Tag: Politics

United States Presidential Politics in a Nutshell

Have you used a private e-mail server for public business? Did you make most of your e-mails disappear when the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) started to investigate? Did you purposely remove classification headings so you could continue using your private e-mail server? Have you been directly involved in the perpetration of war crimes during your stint at the State Department? No problem, you won’t be arrested.

Did you spray paint some graffiti on a bulldozer blade? Well you’re going to be arrested you dastardly mother fucker:

CANNON BALL, N.D. — A North Dakota county has issued a warrant for the arrest of Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, who is accused of spray-painting construction equipment during a protest against the Dakota Access pipeline.

Hillary Clinton and Jill Stein may both be running for president but only the former is in the Big Club.

Proof that the Islamic State is a Government

People continue to refer to the Islamic State (IS) as a terrorist group but it really should be referred to as a state at this point. Granted, there is precious little that separate a terrorist group from a state. The only appreciable differences a state manages to hold a near monopoly on violence within a controlled territory for an extended period of time. That monopoly gives the state the power to issue arbitrary and conflicting decrees. IS is now to the point where it can do exactly that:

The Islamic State group has reportedly banned women from wearing a burka, a veil that covers the entire face, as a security precaution in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. The alleged new rule is striking in part because the militant group also known as ISIS has beaten and killed women in the past for refusing to wear the conservative garment.

I wonder if the French government and Gary “Ban the Burqa” Johnson will express support for IS now.

Islamophobes of all sorts but neocons especially have been jumping for joy because of this decree. In their minds it proves that the practices of Islam are so dangerous that even IS can’t live with them. In reality IS has about as much to do with Islam as most Christian kingdoms of Europe had to do with Christianity. Religion is just the justification for seizing power just as the struggle of the proletariat was the justification used by the Bolsheviks. But the justification a government uses for existing is never the actual goal. Now that power has been seized IS is acting like any other government that has obtained power by tossing aside its justification for existing and focusing on maintaining its power instead. Maintaining that power comes in the form of issuing decrees that are contradictory to is original mission statement. Anybody who believes this particular arbitrary decree invalidates IS as an organization should take a close look at their own government because it does exactly the same thing for exactly the same reason.

Never Comply with Demands from Politicians

It’s inevitable that any company that becomes popular will begin receiving an endless stream of demands from politicians. Each politician will demand the company comply with their person agenda. One example of this are when anti-gun politicians demanded Facebook stop allowing its service to be used for perfectly legal gun sales. Facebook voluntarily complied and started taking down groups and posts related to gun sales. Now the politicians are back and demanding Facebook do a better job at blocking perfectly legal gun sales:

A United States Senator released Facebook’s response on Tuesday to a slew of questions he sent company officials last month about gun sales initiated through the site. But the two-page response, which was supposed to address what impact, if any, Facebook’s ban on gun sales has had, left many questions unanswered.

“While I commend the platforms’ facilitating the reporting of prohibited content related to gun sales by users, I urge Facebook and Instagram to redouble their efforts to develop and deploy technology that can enforce their gun-sales ban without relying so heavily on user reporting,” Sen. Edward Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts, said in a written statement. “Facebook and Instagram’s ban on private firearms sales should have the teeth it needs to be effective, so that it can truly prevent guns from falling into the hands of those who should not have them.”

Never comply with demands from politicians. They’re never satisfied. No matter how well you comply with their demands they will always demand that you do a better job. Politicians are like spoiled children. Once you’ve rolled over for them they’ll never stop.

Treat politicians like terrorists (because they are); never negotiate with them. If a politician tells you to do something just ignore them. They’ll threaten to pass a law but complying with their demands will just give them a poster child to hold up as an example of the industry supporting the law they’re going to pass anyways.

Who’s a Good Politician

Who’s a good politician? You are! Yes you are!

CORMORANT, Minn. —Nine-year-old Duke, a Great Pyrenees, handily won another one-year term as mayor of the small northwestern Minnesota town of Cormorant, Detroit Lakes Online reports.

“I don’t know who would run against him because he’s done such great things for the community,” Cormorant resident Karen Nelson told Detroit Lakes Online.

The locals say Duke has one of the highest approval ratings in the country.

The people of Cormorant have their heads screwed on right. They’ve corrected one of the biggest mistakes more people make, which is electing humans to political office. Not only are dogs generally loyal but they’re also unable to speak any human language so they can’t make decrees. Furthermore, their scheming consists almost entirely of getting treats, being pet, and playing fetch. If everybody political office was occupied by a dog instead of a human politician the world would be a much better place.

Do You Want to Help Your Neighbors? You Better Pay Off the State First.

The floods in Louisiana have received very little press coverage. This isn’t surprising since Louisiana is a poor southern state and those are undeserving of coverage according to most major media outlets. Joining major media outlets, the State has also provided precious little help so far. This has forced the members of the community to step up efforts to help one another (as they always end up having to do because the State doesn’t care about them). There’s just one problem. Most of these good Samaritans haven’t paid off the State and that makes it very angry:

NEW ORLEANS – The Good Samaritan who rescued hundreds, maybe thousands, of people during the ‘Great Flood of 2016‘ said he was not happy after a state lawmaker announced he wants to introduce legislation around future actions by citizen heroes.

Some of these citizen heroes, a loosely-organized group called the ‘Cajun Navy,’ gained national attention for their rescue efforts last week, but that attention is nowhere near the pushback lawmakers are discussing when it comes to a lawmakers proposal to require permits for citizen rescue groups.

Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, the State wants a piece of the action. It doesn’t care if people end up dying while you’re wasting time filling out paper work so you can pay the State for permission to help the people it’s not helping. It doesn’t even care if all of your belongings were just destroyed in a flood. If you don’t scrounge up money to pay off the State it will send men with guns to kidnap or possibly kill you.

A Growing Idea

More and more people are jumping onboard the idea that Trump is part of Clinton’s campaign:

How would Donald Trump assess Donald Trump’s candidacy? As he might put it: A lot of people are saying his campaign is an operation on behalf of the Democratic Party to destroy the Republicans.

“A lot of people are saying”? That’s not a very high evidentiary standard. What else?

Well, to start there is the photo. You know the one, where Trump and his new bride Melania are rubbing elbows with the Clintons. Bill Clinton spoke with Trump right before Trump announced his candidacy. Trump has of course contributed to Clinton campaigns in past years as well. This doesn’t even get into the fact that Ivanka Trump and Chelsea Clinton are friends.

Previous evidence leads me to believe that Trump isn’t an idiot. He has raked in a ton of cash over his lifetime and became prominent enough to rub elbows with powerful political figures. Yet he seems to have become entirely incompetent overnight, which leads me to think he might be part of his good friend Hillary’s campaign.

Why do I care? The only reason I care is because I want this to be true so I can rub it in the faces of all those so-called gun rights activists telling gun owners they need to support Trump even though he has a long history of being anti-gun. If Trump is part of Hillary’s campaign they’re actually providing material support to her campaign and that would amuse me to no end.

They Call Her Killary for a Reason

Everybody who believes in the political process necessarily believes in the death penalty. Death is the inevitable outcome of breaking one of the State’s decrees and not cooperating when armed men with guns come to kidnap you (and cooperating won’t guarantee you avoid the death penalty). However, many politicos, especially on the Democratic Party side, will say they oppose the death penalty. Hillary Clinton is not one of them:

Asked her position on capital punishment, Mrs. Clinton said she did not support abolishing the death penalty, but she did encourage the federal government to rethink it.

“We have a lot of evidence now that the death penalty has been too frequently applied, and too often in a discriminatory way,” she said. “So I think we have to take a hard look at it.”

Mrs. Clinton added, “I do not favor abolishing it, however, because I do think there are certain egregious cases that still deserve the consideration of the death penalty, but I’d like to see those be very limited and rare, as opposed to what we’ve seen in most states.”

They call her Killary for a reason.

The problem with the death penalty isn’t that it’s used too often, it’s that it exists at all. Executions performed by the State are collectivist nonsense. When the State executes somebody it does it under the auspices of justice. But the State’s justice doesn’t involve best efforts to right a wrong. Instead it involves whatever words were written on a piece of paper and voted on by a committee. Justice would require asking if killing a convicted individual would be an appropriate way to right whatever wrong he committed, not whether some suit-clad mother fuckers in a marble building said it was okay to execute somebody for violating one of their decrees.

Transporting prohibited drugs, for example, isn’t even a crime since there is no victim and even if one considers it a crime killing the transporter wouldn’t right any wrongs. But the State is willing to issue death sentences for transporting prohibited drugs. Issuing death sentences for such arbitrary reasons must be opposed entirely. Since everything the State does is arbitrary by nature allowing it to issue death sentences must be opposed entirely.

Playing the Odds

Anybody who isn’t mathematically challenged knows that playing the Powerball is an exercise in throwing money away. The chances of winning are infinitesimal. You’d be better off putting the money for a ticket into buying a coffee at Starbucks since you at least receive something for your money then.

But there is something you can play that has worse odds and absolutely no chance of a payout: the United States presidential election:

However, come November, many of the sophisticates who smugly snickered at these stories will themselves have wasted time and energy on their own statistically senseless participation in yet another faith-based fantasy drawing: they will have voted in a U.S. presidential election.

[…]

A voter has a greater chance of dying in a car accident on the way to the polling station than of affecting the outcome of the presidential election. But you wouldn’t know it from the way engaged voters assiduously deliberate and strategize over their presidential “pick”: balancing pros and cons, prioritizing issues, and agonizing over character judgments, as if they were pondering a decision that would actually make a difference in their lives, like choosing a romantic partner or a dentist.

Get a grip. Handing in a piece of paper is not going to make you a billionaire, and it’s not going to make you a political kingmaker either. Agonizing over your World of Warcraft avatar would impact your future happiness far more than agonizing over your pick for president.

Not only are your odds of dying greater than your odds of influencing the election but even if you do manage to influence the election you won’t win anything. Look at the current presidential candidates. Whether Clinton or Trump wins is irrelevant because everybody inside and outside of the United States will lose. Even if you throw in Gary Johnson as a viable candidate nothing changes. He’s not a libertarian and would still end up fucking Americans over. Since there isn’t a single candidate running on the platform of abolishing the federal government there is no way to win even if you can influence the presidential race (and since the president can’t actually abolish the federal government such a candidate would count as a win for entertainment purposes only).

If you want to play a game with stupid odds on November 4th go buy a Powerball ticket. You won’t win but at least there is a chance of a payout, unlike voting for the president.

Selling Out is Lucrative

I’ve been curious what Bernie Sanders was paid to sell out his supporters by endorsing Hillary Clinton. Although we may never know the exact sum he received we do know it probably wasn’t entirely chump change:

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has purchased a nearly $600,000 summer retreat on Vermont’s Champlain Islands, the Vermont newspaper Seven Days reported Monday.

The Sanders’ new waterfront home has four bedrooms and 500 feet of Lake Champlain beachfront, Seven Days reported.

I think Bernie did the same thing most Silicon Valley startups do. He created a successful national campaign on the backs of donors. When he believed it was at its peak value, that is during the Democratic National Convention, he sold it off to another campaign for a good profit.

I’m bet he even thinks a $600,000 makes him look like a regular Joe. Since he’s never held an actual job he’s probably not away that most of us can’t steal more money from people to give ourselves a raise to buy a second and third house (for being a supposedly poor politician he sure can afford the houses).

Even the BBC Thinks Trump Might be Part of Clinton’s Campaign

My theory is sounds less and less crazy every day. Even the BBC can’t deny the evidence that Trump is part of Clinton’s campaign:

“Mr Trump has a close friendship with Bill and Hillary Clinton,” he said. “They were at his last wedding. He has contributed to the Clintons’ foundation. He has contributed to Mrs Clinton’s Senate campaigns. All of this is very suspicious.”

Of course Mr Trump has also contributed to plenty of Republicans. He likes to boast that he has “bought” politicians of all stripes. And Mr Trump’s wedding was a coveted invitation for all of New York City’s elite, of which the Clintons were definitely part.
But there’s more.

Also suspicious – for those predisposed to suspicion, at least – is a “mystery” phone call between Mr Trump and Bill Clinton in May, less than a month before the real-estate tycoon tossed his hat into the presidential ring.

Will proof eventually come to light showing the Clinton’s paid Trump to be the only candidate Hillary could be guaranteed to beat? One thing is certain, if such proof ever does come to light I will be rubbing it in the face of every alt-right idiot for the next decade.