Month: February 2014

Going Full Retard

That’s valuable advice. When you go full retard you inevitably make an ass of yourself and nobody ever takes you seriously again. Apparently these individuals never learned that lesson:

HIGHLAND, Utah – Billed as a call for an uprising, opponents of same-sex marriage gathered for a meeting in Highland on Saturday.

Former Graham County, Ariz., Sheriff Richard Mack spoke about issues concerning the U.S. Constitution, including same-sex marriage.

Mack says that since it appears that Herbert and other elected leaders have failed at their jobs, it’s up to law enforcement and everyday citizens to deny same-sex marriage.

And what, exactly, are law enforcement agents and everyday citizens supposed to do to stop same-sex marriages? Are law enforcement agents expected to kick in the doors of same-sex couples and shoot their dog to send a message? Are everyday citizens supposed to show up to same-sex weddings, beat everybody attending, and burn the place to the ground? How far is this holy crusade supposed to go?

“The people of Utah have rights, too, not just the homosexuals. The homosexuals are shoving their agenda down our throats,” Mack said.

What a strange false dichotomy. By saying “the people of Utah” Mr. Mack necessarily included homosexuals because homosexuals are, like Soylent Green, people! But I’m not sure why non-homosexuals have the right to infringe on a voluntary union between two individuals of the same sex. Obviously I’m not the master of all but from my vantage point of a person who likes to leave other people alone it seems as though two individuals should be allowed to enter into any voluntary arrangement they so desire.

Cherilyn Eager, who helped organize the event, says that it’s time for the citizens of Utah to speak up for their rights.

“We need people to stand up and speak out. We need to get noisy. We need some outrage,” Eager said. ”It is about the sheriffs now coming out to protect the people.”

Outrage? The United States is engaged in several unwarranted foreign wars, the homeless are treated like shit in most of the country, and the police are acting like an occupying military force. If you’re not outraged by now you either have a very Discordian view of things that helps you cope with such nonsense in a humorous way or your priorities are a bit strange. I fail to see how two individual entering into a voluntary union should spark more outrage than wars, abuses against the needy, and police brutality. In a voluntary union nobody gets hurt or dies while in the latter three people do get hurt and die.

Here’s my question for everybody up in arms about same-sex marriage: why do you care? Seriously. It seems like an awfully stupid thing to invest time in worrying about. If somebody was trying to force churches to perform same-sex marriages against their will I would understand the outrage. But when the status of same-sex marriage flips from illegal to legal it seems entirely pointless to complain about. Hell, most of the loudest opponents to legalizing same-sex marriages are the organizations ultimately responsible for the legalization. Had the currently complaining religious institutions fought the state’s attempt to define marriage then this entire fiasco could have been avoided. But you had to get the state involved and now you’re upset because the state isn’t doing what you want anymore.

Instead of getting up in arms about legalized same-sex marriage why not get up in arms about something that actually involves people being hurt or killed?

Introducing This Week’s Fear Propaganda

You have to hand it to the United States propaganda machine, it never takes a day off. Every week it seems like we’re treated to a new story that is supposed to strike fear, doubt, and uncertainty in our minds. For the last two weeks we’ve been treated to horror stories involving the conditions as the Sochi Olympic games. This week we’re being told that Iran is sending war ships close to the United State’s maritime border:

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iranian warships dispatched to the Atlantic Ocean will travel close to U.S. maritime borders for the first time, a senior Iranian naval commander said Saturday.

The commander of Iran’s Northern Navy Fleet, Admiral Afshin Rezayee Haddad, said the vessels have already entered the Atlantic Ocean via waters near South Africa, the official IRNA news agency reported.

In of itself a handful of Iranian warships isn’t scary. What you’re supposed to be scared of is the reason that Iran is sending warships our way:

The voyage comes amid an ongoing push by Iran to demonstrate its ability to project power across the Middle East and beyond.

Look at those evil Iranians trying to project their power. As we all know projecting power is only a few steps away from an actual attack (unless, of course, the United States is projecting power because then it’s just bringing freedom and democracy). What’s funny are some of the comments I’ve read online. Most people are laughing this story because it is rather absurd. But a few people, the gullible suckers who believe anything the state crams down their throats, have been drumming up the Iran hatred again.

Iran seems to the Ministry of Propaganda’s fallback. Whenever it runs out of world events that could actually be deemed scary for American citizens it resorts to drumming up fear of Iran. It’s sad really. The Soviet Union was an enemy that Americans could legitimately fear. Between it’s large landmass, gigantic military, and arsenal of nuclear weapons the Soviet Union actually had a chance of giving the United States a run for its money in a real war. Now that that threat is gone the Ministry of Propaganda seems lost. It can try and try as it might to turn Iran into an enemy worth fearing but the capability to hurt the United States is entirely missing making the adventure all for naught.

Immigration

The issue of immigration appears to be back in the news. Democrats claim to want to make it easier for foreigners to become United States citizens and grant amnesty to non-citizens who are already in the country. Republicans claim to also want to make it easier for foreigners to become United States citizens but are against granting amnesty to non-citizens who are already in the country. In other words both parties are using individuals not from around here as political pawns (in other words, business as usual). As expected this has fired up both parties’ political bases.

When the Democrats and Republicans claim they want to make the process of immigration easier they really mean they want to cut down on the paperwork and waiting period for non-citizens to become citizens. Granted, I’m not really sure why somebody living outside of the United States would want to move here of all places but that’s not the issue at hand. The issue at hand is the fact that politicians are arguing about making the process of crossing an imaginary line easier.

If you want to cross an imaginary line on a map you should be free to do so without begging some suit-clad dudes in marble buildings for permission. People born on the other side of the imaginary line being unable to cross it freely is the problem. Nobody should be forced to seek permission from bureaucrats to cross public land. Especially when you consider the fact that the United States was founded by people who either came from the other side of the imaginary line or were descendents of people who did.

But the state has convinced many people living here that those on the other side of the imaginary line are barbarians and must be prevented from crossing that line. We’re told that the state has to inspect anybody crossing the line to ensure they’re not going to kill us all. How ironic that the organization that claims it must ensure people crossing the line won’t kill us is the same organization that crosses the imaginary lines of other nations just to bombing the fuck out of their people. I’m sure the state is a great judge of moral character.

The bottom line is that the entire issue of immigration is stupid. People should be able to move about freely without receiving some stupid stamp of approval. Being born on the other side of some imaginary line doesn’t determine the content of your character. After all, there are many people that have been born on this side of the imaginary line that are, in my opinion, assholes. If we want to argue about immigration let’s discuss drawing lines around all federally owned property so that every politician and federal agent is required to go through immigration in order to enter non-federally owned property. That would certainly be more beneficial to our society as a whole.

Everything Old is New Again

The state is having a difficult time trying to find a way to execute prisoners. After the last attempt at using a new cocktail for lethal injection caused a man to suffer for 20 minutes before kicking the bucket the state is back to the drawing board. Virginia is looking at bringing back a classic as a backup plan to lethal injection:

Virginia lawmakers are expected to vote this week to establish the electric chair as the state’s default method of execution when drugs used for lethal injection are not available.

The measure, prompted by a long-standing shortage of the drugs, would make Virginia the only state where a death-row prisoner could be forced in some circumstances to be electrocuted.

The bill has passed the House of Delegates and is expected to emerge from the Virginia Senate this week. A spokesman said Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) has not taken a position on signing or vetoing the legislation.

It’s kind of funny in a sick sort of way watching the state grasp for a method to execute people that is convoluted enough to be called humane. Firing squads are unacceptable because they leave a mess afterwards, which makes the act of killing look horrific. I believe the electric chair went out of fashion, at least in part, for the same reason. Watching a guy twitch as electricity is surged through his body is pretty brutal. It’s certainly more brutal than watching a guy fall asleep as a cocktail of drugs is injected into his arm.

Insert Generic Doughnut Joke Here

Sometimes you run across a story that is just goofy enough that you don’t know what to make of it. This is one of those stories:

A 25-year-old Ferndale man died Tuesday night after security guards pepper-sprayed him during a confrontation at Northland Center mall in Southfield, police said.

The incident occurred at 5:40 p.m. in the mall’s corridor outside the LA Diamonds jewelry store, after the man told the store owner he wanted to kill somebody, Southfield police Lt. Nick Loussia said today. Paramedics took the man to Providence Hospital in Southfield, where he was pronounced dead at about 6:40 p.m., Loussia said.

[…]

“The guy told him, ‘I want to kill somebody,’ and that’s when the business owner called security,” Loussia said. The man was “not cooperative” with the guards, and when it looked like he might assault them, they pepper-sprayed him and began handcuffing him as he resisted, he said.

“That’s when they realized he’d stopped breathing,” Loussia said.

“When police arrived, he was (found to be) handcuffed, seated against a pillar (and) not breathing,” Loussia said.

[…]

“From what I saw, the three guards were really laying on him,” said Dan Hutchinson, owner of Hutch’s Jewelry.

“He was saying, ‘I can’t breathe — I can’t breathe.’ They said, ‘If you can talk, you can breathe,’ ” Hutchinson said.

Brent Reeves, general manager of Northland Center, said: “I was told they did not” sit on the man. Reeves said guards told him that the man, when asked to leave the mall, refused and “made fists and pumped up his muscles.”

I could go for the low hanging fruit and make a doughnut joke in regard to the security guards accused of sitting on the man, but I won’t. This story contains too much he-said-she-said to make heads or tails of what went on. But it does illustrate the fact that the information we receive is often not enough to make an educated guess of what happened.

Too often people, myself included, end up jumping to a conclusion based on initial reports. It’s a hard habit to break because speculating on what occurred is a fun exercise in deductive logic. But we must remember to separate exercises in logic from judgements. Based on the comments I’ve read the two prevailing sides appear to be those who are generally anti-cop and those who are generally pro-cop. Predictably the anti-cop crowd wants the security guards’ heads while the pro-cop crowd want the guards absolved of any wrongdoing. Neither side knows what actually went down though.

This is a similar outcome to the George Zimmerman incident. Initial reports made Zimmerman look guilty as Hell. As more evidence came to light Zimmerman’s guilt was no longer a sure thing. But the two sides that had developed, the pro-Zimmerman side and the anti-Zimmerman side, seemed willing to either ignore the new evidence or to perform a great deal of mental gymnastics to twist the evidence to support their belief. This is now how judgements are supposed to be made.

Remember, if you make a judgement be willing to modify it as more evidence comes to light. Try to avoid making judgements when you weren’t involved in a situation. Failing to do so leads to rather nasty polarization that makes civil discussion almost impossible.

A New Telephone Scam

Usually when word spreads of a new telephone, mail, or online scam I’m skeptical. Most of the time these scams end up being fear mongering. But I actually know a friend who was cheated by a recent telephone scam so I believe it’s legitimate and therefore worth bringing up:

One of my Facebook followers let me know about an old scam that has roared back to life. Years ago, crooks found a way to exploit a handful of international area codes that don’t require a foreign code to dial up.

Now that scam has resurfaced as what’s being called the “one ring scam.” Crooks are using robocalling technology to place Internet calls that only ring once to cell phones.

If you pick up, the robocaller just drops the line. But the bigger danger is if you miss the call. Like so many people, you might think it’s an important call and dial that number right back.

Bad move.

Turns out the area codes are in the Caribbean. That call will cost you between $15 and $30! And to add insult to injury, the criminals behind these calls will sign you up (through your cell provider) for bogus services that will be crammed on your phone bill if you return their call.

I have a policy of never answering the phone when I don’t recognize the number. If it’s important I know the person will leave a voice mail, which I can use to identify the caller. If I’m unable to identify the caller via their voice mail message or don’t recognize the individual or organization that left the message I don’t bother calling back. My primary reason for this is sheer laziness but it turns out that it also guards against several scams.

Scamming people out of resources is probably the second oldest profession in the world. Unless you want to regularly be separated from your money you need to be extremely skeptical of, well, everything. If you can’t identify the person you’re communicating with then you should assume that it’s a scam or a waste of your time (or both). Even being able to identify the person you’re communicating with isn’t always an effective defense since many so-called friends turn out to be scam artists themselves.

Politics is Violence

People often don’t agree with my belief that politics is a necessarily violent affair. They seem to think threatening people by proxy isn’t violence, which is a concept I find baffling. But once in a while the proxies are set aside and politicos actually get the balls to threaten and assault each other directly. At least one of last night’s caucus devolved into direct violence:

A heavily attended caucus in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood ended abruptly Tuesday night after an altercation between activists.

About 300 people, nearly all of them Somali-American, attended the event at the Brian Coyle Center. Most of them were there to support Mohamud Noor, who is challenging Rep. Phyllis Kahn for a seat in the Minnesota House.

The altercation over who would chair the event took place before any delegates were elected. Two women outside the meeting said that an aide for council member Andrew Johnson, Ilham Omar, was attacked.

“She was attacked,” Johnson confirmed in an interview. “She’s got some bruises and cuts but she’s going to be fine.”

Police escorting people outside said that no one was arrested.

Why would anybody expect less? A caucus is little more than a group of people getting together to argue about how they believe their political party should force everybody to live. When an event revolves around discussing how to aim the state’s guns at the people it’s going to attract psychopaths. Any room packed with psychopaths is a powder keg that is waiting to explode. The fact that more caucuses don’t devolve into violence is actually a testament to how well psychopaths can control themselves when they believe it will gain them politically.

My Guide to Caucusing

If you’re living in Minnesota today is caucus day. As somebody who has gone through the caucus process twice I want to write a short guide for any newbies considering going to their caucus today.

The most important thing to keep in mind when caucusing is that it’s a complete waste of time if your goal is anything other than toeing the party line. Politicos will often claim that caucuses are where you have a real chance to effect change. They’re lying. The caucus is the first level in a multi-layered system. It is the layer that gives people wanting to change things within a political party hope. When you arrive you will likely notice that there are few people present, which creates the illusion that you have a greater chance to instill change. But you need to know that this first layer is the least consequential layer and that each layer above it has built-in corrective mechanisms to ensure no meaningful chance occurs within the political party. You may be elected as a delegate at the caucus but if you have any desires outside of the party platform you will be weeded out at a later time (or your voice will be totally ignored if you make it to the national convention).

Now that that’s out of the way I recommend you think of a watering hole that you’re particularly fond of, skip the caucus, and spend your evening drinking beer with friends.

But if you’re one of those people who cannot take advice from somebody who has gone before then I’ll give you some pointers. The first thing you must do is find your caucus. I’m not going to explain how to do that because I’m not one to enable people to make destructive decisions. If you really want to attend your caucus I will take no responsibility for getting you there.

Getting elected as a delegate is pretty simple. First, dress well. I recommend going all out and wearing a suit and tie. Few people will do this and it will make you stand out from the rest of the candidates. Speak effectively. What I mean by this is that you should speak clearly, not use any vulgar language, and not appear nervous. When you’re speaking stick to the party line. If your goal is to effect chance within the party keep it to yourself. Do not speak on specifics.

Libertarians attending a Republican Party caucus may feel a desire to discuss ending the Federal Reserve and America’s foreign wars. Know that most of the attendees aren’t aware of the Federal Reserve’s existence and ending it isn’t in the official Republican Party platform so they won’t support it. Instead give vague and empty statements about wanting to return this country to “fiscal responsibility” (it’s such an empty and meaningless phrase that it’s included in the party platform, which means other caucus attendees will lap it up).

If ending America’s foreign wars is what you desire then keep your mouth shut. Without a doubt there will be at least one person at every Republican Party caucus that has a hard-on for Israel. In their eyes opposing America’s foreign wars is equivalent to abandoning Israel to the barbarians in the Middle East (in their opinion “barbarian” is synonymous with “Muslim”). Any mention of ending America’s wars will be met with accusations that you’re and anti-Semite. Once that accusation is out there you’re chances of getting elected as a delegate drop to zero. Instead discuss the need for a strong home defense and ending foreign aid to “our” enemies (caucus goers are naturally collectivists and like to think of Americans as a single cohesive group so use collectivist terms such as “our” and “us” frequently).

At the beginning of the caucus there will be elections for event positions such as chairman. Volunteer for one of these positions. Caucus goers tend to elect people who they perceive to be willing to sacrifice their time and energy for the good of the party. By running for a caucus position you demonstrate your willingness to participate in all of this madness. In the eyes of most attendees this shows a willingness to sacrifice time and energy for the party. Don’t worry, if you get elected to any of these positions you won’t have to suffer much work so running is fairly low risk.

During the evening an opportunity to add to the party platform will be arise. Note that, like the caucus itself, this opportunity is an illusion that enacting change is possible. In reality each caucus will have a slew of its own proposed changes that will be reviewed and dumped by higher layers in the party process. The only chance of getting an adjustment made to the party platform is to make it sound like something that already exists on the party platform. What the higher ups are looking for is a more politically correct rewording of the current platform. If you can make the psychopathic statements in the platform more palatable to decent human beings you have a chance of getting it added. With that said, if you’re trying to get elected as a delegate you probably want to make some attempt to create a platform change. Keep it vague though. Something specific such as ending the Federal Reserve will never go anywhere. Instead find a way to reword fiscal responsibility to sound more convoluted and empty.

Remember that running for a delegate position carries with it the risk of actually getting elected. If that happens you will be asked to sacrifice more of your free time by attending the next party event at a later date (and that date will almost certainly collide with something else you have planned because karma is a bitch). Honestly, it’s better to stay home or go to the bar. At least then you won’t face the risk of becoming a delegate.