You Can’t Cure Stupid – Page 50

Shot Down in Flames

Rand Paul has obvious aspirations of the presidency (everybody has dreams, some dreams are just stupid). Anybody who has researched presidential politics knows that becoming president requires one to kneel down and perform fellatio on the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). For those of you who don’t know the AIPAC labels itself as America’s biggest Jewish lobby. In reality the group is America’s biggest pro-zionist lobby and not all Jews are zionists. But the point is you must appease the AIPAC to stand a realistic chance of attaining the presidency.

So Rand Paul decided to demonstrate his loyalty to it by presenting the Stand With Israel Act of 2014:

Sen. Rand Paul today introduced the Stand with Israel Act of 2014. This legislation halts all U.S. aid to the Palestinian government until they agree to a ceasefire and recognize the right of Israel to exist. The bill, S. 2265, can be found HERE and below:

“Today, I introduced legislation to make all future aid to the Palestinian government conditional upon the new unity government putting itself on the record recognizing the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state and agreeing to a lasting peace.”

Too bad for Rand but the AIPAC is having none of his shit:

While the legislation is expected to garner widespread backing in Congress, AIPAC is quietly expressing reservations about it, according to those familiar with the group’s position.

“We are not supporting the Paul bill,” said one AIPAC insider. “We believe the law currently on the books is strong and ensures that aid is contingent on key conditions that help maintain America’s influence, keep Israel secure, and advance the peace process.”

“I want to be very clear, AIPAC supports a cut off of aid to any Palestinian government that includes an unreformed Hamas, and this is what is provided for in current law,” the AIPAC insider said.

In other words it’s not fucking stupid. The United States already has a policy of not providing funding [PDF] to any organization in Palestine that could possibly be against Israel. You can’t buy off one of the most politically powerful lobbies in the United States by simply making something that is currently against policy more against policy.

I could point out how Rand Paul’s attempt at picking sides in a foreign conflict isn’t a libertarian thing to do. But commenters over at The Daily Paul reminded me Rand Paul’s “liberty” supporters will perform fantastic feats of mental gymnastics to explain away any of Rand’s anti-libertarian actions as part of his super secret plan to bring libertarianism to America. If that’s what Rand’s supporters want to believe so be it. But one thing is certain, if Rand doesn’t figure out how to play the game better he’s never even going to become president.

NYPD Experiences the Internet

The Internet, as we know it today, was created largely by people who weren’t fans of authority. This is rather evident when you look at the mostly decentralized nature of the system. In fact the very protocols that make the Internet work are proposed through Requests for Comment (RFC) and the only deciding factor for whether or not they achieve widespread adoption is peoples’ willingness to adopt them. So what happens when a very anti-authoritarian network meets a very authoritarian organization? Hilarity:

For another case study in the perils of using Twitter for branding, look no further than the #myNYPD hashtag that is now trending for all the wrong reasons in the New York City area.

What started out as an attempt to solicit pent-up good feelings among the New York Police Department’s constituents is turning out to be a troll-fest of epic proportions.

The New York Police Department (NYPD) wanted to use Twitter as its propaganda arm by having users post heartwarming pictures of its officers helping New Yorkers. What they got instead were pictures of brutality carried out by NYPD officers.

There is a lesson to be learned by the NYPD from this. The department’s image sucks and for good reason. Officers in the NYPD have a long history of committing acts of brutality and being generally corrupt. Thanks to readily available recording equipment, namely cell phones with cameras, the amount of evidence of the NYPD’s brutality is voluminous. What this means is that any attempt to solicit the help of the Internet, which is heavily composed of people who are not big fans of brutality, will end in disaster.

What the NYPD should do now is accept that its image sucks, understand why its image sucks, and work to improve its image but not doing horrible things. What will probably happen is the person who though up the #myNYPD idea will be fired and more traditional routes of distributing propaganda will be utilized.

The Minnesota GOP Setting Itself Up to Fail Again

It’s nice to sit on the sidelines and observe the great political competitions as they play out. People often criticize those of us on the sidelines and claim that we’re not pulling our weight. But we see things from our vantage point that those playing the games do not. One example is the apparent inability of those playing for the Minnesota Republican Party (MNGOP) to see how ineffective their strategies are.

The MNGOP is currently putting its weight behind taking Al Franken’s seat. Considering Franken’s political track record this competition should be in the bag. Franken’s track record of supporting draconian intellectual property and Internet censorship laws and defending the National Security Agency’s (NSA) surveillance apparatus should be enough ammunition to get young politicos fired up against him. At that point the MNGOP would only need to run a candidate who could stop himself from saying stupid shit in public, advocated Internet freedom, and demanded the abolition of the NSA to achieve victory.

But anybody with knowledge of Minnesota politics knows that the MNGOP can’t bring itself to use winning strategies. Instead one of the leading candidates for the MNGOP senate candidacy has decided to play the Democrat Party’s war on women strategy:

In a petition published on her Facebook page yesterday, Republican U.S. Senate hopeful Julianne Ortman says a recently released secret recording of Al Franken joking around in an Arizona driveway shows he “still doesn’t take women seriously.”

Here is the video in question:

Pro tip: never attempt to use your opponent’s strategy against them unless you actually understand it. The war on women strategy only works when the target has said something in a serious manner that makes him look misogynistic. It’s a strategy that works wonderfully against Republican candidates because they have a habit of saying very stupid shit in public. But Franken has never really said anything too misogynistic so using the strategy against him is foolish. In fact the video, which makes it obvious that Franken was trying to be comical, does more to humanize him than make him look misogynistic.

But the failboat doesn’t only dock at that harbor. Ortman also demonstrates that she’s not opposed to the NSA’s surveillance apparatus:

The FISA Court first was authorized in 1979 and operates in secret and ex parte (only the government gets to present its case). It makes sense that we don’t want our foreign enemies to know how we are gathering information to protect ourselves. However, I am deeply concerned that the court has migrated to granting orders authorizing the wholesale gathering of information about presumably innocent private citizens and residents of the United States under the guise of intelligence gathering against unnamed foreign threats. This is where there must be more transparency. To begin with, we should insist that the FISA Court’s analysis and legal justifications be reviewed and discussed publicly by policymakers, with the right of the general public to be heard and considered.

Justifying secret courts is something only a petty authoritarian would do. So that justification was the first mistake. The second mistake was asking for more transparency instead of complete abolition of the secret court. She could have said that the secret courts made sense at the time but now their time has passed and saved herself from looking like a complete authoritarian. But she chose to justify the establishment of the secret courts and then argue that they are still necessary but a little additional oversight would be nice. Franken’s campaign won’t be able to argue against secret courts due to its candidate support of the NSA surveillance apparatus. What it will be able to do is point out that Ortman also supports the NSA surveillance apparatus and render the issue irrelevant for the race.

To quote my friend, “This is why the GOP can’t have nice things.” The party is flailing in a desperate search for a life preserver. Franken’s seat would be pretty easy to snatch if the MNGOP would use an effective strategy. Instead it’s marketing a candidate who is little more than Fraken lite. I’m not aware of any races where an incumbent was removed from office by a candidate advertising him or herself as a lite version of the incumbent.

What’s even more pathetic is that the MNGOP will likely pull the same stupidity in the governor race. Mark Dayton has burned a lot of bridges and his seat could easily be taken but the MNGOP will likely run another lackluster candidate and use absolutely idiotic campaign strategies to ensure its defeat.

This is one hell of a game to observe but I sure am glad that I’m not playing it.

Michael Bloomberg Really is Arrogant

Michael Bloomberg has always been a power-hungry tyrant but his acts could always be written off with the standard “trying to do the right thing” schtick. But a an article about Michael Bloomberg’s continuing push for gun control his arrogance really showed:

Pointing to his work on gun safety, obesity and smoking cessation, he said with a grin: “I am telling you if there is a God, when I get to heaven I’m not stopping to be interviewed. I am heading straight in. I have earned my place in heaven. It’s not even close.”

I may not be the more educated man when it comes to Christianity but most of the people I know who identify as Christians don’t believe that they will be fast tracked into Heaven. Usually they state something along the lines of “When I die I will be judged by God. I only hope that I lived a life worthy of entering his kingdom.”

Mind you this doesn’t surprise me. The man is obviously a tyrant who believes he alone knows what is best for everybody else. But most tyrants are smart enough to keep their arrogance somewhat low-key.

As for his push for more gun control, whatever. He managed to rule New York City with an iron fist and an overtly violent police force. But his track record on pushing for gun control elsewhere has been lackluster. I don’t see him being able to single-handedly overcome the entire gun rights movement. After all, pride goeth before the fall.

The Republican Party Continues Its Downward Spiral Into Irrelevancy

It’s funny how people continue to tout the Republican Party (GOP) as a viable alternative to the Democratic Party. While the parties agree on every important political issue the GOP has been spiraling into irrelevancy for the last several decades. This downward spiral has gone mostly unnoticed until the last decade or so. But the signs of irrelevancy are all around us. Take, for example, the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The ACA is at the top of the GOP’s hit list. That being the case you would think the GOP would be pouring everything it has into repealing the legislation. If it is then the GOP obviously doesn’t have much left because all that party has managed to do is lower its standards:

At the prodding of business organizations, House Republicans quietly secured a recent change in President Barack Obama’s health law to expand coverage choices, a striking, one-of-a-kind departure from dozens of high-decibel attempts to repeal or dismember it.

Democrats describe the change involving small-business coverage options as a straightforward improvement of the type they are eager to make, and Obama signed it into law. Republicans are loath to agree, given the strong sentiment among the rank and file that the only fix the law deserves is a burial.

“Maybe you say it helps (Obamacare), but it really helps the small businessman,” said Rep. Phil Roe, R-Tenn., one of several physician-lawmakers among Republicans and an advocate of repeal.

We’ve gone from the GOP trying to repeal the legislation and replace it with the exact same thing (Romney’s “repeal and replace” slogan) to improving the law to sliding in minor updates and declaring them as victories (quietly of course since they still want to pretend that they want to repeal the law).

I think the GOP is learning a lesson many businesses have learned throughout history. One cannot compete by being exactly the same as your competitor. You must find a way to distinguish yourself whether it be from different products, lower prices, and better customer service. The GOP has become nothing more than the Democratic Party mixed with religion. Needless to say the American people seem less and less inclined to have a large and powerful government that is mixed with religion so they’re opting for just having a large and powerful government. This choice is making the GOP less relevant every year. I’d say this is also turning American into a one party political system but it already is one so nothing is really changing in that respect.

Racist Fish

Last week I theorized that political correctness may simply be a social phenomenon of the powerless trying to feel empowered (but you didn’t see it because my post scheduler decided to forget to post it and I missed it because I don’t check my post queue as religiously as I should). In summary, for those not interested in reading my previous post, whiny bitches are whiny because it gives them the ability to lord a very measly amount of power over another human being.

Minnesota has to be the capital of butthurt social justice warriors. Our army of whiny bitches are ready to move at any sign of potential political correctness. Whenever a man says something the social justice warriors are there to point out his misogyny. Middle class individuals need not fear of being unopposed in everything they say because the social justice warriors will let everybody know that any wealth is a privilege (from their iPhones and MacBook Pros no less). If a white person say something never fear because Minnesota’s social justice warriors are here to point out that individual’s inherit subconscious racism. In fact our social justice warriors are so effective that they have even found that the name of Asian carp is really thinly veiled racism:

Jean Lee, who testified for the Senate bill Thursday, said she became upset by the term as it was used during a round-table meeting she attended with Minnesota Department of Natural Resources officials.

“They were referring to the Asian people in terms of being invasive species. This was offensive,” said Lee, executive director of the Children’s Hope International Minnesota chapter. That St. Louis-based nonprofit organization facilitates international adoptions from countries including China and Vietnam.

Sia Her, executive director of the Council on Asian-Pacific Minnesotans, a state agency, also testified in support of calling the fish “invasive carp.” The negative response to the fish “will reflect negatively on our community,” she said.

I highly doubt that the officials in the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) were referring to Asian people during the meeting about Asian carp. But nonetheless Jean Lee seems to believe that the best way to fight bigotry is with more bigotry. She proposed that Asian carp be changed to invasive carp.

Invasive carp? Really? These poor fish were kidnapped from their native waters, hauled over to America in suboptimal conditions, and forced into labor for the commercial fisheries! They are no more invasive than African Americas. In fact I’m betting that Mrs. Lee’s entire crusade against these underprivileged fish is due to her inherit speciesism. Mrs. Less probably thinks that just because she’s human that she’s a member of the master species and sees other forms of life on this planet as inferior. I’ve got news for Mrs. Lee, these fish didn’t ask to come here, they were kidnapped. We’re not talking about an invasive species, we’re talking about victims of the fish slave trade! Mrs. Lee should be ashamed of herself for publicly displaying her blatant speciesism.

The Dark Side of Taxes

It’s tax season. With the circle of friends I have that means it’s the season to bitch about the government taking a huge chunk of our personal wealth. I’m assuming that most of my readers at least lean towards libertarianism so there is probably a strong sentiment that taxes should at least be greatly reduced if not entirely eliminated. That means I’m also assuming that you’ve heard a variation of this debate before.

A libertarian comments about taxes being too damn high. In response a government advocate claims that we need taxes because taxes enable civilization. What that individual means is that he or she believes that infrastructure, welfare, and other pet government programs are only made possible through taxes. Putting aside the fact that anything made possible through taxes can be, and has been, made possible through voluntary methods we still have the fact that such an attitude ignores a lot of terrible things made possible by taxes. Taxes, like anything else humanity conceives, has the nice cheery side that makes people feel good and the dark depressing side that most people tend to ignore.

Let me take a moment to talk about the dark side of taxes. A small percentage of taxes are used to build roads, schools, and civic centers. But a large percentage of taxes are used to directly hurt of kill people. For example, taxes allow the United States government to bomb wedding parties in the Middle East, allowed the Soviet Union to build gulags that were used to murder millions, and enable police forces throughout the world to imprison people for nonviolent crimes.

Here in the United States we get to see the dark side of taxes more obviously than most other parts of the world. We have the highest incarceration rate in the entire world. Most of the kidnapped souls inside of the government’s great cages harmed nobody. They were victims of the war on unpatentable drugs. Their only crime was smoking, snorting, or injecting something that the government said they couldn’t. To fuel this war a great deal of tax money is sent to law enforcement agencies so they can put together Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams, buy armored personnel carriers, and fight court cases when their victims decided to sue.

Speaking of war, taxes also enable the numerous illegal wars that the United States is embroiled in. Drones and Hellfire missiles don’t build themselves. In order to butcher Middle Eastern children the United States government needs to collect taxes to pay for its military. Aircraft carriers, fighter jets, bombers, tanks, and nuclear bombs cost a lot of money. Since I brought up nuclear weapons I will point out that taxes it possible for the United States to drop nuclear weapons on two major Japaneses cities (after making it possible for it to firebomb Japan’s most densely populated city). Going back in time a bit further we can see another thing taxes made possible: the genocide of this continent’s indigenous populations.

Taxes may have been used to build the roads you drive on and the schools you send your children to but they were also used to destroy the roads and schools people in other countries depend on. The next time you hear somebody talk about all the great things that taxes make possible be sure to remind them about all of the horrible things that are also made possible.

University of Minnesota Students Making Effort to Allow Students and Faculty to Carry Firearms

Brace yourselves because the sky is about to fall. A group of students at the University of Minnesota are urging the administration to allow students and faculty to carry firearms on campus:

A string of robberies on the U of M campus late last year escalated on Nov. 11, when the campus went into lockdown because of an attempted robbery at gunpoint, and the suspect got away. A month later, in December 2013, there was another armed robbery on campus.

U of M freshman William Preachuk believes things could have ended differently if he’d been able to pack heat. “I would believe that I have the right to defend myself; I have the right to protect others as well as myself only if the situation allows it,” William Preachuk said.

Preachuk signed a petition Monday that will be sent to the Board of Regents asking to be allowed to conceal and carry on campus.

Susan Eckstine with College Republicans is a permit holder and trained in using a gun. “If I was able to carry a firearm here on campus I’d feel a lot safer to protect myself from a life-threatening situation,” Eckstine said.

As usual advocates of gun control are playing Chicken Little. The most common argument against allowing students and faculty to carry firearms on college campuses is that those areas are high stress environments where emotions run high. This is an interesting argument because I don’t understand where its basis lies. While college campuses are indeed high stress environments and emotions often run high the rate of actual violence is relatively low. Fist fights, stabbings, beatings, and other forms of violence remain low enough on college campuses that when they do occur they are major news items. The linked article mentions that there have been a few robberies near the University of Minnesota campus. Those robberies were big news here in the Twin Cities precisely because such violence is rare. So I’m at a loss as to how allowing students and faculty, who are a pretty peaceful bunch judging by the current lack of regular violence on college campuses, to carry firearms will turns campuses from peaceful spots to veritable war zones.

If the high stress environment of college campuses inherently bred violence then we would already be seeing a great deal of violence. It’s an absurd variation of the “blood in the streets” argument made by gun control advocates whenever a state was planning to pass or further liberalize carry laws. The sky will not fall if college students and faculty are allowed to carry firearms because, as it turns out, college students and faculty members are rational human beings. That means a vast majority of them understand concepts like violence and recognize when it should be used and how much should be used. They’re not likely to pull a gun on a drunken student who is getting overly aggressive but have the option of meeting deadly force with deadly force in a life threatening encounter.

A particularly disturbed anti-gun individual on Facebook made an absurd claim that I want to bring up just because it made me laugh. The individual, who we will refer to as Steve (because that’s his actual first name), said “This will cause a trickle effect and allow weapons of mass destruction into other areas where they shouldn’t be.” Wow. According to his logic allowing students and faculty to carry discriminatory weapons will somehow cause a trickle effect that will result in allowing them to carry nondiscriminatory nuclear and biological weapons. That’s a long leap of logic that is so absurd that it’s barely worth addressing (as I said, I merely brought it up for entertainment value). But it is interesting to see how far advocate of gun control will stretch things in an attempt to argue their case.

Equal Time

Back in the day the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) established the Fairness Doctrine, which stuck with us until 1987. The Fairness Doctrine mandated that television and radio broadcasters give balanced coverage to opposing viewpoints on a topic. While the doctrine is gone the attitude many hold that broadcasters must give balanced coverage remains. Recently a group of creationists have taken offense to the way life on this planet was presented on the show Cosmos (a new show that many of my friends swear is the most important show on Earth but I decided not to watch). In reaction to this offense there has been come murmur about requiring Cosmos to provide airtime to the theory of creationism:

Creationists held a pity party for themselves Thursday because “Cosmos” isn’t being fair and balanced to their beliefs.

“Creationists aren’t even on the radar screen for them, they wouldn’t even consider us plausible at all,” said Danny Falkner, of Answers In Genesis, which has previously complained about the show.

Falkner appeared Thursday on “The Janet Mefford Show” to complain the Fox television series and its host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, had marginalized those with dissenting views on accepted scientific truths, reported Right Wing Watch.

“I don’t recall seeing any interviews with people – that may yet come – but it’s based upon the narration from the host and then various types of little video clips of various things, cartoons and things like that,” Falkner said.

Mefferd said the show should at least offer viewers a false compromise.

I don’t care about this particular pissing match but it has provided me an convenient platform to discuss the idea of balanced coverage. When people think of balanced coverage they often believe that it requires all views to be given equal coverage or at least a mention. In practice this is not how balanced coverage works.

People often mistakenly believe that there are only two points of view on any issue. They see the issue as “us versus them”. That is to say one side of the issue, specifically the side they agree with, is correct while the other side is wrong. This leads people to believe balanced coverage involves providing the Republican and Democratic views of an issue, Christian creationism and evolution, Christianity and Atheism, etc. But binary options don’t cover all sides of an issue.

I’m guessing both Mefferd and Tyson would agree that the origin of life stories from Norse mythology shouldn’t be given airtime. In this case I would argue that such a viewpoint held by Tyson would be consistent since he is arguing in favor of providing scientific theories on his science show. But Mefferd, who is arguing that Christian creationism should be given equal time as evolution on Cosmos, would be making an inconsistent argument by claiming equal time should be given to her views without it also being given to other points of view.

The argument over the origins of life on this planet are the only occurrences of issues that are mistakenly treated as binary by the general public. Politics is rife with binary choices. We generally get viewpoints from Democrats and Republicans. Left out of the debate are libertarians, communists, socialists, anarchists, etc. Many people who argue in favor of balanced coverage between Republicans and Democrats would argue that third-parties or apolitical viewpoints shouldn’t receive any coverage.

This is where the idea of balanced coverage begins to look a little ridiculous. How can you offer balanced coverage to thousands of different theories and beliefs? Many religions have differing accounts on the creation of life on Earth. There are almost as many political views as there are people on this planet. Each of us is a unique individual so there is the potential of roughly seven billion points of view on any given issue. Mandating balanced coverage of all viewpoints of an issue is unmanageable. But offering binary choices and calling it balanced is dishonest. Either way mandating balanced coverage is idiotic.

Making Up Victories

Mothers Demand Action (MDA) is one of my favorite gun control advocacy groups. Somehow the members of MDA manage to sound more insane than members of the Brady Campaign ever could. In addition to the rather insane ramblings made by members and over the top attempts at appealing to emotion the organization also has a habit of turning every defeat into a victory. Shall Not Be Questioned has the best example of MDA declaring victory over something that wasn’t at all a victory:

Mothers Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, an organization funded by billionaire Michael R. Bloomberg, is falsely claiming a victory for forcing a billboard company to take down a Slide Fire advertisement in Chicago.

The truth is that the manufacturer contracted for the billboard to stay up for only two months.

I’m sure you’ve seen children who have brutally lost at something only to refuse to acknowledge it. That’s what MDA reminds me of.