a heart deformity. The other two, Sandy & Suki, are still with us and spend most of their time snoozing by the fire, eating, playing and being pampered.

Satanists sacrifice/molest babies - Again, completely untrue. Amid the Satanic Panics of the 1980s, this was often alleged but not one of the charges was ever confirmed. Even in the famous McMartin primary school case, there was not one shred of physical evidence and the stories of the children were frequently self-contradictory. It has also been alleged that Satanists keep women as "breeders" and sacrifice their offspring. Problem here, even leaving ethics aside, is that repeated pregnancies without long gaps between will cause severe internal damage to a woman's plumbing. Also, psychologically, people just don't work that way. While it is possible to brainwash someone into allowing their own child to be killed, it can't be done consistently and repeatedly. It requires close supervision and constant reinforcement, both of which would be noticed by anyone observing the woman. The saying "death to the world" which Luciferians sometimes use is not a directive to mass murder but a shorthand way of expressing a continuing process of turning away from the physical and selfish world and toward a world of spirit and service.

Satanists sacrifice something - The only things sacrificed are pinches of herbs and suchlike. They're symbolic. Lord Lucifer, to secure free will and moral self-determination for humans, sacrificed his good name, rank, place in heaven and human trust. We sacrifice a few pinches of dried herbs to remind us of that sacrifice.

Satanists hold orgies - They're recreational and entirely optional, not a required part of the faith.

Satanists have no morals - Again, completely untrue. Actually, we have a moral code which is often more exacting than those of conventional faiths because ours is not derived from a book or a preacher but arrived at through deep thought and experiance. What we do not have are sins, at least not in the conventional sense. LaVeyans don't have sins at all but they do have quite strong codes of conduct. Setites have a whole philosophy on this that I confess to not fully understanding. Luciferians have only one sin (treating another as a thing, a tool for your own gratification or glory). That is not unforgiveable but it is a big strike against you. Likewise, we don't have Holy Books in the normal sense. Conventionally, a Holy Book is treated as the final answer and discussion is limited to how to interpret it. Among Satanists, the Satanic Bible (for example) is regarded as simply the respected opinion of one man added to the discussion.

Satanists don't believe in Hell - Depends on the denomination. LaVeyans don't, Setites have their own thoughts. Luciferians believe that, although hell is ruled by Lord Lucifer, there is a corner set aside for the truly irredemable. In that corner, those who are judged to be beyond redemption will experiance the lives of everyone they have ever affected. For example, if you're Jerry Falwell, you will experiance the life of a gay man, a gay woman, a pagan, a woman in desperate need of an abortion; and you will experiance those lives over and over and over again until finally, at the end of time, you will understand fully the consequences of your actions and what they have meant. Then, perhaps, maybe, you will be able to realise why your actions were wrong.

Satanists take drugs - No more so than the congregants of any other faith. The Dabblers often do but they're teenagers who don't understand the belief system but adopt the signs and sayings because they "look cool", not because they understand what they mean.This is akin to judging Christianity by the rock stars who wear fashion crosses.

Satanists hate Christians/Muslims/Jews - Not really. We often hate their god (although some are resolved to simply ignore him) but the individual believers, we generally view as misled and misinformed, not necessarily bad (and perhaps the kinder ones would say the same of us). Nor do we "hate you for your Christ", an absurd little bit of self-serving pablum that serves to avoid responsibility for one's own actions. If we hate you, it is because of something you have done or something we have done (we are no more immune to having assholes in our ranks than any other faith). Opinions about Jesus are divided. Some believe he never existed. Personally, I think a man called Jesus lived in the area around Galilee in the early part of the first century. He was a good man with a good message of peace, love and tolerance who was eventually killed for it (as such people tend to be), was buried and remains buried still. But I do not believe he was divine. And I think the insistence that he must have been divine does a tremendous disservice to the potential for good within the human spirit.

Satanists have a vast clandestine conspiracy - Have you ever actually met a Satanist? We tend to be individualistic, argumentative people. Getting us to agree on anything is like herding cats. We can't even agree on what to call ourselves, let alone on acting in concert and in secret for years.Also, consider the sheer numbers required to pull this off. Conspiracies sometimes happen in the real world but the ones that remain secret for very long are the ones with very few people in on the secret. JFK could have been assassinated by a team of perhaps half-a-dozen and so, it's just about possible that could have been done and kept quiet. A vast conspiracy of hundreds of individuals could not be kept secret for very long.

Satanists practice magick - This one's true, after a fashion. Without wishing to write a whole dialectic on the nature of magick, it can be thought of as a way of harnessing the inate power of the human spirit to tilt probabilities very slightly toward one's objective. It is unreliable, draining and often doesn't work. When it does work, the most it can do is affect things very slightly. It cannot violate the laws of nature. We can't hurl fireballs down main street, glamour nubile young things into bed and no amount of magick can bring back the dead. If you ask for anything very much, it's going to fail. The very most you can do is very gently place your thumb on the scales of fate and if the probability is very much against what you want happening, forget it. No-one has that much power. In general, trying to do anything real by magick is going to be a pointless excercise in futility but, if you're desperate enough, sometimes it's worth a try. Even here, the ethic of reciprocity (aka the Golden Rule) holds sway. No-one but the psychopaths go around trying to level death curses on others just for the hell of it (pun intended). Oh, and the additional "K" is purely to distinguish it from the conjurer's craft of illusion, there's no spiritual or historical reason for it.

Satanists don't believe in god/spirit X - Entirely down to the individual. Some believe in no deities but Satan and Jehovah, others believe in whole hosts of them. Personally, I believe that other deities may or may not exist but this one is sacred to me.

Satanists don't help others - This is untrue. We have as many individuals of charitable intent in our ranks as any other faith. The Devil's Apocrypha (a novel which acts as a good primer to Luciferian thought) contains the line "if the lot of man is to improve, the seer must be the doer". What that means is that, if faced with injustice or suffering, it is not enough to pray about it or moan about how awful it is; get up off your knees and do something about it. So we have many charitable persons in our fold. What we do not do is talk about it. There are four reasons for that. The first is that, knowing charity came from a Satanist might disincline them from taking it. The second is that charity should not be given for plaudits. It should be something you do for it's own sake, not so that others will tell you how wonderful you are. Thirdly, knowing that charity came from a particular person (and this applies only to individuals, not to charitable bodies or governments) would create a sense of obligation to that person. The receipiant is likely to see it as a favour that must be repaid and that goes against the spirit of charity. However, if the recipient simply receives a stroke of good luck or good will, they can go on with their lives, self-sufficient and owing nothing. Finally, disclosing such charity could lead into a compteition of who is most charitable. It's not a contest.

Satanists proselytise the young - Satanists don't proselytise anyone. It is (not "commandment", that's the wrong word) strongly suggested that we not proselytise to anyone, ever. We can talk about our faith, answer questions or correct misperceptions (such as I'm doing here) but we cannot suggest someone else try it out. The whole point of Lucifer's rebellion was free will and moral self-determination. To foist our faith upon another would violate their right to make their own moral choices. That's not to say we can't intervene to prevent harm. For example, no-one is going to quibble with the Satanist who tackles an axe-weilding psycho but we cannot press our faith upon others. Each of us has their own spiritual path to walk and we learn as much, if not more, by the journey as we do by the destination. If your journey leads you to us, great. If not, that's fine too. It is your journey and no-one can walk it for you.

Satanists have wild sex - Jealous?

How do you know Satan will win? - We don't. Winning or losing the great celestial war is not the point. First off, one must realise that this is not a battle in the sense that we think of one. We're not talking here of squads of cavalry charging across plains. It's closer to trying to win the hearts and minds of a populace stuck in the middle. But whether we win or lose doesn't really matter. I like to explain by analogy: There was a time during World War II, before the Americans joined in, when Britain stood virtually alone in Europe against the Nazis. Defeat seemed certain. Should the British have surrendered? Of course not. We should have, and did, fight with every breath in our bodies for as long as we could hold out because it was morally right to do so. We hold God to be the worst dictator, the greatest monster that ever existed. Worse than Hitler or Stalin or Pol Pot ever dreamed of being. Should we bend knee to a being like that? No, he is not worthy of worship, worthy of nothing except to be fought and so, we fight. Because tyrants must be fought, because it is morally right to do so. We willingly choose to damn ourselves because we cannot and will not give even nominal approval to a monster. Eternity is a very long time to live with yourself and even if we have no hope of winning, we will always know that we did what was right.

Healthcare... Yet Again

2009-12-06T03:54:00.000-08:00

Cheeses, are we still going with this crap? Seriously? OK, let's debunk the myths one more time:

"government takeover" - No, fail, wrong. The bill currently being debated does not comprise a "government takeover" of anything. Now, I don't think a government takeover would be all that bad. I live under government healthcare here in Britain and, occasional headline-grabbing scandal aside, it's pretty damn good. But this bill doesn't amount to anything like that. All it amounts to is government creating another insurance option, just like Medicare. Medicare currently has a funding problem but that could be easily solved by, for example, the enrollment of lots more people. No-one is claiming that Medicare is perfect but it is a hell of a lot better than no option at all. And no-one would be forced to take out the government option. Under the current Bill, you would be forced to take out insurance of some kind (and I agree, that part is extremely dodgy) but the legislation does not specify what form of insurance you must take out.

"socialism / communism / fascism" - We'll do these together since they amount to the same thing. First off, fascism is an ultra-right political ideaology which has no common ground and is entirely incompatible with the other two. Anyone telling you that fascism is a left-wing ideaology is just plain lying to you. Now, the accusation of socialism is based on a very American misunderstanding of what the word means. The US is using the term to mean any sort of collective risk or responsibility. That is not what the word means. The word means that the government has sole ownership of the means of production and distribution. Would there still be competing private interests? Yes? Then it's not socialism. The US also misuses the word "communism". The idea that a communist would want to grow government is directly opposed to the basic tenets of communism. The only reason anyone in the US believes this crap is because of the Cold War and Stalin's insistence on calling his regime "communism". Stalin's regime was Soviet Communism which is a hell of a lot closer to beurocratic despotism than to Marx's vision (this should not be taken as approval for Marx's unworkable utopianism). Actual, real Communism, also known as Marxism, is much closer to collectivist anarchism than anything the Soviets came up with.

Also, what's so terrible about socialism? The US tends to treat socialism like it's some kind of virus; like if you allow even the slightest hint of socialism, the entire country becomes 1958 Moscow. It doesn't work like that. Socialism is a system of economics, you decide how much to have.

"government is inherently inefficient/corrupt" - This is complete bollocks. It only persists because the right, through it's ownership of the media, has spent thirty years telling the public that government can't do anything right, highlighting the ocasional abuse that will occur in any system as an example of the whole and the public, being deeply stupid, believes them. The US government is more inefficient than most, largely due to your system of unlimited amendments being tacked on to every bill. However, every other nation in the civilised world manages to do this without it turning into a black hole of resources. Your media, advancing the cause of the right as always, has flat-out lied to you about how bad those systems are. For the most part, they're pretty good. Yes, the ocasional scandal or outrage occurs. Does anyone honestly believe that those things do not happen in the private insurance system? And finally, if the public option would be so bad, why would anyone choose to take it? No, they're not being forced to, see my first point.

"everyone has access to healthcare" - This is both true and false. The true part is that hospitals are under a legal obligation to treat anyone who needs treatment. However, where it becomes false is that, firstly, a horrifying number of doctors disregard their Hipocratic Oath when it comes to non-insured people (there is a reason that "oathbreaker" is the worst insult in many ancient cultures). Secondly, "treatment" doesn't necessarily mean the best treatment. It's easy to find tales of people who really should have been admitted to hospital but weren't because they lacked insurance. This is by no means rare. Thirdly, according to statistical studies, an uninsured person is 40% more likely to die of any particular illness than an identical person with insurance. Because if you do not have insurance, a frightening number of doctors will do only the bare minimum to treat you (please note, I am not suggesting that such doctors are the majority; merely a worrying minority). Finally, emergency room care is the single more expensive way of delivering care. It's a lot cheaper to deliver care in the normal fashion.

"illegal immigrants will be able to use the program" - Point 1 is that this is flatly untrue. Standing law forbids illegal immigrants from taking part in any federal healthcare program and the only part of the bill which could be read to cover illegal immigrants also includes language to specifically prevent that. Point 2 and entirely seperate, so what if it did? If an illegal immigrant pays their own money into the system and gets care because of it, why is that any harm to you? No, they wouldn't get any kind of money to cover them, that's specifically prevented by language in the bill.

"death panels" - Die in a fire.

"private insurance won't be able to compete" - Again, several points to make here. Firstly, how is that your problem? How does it harm you if private insurance can't compete with the public option? Secondly, despite having a single-payer system here with full coverage from cradle to grave, we still have private insurance companies and they still make a profit. Thirdly, this one is predicated on the presumption that the public option insurance would be so cheap and so good that private insurance wouldn't be able to compete. Well, A) that's completely incompatible with the idea that government can't do anything right and B) again, how is that your problem? Now, at this point, some people might start going on about a sixth of the economy going bust. Except it won't. And it won't because the doctors, nurses, x-ray techs, etc don't work directly for the insurance companies, they work for the hospital or for themselves. They're still there, they're just claiming their fees from a different insurer than before.

"Rush / Beck / O'Reilly says..." - Anything these three say can be presumed to be a lie sight unseen.

"the bill is 1092 pages long" - So what? Really, what difference does that make? Is there some inherent connection between the length of a bill and it's quality? Of course not. Besides which, have you ever actually read a bill? They're written in very technical legalese, larded with clauses, subclauses, sections and sub-sections and loaded with "theretofore"s, "but to"s and once-in-a-lifetime exceptions. Lawyers spend four years (US) or six years (UK) studying to learn how to understand this crap. This is not layman's language, this is a very specialised, archaic dialect spoken only by lawyers and legislators. And this is why the demand to post the bill online is also pointless. The general public doesn't have the training or tools to understand the bill even if they managed to make it through the whole thing. It's not to do with intelligence (although I feel that much of the general public is dumb as a post), it's to do with a very specialised language. Law and medicine are probably the only professions where the layman feels he can blunder in and do better than the experts. People don't go up to engineers and say "you've put that bridge up wrong", they don't go around telling architects how they should design houses. Only in law and medicine does the general public feel that they know better than the experts on no more basis than their own arrogance. If you have enough knowledge to ask sensible questions, do so. Otherwise, shut the fuck up and leave it to people who actually know what they're doing.

Look, the current bill is not perfect. In fact, it's far from perfect. But it is better than what you currently have. Because it might take a fraction of a penny away from profits, the Republicans and their corporate puppetmasters are going all out to halt this but for Lord's sake, don't let them kill this. This is probably the only chance you're going to get for the next fifteen to twenty years to do something about your abomination of a healthcare system.

By the way, your blogger has given in to the Dark Side and joined Twitter. You can follow me as EbonBear if you feel like it.

Republicans Promise "Holy War"

2009-11-19T14:54:00.000-08:00

In today's LA Times (1), Orrin Hatch (R-Cigna) promises "holy war" to halt the healthcare bill. A couple of days ago, Rush told his listeners they were in a "war without bullets". Beck told his listeners that they were the teenage girl and the government was Roman Polanski. One presumes he didn't mean that the government was going to make visionary, innovative films. No, he meant the government is going to rape you.

Holy war. "War without bullets". "Whites of their eyes". That repugnant Dachau poster. "I'm a proud right-wing terrorist". The rampant racism of the Birther clowns. Am I crazy or is anyone else noticing a pattern here?

The right loves to equivocate. They love to claim that the left were just as bad to Bush, the Democrats were just as hyperbolic and obstructionist. Both claims are untrue, of course, but they're par for the course on the right. What is new is the increasing level of militancy in the rhetoric; subtle (and sometimes overt) allusions to violence. The left, who were routinely accused of being unpatriotic for criticising Bush (who the right pretend to have always been against now) didn't go anything like this far. Perhaps a few posters in the underdepths of the webway posted violent fantasies but in the left as a whole, it didn't happen. And yet, after less than a year out of power, the right are coming within a hairsbreadth of actually inciting assassination.

Look, let's be honest. Obama is a black guy and there are enough unreconstructed racists in the USA that there was always a chance that one of them would take a shot at him. The Secret Service says that threats to the president have quadrupled since Obama took office. The right would have us believe that's just because normal Americans are angry at the president for, well, something (they seem unable to decide what their complaint is) and you can guarantee that, if some nut takes a shot at Obama, they'll do the same dance of deniability: A brief, insincere denunciation of the violence and then straight back to hatred and near-enough justification of that same violence. The same way they did with Scott Roder. The same way they did with the Town Hall lunatics. Since this president took office, they have stopped at nothing to paint him as illegitimate, dangerous, even alien. They've done everything but outright say that, since the president is such a monster, you might as well take a shot at him.

Oh, I know I'm not supposed to say that. You're not supposed to talk about the distinct possibility that some maniac will absorb the violent rhetoric tacitly encouraged by the right and act upon it. But the rhetoric is there and it is violent (Sean Hannity's site a while back had a survey asking it's readers what kind of revolution they'd prefer). And there is a distinct possibility that someone will act upon it. The Secret Service are dedicated to their jobs but they're only human and it only takes a moment for a maniac to get lucky. And if he does, the right will soothe themselves with the thought that the left would have been just as bad to Bush.
I'm not sure what can be done about this. The yappers like Beck and Limbaugh have already made a big noise about their First Amendment rights and you can be certain that if anyone even asks them quietly to dial it back, they'll ramp it up even further. And the 20% crowd will follow them right over that cliff. Just... notice how extreme, how violent the rhetoric has become and realise that these people cannot be negotiated or compromised with. As far as they are concerned, the proper order of the universe is to have Republicans, white Republicans (not all of the criticism is racial but the racial factor is certainly adding heat to it) in charge of everything. Anything else is abomination and must be brought to an end by any means necessary. And I mean any means, the word is an absolute here. If the worst happens, the yappers will make a pretence of their sorrow... and then they'll be straight back to attacking with exactly the same tactics, exactly the same vitriol and the 20%, their followers will quietly toast the shooter with beer. The right these days loves to talk about having a fifth column of communists in the Whitehouse. That's crap, naturally, but it occurs that you may have a literal fifth column of would-be domestic terrorists and a much larger faction that would apologise and cover for them.

(1) http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-health-senate19-2009nov19,0,7126306,full.story

What The Hell, Maine?

2009-11-04T05:51:00.000-08:00

I was going to use today's column to have some fun poking Rush Limbaugh over the sycophantic "interview" he preached on Fox news. But then, I heard that same-sex marriage has been overturned in Maine. Maine of all places. There are three areas that any bookie would have expected same-sex marriage to be uncontroversial: Southern California, Washington DC and New England. Well, Prop H8 took away same-sex marriage in Cali and left the couples that got married in that brief period it was legal (including my friend Buffy of The Gaytheist Agenda and her partner) in a kind of limbo. DC passed Ref 71 which, as I read the law, gives same-sex couples everything except the word "marriage". I can live with that, that's the same arrangement we have here in Britain. And then came the other result.

Et tu, Maine?

Let me get this straight: New England is one of the more reliably liberal areas of the country, the rest of New England has legalised same-sex marriage or something equivelent and 58% voted to decriminalise pot. Were all the potheads freakin' stoned and thought their "yes" meant they were affirming gay rights? Because the numbers I'm seeing (58% for decriminalising pot, 52% for screwing over gay people) means that at least some of the stoners must have voted for this abomination. Did we all take a big dose of hypocracy today, kiddies? Were you guys so high that you couldn't distinguish lies from facts? Could you not have waiting until after voting to take a half-dozen bong hits?

And don't think I'm exclusively picking on the stoners either. Everyone who voted for this absurdity needs to get clocked with a clue-by-four. I mean, you look at any open forum on gay marriage and lo, doth the bullshit wax forth. We've heard everything from teaching your kids sodomy (horseshit) to some weird guy on HuffPo who seemed to be under the impression that gay people could have offspring genetically engineered to actually be the biological children of two men or two women (which won't be a problem for at least twenty years and genetic engineering on that level was banned under Clinton anyway) to teaching your kids that gay people exist. I hate to tell that last group but they're going to find out sometime. It's weird how obsessed these people are with the sex act. They act like kids knowing gay people exist means having to explain the technicalities of gay sex to them. What's wrong with "some boys love other boys"?

And let's not even get started on the moral atrocity of putting human rights to the whims of the popular vote in the first place. Have we not got the message yet that the PoliSci fiction of the informed voter carefully weighing the issues is bullshit? The average voter is not very intelligent, actively distrustful of intelligence, distrustful of change, petty and cruel. No, I'm not a big believer in democracy, I've met too many humans. If you put the option of doing the right thing to the plebians, the plebians will usually vote against it. I back democracy not because it's a good option but because it's the least bad option. If it had been left to the popular vote, slavery would have continued much longer and interracial marriage might still be illegal. And 52% of Maine voters just voted to make it illegal for gay people to have the same chance at happiness (or permanency, depending on your experiance of marriage) as straight people. Stop letting the people decide human rights, the people are frickin' morons! They believe bullshit! The ridiculously monikered NOM puts out bullshit that churches will be forced to marry gay couples and over half the public laps it up! OM NOM NOM! Gay marriage threatens the sanctity of marriage? How the fuck does that work? Do you even understand what "sanctity" means or the fact that, for most of human history, marriage was the transfer of property? And don't give me that bullshit about your religious beliefs. My religious beliefs aren't being passed into law and mine don't involve violating the fucking Constitution. Yes, the state has a vested interest in promoting families, no arguement there. But did it ever occur to your brain-trists that A) gay people form familes too and B) no families are going to break up because the gay couple down the block are suddenly the married gay couple down the block.

I often wonder if gay people aren't being far too civil about this. The movement is trying to win their rights with lawsuits and public opinion. And don't misunderstand me, that's very laudable, very civilised and noble. But the public are morons and your SCOTUS is dominated by conservatives, at least two of whom don't give a shit about the law. There is something in the human psyche that seems resistant to treating something as a right unless it's forcibly torn from teh fist of the opressor. So I often wonder if the gay rights movement wouldn't have gotten further if there'd been a bit more forceful expression involved. The most conservative estimate of the gay population is about three million and an accurate estimate is probably three or four times that so let's have a Million Queer March on the Whitehouse. Let's put a few pink triangles on poles and set fire to them, just to make the comparison obvious to the terminally dense. Ellen is apparently going to be a judge on American Idol but let's get RuPaul on Monday Night Football, let's have Chris Kanyon doing play by play on Monday Night RAW. They think marriage is a step too far, let's go a mile too far, let's shove gay people down their throats until they're so sick of the subject that everyone grows the fuck up. Forget the lawsuit, let's have some fucking riots.

Cheeses fucking christ on toast; Maine, for fuck's sake!

Why Obama Is Right About Fox News

2009-10-25T06:15:00.000-07:00

It's been a real interesting week, watching you guys from across the pond. President Obama points out something that everyone in their right mind already knew, that Fox is a Republican propoganda mill and people would be wise to keep that in mind, and suddenly the freakin' world's coming to an end.

First came the lie that this was in some way a violation of freedom of the press. Satan save me from sanctimonious conservatives moaning about freedom of the press. Have the Obama admin pulled Fox's license like Hugo Chavez (and what a disappointment he's turning out to be)? No. Have they shut down FNC? No. Have they even shut off access and kicked Fox's guy out of the Whitehouse press pool? No, they haven't. The closest they got was trying to refuse to give an interview to Fox. Wow, truly a draconian act. Here's a newsflash for the idiots: Freedom of the press does not equal automatic access. If I start up a podcast, does the president automatically have to come on when I invite him? Of course not. He's the president, he's a busy guy. He has every right to refuse to give interviews to any media outlet he likes (and, incidently, they have every right to report that)

Then there was the lie that this was an "unprecedented" move. Horseshit. DimBulb's admin used to call out NBC and MSNBC all the time, they all but accused the New York Times of treason! Conservatives like to use that to try and claim that MSNBC and Fox are equivelent. Bzzz, sorry, you're still fucking wrong. First off, MSNBC isn't half as liberal as you like to think. Yes, Olbermann and Maddow are liberals and Ed Schultz tends to lean to the left. Chris Matthews doesn't have an intellectual stance consistent enough to be called a leaning but he seems to have a crush on Obama right now so let's throw Tweety in there too. MSNBC also has Joe Scarbrough, a guy who has been seriously mentioned as a Republican candidate for president in 2012 (and the GOP could do a lot worse) every morning for THREE FREAKIN' HOURS! OK, Joe's not a batshit conservative like most of the GOP right now but he's a pretty conservative guy. Does Fox put an avowed, outspoken liberal (say, Mike Malloy) on for three hours every morning? Of course they fucking don't. Watch MSNBC for a day and chances are, you'll see Pat Buchannon at least a couple of times. Now, Pat's a weird guy, he's very right-wing and he also happens to be rampantly racist (contrary to some opinion on the left, the two don't automatically go together). But you see him on MSNBC and he's usually treated respectfully. Hosts might disagree with him (I have yet to understand why Pat and Rachel Maddow are good friends when they agree on precisely nothing) but he's treated in a respectful fashion. Pat's so reactionary, he could be nicknamed Paleolithic but he gets treated nicely by this supposedly liberal network.

Recently, Fox has tried to draw a dividing line between their "opinion" shows and their "news" shows. That's bullshit too, there is no division. Fox's "news" section is just as biased as their prime-time line-up. This has been proven so many times that you have to be either indescribably stupid, insane or stubbornly resistant to reality to ignore it. Every story, on any show is slanted in a conservative direction. Look up the "Moody memo", go and do some fucking research, they admitted this in fucking court! On MSNBC or CNN, their news shows are straight-up news. If they have a slant, it's slightly to the right (most US news has a rightward slant) but they genuinely try to report on things objectively. On Fox, everything is actively slanted to favour the Republicans and attack Obama. And spare me the outrage about Fox breaking the ACORN or Van Jones stories. I don't carry a flag for either of them but both of those were complete non-stories that Fox went hysterical over until the Whitehouse gave in (I wish they'd stop doing that). From Hannity (who makes no pretence at neutrality) to Bill O'Lielly (who's relationship with the truth has only ever been accidental) to Glenn Beck (I want to stop picking on Glenn because he's so obviously ill), these guys are vastly further to the right than Olbermann, Maddow or Schultz are to the left. Hannity is about two steps from being an outright fascist; Beck is so far gone that he appears to be channeling the ghost of Joe McCarthy and trying to cope by mainlining LSD. Olbermann's a liberal, sure, but he's not sobbing on tv and calling people every name he can get away with (barring George Carlin's famous seven words). There is no equivelency between the two prime-time line-ups. MSNBC's is centre-left, FOX's is frothing right-fringe. And their straight news shows are just as bad, they're just slightly more subtle. Media Matters (yes, I know Bill-O says they're an extreme-left outfit but he says that about anyone who disagrees with him) has loads of stuff on this, showing how Republican talking points get endlessly repeated by Fox in both their opinion AND news shows.

Fox's apologists (and Bill-O, who's viciousness hides some deep insecurities) like to point to their ratings as proof of their accuracy. I'm sorry, what? First off, how does the fact that people like your product prove it's accurate? There is no connection between the two. Secondly, yes, Fox has very impressive numbers. So did Jerry Springer. Ratings have nothing to do with quality. Springer did bonanza numbers, Oprah still does. Is anyone really claiming that Ford make better cars than, say, Rolls-Royce? Or that Dell make better computers than Alienware? Of course not. Sales (and ratings are, in the end, sales) have nothing, zip, zero to do with quality. All Fox's numbers prove is that there is a market for news (and sometimes outright lies) with a heavily conservative bias. And Fox isn't just reporting the news with a rightward slant. They're actively making news with a rightward slant. The Teabagging parties were pushed endlessly on Fox, complete with links on their website of where to go. Beck's 9/12 march of the morons was created, promoted and owned by Fox. The Van Jones non-story was "broken", pushed and promoted by Fox, created by Fox. Obama isn't calling out Fox because they "ask the tough questions". He is calling out Fox because they have been attacking him 24/7 over bullshit charges since before he was even in office. Fox have made barely any pretence that their mission is now to destroy Obama by any means necessary. And I do mean "any", the word is an absolute in this instance. Beck is already about one step away from outright treason. He might not have fulfilled all the technical legal requirements to be charged with treason under the letter of the law but under the [i]spirit[/i] of the law, he's guilty as hell. But there I go again, picking on the ill. Incidently, anyone remember Fox's Half-Hour News Hour, their conservative answer to The Daily Show? Does CNN have comedy shows on it? That show was Fox's admission that they have a conservative slant. As comedy shows go, I thought it was hit-and-miss. Had some very funny sketches (Lorenzo Lamas defending the Bush line on 9/11 was a hoot) and an awful lot of dross. Shame they didn't get longer to work out the teething problems. But the important point is that Fox felt an obligation to "balance" the liberal slant of The Daily Show by putting on a conservative comedy show. Fox is a conservative propoganda outlet, case closed.

And that's fine. Advocacy journalism has a long and honourable history. Upton Sinclair's The Jungle led to the creation of the FDA (not his intention but we'll take results here). The British Daily Star was founded as a crusading socialist newspaper, specialising in exposing abuses of power (sadly, it's now fallen to tabloid status). There is nothing wrong with advocacy journalism. But don't lie about it. Be out and proud. Say up front that you are a conservative news outlet and you cater to a conservative audience and we wouldn't have this problem. You say openly that you come at things from a particular direction and there's no problem with that, we take that into consideration when we decide whether to watch your shows. That way, you're the conservative network, MSNBC boots Joe Scarbrough across to you guys and rebrands itself as the liberal network and CNN returns to calling it right down the middle. Everyone's happy.

Now, Let's Do Communism

2009-10-18T21:50:00.000-07:00

Having set the record straight on Naziism, it seems an obvious next step is to do Communism and to talk about communism, one must talk about socialism as the latter grew out of the former.

The basic premise of socialism is that the capitalist system concentrates wealth and power within a small ownership class which exploits the worker. That much is undeniable to anyone with functioning eyes but socialism then posits further that, by common or communal ownership of the means of production and distribution, the abuses of the capitalist system can be eliminated or, at least, minimised. The idea is that if the community (usually via the state) owns and operates a service and has no internal competitors (that part's important), then the state, as representative of the people, can allocate wages and rewards fairly. Over time, as these roles become ingrained, the need for the state to administer them gradually withers away and the state itself becomes redundant (as in, both unnecessary and out of work). One may agree or disagree with it but that's the theory.

It's worth pointing out that, on a small scale, socialism can work well. The traditional farmer's collective or British share fishermen (where each take a percentage of the collective catch) are examples of socialism working well on a small scale. They work well because there is an emotional tie between each member of the collective. One may feel that the nameless person collecting Social Security is a lazy scrounger but it's a bit different when it's Bob who you've known your whole life and know is laid up right now with a broken leg. Likewise, Bob himself probably would feel some guilt about ripping off his friends and/or family if he didn't attempt to make up his end of the collective bargain.

No-one really knows who first came up with socialist theory but the term was coined by Henri de Saint-Simon who, along with Friendrich Engels, laid the foundations of modern socialist theory (earlier forms, such as the aforementioned farmer's collective, go back to the Medieval Period). Various governments have experimented with socialism on a limited scale, generally with regard to the essential services too important to be left to the whims of the free market (something I extrapolate on in other essays). Sometimes, they have worked (Social Security in the USA, prior to it's demolition by George W. Bush; the NHS in Britain), other times they have not (the EU's Common Fisheries Policy is still a sore spot for many). Now, few of those are truly socialist as most have internal competitors which force the state-run option into a battle with private industry. For example, while the NHS covers the health needs of all Britons from birth to death, other companies offer health insurance in Britain and some operate entirely private hospitals. The result may be seen as an improvement on pure socialism. Pure socialism, due to it's lack of competitors, has a noted tendancy toward waste and abuse while the whims of an unopposed free market will always operate to maximise profits at the expense of the consumer (see the current health insurance situation in the USA, which resembles a lottery system for health). By having both socialised and private industries compete against one another, one forces the socialised industries to eliminate waste to remain competative but also forces the private firms to minimise the worst abuses to maintain their customer base.

Socialism is an economic theory. It has little to say about politics as the founders of modern socialist thought considered politics merely an extension of economic issues (and one can see their point). When you extend socialism beyond economics, you end up with Communism.

Communism is, in the simplest possible definition, an attempt to create a classless (meaning, lacking social classes rather than just crude), stateless, egalitarian society through the common ownership of not just the means of production and distribution, but all property and, unlike socialism, accepts that revolution may be necessary to bring this about. Whereas, in a socialist system, the worker would get paid for his endevours and then spend his wages on, say, a new pair of shoes; the worker in a Communist system would simply go and request a pair of shoes from the warehouse filled with shoes made by other workers. Again, the state required to administer this would gradually wither away as people adjusted to their roles and, eventually, the state would become entirely unnecessary and disappear. Far from wishing to expand government, communism regards government as simply a short-term necessary evil on the road to an anarchist collective utopia. If you're thinking that avowed Communist states have never worked out that way, you'd be entirely right. For that reason, this form of theoretical Communism is known as "pure Communism" or, more often, simply as Marxism.

Karl Marx was the man who, in conjunction with Friendrich Engels, essentially invented Communism. Contrary to popular belief, Marx wasn't some cackling psychopath but a man with a rather kindly, if also naive, view of human nature. Marx believed that the primary motivator in human history had been the struggle between social classes or, as we would define them, between the Haves and the Have-Nots (Like many men of his time, Marx defined social class purely in terms of wealth). By instituting a system whereby everyone held everything in common, that cause of conflict would be eliminated and peace would reign. Or, at least, that was the theory. Marx himself would have been appalled at what his ideas led to.

No nation in history has ever achieved Marx's form of "pure" Communism. Many observers (including myself) think that vision, although noble, is utterly unworkable for several reasons. Primarily, Marxism makes no accounting for human greed or laziness. The assumption is that the worker will want only that which they require and that everyone will do their fair share and yet, all of us know someone who lives only by the goodwill of others (and I'm not talking about those who have no choice such as the severely disabled). It doesn't account for the human capacity for stupidity and bad judgement that leads a man to squander his life savings on some addictive drug. While in many ways noble, Marxism was not very wise.

Those nations which have attempted to reach Marxist Communism have given birth to several variations. The form which most of us are most familiar with is the form which arose in the Soviet Union during the 1920s: Leninism or Bolshevism. Leninism may have been a genuine attempt to use violent revolution to achieve Marxist ends. It is primarily remembered for Lenin's belief that socialism was merely a middle form which would inevitibly lead to Communism. In this, he was entirely wrong but we'll get to that later. It's difficult for us to say how effective Leninism might have been because that period of Soviet history led directly, in 1928, to Joseph Stalin and the ideaology named after him. Stalinism had very little in common with Marxist thought. Rather, it embodied the worst excesses of both Communism and capitalism: An opressed working class kept deliberately ignorant; cults of personality and an intrusive police state. In every practical sense, Stalinism was an enlightened (for a given value of "enlightened" anyway) dictatorship. Far from the egalitarian vision of Marx, Stalinism led to an ever deepening chasm between rich and poor; the only difference was that the rich were also now the elite of the only political party allowed to exist. Some commentators have described Stalinism as a form of left-wing fascism but that's a perversion of the word. While both were highly authoritarian, fascism and communism are specific and quite different sets of reasons for being so.

There were and are many different minor variations of Communist theory; from Trotskyism to Maoism and Luxemburgism (named after Rosa Luxemburg and nothing to do with the country) to even forms of Christian Communism (contrary to popular belief, athieism, while the official position, was never a very major part of Marxist thought), but to spend much time dealing with them would be folly. Communism has been proven by history to be unworkable and to lead to undesireable and unpleasent results when it is employed on any kind of mass scale. The vision of Marx and Engels can be marked down as a classic case of "did not think this through enough".

I mentioned earlier that Lenin was quite wrong in his assertion that socialism was merely an intermediate step between capitalism and communism. I say this because history has proven it to be the case. In my own Britain, the Labour Party was explicitely socialist for most of it's existence. Clause Four of the Labour Party manifesto called for collective ownership of the means of production and distribution, a section that was only removed with Tony Blair's leadership of the party in 1994 (Blairites described it as the "new" Labour Party for exactly this reason). During it's time as a socialist party, Labour ruled Britain several times. Some administrations were good (Clement Attlee), others were bad and one (that of James Calaghan) was a disaster, but none turned Britain into the UKSR or even attempted to do so. The NHS ticks along year after year, decade after decade but it's staff have never mentioned a Bolshevik uprising. In the USA, Social Security operates as a partially socialised system. As does the Veteran's Association but neither have ever led to tanks in the streets and an all powerful police state (and, as mentioned above, that would be a perversion of Communism anyway). In fact, given the Constitution of the USA, it's citizens general attitude of "live free or fuck off" and the prevelence of firearms, it's difficult to see why the average American citizen is so terrified of socialism. Americans tend to treat socialism as something akin to a zombie-causing virus; a nightmare which, once admitted even slightly, will inevitibly transport the entire nation to 1955 Moscow. History, and the attitudes of most Americans say that not only will that not happen but that, absent a sea change in public values and morality, it cannot happen. And yet, we have, at time of writing, a whole cottage industry in the USA dedicated to describing the current president as a Communist. This is not just a perversion of the term but such wilfull and deliberate stupidity that one is tempted to suggest steralisation to avoid further pollution of the gene pool. Taking equity in a miniscule part of the economic structure cannot be described as socialism in any rational way, especially when there are still competing private companies. Rather, this assertion seems to be based entirely on the very short memory of many Americans and the fact that the administration preceding (that of George W. Bush) was inarguably the most right-wing in US history. Over the eight years of Bush's reign of error, the centre of political discourse seems to have been reset to somewhere around Attila the Hun. When the standard for political discourse is set by Dick Cheney, a man so cartoonishly evil that parody becomes impossible, even the moderate Obama looks like a raving radical of the left.

Finally, a brief word about the author's own preferences. I am not a socialist. I consider socialism to lead to waste and abuse. Nor am I anti-capitalist. I am anti-corporatist. I believe that corporations are, as Bierce said, "an ingeneous device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility". I shan't speak further on that here, see my other essays for elaboration. Which I am, in relation to this essay, is a believer in a socialised option in certain essential services (again, defined further elsewhere) whereby, the competition between private and socialised options benefits the consumer and keeps the abuses of both to a minimum.

ADDENDUM: In contrast to the delusional theories which Foxwood replied to my last entry with, Communism hasn't been "fashionable" in the USA since the mid-sixties and wasn't all that popular then. The hippies and flower children of the Sixties weren't Communists (unless, like Foxwood, you consider Joe McCarthy to be a role model), they were just pissed off with a political system which alternatively marginalised them or tried to send them to Vietnam to be killed. Contrary to the McCarthyite ramblings of Foxwood and his overlord, Glenn Beck, the president isn't a Communist, a socialist or even especially liberal; there aren't hordes of "godless commies" in the Obama administration or the schools, colleges or universities; the overwhelming majority of teachers and students at any level of education in the USA hold fairly conventional political beliefs and your country is about as far from Communism as it's possible to be and still be a functional democracy. Newsflash guys: McCarthy is dead, he was an evil monster when he was alive and he was and you remain, just plain wrong about absolutely everything.

The Nazis - Let's Get This Straight

2009-10-17T17:31:00.000-07:00

OK, I'm now officially wanting to execute conservatives who keep rewriting the historical record with regard the the Nazi party, usually in hopes of proclaiming them far-left. This is both wrong and a lie. Normally, I'd allow the option of being misinformed but our history has been so heavily influenced by the Nazis (via WW2) and the history is so freely available that someone would have to go out of their way to avoid know the basic facts. Ergo, anyone who tells you this is lying, either explicitely or by omission.

First off, let's deal with the political ideaology of the Nazi party, since this might explain how an extreme-right party came to have the word "Socialist" in it's name (which is the one and only reason to even entertain the idea that the party was on the left). Essentially, the party was founded as the German Worker's Party in 1918 as a unification of the various German nationalist groups that grew up in the chaotic end of World War I. The original leader, Anton Drexler, formed a party platform which included social support to middle-class Germans of Aryan origin (which was the ONLY socialist part of the agenda), nationalism (which included, at that time, anti-semitic views), fierce opposition to both lasseiz-faire capitalism and communism and the glorification of the common "volk" (German for "folk" but carrying connotations of noble farmers and rural manual labour. The way Michelle Bachman uses "real Americans" has similar connotations). While explicitly opposed to communism, the DAP (German Worker's Party) also considered international capitalism as a tool of "international Jewry". From the very beginning, the DAP was opposed to any political ideaology which was non-nationalist and especially those on the left and fought bitterly with the DSP (Social Democrat Party) and KPD (German Communist Party).

Initially, the DAP was tiny. Perhaps to attract new members, the group changed it's name to the "National Socialist German Worker's Party" in 1920. Adolf Hitler was the 55th member. Through a combination of fiery oratory and ruthlessness, Hitler quickly became the dominant figure in the party and became chairman in 1921 whereupon virtually the entire socialist aspect of the party's ideaology was dropped. Thereafter, the party would be governed by the furherprinzip ("leader principle"). In short, what Hitler said was what happened. And Hitler was uninterested in the social welfare aspect of the platform (although it was left in the party manifesto to attract working-class members). Hitler's interests were German nationalism and Antisemitism. When the National Fascist Party rose to power in Italy under Mussolini, Hitler promptly stole a lot of their schtick, such as the brown shirts (the Italian's wore black) and the straight-arm Roman salute. The party continued to grow until they launched the disastrous "Beer Hall Putsch" (an attempted coup) in 1923, after which Hitler was imprisoned and the party was banned.

Hitler was released around Christmas of 1924 and the following year, he refounded the NSDAP. This time around, the party made a great pretence of disavowing force (although, like the British BNP, this was a transparent charade) and admitting women. It was around this time that the SA (stormtroopers") and SS (originally Hitler's personal bodyguard) were formed. Eventually, due to a coup in 1932 and the splintering of the opposition, the NSDAP essentially held power in the Rechstag (although not a majority, the intricacies of Reichstag politics meant that if the Nazis acted in conjunction with other nationalist parties, they could excercise power). In 1933, Hitler was appointed Chancellor by President Hindenburg and the rest is history.

Hopefully, that's somewhat clear now. Fascism is slightly difficult to define but some of the traits which are always included are that it always starts as a working-class, populist phonomena preaching a return to a glorious (and often mythical) past. It usually makes heavy use of whatever the dominant religion is and it is always violently nationalist. Naziism is right-fringe, is that clear?

Right, now for the religious element. This one has two main offenders: Christians who claim that the Nazis were athiests and athiests who claim they were Christians. The truth, as always, is rather more complex. There were four main strands of religious thought within the NSDAP. The first thought of themselves as "good Christians". To do this, they reimagined Jesus as an Aryan, threw out the entire Old Testament as a "Jewish book" and had some very creative interpretations of the New testament but nevertheless, they thought of themselves as good Christians. That faction was probably the majority of the parties rank-and-file, it's functionaries and pavement-pounders, it was certainly the majority of the German army under Nazi control. The second faction, which was probably the majority of the party elite, felt no real religious faith themselves but were more than happy to manipulate the faith of the masses to their advantage. It was probably this faction which was responsible for things like trying to "Nazify" Christmas by putting swastikas atop the tree and on ornaments (yes, that really happened; no, it didn't have much success outside the party). A third faction wished to destroy Christianity and replace it with a kind of pot-pouri paganism, stealing elements of Germanic and Nordic mythologies and relics and collecting and performing rituals with no real understanding of the underlying belief structure of those rituals. Finally, there was a faction of athiests who thought religion was a refuge for the weak. This lot were somewhat influenced by the philosophies of Nietzsche although those philosophies were twisted to adhere to Nazi ideaology (sadly, Nazi propoganda on this front has led to the majority of the public misunderstanding what Neitzsche was actually saying).

Now, Hitler himself made a great many remarks. Some (especially those in "Main Kampf" which was intended for public consumption) were supportive of the Nazi interpretation of Christianity. Others seemed to support paganism, attack Christianity or attack religion in general. Hitler never consistently supported any of the religious factions, instead manipulating and supporting whichever one fitted his purposes best at the time. The upshot is that we now have little idea what, if anything, Hitler actually believed. For every quotation one can find showing a disdain for Christianity, one can also be found supporting it. In the end, we have no idea.

So neither the Christians nor athiests are right to blame the other for Naziism. Both also fail to consider that, as in any fascist structure, understanding of Christianity or athiesm was always filtered through the lens of party ideaology.

EDIT: To reply to Foxwood's dimwitted comment. Obama is neither a Communist or a socialist. The only way to call him either is to completely ignore the actual meanings of the bloody words. Obama isn't even especially liberal, let alone a communist. And it isn't "in" to be a communist or even a socialist (Michael Moore no more represents the left than Ann Coulter represents the right). Fox News and Rush are lying to you. Obama is a very slightly left-of-centre moderate.

How Did It Come To This?

2009-10-15T10:37:00.000-07:00

America was a healthy baby,
born in blood and pain but then,
aren't all babies?
Healthy but like all young life,
she was fragile,
and her parents worried.

As she grew, America struggled,
with redskins and blackskins,
and with herself.
And as she grew, she dreamed,
she imagined goals for herself,
and her parents worried.

Soon, she left her home to learn,
she met the one who shared her heart,
her name was Liberty.
And for a time,
the two were happily inseperable,
But still, her parents worried.

Her parents went to their grave,
the way all flesh must go,
and America mourned.
Her safety shattered, her innocence gone,
a feeling we all share eventually,
and her parents still worried about her.

For years, they grew and prospered together,
America and Liberty,
taking the world by storm.
They went to the stars and then to the moon,
they made all equals,
and her parents worried.

So how did it come to this?

America's children lie dying,
murdered by the suits they paid for their care,
she lies cold each night.
America has done things,
she never thought she could,
and her parents worry.

She has tortured bones and torn flesh,
squeezed the lifeblood from the earth she walks,
sold everything she believes in.
She doesn't know herself anymore,
doesn't recognise the life she leads,
and her parents worry.

And Liberty's a whore,
raped in an alley and left to die,
expiring in the smell of piss and beer.
America hasn't room left in her heart to care,
too frightened of what she can do to do anything,
and her parents worry.

When she feeds the poor, they call her a saint,
when she asks why her children are hungry,
they call her a commie.
And the man in the window,
sobs and weeps at phantoms,
and her parents fear.

They tell her she's mad or bad or worse,
for wishing her children,
a better life than she had.
America is old now and she cannot remember,
a time when she dared to hope for something else,
and her parents shed tears.

Cold and alone and jumping at shadows,
America slumps defeated, not by others,
but by herself.
By her arrogance and her carelessness and her denial,
that she had failed those dreams of long ago,
and she asks out loud,
to no-one in particular,
"How did it come to this?"

Ever Get The Feeling, You Just Can't Win?

2009-10-13T18:38:00.000-07:00

It's been an interesting week in politics. First off, President Obama was awarded the Nobel Prize For Peace. While it's fair to say that the award came as a surprise to pretty much everyone except possibly Bo Obama, the right's attack on, well, everyone, went totally beyond the pale. One suggested renaming it the "Yasir Arafat Prize", many suggested Obama should turn it down (it's unclear if that was even possible); a great many made the claim that since the Nobel Committee had awarded the prize to Jimmy Carter and Al Gore, that the prize was now meaningless. The presumptions here need to be dealt with in order.

Firstly, let's deal with the "questionable" awards of the past. Yasir Arafat won the award in conjunction with Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres for their attempts to find a solution to the Israel-Palestine mess. So if one is going to decry Arafat's award, one also has to decry the award going to Rabin and Peres. I could at least respect such a "pox on both their houses" approach as intellectually consistent. Jimmy Carter won the award for decades spent promoting peace and alleviating poverty. Both these concepts seem to be anathema to the right these days but those of us in the sane world tend to think they're good things. Many of the right-wing attacks on Carter pointed out that he was an ineffectual one-term president. To which, the only reasonable response is"So what?". It's an example of the kind of blinkered US-centrism that has made the American right so despised in the rest of the world, that we should be expected to disregard Carter's other achievments because he failed in the presidency. Outside the United States, Jimmy Carter enjoys near-global love and respect and has for years. The Nobel Prize, while much deserved, was only the icing on the cake. So Carter eminently deserved the award. And yet, it was interpreted as an award for being Not Bush. Then came the slams at Al Gore. Now, again, I'm aware that the US right prefers to deny the fact of global warming but in the sane world, we accept that it is happening, that humans are largely to blame and that we desperately need to do something about it. Al Gore has spent decades trying to get the world to wake the fuck up about global warming. While he never claimed to invent the internet, he did champion the legislative tools which expanded DARPAnet into the modern internet (along with the technical achievments of Tim Berners-Lee and the guys at MIT), something which has transformed life more than anything since the invention of the automobile. So again, we have someone who throughly deserved the award and again, we have someone whose award was interpreted as being Not Bush. Then there was the argument that the Nobel Committee are biased because they've awarded the prize to more liberals than conservatives. Really, this says far more about the mindset of conservatives: That they deserve equal prizes just for showing up.

Was the Peace Prize ironic, given two ongoing wars? Absolutely and that irony was lost on no-one. Was the Nobel Prize premature? Certainly. However, the intention seems to be that, by giving Obama the award at this point, he will be forced to act in a way which makes him worthy of it. Also, the hypocracy of Republicans who cheered when the US lost it's opportunity to host the Olympics and booed when the president of the USA won the Nobel Prize has been lost on no-one except them.

Then we had the ongoing healthcare clusterfuck. There is a scene in the film adaption of "Interview With The Vampire" where a helpless and naked victim is surrounded on a Paris stage by a dozen or more hungry vampires. They pause for a moment, letting us register her terror and vulnerability. Then they fall on her, a dozen vampiric rats strugging for a spare inch of flesh. That's the image that comes to mind when I think of healthcare in the USA. The free market only works when you're free to walk away from it. When walking away from the market means great risk to your life and/or health, the market isn't free. That's basic Keynesian economics. And so, when it came to reforming healthcare, we got... what? I'm still not entirely sure wher this disgusting process of sausage-making is going. For reasons best known to Obama, the single-payer option (true universal coverage, which works pretty well here in the UK) which was the genuinely left-wing option was taken off the table before negotiation even started which has allowed the right (and their Big Insurance paymasters) to paint the limited incremental Public Options as something to the left of Stalin. And I'm not just talking about the Teabag crown here (the latest is that Glenn Beck claims the Million Moron March totalled 8.2 million people and was led by Moses. Then he cried). Mainstream Conressional Republicans are arguing that a Public Option would amont to government takeover of healthcare. Oh, and Big Insurance has already effectively promised that rates will continue to skyrocket regardless. Only in the USA are the people so terrified of their government that they won't let it do anything.

Then there was Orly Taitz. The US's most high-profile racist and queen of the (racist) Birther Movement was fined twenty grand, essentially for contempt of court and wildly unethical practice in violation of all legal standards. Orly effectively told the judge to shove it and accused him of being part of a conspiracy to surpress her. I'm starting to think this woman is clinically ill, the accusation that any detractor is part of a conspiracy against them. Orly actually presents a problem to us. The problem is that, the more we point out that the Birther Movement is entirely founded on the racist assumption that a black man can't possibly be a "natural-born citizen", the more it allows the right, always eager to nail itself to the cross, to claim that we are painting any criticism as racist. It's absurd, naturally. We know that not all criticism is race-based and most of us are getting pretty adept at spotting the code words these days ("welfare", "community" and these days "ACORN").

Then there was Obama's pondering whether to put more troops into Afghanistan. Um, why are we fighting the war in Afghanistan again? Yes, I know it was a response to teh horror of 9/11, I'm actually not going to criticise Bush for that as I think any nation capable of responding militarily would have done so but what is the objective supposed to be here? Are we trying to get Al Queda or the Taliban or both? Are we going to try turning Afghanistan into a western-style democracy? Since we are fighting a war in a country which has ever been the graveyard of empires, what is the final END > IF here?

Finally, there was President Obama's address to his gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans supporters. I'm not sure what to say about this one. It was a largely form speech, the kind where you only have to change a few particulars to fit the occasion. Given the cavalcade of catastrophes dumped on Obama's lap by the previous administration, I suspect most are willing to give him a little time to get to gay issues (specifically, rather than genpop issues which also affect gay people, such as healthcare) but, at the same time, they would also like to see some movement on those issues, no matter how slow it has to be to accomodate the president's busy schedule. Personally, I want the asinine Don't-Ask, Don't-Tell policy repealed or nearly so by the New Year. That's my personal benchmark. While I know Obama is not a supporter of equal marriage rights and so a push for those rights shouldn't be expected from him, I also want DOMA repealed or overturned by the end of his first term. I suspect Obama would like to leave the choice of whether to push for DOMA's overturn until after the midterms but DC's move to legalise same-sex marriage may force his hand. The problem Obama has here is that there really is no upside for him. I can sit here and say that I believe legalising same-sex marriage to be a legal and moral imperative (yes, I think it is immoral to deny same-sex couples the rights of marriage, conservatives don't have an exclusive claim on morality) but I'm not trying to be re-elected and wouldn't stand a chance if I ever stood. For Obama, if he comes out strongly against overturning DOMA, he pisses off the LGBT activists and allies who worked so tirelessly to help elect him. They won't jump to the Republicans but they might well stay home in 2012. On the other hand, if he comes out too strongly in favour of repealing DOMA, he alienates the moderates (forget the Religious Reich, they already want him dead). In addition to that, Obama's DOJ has argued in favour of DOMA (their obligation, as I understand it) and done so in the most reprehensible terms (certainly not their obligation). How Obama intends to square this circle is anyone's guess.

And we haven't even had time to get to Oklahoma attempting to brand a scarlet A on the foreheads of those seeking abortions; the increasingly chance of war with Iran; Mike Moore's latest film; Alan Grayson's gobsmacking counter-attack on right-wing smears or Tom Delay leaving Dancing With The Stars. What a wild week!

Randomness Break

2009-09-21T23:38:00.000-07:00

So, I've been watching a lot of Sex And The City lately (yes, fuck you, I'm a guy who watches Sex And the City, it works best if you think of it as a satire). I can't decide if the show is pro- or anti-feminist. On the one hand, all the women in the show support themselves through successful careers (amazingly, since the plot often requires them to be dumb as posts) and they're sexually liberated (mostly). On the other, all of them are obsessed with finding the perfect man and getting married (Charlotte anoyingly so), the obsession with designer labels is just pitiful and some parts of the show are just stunningly anti-male (seriously, imagine half of those jokes being made about women and the uproar that would follow). Oh, and they all drink far more than is healthy although I'm willing to let that slide on the grounds we mainly see the characters in social situations. The mixed messages on feminism was something I got used to watching Buffy but with Buffy, the premise of the show constantly reminds you that these are not normal people. If you spend your teenage years beating the shit out of vampires, werewolves and the occasional robot, your worldview isn't going to be remotely normal.

What's interesting about the show, apart from the aforementioned indecisiveness, is the attitude of the characters toward non-vanilla sex or sexual orientations. While the gay character we see most often, Stanford, is slightly camp, he also manages to avoid the twin traps of gay characters in TV (being either celibate or wildly promiscuous). Although the premise of the show requires him to be as unlucky in love as the other characters, Stanford manages to be a warm and sympathetic character. Less sympathetically treated are the bisexual characters we meet in one episode. Although protrayed as pleasent people, the fact that they are far younger than Carrie (our POV character) and Carrie's reaction to them, means that their bisexuality (or possibly their tangled personal relationships) comes across as just one of those crazy things that the kids do these days.

It's amusing that TV can't seem to decide how to deal with bisexuals. Statistically, there are far more of us than there are exclusively gay people but while gay people have gradually become accepted and respected characters in TV (and about time too, don't misunderstand) but when we appear on TV, we always end up portrayed as either gay people who occasionally have sex with the opposite sex, straight people who occasionally "experiment", greedy or just flat-out insane. The idea that there are people who tick both boxes on the form marked "fucks girls" or "fucks guys" seems to make otherwise gifted writers lose all grasp of ambiguity (Kevin Smith and Joss Whedon, gifted writers both, take a bow). Naturally, there are a few exceptions. The entire main cast of Torchwood are portrayed as bisexual to one degree or another. The omnisexual (men, women and sometimes non-human species) Captain Jack is mostly portrayed as just slightly different although most of his on-screen lovers are male (possibly to accomodate John Barrowman's real-life orientation). His on-off relationship with his seneschal, Ianto, is portrayed as positive, loving and supportive which is part of what made Ianto's meaningless death toward the end of Children Of Earth bloody annoying.

Here's the FYI on what you need to know about us bisexuals: There's nothing to know. My faith teaches that love is the intermingling of souls. Some people find that with the opposite sex, some people find that with the same sex and it's all good because the love, that most important and rarest of elements, remains the same. Oh, every couple has their quirks but the love shared by two men or two women is exactly the same quality of love as that shared by a husband and wife. Bisexual people are exactly the same. We find love where we find it. This world is so hostile, so stacked against love in a million ways, that it seems absurd to place additional barriers in the way. Humans are animals, yes, but we are also something more and it is our capacity to love and to be loved that makes us something more than just a superevolved ape.

But, to return to the original rambling over a TV show, it seems another human quality is our capacity for sexual invention. In the course of the three seasons of the show I've watched recently, we have heard about: Anal sex, watersports, oral sex, chemically assissted sex (both clinical and recreational), any amount of costume play, threesomes (every possible variant), etc, etc. The main characters, all highly experianced sexually, always react to these with a mixture of bewilderment and disgust. These are women who have laid so much pipe you'd think they'd sprung a leak (and I mean that as a compliment) and they react with horror at the idea of anal sex? Do TV writers believe that real people only fuck in the missionary position? Fact is, for as long as humans have been fucking, they've been inventing different ways to fuck. Apart from the chemicals, all of this has been around for as long as we have records. Charlotte (yes, most of the sexually naive plots involve Charlotte, she's the naive character) eventually blows off the anal sex proposition with the hysterical rant that "I don't want to be the up-the-butt girl because no-one ever marries the up-the-butt girl and if they do, I'll be Mrs up-the-butt". Quite apart from being both stunningly naive and insanely stupid, the absurdity here is screaming at us. The characters obsession with rules regarding sex is self-defeating. It's sex, not a space shuttle launch. Of all the dumb shit humans do, sex is one of the few that really does come instinctively. It's sex, the only rules are the ones you make up for yourself.

Actually, strike that, there are rules. Here are the rules:
1) Consenting adult humans only. Sex is a grown-up game for grown-up players. Don't invite the under-age, the mentally under-age or your pets.
2) Fellas, either grow a beard or shave. Stubble only worked for Don Johnson.
3) Ladies, ditto. Most of us don't much care if you shave all over or go au naturel but stubble burn is just as annoying for us as it is for you.
4) Never tell the truth about your partner's genitals unless the truth is complimentry or something that can be easily fixed (i.e. requesting a wash is fine, requesting piercing isn't).
5) Ladies, if a fella goes off too early, don't make a fuss. Even if you're trying to be sympathetic, it comes off as pitying.
6) Fellas, if you go off too early, the correct response is not to roll over and go to sleep. The correct response is to use fingers and tongues to keep your partner on the boil until you're ready to go again.
7) Ladies, do not be ashamed to say what you want. Contrary to popular belief, asking a guy to fuck you rigid will usually be met with a sigh of relief. Having to always make the first move is nerve-wracking, especially in this day and age of sexual harassment lawsuits. I have no idea how gay women handle this one, anyone want to enlighten me?
8) Pulling out the toys is fine but give your partner warning first. Saying "you mind if my little plastic friend joins in?" is fine and it's a lot less stunning than having Black Beauty suddenly appear between the sheets.
9) Don't shag someone else's significant other if you can avoid it. Look, stuff happens and the heart does as the heart does. Sometimes, life gets complicated and love even more so. I know that as well as anyone but be aware that when you crash land into someone's love life, the stakes get very high, very quickly. Poly couples, make your own rules here.
10) If you're into casual hook-ups, that's fine. No judgements here. I happen to be a big fan of sexual pleasure and if it's just two people giving each other pleasure for the night (or day or lunchtime), that's fine. But for casual hook-ups, two additional rules apply: A) Rubbers are mandatory. No excuses, ifs, ands or buts. Unless you met your playmate at an HIV+ support meeting, slip on a rubber before you slip into your lover (ladies who love ladies, you get to skip that one); B) don't say "I love you" unless you mean it. If it slips out in the heat of passion, just try not to do it again. Everyone is in love when they're cumming and if they say it, don't hold them to it. But, in general, be up front about your intentions. If all you're looking for is a memorable night, say so.
11) Unless your partner is able to give a firm clear "Yes", don't go there. "FOR GOD'S SAKE, FUCK ME!" counts as well. If in doubt, "Are you sure?" is a good way to check. Granted, we've all fucked when we were beer buzzed or slightly high but if your partner isn't able to affirm their assent in a clear voice, settle for making out. That way, worst you'll have in the morning is a little embarassment.
12) No-one gives a shit about your porn stash. Really. This is the Internet Age, any of us can find any porn we want any time we like. Tits, cocks, pussys and asses are not a rare commodity anymore.

Let Me Show You Another World

2009-09-17T07:53:00.001-07:00

In this loopy land, it's taken as read that gay people have as much right to love and be happy as everyone else. Their bonds may or may not be called "marriage" but they are recognised by the state and held as legally indentical in all respects except the very, very technical (like what exactly defines consummation). They have non-discrimination and hate crimes laws that include sexual orientation. People are still fired for being gay on occasion but they can sue and win. Transgendered individuals can have their birth certificates changed to reflect their change. Law-enforcement bodies have official liasons with LGBT groups and with most sizeable ethnic minorities, listening and advising them to matters of law which are likely to affect them. Some bigots still decide to stomp gay people but law-enforcement makes a real and serious effort to catch them. In this crazy world, gays can serve openly in the military, never having to lie about who they are. They can even adopt if they pass the usual checks! Won't someone please think of the children?

In this mixed-up madhouse of a country, the abortion debate is largely over. Some tinkerng with existing laws is done from time to time as new medical techniques make revision necessary but for the most part, people accept that abortion is a decision best made by a woman and her doctor. If that doctor has a moral or ethical objection to booking an abortion, he will refer his patient to someone who has no such objection. Often, that's just a case of asking another doctor in the surgery to actually sign the form. For such a small inconvienience, a few minutes in most cases, most patients are willing to respect their doctor's beliefs. Virtually no-one even harasses these hussies as they make their way to the hospital!

In this morally confused morass, faith is something which most feel is best kept between the individual and their god. While many hold faith dear to them and are extremely devout, they recognise that faith is about how you live your own life, not how you tell others to live theirs. Their children learn Darwinism and only hear about creation in Religious Education classes! Most of these heathens do not even know which One True Faith (tm), their national leaders follow! And few of them even ask! They elect Christians and Muslims and Jews and athiests and agnostics and women and treat them just the same! They don't care who their leaders pray to or even if they pray at all! Surely, such a nation is tempting God's holy wrath!

In this socialistic dystopia, no-one ever goes bankrupt over medical bills because everyone is covered by, at least, the state's system. Some even have short waiting lists for elective surgery. If they would only pay a king's ransom, they could dispense with that waiting!...

Sod it, this faux-outrage style is too bloody difficult to write. The nation I am describing above could be Germany or France or my own England or most countries in the western world, it fits most of them to some extent. My American friends, if you've ever asked yourself why the rest of the world seems to not understand you, it's because we don't. So many of the questions your society divides itself into ever-smaller factions over simply don't exist here. It's not that we want to make you like us (although we worry that you want to make us like you), it's more that things which seem so utterly obvious to us; things like medical privacy, universal rights and the privacy of faith; divide your society so completely, if the solutions have even occured to you at all.

Too Many Morons

2009-09-10T12:07:00.000-07:00

Geezus, it's getting difficult to read for all the idiots screaming their collective asses off about bullshit. The most fucking annoying part is that they won't listen to facts. You can show them all the studies and bills you want and they'll still believe what they want to believe. Here, morons, try and get these through your thick fucking heads:

There are no death panels. That was never in the fucking bill. There was a provision to pay doctors for having the discussion about end of life care that all of us will one day need to have but there is not and never will be some panel deciding on your productivity. That story you keep spouting about being sentanced to die on the NHS is bullshit. It's talking about a fucking dispute between doctors over when someone should be diagnosed as terminally ill. It's not a fucking Sword of Damocles hanging over your head, it's a discussion about the best way of caring for people. No, illegal immigrants will not be covered under the healthcare bill. I don't give a shit what Rush told you or what Glenn Beck is beaming into your fucking head today. Standing law prohibits illegal immigrants from being part of any federal healthcare plan and the only section of the bill that could be wilfully misinterpreted to apply to illegal immigrants has a proviso specifically saying that they won't be covered (pg 143). No, it will not fund abortions. Whether it should is a different matter but it won't.

Come on, just fucking think about this for a damn second. The people voting on this bill have to get re-elected, some of them soon. Do you really think that if they voted for a fucking bill which "pulled the plug on granma", they'd get re-elected? Of course they fucking wouldn't. And knowing that, why the blue fuck would they vote for it? Why are you willing to believe any shit about Democrats when you would have a shit fit if this had been said about your guys? I didn't like McCain but there's no fucking way I would have said he supported a "death panel" or killing off your elderly relatives. McCain has his faults but that isn't one of them. And yet, you scumbags will swallow any fucking thing if it's said about Obama. You're the morons who actually believe that pro-choicers just know that the foetus inside them is an innocent baby and want to murder it anyway. You don't want a "government beauracrat" to get between you and your doctor, which isn't in the fucking bill anyway, but you'll happily support one getting between a pregnant woman and her doctor. Where's your fucking concern for patient autonomy then? Where was it during the Terri Schiavo fiasco?

No, Obama is not a fucking socialist. Socialism's defining aim is collective ownership of the means of production and distribution. Taking equity in a piddling percentage of the business sphere in exchange for saving your collosal banks is not fucking socialism. No, it's not fucking communism either. The fucking right-wing has so corrupted the words that people don't know what they fucking mean anymore. The objective of communism was to institute a collectivist anarchy. Arguing that expanding government makes you a socialist or communist is fucking inane, it's directly counter to the aims of both ideaologies. And no, I know that's not what the USSR ended up with. That's why their version is called "Soviet Communism". They tried for communism, failed and ended up with soviet communism. All fucking clear now? No, Obama isn't a fascist either. Fascism isn't just a nasty fucking word, it's a specific set of principles. He's not marching people around or glorifying the military or ruling by dictate, no matter what drivel you hear on the radio. And for fuck's sake, don't call him both a fascist and a socialist. The two ideaologies are in direct opposition. Crack a fucking book and learn what the words mean.

ACORN is not a fucking boogeyman. They paid people to register voters. Some of those people put down fictional characters to pad their pay. ACORN was defrauded of the money and reported them itself but Mickey Mouse didn't turn up to fucking vote. ACORN was the victim you fucking imbeciles. But while we're on the subject of vote irregularities, can we count on your support to ban those fucking voting machines?

Stop listening to Glenn Beck, the man is fucking certifiable. He is suffering a psychotic break from reality and desperately needs help. Did you catch his little architectural art critique? The man is out of his fucking mind. In fact, stop watching FOX entirely, they're just lying to you and no, you're not bright enough to know teh difference. And while we're on the subject: Mr President, stop letting your people resign when Beck is attacking them, it makes it look like you're afraid of this fucking maniac.

People, the corporation is not your fucking friend. The corporation does not care about you. The corporation cares only about money. If it is more profitable to help you live, they'll do that. If it's more profitable to take your premiums for years and then cut you off at the first sign of trouble, they'll do that. If it was more profitable to rape you to death with a broken bottle, they'd do that too. The corporation will do whatever it takes to make a profit. Do not trust the corporation, their only objective is to move your money from your pocket to theirs and if they can find any possible way to do so without providing anything for it, you can guar-en-fucking-tee that they will use it.

Oh, and finally, you DON'T have the best healthcare in the fucking world. Stop believing the bullshit blown up your ass by those who wrap themselves in the flag while they pick your pocket. You might well have the best doctors in the world but in every way that can be measured, your actual healthcare outcomes are pretty fucking pitiful and you're presenting the bullshit arguement that because the NHS has problems, the only alternative is to do nothing. The NHS does have problems but it's a fuck load better than what you have now. And you're not being offered an NHS-style option anyway. For fuck's sake, the bill is about reforming health insurance and you act like you're being offered Soylent Green.

Grow the fuck up. The adults are in charge now and it would be nice to have conservatives contribute to the discussion again.

Insurance Companies Are The Mafia

2009-09-01T15:26:00.000-07:00

Now hear this: The corporation is not your friend. Repeat: The corporation is not your friend. Cool, that should have scared off any lurking Freepers.

I read a post earlier today of someone wondering why his health insurance premium was going up by 29%. The form letter the insurance company sent to him didn't offer any kind of explanation and he wondered, in today's economy, what could possibly have caused such a huge rise? Really, the answer is simple. Why was his insurance company raising his rates by nearly a third? Because they can.

Really, this is not hard to understand. Businesses exist to make a profit. The bigger the profit, the better. All fair so far. Basic market economics says that when the price of something gets too high, consumers will move to another vendor or drop out of the market altogether (mentally circle that last one, it's important). That mechanism keeps prices as low as possible, allowing the market to reward good companies and allowing consumers to get the best deal, right? That's what we all learned in Econ101, isn't it?

It's horseshit.

For many things, hamburgers for example, the free market model works well. If the price of a Big Mac gets too high, you go to Burger King or you skip lunch. But healthcare is not like a Big Mac. We all need healthcare (or, at least, the option of it) and we need it all the time. That means you are what is called a "captive market". You cannot drop out of the market without great risk to your life and/or health. Essential services always lead to captive markets, it's the nature of them. We can't do without electricity, water and healthcare (one could make an argument for putting mail in there too) and that allows the corporations that control the market to game the system, charging as much as they can and keeping prices within a few dollars of one another. Over here (Britain), we lived through privatisation mania under Thatcher (and, to a lesser extent, Major and Blair). All our essential services were privatised; water, gas, electricity and mail were all privatised. What happened? The same thing that always happens when essential services are privatised: Prices soar, standards drop and service is taken out back and shot. The "invisible hand" (and I wish people would read Smith, he was not in favour of this stuff) does not select for the best company, it selects for the most ruthless.

And it happens because corporations are not your friend. Corporations are not in business to provide a service, they are in business to make a profit and the corporation has no soul. The corporation doesn't care how it makes a profit, it just cares that it makes one. Were it not illegal, you can bet your bottom dollar that Blue Cross would sell crack. All corporations care about is profit. Legally, that's all they are allowed to care about. And that is why your insurance company will cut you off if you get sick (recission), why premiums continue to soar, why pre-existing conditions are screened out. Because pre-existing conditions undermine profit. Henry Ford, scumbag though he was, said at least one thing that bears repeating: "The ultimate goal of the industrialist should be to make the highest quality of goods possible, at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible". Ford was a clever man and he parlayed that into becoming very rich but his flaw was that he thought small. He thought in terms of actually providing a product, an exchange of cash for goods.

The new insurance lords do not think so small. They aren't a business, they're a protection racket. You pay a sum every month in exchange for your health, which will be preserved only if the collectors can't find some way to avoid it. If you actually need the service, they cut you off. So, in reality, this isn't insurance, it's a protection racket, a lottery. The insurance industry is the Mafia. Henry Hill is collecting your premiums. It is not in the insurance corporation's interest to preserve your health. It is in their interest for you to fork over your money and then die without claiming. Should you claim, it is in the corporation's interest to find any way it can to deny your claim. And the insurance corporations, like the mafia, are very good about remembering to kick some of that moolah back to the law enforcers (in this case, Congress). They convince you to buy into a lottery, pass some of the cash to the only people able to stop them and those people then vote to keep the lottery going. How is this not organised crime?

Right about now, some fuckwit reading this is calling me an anti-capitalism socialist. First off, my dear braindead, don't use words you don't understand. That's not what "socialist" means. Crack a book, if you can read. Secondly, I am not anti-capitalism. I am anti-corporatism. "Corporation. noun~ and ingeneous device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility". A Mom N' Pop insurance company, if such a thing could exist, would not fuck you over or would think very carefully about doing so for two reasons: A) Because they actually meet and therefore have an emotional tie to their customers and B) Because you can sue. Now, you can sue Blue Cross/Blue Shield too but they're big enough to afford a whole squadron of lawyers who can keep the judge buried in motions until the Last Trump. Mom N' Pop's can't afford to do that so they're forced to be reasonable. Nor is that an argument for tort reform because malpractice insurance premiums bear absolutely no resemblance to malpractice payouts. Actual payouts for malpractice have remained fairly static. So why have premiums continued to soar? See above, because they can.

The corporation does not care about you. The rule of the corporation is not the rule of Henry Ford. The rule of the corporation is: "Take all you can, give nothing back". That's why it used to be possible to support a family in half-decent style on one full-time wage and now, you'll struggle on three. Because the corporation's ideal situation is to have a small class rich enough to buy their product and a large class of potential workers who can be paid as little as possible, used and fired at will. The corporation does not reinvest the money and hire more workers if you give them a tax break. The corporation hires exactly the number of workers it needs for the work it needs to do and pockets the rest. And often not even that. I got laid off about a month ago. From a department of twelve, there are two left and there's still the same amount of work. So FOX (yes, I know but I was there before the buyout) are now expecting one person to do the work of six. I still speak to one of them. Yes, he's struggling. If the corporation decides it needs to expand, it will leverage it's assets, raise the capital and expand. It has nothing to do with how much liquid capital they have.

I'm not sure when the USA started to forget the lessons of the Great Depression. I suspect it was because right-wing bastards spent a lot of time and money brainwashing people into forgetting. But over the course of the Cold War, the USA seemed to become committed to the fallacy of the excluded middle, if the USSR was at the extreme of the economic left, we must be at the extreme of the economic right, completely unregulated dog-eat-dog capitalism. And unregulated capitalism always tends toward corporatism. Say it with me now: The corporation is not your friend.

Health care isn't a Big Mac. Health care isn't a commodity, it's a service. You put money in and you get good health out. It doesn't matter if it makes a profit. Let's try and remember that.

Anger - A Rant

2009-08-30T23:04:00.000-07:00

Dear Republicans,

Fuck you. No, I'm not joking. I'm sick of this bullshit.

I'm sick of the way you've corrupted the public discourse. The way you've made it acceptable to hurl any insult you like at public officials. The way you blame us for the current atmosphere of hatred by accusing us of starting it with hating Bush. Like Bush didn't come on the heels of eight years of your tireless efforts to destroy Clinton by any means necessary, like Bush didn't give us good reason to complain. A couple of posters on a website compared Bush to Hitler and you've used it as free license to compare Obama to Hitler 24/7 and I'm sick of your hypocrisy, where it's acceptable to say shit about Obama that you would have had an apopletic fit (and did) if anythign remotely similar had been said about your guys. Keith Olbermann calls Cheney a fascist when he was actually using fascist tactics and you think that gives you the freedom to call Obama a fascist, socialist, Marxist constantly for no reason at all. Fuck you and your bullshit false equivelancy.

I'm sick of the way you've made the populace stupid. Around a fifth of your populace thinks the sun orbits the earth, over half think evolution never happened. Your populace actually believe the media has a liberal bias. Not because it has, you have the most conservative media in the free world, but because you've shouted it so loud and so often that you've brainwashed the public into believing it, like the battered wife who parrots her husband's insults. You've got a whole segment of the populace shouting about socialism and fascism and none of them know what the fucking words mean. You've convinced them that fascism is a left-wing thing. You've got them so turned around that some of them actually believe global warming isn't happening. Fuck you.

I'm sick of the way you try to destroy the whole concept of government. You've tricked the people into believing that government can't do anything right, always being careful to exclude the army because you love your bullets and bombs but you've so destroyed the public's ability to reason that they don't even think of interstate highways, the space program, the national parks program, etc. Government is always great when it's doing what you tell it and inevitibly corrupt when it isn't. Fuck you.

I'm sick of your rewriting of history. You've bleated so loud and long that Reagan was a great president, that the New Deal didn't work, that cutting taxes increases revenues, that you actually have the people believing this bullshit. And these are the same people who will go on to become teachers and fill their student's heads with this self-same bullshit. Reagan was a mediocre president at best who had teh good fortune to be in power when the USSR collapsed under it's own weight and you bastards have turned him into teh Second Coming. You've rewritten history so that everything foul and hateful and wrong can be attributed to a Democrat while everything worthwhile is a Republican's glory. Fuck you.

I'm sick of your dragging the centre ever further to the right. How many whackjob fringe ideas have you dragged into the mainstream? The aforementioned idea that tax cuts increase revenues, the Laffer Curve, the idea that Welfare harms the poor, the idea that there's rampant fraud in Welfare, the idea that whatever is good for corporations is good for the country. And you push these ideas through your corporate media and you do it so long and loud that they become part of the accepted political landscape and because it is easier to tell a lie than to debunk one, we never get away from this rancid shit. Fuck you.

I'm sick of your casual criminality. Teddy Kennedy, a man who's boots you were not worthy to lick, was just buried and all I've heard from my rightist friends for days is Chappaquidick, Chappaquiddick, Chappaquidick. Your fucking golden boy raped the Constitution, mainly because he wanted to; tortured random people (and waterboarding is torture, fuck you too) essentially because he wanted to; spent like a drunken sailor, essentially because he wanted to; invaded a soverign nation, essentially for the loot and destroyed people's lives, essentially for the evilulz and you bastards are obsessed with a fucking accident a Democrat had decades ago? You don't go on about Laura Bush killing some guy decades ago. Fuck you.

I'm sick of you praising pure evil. You're letting Dick Cheney be the standard-bearer for Republicanism. Dick Cheney, a man so nakedly evil that even his friends call him "Darth"; a man so callous that Lex Luthor would recoil in terror; a man who probably has dismembered hitchhikers in those man-sized safes and kills plants by his mere proximity. Fuck you.

I'm sick of your attempts to tilt the playing field permanently in your favour. Democrats filibustered a few of Bush's most hateful judicial picks and you pricks started screaming about doing away with the filibuster but now you're in the minority, you're filibustering absolutely everything you can and whining when you don't get the chance. You ignored everything the Democrats had to say when you had power and now that you don't, you scream that everyone must be bipartisan. You don't budge a fucking inch on anything but you insist that everyone must compromise to meet you. That's your idea of politics: Don't move an inch, force the other guy to come to the right to meet you and call the result a "compromise". Fuck you.

I'm sick of your corporatism. You dress it up in false populism but anyone with half a brain can see that you're the brought and paid for subsidiary of big business. You keep pushing tax cuts as the answer for absolutely everything, you keep sabotaging every attempt to control the excesses of big business. You geuinely think the world would be a better place if it was a combination of Bill Gibson's dystopian vision of a corporate dominated world and Ayn Rand's bullshit Objectivism, yet another entry in mankind's endless attempts to find a moral justification for naked greed. You've taken the clinically insane spewings of a woman literally to the right of Hitler (pardon my Godwins) and the 1984-like vision of a dystopian author and convinced yourselves that would be a good place to live. Big business is the enemy of the people, always has been. The ideal for the corporate class is to have a small pool of people rich enough to buy their fucking crap and a much larger pool of people so poor and with so few options that they can be used and abused at the corporation's whim. A corporation's objective is not to look after you, it is to make ever-larger profits by any means necessary. You bastards want to reinstate fucking slavery to the corporate class and you've made the public so fucking stupid that they actually swallow the bullshit you're serving up, they actually want to enslave themselves to the corporations that abuse them at every turn. They actually care more about the corporations right to make obscene profits than they care about their child's right to live on a habitable planet. Fuck you.

Fuck you, you scumridden shitehawks, you make me sick. Just fuck off and die.

I wonder...

2009-08-26T03:45:00.001-07:00

I wonder sometimes, what it must be like to be an American conservative. To believe wholeheartedly in such an outrageous collection of fictions, exagerations and lies. To believe that Obama isn't a US citizen; that global warming is unproven; that the jury is still out on evolution; that government is always the problem; that taxes on the rich are always too high; that a world run by corporations for their own benefit is a desireable objective; that Keith Olbermann is in some way equivelent to Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck; that waterboarding and wallslamming aren't torture, no matter what 500 years of history says; that Bush "kept us safe" and Reagan "won the Cold War"; that cutting taxes increases revenues; that Clinton was unusually corrupt and Bush did not deserve impeachment a dozen times over; that the media has a liberal bias, the Obama administration is already unusually sleazy and Faux news is "fair and balanced".

I'm mentally ill. I have an excuse for believing utter bunkum. What makes me shudder is that supposedly sane people exist who believe this collection of bullshit and fairytales and not only that but they get elected to national office.

Dude, Where's My Religious Rights?

2009-08-25T20:55:00.000-07:00

I am a man of faith. I am a Luciferian Satanist. In extremely simplified terms, that means I believe that Satan (whom we call Lucifer) exists and is best described as a noble rebel against an unjust and tyrannical God. That's extremely simplistic as I don't wish to bore you by explaining the theology but those are my beliefs. It's an unorthodox faith, certainly, but faith all the same. A friend once described it as similar to the internal struggle at Disney. Roy Disney (playing Lucifer here), while remaining loyal to the ideals and dream of Disney, became dissatisfied with the direction Michael Eisner (God) was taking the company and attempted to organise a revolt of stockholders (the rest of us). It's a good analogy and, for the most part, it works. Lord Lucifer is not some medieval loanshark stalking New England offering to exchange souls for material wealth. He (and the masculine is used purely for convienience) is former upper-management attempting to organise resistence to the regime of the existing CEO. Yes, He is also a general but this war will not be fought on the plains of Israel but in the hearts and minds of all of us.

I explain this not because I'm trying to convert you (actively seeking to convert others is not allowed) but so that you have some idea of where I'm coming from and don't fall prey to the common misconceptions of my faith. The right like to talk a great deal about their religious freedoms, usually when they're not under threat. The argument is near-constantly made that the legality of same-sex marriage in some states or abortion is an attack on their religious liberties. Naturally, that's not only wrong but ridiculously wrong. The simple existence of something you disapprove of doesn't threaten your rights but, to take their argument at face value, what about my religious rights?

See, your Constitution (and Article 9 of the ECHR which the UK is a signatory to) makes no distinction between religions. It says that your faith (or lack thereof, and the ECHR makes that part explicit) is on exactly the same level as my own. Your religious rights do not trump mine, regardless of our respective numbers. The documents do not say "all religions except Satanism". If you believe your religious freedoms must be legally respected, you have to respect mine as well and the disproportionate numbers of Christianity make precisely no difference. The ECHR also explicitly guarantees the right to freedom from religion and to freedom to change one's religion. Those rights are implicit in the First Amendment to the Constitution but they are not codified (that is, made explicit by being written down).. So, we're on equal grounds, right?

In which case, why should your religious rights trump mine with regard to same-sex marriage. My faith says that, in the wild dance of creation, some will love the opposite sex and some will love the same sex and it's all good. Love, real love, is a merging of souls and the love shared between two men or two women is exactly the same in quality as the love shared between a husband and wife so why should we take issue with two people's love because the bodies their souls currently reside in share the same configuration of genitals? My faith says that love should be preserved wherever possible. I hold a minister's license and I will happily marry any two people who want to be married (due to the UK laws, it won't carry any legal weight until registered though). Since the only arguement against same-sex marriage is religious (and it is, the other arguments can be disposed of in a matter of seconds), why should your religious objections to same-sex marriage trump my own religious beliefs which says that same-sex marriage is just as laudable as hetero marriage? Do you only respect that faith which agrees with you? Well, probably you do because if you're arguing against same-sex marriage, you're probably a militant fundie and the hallmark of militant fundies (of any stripe, both theist and atheist) is the utter belief in their own rightness.

In fact, that's true generally. In the US (and almost uniquely in the US), the populace impose their own religious test on public officials. With a very few exceptions, non-Christians cannot get elected. In coded language, the argument is often made that you can't trust them because they're not Christian. Can you imagine if there was ever any kind of similar whisper campaign against a Christian candidate? Can you imagine if there was robocalls saying "Senator Bachman worships a sadistic sky-god who sacrificed himself to himself to appease himself"? Bill O'Lielly wouldn't shut up about it for a year. See, we believe that God really does disapprove of same-sex marriage. We believe that God does that because God is a sadistic bastard who doesn't want people to be happy but I'm curious why you guys think that a benevolent God doesn't want gay people to be happy. Does your God create people with the express purpose of being abused? I think so but you guys tend to disagree.

I don't live in the USA but if I did, chances are my religious beliefs would be abused all the time. I believe it is a moral wrong to allow people to be denied healthcare but your country (or at least, the right-wing who run the country) seem to think it would be a sin to provide healthcare. I believe it is a moral wrong to deny gay people the chance to be happily married and a significant portion of your nation wants to enshrine that moral wrong in law. Would my religious rights be infringed by a law which I consider to enshrine a sin? If not, then your religious rights are also not being infringed by recognising same-sex marriage. If so, then our faiths are considered to be legally equal so why are my religious rights being trumped by yours?

Faith can be a great thing for some people. Some of us find peace, purpose or wisdom in a faith. Others find them in a philosophy or in the works of great minds and that's all good (my faith is the right one for me, whether it is right for you is a decision you have to make on your own). Some find the inspiration in their faith to do great things, such as the Rev Martin Luther King or Dr Barnado. But when religion becomes not a matter of faith and introspection but a matter of dogma, when it becomes a case not of faith in the deity or the teachings but in the institution and rules, it becomes a tool for evil. When the institution of a faith views itself as a tool for shaping law, then that institution will act to preserve the world as it wishes the world to be. Faith is about the search for the self, it isn't (or shouldn't be) an excuse for forcing others to live your way.

I've read the Bible, many times. Jesus had some admirable things to say and his teachings stand by themselves. Assuming we take the Bible as an accurate record (I don't but many do), Jesus spoke at great length and with eloquence about the plight of the poor, about social justice, about equality and tolerance and the need for good people to aid others. Granted, it's been a while but I don't remember anywhere where he says "QUEERS NOT INCLUDED".

2032

2009-08-18T07:56:00.000-07:00

It has been twenty years since President Obama was swept from office. In those twenty years, the political game has been run by the Republicans. When in power, they pushed their measures through. When not in power, strategic use or threat of the filibuster, the echo chamber of corporate media and corporate backed advertising acted to prevent any progressive legislation from being passed.

The reforms of the New Deal have been swept aside. There is no minimum wage. The workday averages twelve to sixteen hours for an average wage of whatever the corporation feels like paying you. Health insurance in the current sense no longer exists. Instead, you are legally required to buy insurance and, each month, the insurance company will draw twenty claimants at random to have their costs paid. Medicare and Medicaid are gone. If you lose your job and get sick, you die. The conservative Supreme Court ruled in 2022 that forcing hospitals to treat anyone who needed treatment was an unfair infringement on their right to earn profits. Your home is provided by the corporation. Between rent paid to the corporation, out-of-pocket health costs and money owed to the company store, your take-home pay may even be five dollars a month. Your employment is entirely at the whim of your employer. You can be fired at any time for any reason. Your welfare payments will last a week and there is an ongoing effort to remove those amid cries that the US cannot afford it. Military costs now average 70% of government spending and we are at war with Eastasia.

I say this not because I want this to happen. I say this because this is the dream of the corporate class. Not because they are evil men (although you and I may think so) but because, to them, all that matters is the economy. When I wrote this scenario (in far greater detail), I wrote it as the background for a dystopian roleplay game I was working on. I never thought it would happen but I was wrong.

Because if something as simple, as plainly commonsense as a public option can be turned into a cause celebre for the corporate class and the horrifying faction of morons they lead around by the nose, then there are no limits. If a public option can be bargained away, anything is up for grabs. And the dream of the corporate class, of the owner class, has always been of an employee class completely at their mercy, as they were prior to the New Deal. And I now, even as I write this, that using the words "corporate class", talking about the division between the "malefactors of great wealth" and the serfs who labour for their enrichment will cause some, perhaps many, to label me a socialist or even a communist. Because people don't know or care what those words mean anymore. Now, it seems that we just accept entirely unregulated, free-for-all capitalism as a divine imperative and anything which deviates from that, even slightly, gets you labelled a socialist. Talking about providing for the less fortunate, in any way, makes you a commie. Compassion is outlawed, by public disdain, if not by law.

I'm trying to be angry here. Normally, I can deliver a pound of fresh outrage fresh on your doorstep every morning but today, I'm just fuckin sad. The civilised world would love to see you, America, but you never return our calls anymore.

Dear Mr President

2009-08-16T23:13:00.000-07:00

Dear Mr President,
First off, thanks for reading my letter. I know you're a busy man. I know you have the demands of both your job and your family to balance and your time is precious so I won't take up too much of it.

Mr President, what are you doing? I'm hearing ugly rumours that you may allow the public option to be "compromised", that is, either removed or watered down to insignificance. Sir, did you forget that the public option was the compromise position in the first place? The left-wing option was single payer, a system I live under here in the UK; the right wing option was doing virtually nothing and the public option was in the middle. "Compromising" away the public option isn't compromise, it's capitulation. It's continuing the politics of the last twenty years where the right refuse to budge at all, the left gradually come to meet them and we call the result "compromise".

Sir, are you deluding yourself into thinking that if you "compromise" some more, the Republicans will vote for this thing? They won't. There are perhaps two reasonable Republicans left in Congress, they're already looking increasingly uncomfortable in their party and they probably would have voted for a halfway decent public option. Two Republican votes and that's it. Th rest are not open to negotiation or compromise. It wouldn't have mattered what was in the bill, they would vote against it anyway because it's not about the bill, it's about you. They hate you, Mr President. They hate you even more than they hated Bill Clinton. Part of it is because of your ethnicity but mainly, it's because you're a Democrat and the only way the modern Republican party knows to deal with Democrats is to attack constantly. No negotiation, no compromise, no reason, just endless attack.

Mr President, you will never win these people over, stop trying. Craft the best bill you can. If they have worthwhile ideas to offer, include them but don't pursue bipartisanship just for the sake of it. The public doesn't care about bipartisanship, they care about getting things done. Just craft your bill. If some Republicans vote for it, great. If not, no great loss. This isn't a collegiate meeting, this is a war. You're seeing yourself as a referee and the Congressional Republicans are seeing themselves as a pugilist. Guess which one of you is going to get hit?

These people are not interested in what you have to say. They are interested only in sabotaging you. They will sabotage everything you try to do, they will spread lies about you and, if given the slightest opportunity, they will impeach you. Sir, I know you haven't done anything to warrant impeachment, it doesn't matter. They are trying to destroy you and if you don't give them the opportunity, they'll make one up. If you do not pass a string public option, the Republicans will run their 2010 and 2012 campaigns on your inability to fulfill your campaign promises because they torpedoed them. These people are not logical, sir, and they can't be reasoned with.

Sir, you were elected with an overwhelming majority in Congress and the Republicans are still running the show. They are still blustering you into siding with their position. You are being turned into the puppet of the right fringe and they're going to try and destroy you anyway. Mr President, what is it going to take? When are you going to realise that you cannot rely on these maniacs to act in the best interests of the country? They are going to act in the best interests of themselves and the corporations they are the political arm for. Sir, I know you're a comic book fan. Me too. You are trying to negotiate with Lex Luthor, sir, with the Kingpin, with the Joker and you are losing.

Yours,
Ebon

The Right Goes Crazy

2009-08-11T14:40:00.000-07:00

Anyone else noticed that the right have lost their minds of late? Now, I'm diagnosed mentally ill, I'm allowed to call others crazy but the right's base, that roughly 25% of the country that stuck with Bush to the end seem to have collectively gone completely tonto.

Let's start with the Birthers. I've avoided talking about the Birthers because I was under the impression that they were a despised but extremely vocal minority but according to recent surveys, they may even constitute the majority of the base in the South.

Let's not mince words here, the Birthers are insane. Obama's birth certificate has been posted online and they complain that a Certificate of Live Birth isn't the same as a birth certificate (they're exactly the same thing). The Hawaii state department has confirmed that Obama was born there and that's not good enough. Two birth announcements were placed in Hawaiin newspapers at the time and that's not good enough. They complain that Obama's father was a British citizen (true) and therefore, Obama isn't an American citizen (false, as several of the Founders were in the same position). The Supreme Court has repeatedly refused to waste their time on this nonsense. One gets the impression that handwritten note from the Almighty wouldn't be enough proof for these people. They're crazy, utterly Dagenham (two stops up from Barking). The Birther movement appears to be a straight up split between racists convinced that a black man cannot possibly be a natural-born citizen (usually they will defend themselves with the bullshit argument that they haven't mentioned race); crazy conspiranoids who will believe absolutely frickin' anything if it complies with their pre-existing fantasies and rabid Obama-haters determined to destroy him by any means available.

That last group are interesting. Some deny their own hatreds under the banner of patriotism (the last refuge of the scoundrel, according to Johnson), others are blunt about their mission to destroy Obama. Sometimes they defend themselves with the usual false comparison to how Bush was treated. Naturally, they forget that Bush was given pretty much a free pass from the media for most of his first term (if you genuinely believe the US media has a liberal bias, you need to kill yourself and remove your stupidity from the gene pool), they forget that Dubya gave us a lot more valid reasons for complaint and they ignore that W's stint came directly after eight years of non-stop Clinton witch-hunting when every rumour and smear was treated as cause for charges of treason. In other words, if the atmosphere had become toxic, it was because the right had made it so. All of the accusations were bullshit of course and David Brock, who broke many of those stories (and has since apologised and tried to make amends) is refreshingly honest about their motives in his autobiography, Blinded By The Right. There was not so much a conspiracy as a generally understood aim on the right that the public had no right to vote in a Democrat and therefore, it was the duty of Republicans to destroy him by any means necessary. It's clear that if Clinton hadn't been impeached for misuse of presidential cigars, he would have been impeached for something, such was the Republican hatred of him.Reagan's administration committed crimes which warranted impeachment by any reasonable standard and nothing happened. Clinton's only crime was an entirely consensual affair with an adult woman and he gets impeached. W rapes the Constitution and deserved impeachment a dozen times over and yet, nothing happens. Obama is allegedly a socialist for saving America's collosal banks and you better damn well believe that the right are already looking for some way to impeach him.

There is a double standard here. A naked and blatant double standard. Democrats are expected to conduct themselves like saints in their private lives and paragons of statesmanship in their professional ones or they'll be impeached at a moment's notice. Republicans are free to conduct their personal and professional lives like the bastard offspring of Lex Luthor and Jack The Ripper but because they are Republicans, they are always right and can do no wrong. It's the refuge in audacity, a lesson that the previous administration learned far too well: You can get away with pretty much anything if you're brazen enough about it.

Then there's the health care crazies. Now, I'm not talking here of those who have reasonable concerns about cost, availability, government power or the technicalities of the bill. All of those are legitimate topics for discussion but euthanasia? Really? We're going to have a discussion about euthanasia? Well, actually, we're not. I'm going to have a discussion about it, the right are going to work themselves into spit-flecked madmen over it.

There are no "death panels". There never have been, the proposed legislation would not create them and the chances of this president creating them are slim to none. The proposed legislation simply proposes paying the cost for the discussion which you will someday have to have with your doctor about end-of-life care. Someday, everyone will need to have that discussion. If not for themselves, with regard to a spouse or loved one. That's an unfortunate fact of life and no reasonable person is going to judge the outcome of that discussion. But proposing to reimburse the doctor for that conversation (or encouraging people to take out living wills, which is also in the legislation) is not the same thing as a "death panel" (and incidently, that would make a great name for a thrash band). To enact the latter would take far more than a couple of lines in a proposed healthcare bill. It would take a sea change in public morality and feelings, a completely different set of legislators and, by the way, what are the chances of the courts holding it to be lawful anyway? Also by the way, I thought conservatives were meant to be pro-life? And yet, the right is coming very close to advocating actual treason over legislation which actually would extend life. Interesting. This isn't protecting the people from government, this is protecting insurance corporations from the people.

Likewise, there are no plans to cover illegal immigrants or sex changes. I don't know but I doubt that there are plans to cover abortions, given that the issue is radioactive in the States. But really, this just illustrates my point: The right's utter willingness to wholeheartedly believe (and say, even in Congress) things of Democrats that would have brought cries of treason if they had been said of Bush. If you think Obama wants to euthanise your granny, you're an idiot. If you believe Obama wants to sieze your guns, you're an armed idiot and if you think Obama wants to give your guns to an illegal immigrant to kill your god, you're Bill O'Lielly.

This is all horseshit. There is no plan to sieze your guns and, barring an outright insurrection, there won't be. There is no plan to kill your grandparents. Saving America's collosal (and politically powerful) banks and auto makers from collapse is not socialism. Obama isn't a socialist, communist, Marxist or fascist. He's not even especially liberal. He's a left-leaning moderate, same as Clinton was (and I'm aware that I'm talking to the people who think Bill Clinton was the devil). He hasn't moved on DADT, on civil unions (he's already come out against same-sex marriage), his SCOTUS pick was a wildly qualified and sensible moderate (and incidently, the right's ciriticism of her also used rampant racist tactics). Don't misunderstand, I can find a hundred things to ciriticise Obama for (two of which are above) but the right aren't criticising Obama, they're criticising an acid trip hallucination of Obama.

And while we're talking about this meaningless piffle, right-wing protesters (and I will do a favour they certainly won't return by pointing out that this is a small faction) are actively disrupting Democratic meetings with constituents. Glenn Beck can make jokes about poisoning Nancy Pelosi; Bill-O can talk about "Tiller the Baby Killer" a thousand times and yet, Keith Olbermann's carefully-phrased rants about policy issues are held to be equivelent? I'm sorry, I don't throw this word around much because I know too well what it actually means but the or threat of force, using intimidation to drown out the opposing side is fascist in the literal, academic meaning of that word. And so, we arrive at a position where a small but vocal minority of the right have embraced outright fascism. And they have constructed the situation very carefully to avoid any kind of restraint. You can't take away their weapons due to the 2nd Amendment (although I'm unclear if the 2nd covers taking a gun away from a would-be domestic terrorist). You can't even ask them or their corporate media enablers to dial it back a notch or they scream that their 1st Amendment rights are being surpressed and amp it up even further. Souting "FIRE!" in a crowded theatre isn't covered by the 1st but apparently, doing the same to a segment of the population that currently resembles a powderkeg is covered.

So where do we go from here?

Life Under Socialised Medicine

2009-07-29T16:55:00.000-07:00

I live in Britain, under the NHS. Now, I want to say this up front in case anyone gets the wrong impression: the NHS is not perfect and no-one should ever claim it is. Having got that established...

I suffer from extremely severe depression and anxiety disorders. As a result of that, I self-harm frequently (please, no lectures). I also have a completely unrelated condition where my stomach produces too much acid and slightly high blood pressure.

Every morning, I take two antidepressents and an acidity regulator. My prescription for these drugs is for two months supply of each and costs me £7 (roughly $15) to get filled. If I was unemployed (which I will be shortly), young or elderly, I would be exempt from that charge. But surely those are pre-existing conditions? Yeah, they are. Makes no difference. Under nationalised healthcare, the only time the words "pre-existing condition" come up is when your doctor is checking that any drugs he prescribes won't conflict with another condition you have. That prescription fee is all my out-of-pocket expenses (oh, and the occasional bottle of asprin or antacids). My doctors visits, medical tests, psychiatric tests and care, the weekly visit from the psychiatric nurse, all of that is covered by the NHS. If I need a hospital stay or an operation, that's covered too. If/when I lose my job, it makes no difference to my healthcare. The only difference from my perspective is that I need to tick another couple of boxes on the back of the prescription. No-one loses their healthcare when they lose their job here, even the (*shock, horror*) unemployed are covered.

As for the government deciding your healthcare? Well, there's two things here. Under the NHS, doesn't happen. My doctor and psychiatrist decide what care I need, they note it down on a computerised system and the NHS reimburses them, the actual exchange of money nevers involves you. The career civil servants who run the NHS don't decide your care, they just direct the resources where they're needed, quickly, quietly and with a minimum of fuss. Admin costs average 6.8% of the budget, including pensions and benefits. Secondly, how is that different from insurance suits deciding your healthcare? Given the choice, I'd rather go with the career civil servants. The insurance industry has a profit motive, they are actively looking to screw you out of your healthcare because the more people they can cut off from care, the more money they make. The civil servants don't care either way, they get paid exactly the same regardless of whether the NHS runs a surplus or a defecit. I could ring my doctor this morning and get an appointment this afternoon. Ah, but perhaps I'm special because I have "SUICIDE RISK" on my file? 'Fraid not. Most people will get an appointment on the same day or, at worst, the following day.

Now, I keep having the sam argument with conservatives who believe the NHS is a failure since it usually runs at a loss. IT'S SUPPOSED TO! Look, healthcare is not a product like a Big Mac, healthcare is a service. The Post Office doesn't make a profit either and it doesn't matter if they do. Their primary purpose is to move the mail about for the mutual benefit of all. The fire service puts out fires for the mutual benefit of all. And that's how the NHS works. They're not a profit driven business, they just treat illnesses for the mutual benefit of all. It is in an insurance industries best interests to deny you care. It is not in the governments best interests to do so because the quicker you get better, the quicker you get back to work and start paying taxes again.

The right keep screaming about waiting lists under the NHS. Yes, there are waiting lists for non-emergency operations. The actual time varies depending on the specific operation needed but they might well be there. Do you really not have waiting lists in the US? You can just walk into a doctor's office any morning, slap the cash on the counter and have the op there and then? Or do you, more likely, have to arrange a mutually convienient time for a consultation, arrange payment and arrange a mutually convienient time for the op? See, you already have waiting times, you just don't call them that. And how long do you have to wait if you don't have the cash to slap on the counter? Waiting lists might be annoying and sometimes painful but you will get the operation eventually and it won't cost you a penny (your employer is legally required to pay you while you recuperate). If you need a non-emergency operation in the US and you don't have the cash, how long do you have to wait? Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending waiting times. They're a major flaw in the system and one we're trying to correct but what I am saying is that waiting a short time for care and getting it is better than never getting the care at all. I have been offered an operation to correct the problem with my stomach but I always turn it down. Not because of the waiting times but because stomach operations are fairly major surgery and I'm happy to keep taking the pills.

How about costs? I pay around 22% income tax and about another 8-9% National Insurance (our version of Social Security, there is no such thing as a payroll tax here). That's about average. How much do you pay in taxes? Now, add the cost of your health insurance (assuming you have it) to that figure and work it out again. The NHS running costs work out at just over $2000 per citizen, per year. How much can you get a year's health insurance for? The US spends, on average, $2.3 trillion a year on the combination of Medicare, Medicaid and private insurance. Assuming the same $2000 per citizen, per year cost, the entire US population could be covered for around $600 billion a year, not counting start-up costs. Yes, some people here choose to take out private insurance anyway, that's their right and they do it for many different reasons. Some want the option of skipping the wait times, some want a more luxurious hospital or brandname drugs (the NHS tends toward functionally spartan and generic drugs to keep costs down), some may have more esoteric reasons but the option is there. Some employers offer it as a perk for their high-value employees. I smoke about a pack a day. Marlboros here cost about $12 a pack, 80% of which is tax. I don't mind paying that because the vast majority of that goes into the NHS. The government takes in about £10 billion annually from tobacco taxes and spends about £6.8 billion treating smoking-related illnesses. Again, I have no problem with paying that. I have a habit which is damaging to my health so I pay extra to cover the extra care which may be required.

A very brief word about abortion: The NHS will pay for abortions which your doctor considers medically necessary for physical or mental reasons. Abortions which are not medically necessary are not covered, they must be paid for privately, albeit at NHS rates. Whether you agree with that stance is up to you but that's the position.

A lot of people think the British hate our healthcare system because we bitch about it so much. This is a basic cultural misunderstanding. We bitch about everything, we're a dour people. Complaining is our national hobby, second only to football. This is the same country that had two books called Crap Towns where people were competing to get their town entered. The city where I live, Stoke-On-Trent in the Midlands, was once voted the most depressing place in the nation to live and we're proud of that. Whinging is the British passtime so our complaints about the NHS shouldn't be taken at face value. Rather, look at the fate of the rare politician who proposes abolishing the NHS: They catch hell at their surgeries (a monthly meeting for their constituents), get shouted down and usually booted out of office at the first opportunity.

And how about the charge that government will then tell you how to live your life? Yeah, it's bullshit. Utter bullshit. As mentioned above, I smoke about a pack a day. I don't drink much but I enjoy the odd pint of real ale. The government makes 80% of the price of my smokes in taxes and they skim a couple of pence off the price I pay on a pint but no-one's stopping me indulging those habits (although I can't smoke in pubs anymore). The health impact of fast food is generally dealt with indirectly (by taxing the corporate profits) but we still have plenty of branches of McDonalds, Burger King, etc. Sex is a health issue here, not a moral issue so any doctor will give you a dozen rubbers, free for the asking. The idea is that promiscuity is not a health danger in itself but unprotected promiscuity is. Therefore, provide a means of reducing the risk. It works, sort-of (the high teen pregnancy rate is more to do with them not using contraception in the first place).

Every other nation in the industrialised world manages some form of universal healthcare. It takes many different forms, with varying methods of delivery and paying for it. Since you're coming to this relatively late, there's nothing to stop the US setting up a committee to examine the existing systems and then mix-and-matching the best parts, absorbing Medicare and Medicaid along the way, until you come up with something special and uniquely American. The USA is the richest nation in the world. California alone is the fifth biggest economy on earth and yet, you are the only industrialised nation which doesn't guarentee at least basic healthcare for all of it's citizens. Guys, Italy manages this without it turning into a socialistic nightmare. Are you seriously telling me that US politicians are markedly worse than those of Italy? In most of the civilised world, only a very few unfortunates (mainly homeless people or drug abusers) die for lack of care. That's a tragedy, no questions there but how many people in the US die because they can't afford care? Triage by wallet.

The pressure for healthcare reform has never been higher. In poll after poll, about two-thirds of the USA wants healthcare reform but Congress may bargain away the public option (and let's not forget that the public option was the compromise position in the first place). Write, call, fax or email your CongressCritter. Take the Andy Dufresnes method (watch The Shawshank Redemption): Bug the living piss out of them until they'll do the right thing just to get rid of you. You guys need reform in the worst way and the wind is in your favour. So let's get it done.

Then we'll start on the legal bribery known as "campaign contributions". You grok?

Irregular

2009-06-30T13:05:00.000-07:00

The few of you who follow this blog will have noticed that posts have started to become few and far between. After considerable thought, I have decided to explain why.

I suffer from severe depression. Lately, my mental health has begun to deteriorate further, to the point that I have begun self-harming extensively again (please, no lectures) after years. Because mental illness is covered by the NHS here, I am getting doctor's treatment and am awaiting treatment from a professional psychiatrist (I always wondered about that expression; are there amateur psychiatrists?).

However, as a result of that, I've felt unable to update this blog as often as I should. For that, I apologise to everyone who reads it.

An Immoral Society

2009-06-19T12:38:00.000-07:00

No, I'm not talking about abortion.

Most of the USA describe themselves as Christian. I'm not Christian but I am a man of faith and yet, I have to wonder if those calling themselves Christian have actually read the words of Jesus. Mahatma Gandhi once said something to the effect that he would love Christians if he'd ever actually met one. While the right likes to mouth pieties like a drunken televangelist, how many have actually compared their actions to the teachings of Jesus?

For example, Jesus, like many religious figures, had a lot to say about poverty. He said that the poor would always be with us but also that alleviating poverty was a noble calling. Jesus didn't have much to say about economics but what he did say is closest to a form of proto-socialism. So how come so many Americans revile the poor and resent the state making any provision for them? Poverty is a moral issue but while the right seems to interpret that to mean that the poor are poor due to some moral failing, the left tends to interpret it as being our moral duty to help the poverty stricken. So many American Christians seem to believe that the Bible condemns socialism or communism. This proves that not only do they not understand the meaning of the words, they don't understand their own Bible very well either. The Bible doesn't say word one about either (unsurprisingly) but it's very much in favour of sharing one's wealth and goods with the poor.

Or take gay rights. Yes, yes, there's a couple of clobber verses which can be read to apply to homosexuality but none of them come from Jesus, they all come from the Old Testament or Paul. Jesus hung out with moneychangers and hookers, does anyone sane really think he'd have a problem with committed same-sex couples being given some legal rights? And if so, no-one is offering to legislate my religion.

Which brings us onto another point: The frightening number of Christians who honestly believe that the USA is a Christian nation. Firstly, the Founders said pretty much the exact opposite but more to the point of this article, Jesus warned you not to do this! "Render unto Caesar" wasn't just a snappy comeback, it was an endorsement of the separation of church and state. Jesus lived (assuming he existed, naturally) in a society which had no such separation and he personally saw the mess that resulted. He told you not to pray in public as well but you ignore that.

Why do so many Christians disregard the teachings of their founder in favour of ultra-right politics? Because for many, they are not Christians. They follow a religion which may be described as the "Cultus Americanus". A religion which grew out of but is distinct from Christianity in the same way as Mormonism. A religion which exists purely to provide divine blessing to ultra-right politics. In Crazy For God, Frank Schaeffer talks candidly about the swift mutation of the Religious Right that he helped create from a religious movement to an extension of the ultra-right wing of the Republican party (Schaeffer now regrets and is trying to make amends for most of what he did during that period). The Cultus Americanus pays lip service to the teachings of Jesus but places the teachings of Ronald Reagan and Rush Limbaugh on much the same level. They have their own high priests (Bill O'Lielly, Rush, Grover Norquist); their own devil figure (Clinton although Obama is getting there) and their own set of values. For example, the poor should be left to starve, lying is perfectly acceptable in the service of the faith, blind obedience is preferable to examined faith and it has the same cultish brainwashing tendencies as Scientology.

As a student of history and religion, the emergent faith is fascinating to observe. As someone who has to share the planet with these lunatics, it's terrifying.

Party Platform - Addendum

2009-06-17T10:38:00.000-07:00

- Paper Ballots. This should really be a no-brainer. Paper ballots are easily checkable, the error rate is virtually non-existant and everyone knows how to use them: Put your cross in the box. At the end of the evening, dump all the ballots out on a big table and, watched by a rep from each party who can object at any time, they're all counted. This is not rocket science.

Wanna have a party?

2009-06-16T12:14:00.000-07:00

No, not that kind of party. The political kind. We could call it the Promethian Party, seizing the political dialogue back for those of us who don't have a dozen lobbyists. Here's what the platform should be:

- Economics. Raise taxes on the right, rising to 50% on amounts above one million dollars a year. Yes, I know the standard talking point that if you do that, all the millionaires will flee the country. Bite me. They didn't flee the country during the Eisenhower era when the top tax rate hovered around 90%. If you want to talk about how Reagan cut the rates and the economy boomed, you can also bite me. Reagan's tax cuts let rich people get much richer but they also caused a recession (no, it wasn't Congress, guess what you can do?) and hammered government revenues. The insane "trickle-down economics" theory is crap, it always has been crap and it's never worked.

Small tax cut for the middle class. Tax credit for the working poor. No need to mess with corporate tax rates, just close the loopholes that let the majority of US corporations avoid paying taxes and institute a law that any profit earned on goods sold in the USA is taxed at USA rates. If you don't want to pay US tax rates, you don't get to sell to US consumers.

- Law & Order. We will not torture. Nor will we quibble about whether techniques classified as torture for five hundred years are really torture. The right laughed hysterically at Clinton quibbling about the meaning of "is" so they do not get to quibble about the meaning of "torture". The UN Declaration on Torture (which the US is a signatory to) expressly state that no special circumstances will excuse torture. While we're on the subject, anyone in custody is either a criminal, a civilian or a PoW and covered by the appropriate schedule of the Geneva Conventions. Since you aren't in a rebellion or invasion, they also have habeus corpus rights and criminals will get a fair trial as soon as is practical (just as the dozens of domestic terrorists already held in Supermax jails did).

The USA PATRIOT Act to be repealed in it's entirety and no, that doesn't endanger you in the slightest, STFU. The PATRIOT Act never had anything to do with preventing terrorism, it was about granting intelligence agencies every police-state fantasy they ever had. The Constitution and Bill of Rights are the supreme law of the land and the PATRIOT Act is an unconstitutional abomination.

The system of allowing Presidents to nominate judges was intended to insulate judges from political pressure. It has done exactly the opposite, allowing the more authoritarian presidents (*coughBUSHcough*) to enshrine their personal bias to a lifetime appointment. However, allowing judges to be elected by the general public opens them to the same pressures as politicians and the general public don't understand the law anyway. Therefore, judges for the Appeals courts or SCOTUS will now be elected by the ABA (American Bar Association) for fixed terms of ten-years (from which, they may resign at any time) and no-one may stand in those elections until they have at least fifteen years experiance as a lawyer and/or lower court judge. While we're on the subject, anyone complaining about "activist judges" is to be bludgeoned with a large ripe haddock. We will pursue a Constitutional Amendment to this effect.

All "three strikes" laws to be struck down. Also, an inquiry will be convened with regard to the war crimes comitted under the Bush administration.

- Equal Rights. The ERA to be ratified at the first opportunity. Partial Birth Abortion Act repealed. FACE Act to be fully enforced. Federal hate crimes and anti-discrimination laws expanded to cover homosexuals. We will order the military to cease enforcement of DADT on our first day in office and repeal it fully at the first opportunity. DOMA is repealed as an unconstitutional challenge to the "full faith and credit" clause.

With regard to same-sex marriage, we are going to concede the word "marriage" to the collective church. However, that is [i]all[/i] we are conceding. We will enact law to ensure that the package of rights and responsibilities currently known as "marriage" will henceforth be available to any two mentally competent adults who register themselves as a Civil Union. For fairness, anyone already married when this law comes into effect will automatically gain Civil Union status in addition. In other words, if you want to have the legal rights with your partner (of either gender), you have to register as a Civil Union. If you want to take it further and have religious rites, that's fine, it's optional. The entire set of legal rights (such as but not limited to, presumptive inheritence, presumptive child custody, etc) shall now be granted to Civil Unions which shall be considered to take the place of the word "marriage" in all federal laws.

Also, cannabis is legalised for production, private consumption and sale from licensed vendors (i.e. vendors already holding a license to sell alcohol), subject to the exact same retrictions as alcohol (age-restricted and a ban on driving under the influence). If you wish to grow your own, that's the same as brewing one's own beer and none of the state's business. Also legalised federally is gambling (including sports gambling) in licensed premises.

- Religious Rights. All persons have every right to practice their faith and to freely worship as they see fit and our administration will not threaten that. However, your religious freedoms come with the responsibility to respect the religious freedoms of others. You cannot make law on a religious basis and any religious argument in law or public policy can and will be summarily ignored. If you hold an opinion for religious reasons, that's fine but you'll need to come up with a secular argument to justify it. You may not erect religious symbols on public property unless other religious/social groups (including athiests, for the purposes of this discussion) are free to do likewise. To put it another way: Erecting a cross alone on public property, not allowed. However, if a group of Christians wish to take up a collection to erect a cross on public property, they may do so, provided that Jews may put up a menorrah; Hindus may erect a statue of Shiva, Wiccans can erect a monument of the Wiccan Rede; athiests can erect a monument of, say, the "Coexist" logo and so on. The only acceptable reasons for refusing such a display shall be either that it contravenes obscenity laws or that it's physically dangerous.

- Education. No, you cannot teach creationism, cration science, intelligent design or whatever silly name you've come up with now in science class. It's not science. When you come up with a testable hypothesis that survives peer review, we'll talk. Science says that evolution, while incomplete, is the most likely explanation for humanity's current state. Creationism, if it is taught at all, shall be taught in Comparative Religions class. Nor can you have teacher-led prayer. Students may quietly pray whenever they wish so long as they do not endanger the class while doing so. Comprehensive sex education shall be taught, in an age appropriate manner, from the age of 11 onwards. Some children (mainly girls) may have already begun puberty by this point but the law must deal in averages. Machines vending condoms shall also be added to the bathrooms of male and female students (bite me, conservatives, no-one has a shag purely because there are rubbers available). All education shall be based on available evidence and teachers shall get a pay rise to the same level as a civil servant of comparable seniority. In exchange, teachers shall take a short test each year to ensure that they remain up to date on recent developments/discoveries in their field. teachers shall also be exempt from having to repay student loans after completing five years as a public school teacher. Any soft drinks vending machines installed on school grounds shall attract a 5% tax, to be funnelled straight back into education. Pay to play, guys.

- Healthcare. Our administration shall enact, as soon as possible, a system of universal healthcare, funded fom taxes. This shall include prescription drugs although we will ask citizens to pay a $15 charge as a contribution (inflation linked) for each prescription filled. Those below 18, over 60, in full time education, military service or receiving welfare payments shall be exempt fom this charge. Private insurance shall continue to be available for those who wish to pay for it. Medical students shall have their student loans written off after serving five years in the USHS (for lack of a better name). The USHS shall also absorb Medicare and Medicaid in the process of being rolled out. The combination of Medicare, Medicaid and private insurance costs you around $2.3 trillion a year. A USHS run along the same lines as the French system (generally accepted as the world's best) would cost less than half of that. Contraception (including, but not limited to, birth control pills, condoms, IUDs, etc) shall be provided free of charge and exempt from prescription charges.

- Defence. A 20% cut in defence spending. America spends more on it's military than the rest of the world combined. Last year's budget increase alone was larger than the entire budgets of your nearest four competitors. This isn't a "strong military", this is a mental illness. In terms of value for money, the Pentagon makes Enron look like a paragon of scrupulous accounting. Any person with some knowledge in this area could cut 10% off the budget just by eliminating the programs which are admitted to be obsolete.

Iraq is handed over the the Iraqi government. However, 50,000 troops shall remain there under the command of the Iraqi government. They shall be rotated out every six months and should the Iraqi government ever ask us to leave, they shall be brought home as quickly as logistically feasable with the exception of the American Embassy's security detail.

The Rules

2009-06-09T19:57:00.000-07:00

Never Trust A Politician - That's Rule 1. There might once have been a time when politicians were honest, noble creatures who laboured for the good of their constituents but that time has long passed, especially in the USA (with the legal bribery you refer to as "campaign contributions"). All politicians, with the possible exceptions of Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul (who I think is batshit but at least honest), will lie to you. They will do so shamelessly, convincingly and whenever it is convienient. The only difference is what they lie about. Currently, Democrats tend to lie about personal matters like extramarital affairs while Republicans tend to lie about policy things like reasons for starting wars, torture and the economy. Note that this can change and often does.

When George W Bush lied, it was easy to tell: His lips moved. Dick Cheney didn't bother lying, he just said "What the fuck are you going to do about it?" and then shot people. Their entire administration lied to torture people, essentially because they wanted to; shred the Constitution, essentially because they wanted to; avoid responsibility, essentially because they could and invade Iraq, essentially for the loot. Obama will lie to you if he's not doing so already. His lies will probably be smaller because Democrats tend to lack the same bully-boy bravado.

Rule 2 - Democracy Is Wasted On The People. There's this wonderful idea among political scientists that voters calmly take stock of the party positions before rationally casting a vote for the candidate who most closely reflects their own views. It's complete horseshit. People, as a mass, are dumb, stupid, panicky, not very intelligent, distrustful of intelligence, spiteful, greedy and vicious. As proof, I present Prop 8. A ballot initiative that might as well have been subtitled "let's stick it to the queers" and yet, the whim of the mob made it law and the California Supreme Court, in a decision I think is legally dubious and morally repugnant, said they could vote away people's rights by simple majority.

I'm not a big believer in democracy. During the 2008 campaign, much hay was made of the "elitist" label. The charge being that an elitist thought they were better than you and they knew how to run your life better than you did. Now, firstly, that's a misuse of the term and secondly, they probably could run your life better than you do. A fifth of Americans believe the sun orbits the earth, most than half don't accept evolution, a frightening number think your Founders were all Christians intending to create a Christian nation, Fox News is "fair and balanced" and more people follow American Idol than the nightly news. This is a people too stupid to be governed. And I'm not suggesting the British are much better. If there is a difference at all, it's only of tiny degrees. The national IQ of any nation is the IQ of it's dumbest resident divided by the number of people in the country.

I actually am an elitist. I believe nations should be run by their best and brightest citizens (which, I hasten to add, doesn't include me), not simply by their most typical. Democracy is, when applied as literally as the California Supreme Court did, simply a more organised system of mob rule and the mob are too damn stupid to rule themselves. They want government services but don't want to pay taxes, they want to smoke dope but don't want gay people to get hitched, they think global warmings a hoax and evolution never happened. If the British public can be represented by a braces and bowler hat commuter, the USA can be represented by an armed soccer hooligan.

So, I don't believe in democracy. It's a bad, fundementally flawed system but, as Sir Winston said, it's the best one we've yet come up with. Actually, one that works, at least for a while, is benevolent dictatorship. But the problem with that is that the dictator eventually dies and his successor may turn out to be Caligula.

Words Mean Things

2009-06-06T17:08:00.000-07:00

In my other life, I am a wrestling fan. Joey Styles, the former "Voice of ECW" managed to make himsel look incredibly silly a few days ago by describing Obama as a Marxist (Jim Cornette then gloriously pwned him on Jimbo's podcast). So, in the interest of advancing the education of (mostly) Americans, let's talk about what a few words mean:

Socialism - Socialism is a left-wing theory of economics, probably rating about a 6 on a ten-point political scale (with the centre at 0). It's main feature is that it proposes state ownership of the means of production and distribution and it is explicitely a class-based theory. The idea is that the ownership class uses and abuses it's ownership to surpress the working class. Therefore, if the state owns the means of production and distrbution, it can ensure fair recompence for labour and purchase, thereby creating a fairer society. You may or may not agree with the theory but there it is.

Here is what socialism is NOT: Spending on social programs, raising taxes on the rich, universal healthcare. None of those things are part of socialism. The right are simply lying about that. Attempting to create a fairer society is not, in and of itself, socialism. Nor is socialism some kind of virus where, if you allow the tiniest hint of socialism, you wake up in 1959 Moscow. It doesn't work like that. Here in Britain, we have had Socialist governments (Labour was an outright socialist party for most of it's existance). Some were good, some were bad, one was a disaster but none turned the nation into the UKSR, came anywhere near or even tried to do so. Universal healthcare is socialised, not socialist. Clear?

Marxism/Communism - Marxism is another left-wing ideaology, rating probably about an 8 or 9. Marxism is an extension of the pre-existing theory of socialism into the political arena which socialism has little to say about. Essentially, the idea can be summed up as "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs" i.e. that the state would take control of any produce beyond that required by the producer for their needs and redistribute that according to the needs of others. Over time, the state would become less and less involved in this movement of produce and eventually wither away entirely, creating a form of communalist anarchist utopia. So there's the theory.

It's worth noting that not one country which has ever attempted Marxism has ended up with Communism as Marx envisioned it. In the opinion of many (including myself), that's because Marx's vision, while noble, was unworkable. Communism as Marx envisioned it requires humans to be a great deal nicer than humans actually are. It doesn't account for the greed endemic in human nature. Nor does it provide any incentive for producers to produce beyond their needs other than the vagaries of human nature. If you have the same opinion of human nature as myself, that would explain why it's unworkable.

What enforced Communism actually produces in the real world is Soviet Communism (note that, despite the name, this is used to cover Cuba, Yugoslavia, China and so on, despite the forms being slightly different and China having this really weird hybrid). You all know about Soviet Communism so there's no need to examine it in great detail except to point out that it was a million miles from Marx's intentions but probably the closest anyone could come in the real world. So, Marx took the already existing theory of socialism, expanded it into Communism, Russia (and other nations) aimed for Communism and ended up with Soviet Communism. Clear?

Fascism - Fascism is probably the most abused word in political history. The name comes from the fasces, a bundle of rods carried by the Roman Lictors, bodyguards to the elected leaders of Rome, the Consuls (note, this does NOT make the fasces the symbol of fascism). Fascism is an extreme-right theory, around a 9 or 10 which presupposes the pre-eminence of the state, that all individual interests should be sublimated to the interests of the state. In the early 20th century, it was a fashionable theory and several countries adopted it to various degrees, most notoriously Nazi Germany.

Now, fascism has various features, some of which are disputed but the ones which are generally agreed are prominent and continuing nationalism; near-worship of the military; some degree of fusion between the state and corporate worlds; retreat from pre-existing democratic ideals and the designation of certain groups (often, but not necessarily, racial groups) as semi-official scapegoats. "Fascism" is NOT a synonym for "authoritarian" although fascist nations almost always are authoritarian in practice in the same way that racism is not necessarily a requirement of fascism but fascist regimes are almost always racist. "Authoritarian" simply indicates any state which abuses human rights, "fascism" is a specific set of reasons for doing so.
All clear? Good (and you should now know why "Islamofascism" is a nonsense word).

Having read this far, you can probably see why the Obama Administration is none of these things. Raising taxes on the richest by 3-4% is not socialism or communism and the idea that a Marxist would want to expand government is laughable. During the Eisenhower era, the top tax rate hovered between 85% and 91%. Was he a socialist or a communist?

"Tax-and-Spend" - One of the great myths of politics is that only liberals tax and spend. Taxing and spending is kinda what all governments require; in a very real sense, it's the definition of what governments do: Taking money from some (in the form of taxes) and then spending it on, say, an army. All governments do this. The reason the right hurls the insult at liberals is the difference in what the taxes are being spent on. Conservatives (or people who call themselves conservative anyway) spend them on the military (and the US has a massively bloated military budget for that reason) and on tax cuts for the very richest. Liberals spend them on trying to provide for the poorest and can therefore be demonised for it (the entire US political arena having swallowed Ayn Rand's batshit theories whole). Both sides spend money on earmark projects, most (but not all) of which are unnecessary.

New Hampshire Spits In God's face

2009-06-04T12:57:00.000-07:00

Yes, that's sarcasm.

It's going to be interesting to see what kind of lies the right will come up with to scream about this one. Their usual complaint is about "activist judges overruling the will of the people". Of course, that ignores the fact that the job of the courts is not to enforce the popular whim (part of the reason I think the Cali decision was wrongly decided), it is to decide the law. Not to follow popular idiocy, not to respect the voters, not even to "protect teh nation". Simply to decide the law.

Right about now, some moron is about to tell me that courts interpret law and shouldn't decide it. Like the canard about "legislating from the bench", this is a distinction without a difference. Court decisions establish precedent which all lower courts are obliged to follow, that's the normal operation of precedent, it's what courts are supposed to do. And that decision establishes a policy (which is what Justice Sotomayor was talking about) on how that point of law is interpreted in the future. That's not "activism", that's the normal operation of a legal system. All courts establish law all the time, it's what they do. And thank goodness for that.

But that doesn't apply on this occasion because NH legalised same-sex marriage through it's legislature. Perhaps they'll try and get up a voter referendum again. I don't know if that can happen in NH, it depends on their state law. Perhaps there will be another smear campaign lying to the public through the mass media but this is NH, so I doubt it.

One of the favourite arguments for idiots, especially when confronted with the Loving decision which defines marriage as one of the fundemental rights is the pathetic observation that the Constitution contains no mention of gay marriage. There are two problem here. The first is the basic assumption in law that anything not expressely forbidden is presumed to be legal. The second is their presumption that there is something so peculier about same-sex marriage that all other statements made about marriage do not apply to it. It's like they think laws have to include the phrase "This means the queers too".

In the end, it doesn't matter what they say, they're still wrong. We have same-sex marriage here in all but name. For political expediancy, the word "marriage" was dropped from the law in exchange for getting all of the legal rights of marriage (and the law is phrased so that it is considered equal in absolutely all respects but the very, very technical like what exactly defines "consumation"). Presumptive inheritence, presumptive power of attorney, visitation rights, child access rights, the whole ball of wax. In time, I suspect that the law will be quietly amended to include the word "marriage" as well. We also allow gay people to serve openly in our armed forces and gay people in the armed forces can marry (or be "unionised" anyway) as well. Gay people here have equal adoption rights as well (subject to the usual checks and tests).

What has this done to our nation? What vengence has the divine visited upon us? Absolutely nothing. Zero, zip, zilch, nada. There was a good-spirited contest between Brighton and Soho (both areas with big gay communities) for who could have the more spectacular celebrations. By general agreement, Brighton had a very slight edge. Our armed forces need to build a few more married couples quarters; a few more children are adopted into loving families and the tax revenues took a miniscule hit (the tax system is structured here so that married couples pay less tax than two single people) but that's more than offset by the tertiary income from marriage services (coach and horses, catering, etc). Beyond that, no difference at all. Straight couples still fall in love and get married, still have kids; churches still marry whomever they see fit, life goes on much as it did before. A few thugs still try playing "Smear the Queer" but the police do their best to catch them. The police force in most major cities have a community liason to the gay community just as they do to most ethnic or religious communities. The world still whirls around. No difference.

Except... Gay couples have the option of permanency, of legal protections, of adoption, of all the rights and responsibilities that straight couples take for granted. The very first same-sex marriage performed here was between a couple who received a waiver of the normal 15-day waiting period because one partner was dying and wasn't expected to live through that period (such waivers are routinely granted to straight couples in the same situation). They were married (Unionised) by the hospital bed by the local registrar. The ill partner died that night and as he died, his husband held him and comforted him and told him he was loved. Call me crazy, call me a romantic but I always thought that was what marriage was about.

Abortion. Dr Tiller and the price of free speech

2009-06-02T07:26:00.000-07:00

Terrorism is the use or threat of violence in an attempt to change political policy. It's not civil disobedience. Sit-ins, protests and the like aren't terrorism. For an act to be terrorism, it must be violent and it must be done in an attempt to change political policy. The acts of the Weather Underground during the seventies were domestic terrorism (although Bill Ayers wasn't a terrorist since his incompetence meant he never managed to bomb anyone except himself). McVeigh was a domestic terrorist.

Most anti-abortion groups confine their activities to civil disobedience; protests, letter writing campaigns, pickets and that sort of thing. That's not terrorism. A few of the anti-abortion groups commit minor acts of property damage as part of their activities, such as using Crazy Glue on the locks of clinics. That's a crime but not terrorism.

There is, however, a faction of the anti-abortion movement which does qualify as terrorists. You've probably heard of them. They go by names like "Army of God" and they kill people to save fetuses. They exist relatively openly, in small but determined numbers and you can find them with a quick Google search. They are exactly the kind of people who were warned about in that report on potential domestic terrorists which the right went nuts over earlier this year (conveniently forgetting that firstly, Bush ordered the report and secondly, there was one on left-wing groups as well). Operation Rescue, while not criminal in itself, frequently acts as an apologist for the terrorist activities of such extremists, in much the same way as Sinn Fein used to do with the IRA. The statement of Randall Terry with regard to the murder of Dr Tiller was largely about how terrible Tiller was. Effectively saying "Yes, it was murder but he needed killing".

Bill O'Lielly on his nightly rant at the world, did several segments on Dr Tiller, publicizing (he claims he didn't invent it) the nickname "Tiller the Baby Killer" and described Tiller's clinic as a "death mill". Other Fox lunatics have said similar things. Their speech is covered under the First Amendment. No-one's disputing that but the First isn't an absolute cover. It doesn't cover you for shouting "FIRE!" in a crowded theater and it's doesn't cover you for encouraging violence. So, how far is too far? Do O'Lielly's comments and those like his cross the line into encouraging violence? I honestly don't know. I couldn't say and the law is unclear.

What I can say is this: O'Lielly and those like him have repeatedly described Tiller and his colleagues as committing murder. They are categorically wrong for several reasons. The definition of murder is "an unlawful killing during time of peace" [my emphasis]. Abortion is legal in the circumstances Dr Tiller acted in, therefore his actions were not unlawful and, by definition, not murder. The Bible might have a different meaning but since the Bible isn't the basis of US law or society (and if you think it is, you are a moron), that's irrelevant. Furthermore, even in those times and places where abortion has been illegal, it has never been classified as murder. A friend of mine (also in the law) and I once deduced that even if abortion was illegal, the only possible legal classification would be "Homicide, sub-class: Illegal abortion".

Personally, I am broadly pro-choice. That's not an absolute position but it is, in general, what I believe. I don't think a fetus qualifies as a person with rights sufficient to overrule those of the woman. As the pregnancy progresses, abortion law becomes more restrictive and rightly so (anyone who describes Roe as "abortion on demand" is either a cretin or a liar). That's my personal view. I have heard all kinds of ridiculous arguments for why I'm wrong, my favorite of which is the gory pictures of late-term abortions (guys, if you can't convince me with a logical argument, you're not going to win with an illogical one) but it's a position that, with only minor modifications, I have held consistently for years now. I know some people who are anti-abortion. A few are the knuckle-dragging misogynists that people imagine but the majority are genuinely well-meaning people who believe abortion is morally wrong. A few are also anti-death penalty and, if nothing else, I have to applaud their moral consistency. I don't agree with them on either point (I am pro-death penalty in the correct circumstances) but their position is clear and morally consistent: They believe that all life is sacred, I respect that.

The difference between pro-choice and pro-life is, for the most part, not a difference of facts but a difference of opinions. Specifically, a difference of opinion about at what point, a fetus becomes a person with the rights thereof. Discounting the lunatic fringe, most people disagreeing over this issue are genuine people with good intentions. Yes, there are knuckle-dragging misogynists in the pro-life camp. I've never met one but I'm sure that there are gleeful baby killers in the pro-choice camp but neither represent the majority. A difference of opinions.

Domestic terrorism isn't a matter of opinion. It's a matter of law and facts. In the US, there is a small but dedicated fringe who are domestic terrorists and they hide within the anti-abortion movement. And they're winning.

Cheney: "US should murder suspects"

2009-06-01T16:36:00.000-07:00

I'm paraphrasing. But only just.

From the Washington Times ( http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/01/cheney-death-option-detainees-guantanamo-closed/ ):

"If you're going to be engaged in a world conflict such as we are, such as
the global war on terrorism, if you don't have a place where you can hold
these people, your only other option is to kill them," Mr. Cheney said.

So that's Dickey's solution: No trial, no jury, straight to execution. How did people fail to notice for eight years that this man is a textbook raving psychopath? As far as Cheney is concerned, there's no law, international or domestic, which can prevent him killing people whenever he wants. Did it just escape everyone's attention that Lex Luthor was essentially running the country for nearly a decade?

I'm not sure about terrorists but I'm rapidly becoming terrified of Dick Cheney.