"Capitalism: A Love Story"

When I went to see Michael Moore's "Capitalism: A Love Story" last night, I fully intended to purchase a ticket for a different film, just to get inside the theatre. (I wanted to see Moore's movie, but I have qualms about giving money to millionaire socialists.)
I forgot that plan in the ticket line. Oh well. I've supported worse.

I'd seen the preview, and had ranted on some of the same subjects.



Michael Moore creates movies in exchange for lots of $10.00 tickets.

Many of us value seeing Moore's movie more than we value our $10.00. Michael Moore values our $10.00 more than he values the time spent making his movies. Michael Moore and a lot of people made a voluntary financial exchange last night. That's called "Capitalism".

Why not engage in this voluntary Free Market exchange with Michael Moore, and let him explain to us why voluntary Free Market exchanges are evil?


If you're looking for a consistent, coherent attack on Capitalism, go elsewhere. The movie is a mishmash of attacks on things that Moore doesn't like, redeemed with some genuinely funny sight gags and film clips.
But if you want a beginner's guide to how Goldman Sachs looted the U.S. Treasury? Give Michael Moore your $10.00


Moore begins with footage from what he sees as America's Golden Years. Dad could buy a new car every three years, he had a pension, four weeks of vacation, and Mom didn't have to work. Why? Because during WW2, we bombed our economic competitors, Germany and Japan, into oblivion. (It was a preview of Cash For Clunkers. Destroy enemy cities, and then rebuild them. It creates jobs and stimulates the economy !!)


Then come some genuinely heartbreaking scenes of people being evicted from their homes, some of which had been in their families for generations. I don't remember any clear explanations of how homes that have been in one family for multiple generations can be foreclosured on, though. Was it an 80-year loan with a balloon note tacked on the end? Did the owners use the house as collateral for a business venture that didn't work out? Did the owner lose his job, and take out a loan against the property just to get by? I don't think Moore ever tells us.


A few of the episodes have so little to do with capitalism, they seem like they were filmed with another movie in mind. One episode where Moore went totally off the rails was an interlude about Judge Mark Ciavarella. This vile bastard, along with someone named Mark T. Conahan, took money under the table from a privately owned juvenile detention center, in exchange for sending more and more juvenile delinquents to the privately operated detention center.

I wrote an incoherent rant about Ciavarella and Conahan several months ago, and when Moore's attack on them began, I supressed an urge to walk down each row of seats and tell everyone to READ THIS.


But, like Michael Moore, I digress. Free Market Capitalism is about voluntary exchanges of time, merchandise, and property. Corrupt judges who can screw up the lives of 1,600 children by taking kickbacks are an argument for less government involvement in the economy, not more.

There are some funny scenes where the dialogue in an old Jesus movie is replaced with contemporary clutch-phrases. (A beggar comes to Jesus to be healed; Jesus turns him away because of a pre-existing condition.) I think the funniest one would be to have Jesus say "I don't think we should do this by ourselves. Let's get Caesar involved."


Then Moore got to the good part. He outlined how various financial institutions were making a fortune by placing exotic bets on the outcomes of our economic behavior. Hank Paulson got a lot of face time onscreen. Ditto for Larry Summers. Ditto for Tiny Timmy Geithner. You can quibble over Moore's choice of details, but he explains how that Unholy Trinity worked with Bush and a Democratic Congress to loot the Treasury. Timothy Geithner comes in for a lot of unexpected abuse. Even Chris Dodd's crimes against transparency got some screen time. I couldn't believe it.
It was more or less accurate and very entertaining, if you enjoy watching a comedy about how a pack of jackals got into your wallet.


Then the music changed. One could almost imagine the Lone Ranger riding over a hilltop. Moore's voice switched from despair to enthusiasm. The screen got brighter, and was suddenly filled with hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans, good solid Americans like you and me, and they were all focused on....


Barack Obama ! Barack Obama ! Barack Obama ! Holy shit, he's awesome ! !


And then everything got better? And then Obama didn't name Timmy The Tax Dodger Geithner to head up the Treasury? Larry Summers was banished from anywhere near the president's ear? Was Goldman Sachs Obama's #1 campaign contributor, or merely #2 ?? Coca-Cola went back to using sugar instead of corn syrup?

Did The Obamessiah come in and cleanse the temple? Or did he merely allow all the con artists to slide one seat higher in the pecking order?
We'll never know where Moore was headed with this awkward scenario, because the movie pivots over to a union strike at a door and window company.


Here's where it should've gone, though. The people who ripped you off with the Wall Street bailout are the people who ripped you off with the Stimulus Package. They take turns, leaving a few Geithners in place as a transition team.


You had no choice but to finance the Wall Street Bailout, the G.M. Bailout, and the Porkulus Package. Other people made that decision for you, and your grandchildren will have a diminished existence because of it. That's not capitalism. That's fascism. A corporatistic economic ideology where Government and business are intertwined.


Some billionaire capitalists financed this movie. A millionaire capitalist wrote it, directed it, and starred in it. That's ok. In our system, they have that choice.


This is the most pro-union movie I've ever seen, and workers should have a right to unionize. That's their choice. Employers should have a right to hire non-union workers. That's their choice.


Michael Moore has come under fire for using non-union labor to make this pro-union movie. Why did he use non-union labor? Because he had a choice.


If you support the right of billionaire producers to finance millionaire capitalist filmmakers who want to hire non-union labor to produce pro-socialist movies?

Please consider the Libertarian Party. We're Pro-Choice about everything.

South Park on the organization that was gonna get stimulus money for helping with the census

"Don't Tax, But Spend Anyway" Republicans

In which the Republican Party attempts to start a blog....
This is from the Hot Air site:

Among the glitches on the newly redesigned GOP.com: The site password was visible for a time in the New York section and the “Future Leaders” page was left (temporarily) blank. Quoth the chairman: “It’s a beta site, meaning that there — we’re working out a lot of the kinks and the bugs… So the Dems can have their fun.”

And so they have. Way to score an own goal, pal, completely needlessly and amateurishly.

Today's video on the GOP.com website moans about the "trillions in new spending".

Folks, until The Teleprompter Jesus entered the Washington Baptismal Waters, the GOP held all the records in new spending.

Unbelievable.

We're truly in the best of hands.

To my gay and lesbian friends: You do have another option

From the comment field at Pam's House Blend, on the dithering of The Teleprompter Jesus on the gay marriage issue, plus some anonymous White House comments lumping gay bloggers into the "internet left fringe":



We get rousing speeches pre-election to get our vote. Then we get that insulting-azz DOJ brief comparing us to pedophiles. Then in front of the tea-and-finger-sandwich crowd there's another inspiring speech about how BHO stands with us. Then today we're the pajama-clad fringe again?
WTF? over!
Not one thin dime, not one more vote until somebody up there gets their shit together and gets some action going in a positive direction. They have not seen fringe lunatic -- yet. My last gay nerve is not that ->.<- long now. They can stick this on-again-off-again up their azzes.

And another:

I am sick to goddamned death of the Obama administration. Give me an honest enemy any day over a snake in the grass.

Here are some words of wisdom from The Gay Patriot:

I have to say that while I do delight in mocking gay leftists for their sometimes seemingly slavish support of Democrats, I have been most impressed with the integrity of many left-wing gay bloggers. They haven’t marched in lockstep with an Administration, even one they helped elect. And it’s not just in dealing with a Democratic Administration. While most gay organizations have been silent on the persecution of our fellows living under oppressive Islamic regimes, many gay bloggers on the left have covered their plight, with one blogger even organizing rallies on behalf of gay victims of Islamofascism.

These bloggers are hardly a fringe of the gay community, indeed, they may well be representative of it. Nearly every gay Democrat I talk to has expressed the same frustration as do these left-of-center bloggers. They may agree with a number of things the President has done these past nine months, but they’re appalled at how he has failed to act on the promises he made to the gay community.

So, we should be grateful for the blogosphere–it may well be more representative of our community that the heads of the various gay organizations with their fancy offices and titles and more ready access to the mainstream media.

Here's another Right-Wing Extremist publication, The New York Times:

Impatient and discouraged by what they see as a certain detachment by President Obama on their issues, gay rights supporters took to the streets Sunday in the largest demonstration for gay rights here in nearly a decade....

The president did not lay out a timetable to repeal the ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the military, voice support for any of the battles going on at state levels to allow same-sex couples more recognition under the law nor mention the march.
“He knows this march is happening, and he can’t even acknowledge it?” said Robin McGehee, 36, a co-director of the march. Ms. McGehee took issue with people she believes are giving the president a pass.

Representative Barney Frank called the march “emotional satisfaction” for its organizers and said of their intention to pressure the Obama administration, “The only thing they’re going to put pressure on is the grass.”

Way to go, Barney. Go back to running a whorehouse out of your apartment.

Here's someone named Beth, commenting on the Ann Althouse blog:

So my question for the pissed off gays--what are you going to do about it? Vote republican next election? sit the next one out? Good questions, all.

I'll support candidates who challenge the Democratic incumbents - some primary challenges would be useful at least to unnerve incumbents who do lip service to gay constituents but never come through for us.

And yes, I'll sit out an election if there's no good option, or vote third party. We've long since quit donating to any organization that has shown up at the Obama White House for their cocktails and photo ops. Screw them. They don't represent us.

Well said, Beth. Please remember that the Libertarian Party waits for you to come around. We don't think America needs a third party, but a genuine second party would be nice.

I was sorry to read about Elmo.

Can your kids purchase life insurance policies on you after you are dead ???

I got into this argument with some friends on Facebook about a month ago.

Imagine you're in this group of about a dozen families who are all afraid that their houses will burn down. So each family puts about 2% of their income into a pool every year, and this fund will cover the cost of a new home for anyone whose house burns down.

Sure enough, every now and then someone's house burns and the group fund has to cover it. By carefully adjusting the rate that everyone has to pay, the fund winds up with 3.5% more than it pays out. (That's the profit margin for the Health Insurance industry, BTW.)

Next, imagine that a newcomer wants into your group. He's heard good reports about the low cost, and how quickly the funds were applied after each household disaster.

There's only one catch: This guy's house has already burned down.
Would you vote for the group to build him a new house? Especially if he crosses his heart, hopes to die, stick a finger in your eye, and promises to start paying money into the fund one day?

(Hint for Democrats: you're going to be giving him a house for nothing. Another hint: I'm not interested in what you ought to do in this situation, I'm interested in what you're going to do. People's houses burn every day, and you don't buy them a new one. I don't think you would let him into the group.)

Ok, enough of that hypothetical nonsense.

If the current Baucus Healthcare Bill passes, will any young person in this great land of ours be dumb enough to pay for health insurance?


Well, yeah. But they will be scarce. This is the Powerline blog explaining why:

....in the current version of the Baucus bill, there is no requirement to buy health insurance at all until after 2013, and by 2017 the penalty for failing to buy health insurance still amounts to only about 15% of the cost of the insurance.
Now, think about it: if you know that you don't have to buy health insurance when you are young and healthy, but if you should get sick, or just get older, you can apply for health insurance at any time and it will be illegal for the insurance company to turn you down, what would you do?
Obviously, you would defer buying insurance unless and until you get sick.
This means that the pool of those who are insured will be lower quality, and the cost therefore higher for everyone who buys insurance.

It is as though you could wait until you die, and then your heirs can buy life insurance on you.

As the great Thomas Sowell has stated a thousand times, in a thousand different ways: Government policies and programs should not be judged by their stated intentions, but by the incentives they create.

In this case they're creating GREAT incentives for younger people to go without insurance.

Our current government is beyond parody. They don't want healthcare for everyone, they want control. They want power.
Many of the people at the top have never even had to profitably run a Blockbuster Video night shift.
What could they possibly be thinking ? Where is the mainstream media on this joke?
Is there not a Woodward and Bernstein out there? Where is Jon Stewart on this? Letterman? Leno?
Anybody?

The Baucus Bill word cloud came from here.

Headline of the decade ! ! !

From Reason magazine, via the Probably Bad News site.

Here's an excerpt from the article in question. I suspect Mr. Cooper might have been giggling while writing this. Lane County is in Oregon, BTW.

"We got our hand out (for more money) on one hand, and we're we're Contraction of we are.
we're we are spending money with the other," Dwyer said. "That's a dilemma that we face."

The commissioners hope that an intense, 10-month public-information campaign that hits media, the general public, the county's own workers and specific groups will convince people that they're getting a lot of county services for their money. That could encourage support for the county-wide income tax, which would generate $70 million annually to fund current and additional public safety services.

But officials must be careful not to spend money advocating for the income tax, as that would violate a state law that governs how public money can be spent on campaigns, county attorney Terry Wilson said.

The commissioners can spend public money on some things they believe are in the county's best interest, including support for legislation or efforts to win federal money, Wilson said.

However, she added, even though the commissioners believe that the income tax for public safety is in the county's interest, they can't spend money advocating for it because it's tied to a vote of the people, some of whom may oppose the tax, and therefore the promotional spending.

The commissioners are expected, later this year, to approve a personal-income tax for public safety that would take effect if voters in November agree to change the Lane County charter.

The individual commissioners can - and will - advocate for the tax, but Dwyer said money will be spent ensuring only that voters are educated about county services and funding when they vote on the tax plan.

Got it? Good. They're spending a staggering sum of Oregon taxpayer money to let you know that if you don't give them more money, they're going to run out of money. (Unlike our Federal government, states and counties can't print their own funds.)

Voters have rejected 11 straight county public safety measures.

May their tribe increase.

The county needs to communicate on a higher level with its citizens," county spokeswoman Melinda Kletzok said.

Kletzok, the county's public information officer, will be the point person for a campaign to explain county services and funding. It will include newspaper, radio and TV advertising; news releases; an increased Web site presence; a video; numerous printed materials; and meetings with groups ranging from Neighborhood Watch to chambers of commerce, she said.

Supervisors from each county department have promised to contribute a total of up to $200,000 from their budgets to the campaign.

Remember, Lane County voters, your elected officials had enough money stacked around the office to fund the campaign to give them more money.

Another $50,000 is set aside in Kletzok's budget.

Fight The Power.

On religious legalism

About five years ago, Lord Sauron and I went to a three-day auction in New Jersey. Bought all sorts of stuff and hauled it back to Texas. One of the more memorable people from that trip was an old Amish guy who mostly bid on hammers, wrenches, and other hand tools. He wore the Amish homespun clothes, the suspenders, a straw hat, and some boots that looked like they were made by blacksmiths. (I've always lived in Mississippi and Texas, and haven't been around many Amish people.)

I didn't pay that much attention to Mr. Amish until he started bidding on the drill presses. This seemed like a violation of the Amish prohibition against electricty, right? What was he going to do with an electric drill press? I asked a friend of his, and here's the explanation I got:

The Amish have a prohibition against electricity. Well, let's define electricity. Let's say its the presence and flow of an electrical charge. A spark, perhaps. Think Ben Franklin's experiment with the lightning. Big spark.
A gasoline-powered electric generator compresses fuel with a piston. At some point, a spark plug ignites the fuel, pushing the piston downward. This creates motion.
For whatever reason, the Amish see this spark as a bad thing.

BUT.... what about a diesel generator? Would that be ok? Diesel fuel ignites spontaneously from compression. (The oldest joke in the mechanical/maintenance industry is to send a kid out to change the spark plugs on a diesel engine. Diesel engines don't have spark plugs.)
Therefore, its ok for the Amish to run machinery and lighting from diesel generators. Go here to learn about an Amish company that actually manufactures diesel generators.

Ok, next point.... During this same time period, I was running the Jukt Micronics metal shop, and we had most of the United Nations working in the place. We had metalworkers from Nigeria. Kenya, Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia, Mexico, Guatemala, Eritrea, and Arkansas. I wanted to do something nice for the guys, and ordered pizza to arrive a few minutes before breaktime.

I ordered Pizza Hut Meat-Lovers pizza. I ordered Sausage pizza. Pepperoni pizza. Italian Sausage. Ham. And guess what? It was the middle of Ramadan. At least a third of my employees were Muslim, and I might as well have ordered everybody some pig-on-a-biscuit. Well, like I said above, I'd lived my whole life in Mississippi and Texas, and wasn't really tuned in to Muslim dietary requirements.

But here's where it got interesting: A small contingent of the Croatians (?) took some of the forbidden pizza to a corner, and they did something to it. I don't know what. Some kind of Mojo. When the pizza came out of the corner, it was ok for Muslims to eat, and a lot of them ate it. I wish that Baptists had a similar ritual to purify Jim Beam.

There was an article in the New York Times a few days ago about Shabbos elevators. You don't know about Shabbos (or Shabbat) elevators? Here's the Times:

Does that elevator “know” how many people are on it?
The question is at the core of a ruling issued by a group of prominent rabbis in Israel on Sept. 29 that seems to ban the use of many so-called Shabbos elevators: elevators fixed to stop on every floor from Friday evening until Saturday evening so that observant Jews do not have to press any buttons.
Since the 1960s, when high-rise apartment buildings became ubiquitous, the Orthodox rabbinate has made such elevators one of the few exceptions to Talmudic rules prohibiting 39 categories of activity on the Sabbath, including manual labor or the use of electrical devices. Like flipping a light switch, pressing an elevator button is considered the use of an electrical device.

You would think that if someone went to the trouble to program an elevator stop on every floor during the Jewish Sabbath, he ought to at least get credit for trying. Not so. Here's the "Ask A Rabbi" website:

One of the common misconceptions about how elevators work, is that they are moved by a powerful motor which works equally hard no matter how many passengers have boarded, or even if no passengers have boarded at all. If this were the case, then the added weight of the passenger is not a contributing factor in any of the functions of the elevator and he wouldn't be considered responsible for those violations of Shabbat caused by use of the elevator. This assumption though, is false.

The assumption is false because elevator motors do not use the same amount of power regardless of the number of passengers or weight. The following is an explanation of how the majority of elevators work, illustrating just a small number of Halachic issues surrounding the use of elevators on Shabbat:

1. Most elevators are the traction type: consisting of a car and a counterweight on opposite ends of a cable hanging from a pulley;
   
2. The pulley raises or lowers the car by using a motor, and stops by using a mechanical brake;
   
3. The motor only requires enough power to lift the difference between the counterweight and the car, and to overcome friction;
   
4. The weight is equal to half capacity of the car, thus the motor operates to counteract the pull of the weight when the elevator is less than half full, and does not operate when the elevator is more than half full, when the car is descending.

Since the weight of the passenger is partly responsible for the motion of the elevator, he becomes liable for any infractions caused by the elevator's descent. In a typical non-Shabbos elevator, these are some of the many problems that one could encounter:

• Letting your weight trigger the mechanism that slows the elevator down and stops it at the next floor.
  
  • Causing the light that indicates the floor that the elevator is presently on to illuminate.
    
  • Activating the system (resistance sensitive pads, photoelectric device, or proximity detector) that opens the elevator doors.
  
  

  
  

  The Institute for Science and Halacha has spent many years working out the various Halachic problems and have designs for Shabbat elevators that meet the most rigorous Shabbat standards. Don't just use any automatic elevator - check with a Local Halachic Authority and find out whether it really is Shabbat safe.
  

Get it? If anything about your body - your weight, your leg breaking a light beam, your sinful desire to press a button - causes the elevator mechanism to change its scheduled starts and stops, then you've desecrated the Sabbath. It's like "step on a crack, break your mother's back" times ten.

Which gets me to the new Eruv in Baltimore. An Eruv, according to Wikipedia, refers to the legal aggregation or "mixture" under Jewish religious property law of separate parcels of property meeting certain requirements into a single parcel held in common by all the holders of the original parcels, which enables Jews who observe the traditional laws of Shabbat to carry children and belongings anywhere within the jointly held property without transgressing the prohibition against carrying a burden across a property line on the Jewish sabbath.

Orthodox Jews can't carry property - i.e., books, keys, kids - across property that isn't theirs on the Sabbath. So they put a wire around a massive amount of land, theoretically enclosing it within the communal property boundary of the wire, and this means its okay to carry your textbooks from point A to point B on the Sabbath. As long as you stay inside the wire. Step outside it, and God gets pissed. Here's another section of Wikipedia on "coping without an Eruv":

Loose medicines may not be carried; most authorities have agreed that it is preferable that one who constantly needs medication remain at home rather than transgressing Shabbat by carrying medication. But if such a person leaves home, then comes in need of medication, it is permissible under the laws of Pikuach nefesh to break Shabbat and bring the medication to the person. A small number of authorities in recent years have been permitting carrying the medication, though, since such a person may be tempted to leave home without it, and then his/her life may be endangered thereafter.

I first learned about the concept of the Eruv in Harper's magazine. The Eruv in the linked article is more than 4,000 acres, and encloses much of Manhattan. That's one heck of a household. Various committees and experts inspect the wire from time to time, and ensure that it remains unbroken. Otherwise, those inside the magic circle would be doing forbidden work on the Sabbath.

My wife is a Baptist Youth Minister. Our church prides itself on being "moderate" Baptist, which these days is kinda like being a "moderate" jihadist. We like gays and lesbians. We have female deacons and ministers. We don't believe that the Republican Party speaks for God. (Some of us even think that you can disagree with us and not go to hell, but don't tell anybody.)

My wife is having another carpal tunnel surgery tomorrow.
According to long-standing tradition, Baptists don't consume alcohol.
People from the church are bring food to our house every other day for the next two weeks, since the church members know that my wife can't survive on my diet of Bud Lite and Chili. (Great folks, all of them.)
But I have at least a 12-pack of Bud Lite in the fridge.
According to my calendar, we're in the year 2009. We've put a man on the moon. We're mapping the human genome. If we could stay out of religious wars in the Middle East, we would've sent a man to Mars by now.
With the exception of maybe three people, every member of the church that I know is at least a social drinker. They're going to be putting stuff in our fridge.
My Bud Lite is now in the salad bin of the refrigerator, stored out of sight.

The Amish prohibitions against electricity, the Muslim ban on pork, and the Jewish regulations against work outside the household on the Sabbath? Those are all silly religious beliefs.
But the Baptist drinking ban is a tradition. We all know and acknowledge that Jesus turned water into wine, and that Paul said a little wine is good "for the stomach's sake".

None of that matters. Baptists don't drink. I can't be too careful, and I better consume that 12-pack tonight.

The picture of the Amish generator came from here.
The picture of the Shabbat elevator came from here.

Taking it to the next level

My friend Harper from Camp Blownstar is taking competitiveness to new levels.


Go here to see Harper's entry in my caption contest. Harper is the first person to bring photoshop to the table ! ! (Mere captions are so....previous millennium)


Link and bookmark Harper's blog "Passed Up Strange". Harper isn't just smart, but is also cerebral. Intellectual. Brilliant person, that Harper. Would've won the Nobel if the process wasn't rigged.

Barack Obama wins the Boston Marathon, a Tony Award, and the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Award for Best Foreign Policy ! !

From the geniuses at Reason magazine:

Barack Obama, The Warmonger, has won the Nobel Peace Prize. Irony is now DEAD.

Barack Obama, the leader of the U.S. forces killing people in Iraq and Afghanistan for the last 261 days, has won the Nobel Peace Prize.

I read something about it around 4:00 this morning, but assumed it was a send-up by The Onion or Iowahawk.


Lord have mercy, it was just a few weeks ago that The Teleprompter Jesus ordered a dozen Bunker-Busting Bombs for a potential attack on Iran. (Bunker-Busters are the most devastating weapons available without going nuclear.) Here's The Debka File:


All this urgency indicates that the Obama administration has been preparing military muscle to back up the international condemnation of Iran’s concealed nuclear bomb program, its sanctions threat and his willingness to join the negotiations with Iran opening on Oct. 1 in Geneva. Tehran may have to take into account a possible one-time surgical strike against its underground enrichment facility as a warning shot should its defiance continue. In particular, the world powers this week demanded that Iran open up all its nuclear facilities and programs to full and immediate international inspection. Failure to do so could bring forth further US military action.


I heard the folks on NPR fumbling around this morning, trying to explain the Nobel committee's decision. Even that gang of White House Sock Puppets were bewildered. They decided that it was probably awarded for Obama's desire for "Multilateral Approaches" to world conflicts. Note the dark type in the article above. I wonder if Iran is worried about France building up Bunker-Buster stockpiles.....


Everyone knew Obama would get this award, but I figured they would have the decency to wait until he was out of office, the way they did it with Jimmy Carter or The Goracle Of Music City and any other Democrats that I may have overlooked.


Unbelievable. They've given the world's highest honor to a marketing campaign. He's doing everything that Bush did - Gitmo, Two Wars, Wiretaps, etc etc etc - but he's so much nicer about it ! ! And he's willing to get France involved !


Whether our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan is just or unjust, our President is the military leader in both wars. He's ordering people to kill other people. If Barack Obama has any sense of shame, he will thank the committee for their consideration and return the prize.


What a freakin' farce.

Caption Contest - Critters on the deck edition

I need a caption for this picture

Karen Armstrong at TCU, Religion in an Age of Terror, and whether our Bible is conservative enough

I went to TCU last night to hear Karen Armstrong give a lecture on "Religion in an Age of Terror: Perils and Possibilities.” Ms. Armstrong is a freelance scholar and one of our best writers on the history of religion.


Here's a rough summary of what she had to say: Religious fundamentalism springs up as a reaction to modernity and the secular state. Those of us in the West experienced modernity as a trickle-down effect over a 300 year period. The Muslim world didn't. Their experience of what we call the modern world came about through colonialism, and is associated with a loss of independence and freedom. Their cultures had to modernize too quickly, and this separated many of the elites from the masses.


You still with me? I'm going somewhere with all this. Hang in there.


The elites saw some of the benefits of Western culture, and some Eastern leaders tried to change their citizens at gunpoint. (Nasser in Egypt, Ataturk in Turkey, etc. Soldiers sometimes were sent into the streets to rip burkhas from faces. Western dress codes were sometimes enforced.) People radicalized as a resistance to their own politicians. Hit these movements, and they become more extreme. All force does is confirm their suspicions.


Please stay with me. I'll get to the point, I promise.


The Gallup organization polled a large group of people in the Middle East shortly after the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. 93% of the Muslims interviewed said that the attacks were not justified. They cited the Koran, stating that to kill one person is to kill the whole world. The remaining 7% who said that the attacks were justified gave political reasons for their beliefs.
"At the beginning of the twentieth century, almost every single Muslim intellectual was in love with the West. After a visit to Paris, Muhammad Abdu (1849-1905), Grand Mufti of Egypt, remarked provocatively: ‘In France I saw Islam but no Muslims; in Cairo I see Muslims but no Islam.’ "


Stop and think of the implications of that for a minute.....


Armstrong went on to argue that almost all religions eventually develop an ideal of compassion as a reaction to new technologies of cruelty and destruction. This ideal of compassion is usually expressed as some form of The Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". The great faiths of the world know that the source of all pain is ego. Greed, selfishness, pride, etc. The goal in these faiths is to step outside the self.


We're almost to the money quote....


Rabbi Hillel, the older contemporary of Jesus, said that when asked to sum up the whole of Jewish teaching, while he stood on one leg, said, "The Golden Rule. That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the Torah. And everything else is only commentary. Now, go and study it."
St. Augustine said that scripture teaches nothing but charity. And if you come to a (scriptural) passage....that seems to preach hatred, you've got to give it an allegorical or metaphorical interpretation, and make it speak of charity.


Got that? We can talk later about whether forcibly taking money from Group A to give to Group B really is "charity" or "compassion". (My belief is that shutting down Washington would be the most charitable and compassionate act imaginable, but I don't want to bog down in that mess during this post.) Armstrong closed her formal remarks by saying that....


We can choose the aspects of our religion that speak of division, hatred, and exclusion, or we can choose compassion.


I left the lecture considering it time well spent. Religious fundamentalism is a reaction to Modernity. Religious fundamentalism is a reaction to Modernity. I got it, but hadn't totally bought into the concept.
Then I got home and found three, count 'em, three emails alerting me to something called "The Conservative Bible Project" at the Conservapedia site. I don't make these things up. You can actually hit real live links to all of this. Here's The Huffington Post:


"Lo and behold, the Bible has gotten too liberal, according to a group of conservatives. And it needs a little editing.
That's the inspiration behind the Conservative Bible Project, which seeks to take the text back to its supposed right-wing roots.
Yes, even scripture is not orthodox enough for the modern conservative. Not that it's the fault of the author(s), exactly. The group cites a few reasons why the Bible is too progressive: "Lack of precision in the original language ... lack of precision in modern language" and "translation bias in converting the original language to the modern one."
So how can the Bible be conservatized? The group has proposed a Wikipedia-like group editing project. Some of the ideas would only bring the translation closer to the original. But others would fundamentally change the text.


Here are some of the areas where they believe our current translations have gone astray:


1. Framework against Liberal Bias: providing a strong framework that enables a thought-for-thought translation without corruption by liberal bias
2. Not Emasculated: avoiding unisex, "gender inclusive" language, and other modern emasculation of Christianity.


Yeah, that's what I think of when I read the Book Of Revelation. Liberal bias. The list goes on:


5. Combat Harmful Addiction: combating addiction by using modern terms for it, such as "gamble" rather than "cast lots"; using modern political terms, such as "register" rather than "enroll" for the census.
6. Accept the Logic of Hell: applying logic with its full force and effect, as in not denying or downplaying the very real existence of Hell or the Devil.


The logic of Hell. Like, temporal offenses and eternal punishments. I get the logic there. And there's one more that I've never thought of, but I kinda like:


7. Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning.


Heck yes ! ! There actually onto something with that one. Prepare for blog posts about the Free Market meaning of Jesus's parables ! ! But here's where they're going to get into trouble:


8. Exclude Later-Inserted Liberal Passages: excluding the later-inserted liberal passages that are not authentic, such as the adulteress story.


Send the children out of the room. Brace yourself. The Bible story of the woman caught in adultery? And the crowd of religious wingnuts that was about to stone her? And Jesus says "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone" ?
That story isn't in the oldest Greek copies of the Gospels. It got shoved in there later.
That's what happened with the last 8 verses of Mark, the part about the resurrection of Jesus. It's not in the oldest manuscripts.
That's what happened with something called the Johannine Comma, (I John 5:7-8, the passage that formed the doctrine of The Trinity.)
Religious conservatives are in for a rude awakening if they go tramping off into those thickets. If they take their findings seriously, they'll have no honest choice but to become religious liberals. But, I digress.


Here's my point: Last night I spent a couple of hours listening to one of our greatest religious historians explain why religious fundamentalism is a reaction to Modernity and Change. When I got home, I found that our local religious fundamentalists had decided that their basic text wasn't fundamentalist enough, and had issued calls to reissue a more conservative version.


Unbelievable.

From the best hometown newspaper EVER - The Fort Worth Star-Telegram

This article was on the cover of today's Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the greatest daily newspaper on this (or any other) planet:

By DEBORAH YAO
The Associated Press

I've never met Deborah, but I've made a followed her fine work over the years. She specializes in media issues. You can read more of Ms Yao's fine work by going here. It's worth the time and effort. Deborah Yao and The Associated Press - the only way to start your morning.

The Federal Trade Commission will try to regulate blogging for the first time, requiring writers on the Web to clearly disclose any freebies or payments they get from companies for reviewing their products.

I don't understand how people can live without the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. I mean, can you really claim to have experienced a Dallas Cowboys game until you read Randy Galloway's analysis the next morning? Can you call yourself a "Fort Worther", and not read Bud Kennedy every day? The great Paul Harral has left the editorial page, but it still carries the lingering aroma of Paul's greatness. Sometimes when I finish reading my Fort Worth Star-Telegram, I spread it on the floor and roll around in it.

The FTC said Monday that its commissioners voted 4-0 to approve the final Web guidelines, which had been expected. Violating the rules, which take effect Dec. 1, could bring fines of up to $11,000 per violation. Bloggers or advertisers could also face injunctions and be ordered to reimburse consumers for financial losses stemming from inappropriate product reviews.

The last time I went hunting in west Texas, I was walking through some brush and another hunter (a lawyer from Dallas) thought I was a deer. (BTW, have you bothered to look through the Dallas Morning News? What a substandard product!) Anyway, this guy shot at me with a 30-06, and the bullet entered my hunting vest at about 3,000 feet per second. I should've been dead.

What saved me? Tucked away inside my hunting vest was an old Fort Worth Star-Telegram ! The bullet went through the front pages, the comics, sports, life & arts, and finally stopped at a Molly Ivins column.

Did I take this as a sign? You betcha.

The commission stopped short of specifying how bloggers must disclose conflicts of interest. Rich Cleland, assistant director of the FTC’s advertising practices division, said the disclosure must be "clear and conspicuous," no matter what form it will take.

My Fort Worth Star-Telegram. I love it, love it, love it. You should too.

All the pics of the great Fort Worth Star-Telegram logo came from here. Go there. It will make you a better person.

"The Invention Of Lying" - good movie

I saw the Ricky Gervais movie "The Invention Of Lying" last night. It's a good one.
Imagine a world where everyone tells the truth. The words "truth" and "lie" don't seem to have been invented.
Next, imagine a short, dumpy guy like Gervais showing up for his first date with Jennifer Garner. The truth-telling that follows is hilarious.


Gervais plays a screenwriter assigned to write about the 13th century. (Remember, "fiction" is an unknown concept to these people, so the only books and movies are about history. Actors are pretending, and therefore they're liars. That's why there are no actors in the movies the Gervais character writes.) Everyone tells the cold, hard truth, regardless of the consequences.

Ricky's mother is dying in a nursing home, and she states that she's scared of disappearing into a meaningless non-existence. Ricky wants to ease her pain, and fumbling for a way to comfort her, he tells his mom that she's going on to another world, a painless world where she'll see all her friends again, and she'll always be happy.


Word spreads about this new world. People want to know more. Ricky invents an Invisible Man In The Sky. People want to know more. Ricky says the Invisible Man In The Sky speaks to him. People want to know more. Ricky brings down the Ten Commandments taped to some Pizza Hut boxes (I'll add them to this post as soon as I can find them online....)

When Gervais is explaining that The Invisible Man In The Sky causes everything to happen, a brilliant "Why do bad things happen to good people>" conversation takes place. Ricky's response is the same as every honest theologian's answer : "Hell if I know. You figure it out."

That's all I can tell without going into total spoiler mode.

Most reviews are labeling this movie as a sacreligious diatribe. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has already rated "The Invention of Lying" as "O - morally offensive".

Not so. "The Invention Of Lying" asks most of the big questions, and makes you laugh at your inability to answer them.

You may claim that you've never doubted the existence, or nature, of God. You might even claim that everyone who disagress with you about God's nature is going to be tortured forever. But what if you lived in a world where you had to tell the truth?

James Tyson - "Earth Is Dying"

I spent a pleasant Saturday night with several friends (at the home of the Jihadist Safety Consultant, BTW) playing guitars, swapping songs and eating gumbo.

One of the guys who showed up is James Tyson, who works in the Jukt Micronics pattern shop. James put this little gem on YouTube a couple of weeks ago. It's called "Earth Is Dying".

Good song. For those of you playing along at home, all you need is an E and an A.



That's James on the left. The woman on the right is his friend Victoria, who has a full-time job bothering me about shipping containers.

Denver Broncos 17, Dallas Cowboys 10, with a few words from Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ozymandias"

The Denver Broncos beat the Dallas Cowboys 17-10. This was not supposed to happen.
Jerry Jones has fired six head coaches.
He has somehow held on to his job as Cowboys' General Manager.
He has taken people's homes by force, bulldozed the houses, and used the space to put up a temple to himself.

This puts me into a poetic mood. Here's some Percy Bysshe Shelley.


OZYMANDIAS


I met a traveller from an antique land Who said:
Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert…. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:

And on the pedestal these words appear:

'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair ! !


Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

Note to Jerry, the City of Arlington, and any other municipality that is tempted to abuse Eminent Domain: You really shouldn't steal houses.

Kicker Gratitude

On wanting Obama to fail

Various conservative groups are rejoicing over Obama's failure to land the Olympics in Chicago. Go to The Huffington Post for a summary. This is supposed to reflect the mean-spiritedness, bitterness, and all around nastiness of our partisan political environment, blah blah blah blah....

Mike Lupica has a different take, reminding us that winning an Olympic bid is not the same as a victory for the U.S...

We can talk about winners and losers all we want to now that it is over. The biggest winners of all are the people of Chicago, because their city doesn't have to plunge itself into debt to host the Olympics. This is the kind of winner New York was despite Michael Bloomberg's insane quest to get the 2012 Games, which eventually - and blessedly - went to London.

....The biggest winners of any modern Games are the businessmen who build the stadiums and the villages, and tell us the same thing we hear when another professional sports team wants a new stadium.

But, as usual, I digress. My question is this: Is it ever ok to publicly rejoice when the President Of The United States fails? Here's my friend John Jay Myers on the subject:

I am not against Barack Obama. I am for freedom.
I do not believe that one man from Chicago has suddenly taken control of the United States and is single handedly trying to destroy the country.
I do, however, believe that lobbyists and money control our country, that banks, big insurance, and the military industrial complex etc., have so wrapped their tentacles around the throats of our politicians that the interest of the common man is no longer on their minds.
After all, one party hired Ben Bernanke - a man who 2 months before one of the biggest financial meltdowns in history didn't have a clue what was about to happen, claiming everything was great.
Then, the next party in power? They appoint the same guy. Someone wants that guy in charge, and it isn't the American people.
I think it's important for the Libertarian Party to understand that Obama bashing comes off as single minded and divisive, when doing it we have everything to lose and nothing to gain.
Republicans know where we stand; most Democrats think we are just hardcore Republicans.
So why do we so voluntarily lump ourselves in with them? We can stand for issues, stand against bad policy, but let's prove what I have always thought, that we are the thinking man's party. People like to feel smart. We should be advertising the fact that we are above the fray, that we will not sink to the level of the other groups, which only succeeds in truly dividing this nation.

If American can be divided, if the media can put you in a box, and if that box can be characterized, it's over.
If we try to play be the media's rules, we will never win.
When you choose the Anti Obama stance as a part of your "message" you are alienating 50% of the voting public. I assumed our goal was to actually gain support.
When you do this, you may get Republicans to say "I guess Libertarians aren't SO bad..."

But you are not going to get them to vote for you.

When I was a kid I worked on a parasail boat, and my job was to shout away the tourists on wave runners who would run over our lines, and I was a little over zealous in my shouting, (who'd've thunk it) the owner came up to me and said "Do you know who those people are you are screaming at??" He went on, saying "Those are my future customers!"
The left are our future customers, and we are selling freedom! And we are we shouting at them!!
All of this is not to say that the current administration isn't making bad decisions, they are indeed, but we need to stand on the merits of the decisions, and not demonize one man or a few people. People see through that type of partisan rhetoric. They are sick of it. We need to be a change, a true choice, something different, not a fledgling party who thinks we can now play by "their rules."
I am writing this message in a hope it will get to the powers that be, and that some thought might go into how we frame our stances, in what will be the most important time in the history of the Libertarian Party.

John Jay Myers
http://www.johnjaymyers.com/

Well, I guess that's the last time I can post pictures of Obama with an ACORN nutcap....

I guess I agree with John Jay. If your newsroom starts applauding when Rio Freakin' De Janeiro gets the Olympics instead of Obama's notoriously corrupt Chicago, you might be taking it too far. That's what Joe Voter is going to think, anyway.

So I'm going to try very hard at this new way of looking at things (and typing about them....)

I want Sasha and Malia to make good grades.

I hope that Bo, the Obama's Portuguese Water Dog, can go on a duck hunt this winter.

Speaking of corrupt business deals for sports stadiums, I hope the Washington Redskins beat the Dallas Cowboys twice this year. I hope everyone gathered around the White House flatscreen has a great time watching it happen.

That's all I can do for now. This is just too painful.

The Fedex imported clock worksheet

From The Coyote Blog:

This is the information that Fedex is required to collect before bringing certain types of clocks into the U.S.
The Feds NEED this info.
You know why?

Here's Mr. Coyote, explaining why Fedex had to track him down and cross-examine him before releasing the shipment:

This would be one of the dumbest things I have seen from the government had it not been for the egg licenses I have to hold. This data was probably critical for some program pushed through by a Senator to protect some business in his district that does not even exist any more. I wonder if anyone in the government even remembers why this data is so vital (seriously, per question 11, how many wind-up clocks are coming through customs nowadays). Probably part of a program to protect America’s essential capacity to manufacture clock movements over 12mm in thickness.

If you think this is a waste of time, dive into the lunacy known as the garment industry. There are tens of thousands of quotas, guidelines, and point of origin notifications. Many of these are based on the designs and styles, each with a different tariff.
The point of all this is to keep you from getting what you want at the best price possible.
It really is that simple.

Two Year Blogoversary

I almost let the two year Blogoversary of this thing pass by without comment.

The first post on this site went up on 9-28-07, and I had no real idea what the main focus was going to be.
Since then, I've made it into the Star-Telegram a couple of times. Once with an editorial and once in a feature piece on political bloggers.
I've made some great friends through the Camp Blownstar Blogger meetups.
Big Daddy John Spivey found the site, and got me involved in the Tarrant County Libertarian Party.
That got me involved in End The Fed rallies, a Gay/Lesbian Rights parade, and staffing pro-2nd amendment booths at gun shows.
I've been to more Tea Parties than Lady Astor.
Then people started linking the site on Reddit. Then Facebook. Then it got Twittered. (And Twixted. Whatever that is.)
See that little world map on the right side of your screen, under the incredibly pretentious "A Thousand Points Of Light" header? Click on it, or click here. Depending on the topic of the day, I'll get more hits from Europe and Australia than from the U.S.
Fun stuff, this internet.
Before I started blogging, Dr. Ralph and I knew each other, but didn't hang out together. We recently spent a couple of hours at his place, playing guitars, not talking about politics, and looking at his artwork. (He's got a show in Fort Worth this weekend, BTW. Hit the link. Dr. Ralph can paint.)

When I can get my A-game going, this thing is good for 700-800 hits a day. Whenever I post sub-standard stuff for three days in a row, it drops into the 300-400 range so quickly that it's depressing. You people have the loyalty of tomcats.

If you've ever considered doing something like this, I hope you'll give it a try. Use the right key words in your headlines, and you'll meet plenty of people who love what you love, care about your concerns, and who are fascinating to correspond with. Plus, I don't know how people can claim they know what they think, until they read what they've written for public consumption.

Your voice counts. Unless, of course, you are WRONG, WRONG, WRONG ! !