Nullam Infernus

Oh my goodness, have there been things to rant about! The government shutdown is the big one, obviously. I try to follow the developments (such as they are) as best I can, and nearly every day I think, Oh, I should blog about that.  I've been feeling guilty about not updating as much as I should, and I got stuff I'd like to write about. Part of the blame can be laid on my schedule. I've stuck a lot of pots on the fire, and while it means I got some good stuff cooking (to be announced soon!) it also means my attention is going elsewhere.
But also, my frustration with the system has risen to the level where I've been asking myself "What's the point?"
We could talk about who's to blame, or what the Affordable Care Act (which people mistakenly call Obamacare, since it was thought up by conservative group The Heritage Foundation in the late 80s and enacted by Massachusetts Republican governor Mitt Romney in 2006) really does and what the pros (and there are some) and cons (way more than there are pros) are. We could talk about the effect of the shutdown on America, or what will happen if America defaults (hint: it would be globally catastrophic).

That's all important discussion, but I think it's not nearly as important as discussing the system that made all this possible in the first place.
The dictionary gives it a fancy name like gerrymandering, but what all of our Representatives have done is consolidate their power. They restructure the borders of the district they represent so they will have the most supporters. Sound strange? It is a little. It's also horribly disingenuous.

Let's say you are a House Representative of the Democratic Party for California. The state of California has 53 members of the House, each Representative covering a district of the state. So let's say that while you garnered enough votes in your district to be elected, there was a sizeable section of your district that didn't vote for you and typically never votes Democrat. What gerrymandering does is redraw the lines of your district so that the section that never votes for you is cut out of your district and now included in the neighboring district, one that mostly votes Republican. With the majority of voters who don't or won't vote Democrat moved out of your district, you've made your seat in the House election-proof. You don't have to fear your constituency becoming so dissatisfied that they'll replace you.

I know a lot of champions of free-market capitalism who moan that without stiff job competition in the marketplace there's no impetus to excel in the marketplace. While I don't 100% agree with that statement I will admit that the House of Representatives provides a perfect example of that idea in action.
In our current situation, a bunch of hard-line ideologues, who are so confident their way is the right way they refuse to compromise right past the point of disaster, made extortionist demands of the government, and when the government refused to capitulate to their demands they followed through on their threats. I could only wish I was talking about al Qaeda here. For once, the Obama administration and Senate Democrats showed they actually had a spine and told these House terrorists to go to hell --unlike when they caved to extend the Bush-era tax cuts through to 2012, caved to offer spending cuts and a "super committee" and a sequester to lift the debt ceiling in 2011, caved to permanently extend the Bush tax cuts for incomes up to $400,000 to avoid the fiscal cliff, and then caved to offer "chained CPI" and Medicare cuts in 2013 (credit to Robert Reich for the list).
Any candidate running against these moronic assholes is doomed to fail in the election because of the gerrymandered districts, so they have little need to change their tune.

The only way out of this mess (because it goes both ways) is for the voters to change. We need to raise the common denominator to expect and demand more of our elected leaders. The only way to do that is by learning. Yes, the l-word. We need to stop relying on the media to tell us how to vote. We need to research our candidates, stop voting down the party line if the candidate at the bottom is broken, learn about the bills and laws that affect our districts, learn how an economy works, how the banking system (the real enemy) works, how taxes work. And then we need to come together as a community and tell these bastards that even if we disagree on the liberal or conservative details, we won't let our elected representatives sell off our personal, social, financial, and political security to the highest bidder.

As Dr. Timothy Leary said: "Think for yourself. Question authority."

Oculus de Acu

In 1795, President George Washington ordered Ambassador David Humphreys to negotiate a treaty with the Muslim states along the Barbary Coast, who for the past three centuries had raided the seas as privateers. In 1797, under John Adams' presidency, the Treaty of Tripoli was unanimously ratified by the Senate. Article 11 of the Treaty that was ratified states,

“As the government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian Religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Musselmen (Muslims); and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”

According to Historian Franklin T. Lambert, Article 11 assured Muslim nations "that religion would not govern how the treaty was interpreted and enforced."

The term "Separation of Church and State" first appeared in a letter from Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association in Connecticut:

“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship… I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between church and State.”

It's obvious to any student of history that our Founding Fathers came from a variety of beliefs, and they mostly all agreed that America should not have a national religion. President James Madison wrote in 1774 that “Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise.” Almost twenty years later he addressed the general assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia, saying, "Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other sects?"

With our Founders so carefully considering religious freedom while simultaneously protecting against the establishment of religion as a national identity, I'm always a little boggled when I hear (quite often) that America was founded on Christianity or Christian principles.

What boggles my mind even more is that a poll by YouGov and HuffingtonPost came out showing that nearly 1/3 of Americans are in favor of a Constitutional amendment establishing Christianity as the national religion, with a little over 1/3 of Americans in favor of their state establishing Christianity as their state religion.
That's a lot of Americans -- more than 100 million -- who believe that Christianity as part of our national identity is the right way to go.

If that is true (and while a poll is not the most accurate statistic maker it's enough of one to say that it is mostly true) that 1/3 of Americans want the religion - or at least  the principles of Christianity - as part of the national identity, I'm kind of surprised there aren't more Socialists in America.

History clearly shows us that under Capitalism, wealth trends upwards and rewards the greedy which has the tendency to weaken the middle class and marginalize the lower class into some semblance of debt peonage. Christians should be very wary of greed, since Jesus taught that "it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God" (Mark 10:25).
Additionally, with so many Americans valuing Christianity as having a proper place in government, I'm surprised by the number of Christians who hate the government's social programs. Maybe they hate how those programs make them feel guilty, since they do what Jesus taught that his followers should do: feed the hungry, tend the sick, shelter the homeless, welcome the immigrants, clothe the naked.

"Then the King will say to those at his right hand, `Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.' Then the righteous will answer him, `Lord, when did we see thee hungry and feed thee, or thirsty and give thee drink? And when did we see thee a stranger and welcome thee, or naked and clothe thee? And when did we see thee sick or in prison and visit thee?' And the King will answer them, `Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.' Then he will say to those at his left hand, `Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.' Then they also will answer, `Lord, when did we see thee hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to thee?' Then he will answer them, `Truly, I say to you, as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me.' And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life." Matthew 25:34-36

Is that what they meant when they wanted to see America become a Christian nation? It sure doesn't sound like it.

Interserere Faciem ad Palmis

Methinks Texas is not thinking this one through. After one hell of a filibuster by Wendy Davis earlier this week, Governor Dick Perry (yeah, the one with the hunting ranch called "Niggerhead") announced a special session called next week to pass SB5, an overhaul on abortion law which would ban all abortions after 20 weeks and close 90% of women's health clinics, effectively eliminating women's choice.
Let's set the moral and ethical arguments for abortion aside for a moment, and just acknowledge that most unwanted or untimed (whoops) pregnancies occur among lower income communities with a higher (as much as 20%) percentage of those pregnancies occurring among Black and Hispanic women. Hold that thought in your mind for a moment while I shift gears.

Also happening earlier this week, the Supreme Court of the United States overturned several key components of The Voting Rights Act of 1965. What does Texas do the same day?

Texas announced shortly after the decision that a voter identification law that had been blocked would go into effect immediately, and that redistricting maps there would no longer need federal approval.

Voter ID laws disproportionally affect the poor, and the poor are disproportionally non-White. Redistricting is the process by which lawmakers determine who their constituents are. It is also an oft-abused method to disenfranchise voters, particularly poor, Black, and Hispanics districts.
So officials had already blocked the Voter ID law in Texas because they felt it violated the Voting Rights Act. Rather than change the law so that it does not target minorities, Texas just waits for the VRA to be gutted.

Let's also set the moral and ethical implications of enacting the Voter ID law and partisan gerrymandering for a moment, and simply add what's been happening in Texas up. What they're doing is creating an increasingly disenfranchised populace and forcing them to have more children, meaning that the numbers of increasingly disenfranchised people will increase. How long do you think it'll take before that blows up in their face?

Setting morality and ethics aside, it's clear that Texas did not think this one through. Taking morality and ethics into consideration, it's clear that Texas is governed by assholes (Wendy Davis and certain other brain-using legislators notwithstanding).

Parsimonia Essentialium

This is how an economy works:

Let's say you make a product, and it costs you $5 to make this product and it takes 1 hour to make it. Now when you sell product, you want to be able to cover the cost of production, right? So you don't want to sell the product for $4, because you'll quickly run out of funds to be able to make your product. What would be great is if you could sell it for $10, so you make back the money on the initial cost, plus pay for the cost entire of a second product.
But let's say that your product is awesome and everyone wants one. Demand is high, so you raise your price to $15, because everyone wants one. As a bonus, you're able to streamline production and make two per hour. But after a while sales dip, and demand drops. In fact it drops to almost nothing. When demand was high, you could make 2 per hour and barely get them out fast enough. Now, with demand low, even making 1 per hour causes your product to start piling up on shelves in your garage. So you drop the price to encourage demand again.

Now, a national economy (or a global economy) is a lot more complex that my example, but the principle is essentially the same. Economy is all about supply and demand and the balance between the two. What makes an economy strong is the movement of money: purchasing power. You could also call it spending. A company spends money to make a product. A customer spends money to buy the product.

Ok, so let's broaden our example a bit:
Let's say that I have the materials you need to make your product, and that's why I charge you $5. Now, I'm a bigger company than you and have a lot of customers who want my materials. So my company is making $1,000 per day, but I also have 2 employees that I need to pay by the hour for making my materials. And those employees want to buy your product.
So your money goes to me, but some of my money goes to my employees, and some of their money goes to you when they buy a product.

This is called circulation. The money essential moved in a circle (in varying amounts). On a national scale, this circle is huge and complex, but the principle is the same. People get paid for a product or service, who then pay others for a product or service, and so on and so on.
Now, I could talk about how the strength of the economy is (or should be) proportional to the strength of the middle class or the danger of credit bubbles inflating the economy with borrowed money - and both topics deserve a look - but for now, let's keep it simple and say that a healthy economy is one in which people are spending money.

So what happens when the economy is unhealthy, in what is called a recession (the movement of money slows) or even a depression (the movement of money stops)? People aren't spending during these times, so how does the economy start moving again? Companies drop the price on their goods to encourage demand, but they also have a lot of product on shelves to move before they need to increase production again, so with low demand and high supply they don't need as many employees, especially since employees cost money. So companies start trimming. But those employees need their job to make money, so they can buy stuff, which will get the economy moving again. So without the purchasing power of those employees, demand drops even further, which causes a new round of contraction and more layoffs. It's a downward spiral in dire need of a lifeline.

Enter the government.
The government can help the economy in two ways: first, it can create social works projects to create demand. Infrastructure is a great example. The government decides to fix some roads, and contracts some companies to do the job. Those companies hire workers to fill the demand, and those workers get a paycheck that they use to buy stuff from other companies, and so the economy starts moving.
Second, the government creates social programs to help the truly desperate. When a worker is removed from their job, their ability to contribute to the economy disappears. So the government steps in and assists the worker, providing an unemployment check to the worker until they get back to work again.

But what about cuts? The government is spending a whole bunch of extra money trying to help companies and workers get the economy moving. What else can it do?
Could it lower interest rates. Companies could borrow money at a lower rate, and the infusion of capital will help get their production moving. Except that only affects the supply-side of the economy, and if a company's shelves are full of unbought product, why should it make more? Does having a supply of a thing create a demand for it? Not really.

The economy moves because of spending. If consumers can't or won't spend the government has to spend for them. It's the only way out of a recession.

What worries me is that somehow many policy makers seem to lack this incredibly basic understanding of economy. We're in the middle of a global recession, and the calls for spending cuts have never been louder or more fervent.
Now, I grant you, the government could certainly spend smarter. And I grant you, the government wastes a lot of money. But if the people aren't spending, then the government has to. That's the baseline rule.

That's how an economy works.

Solummodo Rerum. Et logica.

Well the gun-control debate has been spiraling into the same mess of soundbites and memes as any other political discussion. Now there's a growing discussion that the Sandy Hook massacre is a hoax, and meanwhile everyone is trying to find statistics that support their point of view. Such as the FBI report that violent crime decrease in 2011 by almost 4%, following a five year trend demonstrated by this graph:

What the graph says is that nationwide, a little over 1.2million violent crimes were committed in 2011. Many pro-gun websites are using this report, along with a report of increased gun sales, to demonstrate that violent crime dropped because more people are carrying weapons. Their preferred soundbite: "More guns equals less crime."

The problem with that soundbite is that it is not necessarily true. For one thing, the report on gun sales is actually a report on background checks. Given the variety of reasons a background check may be called for (and the possibility that some people may fail their background check) it's actually incredibly difficult to determine how gun sales are doing.
It's also incredibly difficult to determine the effect gun sales have on crime. I couldn't find a website that showed the statistics on that, which isn't surprising given how difficult it is. You'd have to display crime statistics by region and match it with gun sales data for the same region in order to get anything resembling an accurate picture. And that still wouldn't be proof that more guns equal less crime because we don't have any way of knowing how many crimes would have been committed if there were less guns.

Here are some actual facts, that I think bear mentioning:

• According to a 2007 Small Arms Survey, The rate of private gun ownership in the United States is 88.8 firearms per 100 people, ranking them number 1 out of 178 countries for private gun ownership and private gun ownership per 100 people.
• There are 51,438 are retail gun stores and only 36,569 grocery stores and 14,098 MacDonald's restaurants in the U.S. It's statistically easier to buy a gun than a Big Mac or groceries.
• According to Fatal and non-Fatal Injury data by the CDC, over the 5 year period between 2006 and 2010, the number deaths and injuries during an assault where a gun was involved hasn't moved much. In 2006 65,539 people were killed or injured by a gun during an assault, while in 2010 the number was 64,816. While that seems to show a downward trend, in 2008 there were 68,805 people killed or injured, so not really. The number of homicides by a gun are close to 2/3 of all homicides.
• Also according to data by the CDC during the same time period, the number of dead or injured due to suicide or intentional self harm from a gun increased each year, from 20,073 in 2006 to 24,035 in 2010. One of those fatalities in 2010 was a child under the age of 10. The number of suicides by a gun are just about half of all suicides.
• Unintentional fatalities or injuries from a gun during that same period trended upwards from 15,540 in 2006 to 19,396 in 2009, though the numbers dropped to 15,019 in 2010.

What do all these figures mean? Not much, besides the fact that guns are dangerous. How do these figures relate to the gun-control debate? I'm not sure they do. I'm not sure any facts relate. Because at the heart of things the gun-control debate is entire subjective. One side says "I feel safer with guns around" and the other side says "I feel less safe."

Here's what doing all this research has taught me: More guns do not equal less crime, and there's a chance that if you own a gun it will be used against another person.

Telam Debitum

The concept of money is a bit strange. So strange, in fact, that most people don't try to understand what it is. I mean why bother? As long as your money rests safely in a bank and you can draw on it when you need to, what's to understand?

Well, the first thing needed to be understood is that your money is not like Harry Potter's stash of gold at Gringotts. You can't just walk into a bank and demand to see your money. They print out an account balance for you. Okay, but that money's got to be stored somewhere, right?

Actually no. When the dollar was pulled off the Gold Standard in the 1970s, your money was made by and out of debt. The very first bankers were goldsmiths. Their vaults were the most secure place in a town, due to the nature of their trade. When other people in the town had gold on hand they wanted to keep safe, they could store it in the goldsmith's vault for safekeeping.
Goldsmiths eventually discovered something interesting: not counting a strange economic disaster where everyone came to collect their gold at once, they only needed 10 percent of their gold on hand to give customers who wanted their deposits back. The rest of it they could loan out.

This eventually came to be known as "fractional reserve lending", where a bank lends out 90% of its deposits. The problem with gold is that there is only so much of it. At a certain point, there will be no more gold to lend. Credit, on the other hand, is limitless.

Check this out: Say you sell a house for $100,000. You deposit this money in your bank, and so the bank has $100,000 on its books. They lend $90,000 to a woman named Mary so she can buy a home from John. John takes that $90,000 and deposits it in the bank as well. So now the bank has $190,000 of deposits on its books. Where did that $90,000 come from? There was only $100,000, but now all of a sudden an extra $90,000 appeared out of thin air.
But wait. Say that Mary pays back her loan. At 6% interest for 15 years, she's paid the bank back plus an extra $46,700. So now $100,000 has become $236,700.

Except it's not, because the bank loaned out 90% of John's $90,000 deposit and magically created $81,000 when it gets deposited back into the bank. Plus, the bank reloans $90,000 from the original $100grand. And so on. And so on.

Do you see the problem? Banks can turn $100,000 into 1 million dollars out of nothing. There is no gold behind that money. There isn't even printed money behind that money. It's all merely ones and zeros on a computer that somehow we've determined has actual value.

This is the system upon which our economy is based. For our economy to grow, our debt has to grow. The problem with debt, however, is that it must be repaid. Go back to that $90,000 loan the bank invented out of nothing. The bank did a little sleight of hand and poof, here's 90 grand. The problem is that working at minimum wage (if you paid no taxes and didn't have to worry about cost of living expenses), that $90,000 is worth more than 12 thousand hours worth of work.

In a debt-based economy, in order for one person to pay down their debt, another person has to increase their debt. Absolutely no work is required to create the debt upon which our economy is based, but excessive work is required to keep our debt-inflated economy afloat. This is a really big, bad problem.

And this problem is even more complex than you think. The Federal Reserve System (which issues Federal Reserve Notes, which you'd call dollars) is the bank of the United States. Except it's not a bank, it's a system of 12 regional banks. And the stock holders of these 12 regional banks are all privately owned banks like Chase, and Bank of America, and Citicorp.
That's right, The Fed is a privately owned banking cartel, not a government agency.

When people mention how deep the government is in debt, who do you think America owes money to? Yep, the Fed.

Yet the problem is even more complex. Banks (yes, the private ones that make up the Federal Reserve) managed to come up with ways to take these loans and package them into derivatives and hedge funds and then make money off of them on the stock market. At least, they did before the first credit bubble - the housing market - popped. There's still a few credit bubbles left to burst, and the popping of only one triggered global recession.

It is vitally important that we understand this because we can't come up with solutions until we first understand the problem. And unfortunately, the solution is not to peg the dollar back onto gold. There isn't enough gold in the world to pay off our debts.

If you want to learn more, I strongly suggest visiting The Public Banking Institute and reading the very excellent book Web of Debt by Ellen Brown.

Oleum et Aqua

Oil

Lately, Republicans have taken to lambasting Irish President O'Bama for the high gasoline prices we're subjected to. Cheapest gas I can currently find is $4.25 (and 99/100s. Why don't they just say $4.26?) per gallon. The average price per gallon in Orange County is $4.38. In December of 2011 (just 3 months ago) the average price was $3.50.
Two questions: What the hell happened? and Why are the Republicans acting like Obama is somehow a gas price Czar that can bring prices down through force of will?

There's a lot of disagreement about how much effect commodities trading has on gas prices. According to Dr. Mark Cooper of the Consumer Federation of America oil speculation added $600 to the average family's yearly gas tab in 2011. Other reports say the effect is negligible. Okay, so let's not get into a debate about whether or not Wall Street has been bad for the economy (ahem).

Funny enough, the Republicans are right. There are some things Obama can do to reduce gas prices at home, but if Obama tries to take any of these steps (he won't) the Republicans won't like it.

1. The easiest and most immediate way we could see gas prices drop is if we ended the sanctions and stopped threatening Iran with attack. War and rumors of war always drive up gas prices, especially if it happens in the Middle East. This is because OPEC is in the Middle East. Duh.
"But they are building a nuke," you say. Not according to every American intelligence agency and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), who are responsible for inspecting nuclear facilities. "But wait," you ask. "Why would the news and the government say they are building a nuke if they aren't?" History repeats itself. This is the exact same windup for the pitch that got us into war with Iraq. And once again, Americans are biting into it hook, line, and sinker (sorry for mixing a baseball metaphor with a fishing one).
I want to ask "how stupid do we have to be to fall for this again," except the answer is "as stupid as we currently are."
And even if Obama wanted to soften his stance on Iran, do you think Republicans would go along with it because it'll lower gas prices? If you do think so you probably sent the Nigerian princess money, didn't you?

2. Another easy way to lower gas prices? Stop exporting gas.
In 1977 the first barrel of oil was pushed through the Trans-Alaska Pipeline system, which was built amid similar protest and controversy as the Keystone XL Pipeline. It was supposed to help end dependency on foreign oil. And yet between 1996 and 2004 almost a 100 million barrels of oil were exported to Japan, Taiwan, Korea, and China. The direct exporting of this oil was eventually banned by Congress, but not the direct exporting of refined products, including gasoline, heating oil, and jet fuel. Gulf Coast refineries will ship gasoline to Latin America rather than hiring American tankers and shipping crews to move it to the East Coast. These oil refining companies find it more profitable to export oil products, so America has to rely on foreign oil (and foreign oil prices) to keep their cars running.
This is a tricky situation. Forcing refineries to sell only to America inhibits the free market in a bad way (and yes, I think there is a good way to inhibit the free market). And Republicans refuse to do anything that might inhibit the free market.
On the other hand, if America is going to buy oil, it should strive to buy American oil first. But the trouble with a "Drill, baby, drill!" attitude is that refineries aren't going to sell any increase in oil products from new oil sources (like Keystone XL) at a discount lower than world-market price. So increasing production won't significantly lower price in America until the global market price drops.

3. Strengthen the dollar. The value of the dollar continues to erode at a steady clip. The problem is that oil is traded on the dollar, so the weaker the dollar the more expensive a barrel of oil becomes. The easiest way to strengthen the dollar is to raise interest rates. "But raising interest rates will stifle economic growth," you might say. That is potentially true, on the other hand, interest rates have been at rock bottom for nearly the entirety of the current recession and we haven't seen any real improvement. Part of that is because when the housing bubble burst there wasn't a whole lot lower for interest rates to go anyway.
Another way to look at it is that raising interest rates will lower the price of oil, and a lower price oil would also strengthen the economy. Since low interest rates aren't doing the job, maybe low oil prices will.

Life

There is a mentality that unborn life is sacred. A lot of people (mostly conservatives) are fighting hard to keep it sacred. The trouble is that many of the steps they take make it seem life is only sacred until you're born.
Then all bets are off.
It's kind of hypocritical. Well, not really even kind of.

There are laws being proposed and passed by states that force women to get ultrasounds before they can get an abortion (including highly invasive transvaginal ultrasounds where they shove a stick up a woman's vagina to check things out from the inside). Arizona just passed a law that protected doctors from getting sued if they withhold medical information that might have convinced a woman to get an abortion. Seriously. A doctor can withhold medical information and not get sued for malpractice in Arizona.
Because life is sacred.

Act of Valor opened on February 26, being toted as an action movie starring real life Navy SEALs. Essentially it's the ultimate recruitment poster. But if life is sacred, maybe recruiters should be veterans with missing limbs suffering from PTSD. Maybe recruiters should explain to children (how many recruiters go to high schools where not everyone they talk to are legal "adults" at 18?) and their parents that the dehumanization that happens during basic training often puts cadets at suicide risk. There's a Russian proverb that says, "Every bullet finds its target in a mother's heart." Maybe that should replace "Semper Fidelis."
Because life is sacred.

Since 1976, almost 1300 Americans have been executed from the death penalty. The state won't talk to the mother about the sanctity of life then, will they? Should wardens/governors/executioners be forced to listen to the heartbeat?

And somehow, through all of this, everything is the woman's fault. I'm not really surprised conservatives feel this way. They've been blaming the woman ever since Salome asked for the head of John the baptist, since Queen Jezebel put on makeup to face her execution, since Eve gave Adam an apple. Gimme a break.
You want to reduce the number of abortions? Start by reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies. Duh.
You could tell woman to keep an aspirin between their thighs (if you want to sound like an uptight prig with no grasp of reality), or you could lobby for companies to stop using sex to sell every product on television. You could demand better and more (not worse and less, dumb-asses) access to contraception. You could properly educate teens about sex rather than try to make them scared of it.
Doing it your way is like a company that makes a faulty product that it prevents stores from selling, when they could solve everything by fixing the faulty product.

Tempus Comitiorum

Let me just go ahead and say it so we can get it out of the way: Barack Obama is a worse president that George W. Bush.
Most Republicans, blindly (and naively) following the party line would agree with me. I'm not surprised; most of them are pretty stupid. I don't mean that as an insult, by the way. It's just that I can find no other rationale for devotion to a political party bent on the total destruction of the middle class based, in many cases almost solely, on social and/or religious conservatism. "A 'Christian' politician who is pro-life, anti-gay, pro-Creationism who wants to dismantle the total econo-political structure and rebuild it as a plutocracy? He must know what he's talking about because he believes like I do". Sorry, that's stupid.
Then there are the racists (who can't believe a black man should be president) and the birthers (who believe the same thing but try to hide it) who are also stupid. A lot of the Upper Class Republicans would probably agree with me, but only out of paying lip service. I'm fairly sure they like Obama just as much (if not more) as Bush, Jr.

Since they all agree with me, I guess the statement is more directed towards Democrats, who are more likely to disagree. Their party loyalty is nothing if not steadfast.
Here's why I think Obama is a worse president than Bush, Jr.: George W. Bush made no secret about who he was. His loyalties were obvious and his policies reflected that. Barack Obama energized millions of lower and middle class citizens to vote for him under the "audacity of hope" and then betrayed them all by appointing Wall St. cronies like Geithner and Bernanke to help determine economic policy. He betrayed them all by escalating troop presence in the Middle East (sure the numbers in Iraq are down, but that means nothing). He betrayed anyone too audacious to hope that he would stand up and be a voice against the systematic dismantling of the New Deal (the product of which was probably the strongest middle class in the history of the civilized world) that has been occurring over the past thirty years.
In compromise after compromise, Obama has taken the regressive policies enacted during the Bush Administration and expanded them. He's kowtowed to the banks, he's kowtowed to Wall St., and he's kowtowed to an insane ideological minority in Congress.

And in case you've been sleeping for four years, Wall Street and the Banks are the worst enemy this country has faced since World War II. They utterly demolished our economy in an attack of greed which absolutely dwarfed the effect on Americans the attack of a few terrorists had who flew a couple planes into buildings. We were ruthless (excessively so) in hunting down and exterminating (trying to anyway) the people responsible the the plane attacks. As for Wall Street and the Banks, we paid them more than $3 trillion dollars for the pleasure of their financial rape.

It's time Democrats stopped making excuses for Obama. He's not locked into some hopeless position by unmoving Republicans who steadfastly refuse to make concessions. Take a look at Dylan Ratigan's rant if you need a suggestion as to how Obama could've handled the debt ceiling deal (especially after the two-minute mark of the video). He threw himself under the steam roller on that one and now pleads with America to somehow accept that the concept of "shared sacrifice" doesn't involve and sharing on the part of the wealthy in America. What's especially sad is many wealthy citizens are actually asking for more sacrifice on their part (check out Warren Buffett's op piece in the NY Times).

The whole point of this post, however, is that election season is upon us, whether we believe it or not. Iowa had its ridiculous straw poll following a Republican Primary "debate" and Obama is going on a three state bus tour of Minnesota, Illinois, and (naturally) Iowa. If it seems like Christmas decorations are going up before Halloween, it's because they are.
What this means for Americans, unfortunately, is you are going to see a lot more promises out of Obama for when/if he's reelected. Bah. He's going on a three state tour to shore up support for his reelection. You know what would shore up support for reelection? Jobs. Ending Bush tax cuts on the wealthy. Adding a $1 million+ and $10 million federal income tax bracket. Pulling Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security off the chopping block of deficit reduction. Really, all he would need to do is start crafting policies that helped the 95% of American citizens who need the help. 95% beats 5% no matter how much money 5% has.
Instead you'll see Obama carefully craft his reelection campaign to gain or maintain support from Wall Street and the wealthy. If he wants to do that, I say fuck him. He doesn't get my vote anyway. But what's really important, is he shouldn't get any of yours either, you lower and middle class Democrats. He doesn't love you. He doesn't care.

Does that mean I'm advocating voting for a Republican for president? Nope.
Does it mean I've advocating not voting? Of course not.

People somehow got this idea that elections are a competition, and in a competition, everyone wants to be on the winning team. So they'll vote for the lesser of two evils (either Democrap or Republicunt) rather than vote for a candidate they truly admire (or write in "none of the above") because they don't want to take the risk that their vote could have been the one saving America from the opposing political candidate.
Grow a backbone, America! Stop this snivelling, spineless support for candidates you barely believe in and let politicians know that you reject their bought and paid for policies.

Novus Statua Orbis Terraria

Okay, so far I've managed to keep working, and also not piss off the government so as to be snatched from my home and sent to Guantanamo (Why is the place still open, again?). Not bad for a recession and apocolitical (apocalypse and political, pushed together. Brilliant.) landscape.

It would have been nice when Obama was campaigning if when he said he'd pull our troops out of Iraq, he mentioned that he'd merely be moving most of them to Afghanistan. So far he hasn't lied to our faces, which is a refreshing step away from our last administration, but there have been lots and lots of "oh, by the way" addendums that make me feel the American people are still being misled by the Hidey-Hos in power.

Congress is still as ineffectual as ever. Everyone made a big deal about Arlen Specter defecting to the democrats, which would make them filibuster proof (not that anything filibuster worthy has been proposed). But I think the big lesson to be learned is that the folks in Congress will do anything to keep their seat.
I'm thinking I'll send some letters to my congressfolk, letting them know I can't vote for a congressperson who votes to increase troop presence in the Middle East. That I can't vote for someone who would allow the torture of any person, from any country. That I can't vote for someone who would place the economic health of a corporate entity over the economic health of the American public.

If getting votes is all that matters to these people, then maybe we should make them earn it, rather than voting down the party line. Especially since Specter showed us exactly what party loyalty means.
I am increasingly convinced that the only way to bail out the political dungheap in Washington DC is by a massive immersion by a third political party into the government system.

On a local level, California's budget is a clusterfuck, and the latest round of voting was nothing but a stirring of the shit pot.
Whoever writes these Propositions is one of the smartest fools I can imagine. Every proposition is an issue that immediately divides people into Yes's and No's over the issue itself. What I don't hear people asking is whether we need the proposition in the first place.
Such as that Proposition guaranteeing a certain amount of the budget goes towards the maintainence of our roads. Now, I think our roads are important, and I certainly think that a certain amount of the state budget should go towards their upkeep. Unless of course, something happens where it'd be more important to put that money elsewhere (ahem, like our current budget crisis). That is why I voted no on it. But people were stuck on the debate over whether money should be given to roads or not. Like the budget wasn't already giving money to roads.
All these pet project propositions locked money into their own containers, prohibiting the mobility necessary to deal with a fluid economy that shifts constantly, and often to great extremes. There's no longview in the minds of most voters.

And what you don't hear is any politicians trying to get people to see the longview. It's as if they've abdicated the running of the state government to voters.

And so during the last election, I voted no on all the propositions except the raise increase one (though I almost voted no on that one, since the language seemed to guarantee wage increases in years where there wasn't a deficit).
A proposition I would love to have seen was one unlocking all of the money previously locked into those pet projects of previous propositions (alliteration rocks!). Basically, it would roll back every previous budget prop to where it was if they never happened. I would have voted for that one. We need to hit a hard reset on our budget, start from scratch, and begin by establishing a budget that deals with what is truly necessary, and allocating excess towards pet projects.

The only way that'll happen is by making enough noise to get it on a ballot. So start clamoring.

Difficilis

1. War in the middle east.
So we're bringing death and destruction to Iraq and Afghanistan. We pubicly back Israel's death and destruction efforts against the Palistinian people and Syria. We're sending commando troops into Pakistan (an ally) without the approval of the Pakistani government. And we're pushing hard for conflict in Iran.
Cheney even suggested having Navy Seals dress up as Iranians and fake an attack against US naval troops to garner support back home for attacking Iran.
And then we backed Georgia's play for South Ossetia, and then confronted Russia when it responded to an invasion of its territories.
It's like we're trying to take everything between the 40th and 80th verticals and erase it from the map.
Wait, isn't that what we claim Ahmadinejad wants to do with Israel? Ok, so instead of erasing it, we'll redraw it to be a huge vertical bastion of democracy on the Asian continent.

This is a problem.

2. The economy.
So it starts simple, right? Investors taking advantage of weak rules in hedge fund and commodity markets to start a gambling process for fast cash. Then all this speculative betting starts affecting the actual price on hedge funds and commodities (like oil).

Add into that a housing market scam by loan companies, where you can borrow home equity at a low rate, but after a set time, it becomes a high rate. Housing investment booms, and then actually goes "Boom" when people suddenly can't afford their mortgage.

Suddenly, the simple house of cards is a complicated mess that will fall if someone breaths on it wrong.
And then somebody breathed on it wrong.

Indy Mac goes belly up. Bear Stearns goes belly up. Merril Lynch is bought out by BofA. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are bought out by the government. Lehman Brothers goes under. AIG goes under.
And the government comes in and starts bailing everyone out (except Lehman Brothers, probably because they would have to choose between them or AIG). Hundreds of billions of dollars given to these companies, not to settle debts, but to keep running.
When the government bailed out Fannie and Freddie, they didn't help people pay their mortgage, they helped Fannie and Freddie continue to offer loans to more people who won't be able to pay their mortgage. That, my friends, is retarded government.

So, our economy sucks, and the people holding the bonds for all our debt are other countries (including all the bailouts). What happens when China and Saudi Arabia stop buying our debt bonds?

And of course, the value of the dollar is dropping against the Euro and Chinese Yen, so it's only a matter of time before the world market stops trading on the dollar.

And this is a problem.

3. Of the two major presidential candidates, only Obama offers a definitive change from the current status quo.
The problem here is, his proposed changes may not be enough.

He supports troop reduction in Iraq, but escalation in Afghanistan. We'd still be keeping major military presence in the region between the 40th and 80th verticals. We need major troop reductions around the world.
We need to cut our military spending budget in half or more. Currently, our military budget is greater than every other country in the world, combined. If we cut it in half, our military budget would still be greater than any other country in the world. Russia's and China's put together, ranked 2nd and 3rd on military spending, still wouldn't match us. Oh, and you know what? Cutting our military spending in half will give us billions of dollars we can use in other places, like, um, the economy. Medicare. Education. Infrastructure.

He also has no plan to raise taxes on any Americans making less than $250 thousand a year, which is 95% of America. He has a careful plan to stimulate the economy, but economic stimulation isn't enough. We're at the point where we'll need economic defibrillation if things get much worse.

Most of my friends see Obama as a great savior, a bringer of change, to America. But right now, the most he can save us from is more Bush style of government. Which America can't handle four more years of, granted. But we need something more than that from him.

Because at this point, it's not going to matter.