Rilaly's Blog

May

We got it already!

Actors are smart, we got it already. I was watching a show the other day in which two actors were engaged in witty repartee. “It’s like asking me who is buried in Grant’s tomb,” one of the actors read…err said. The obvious answer, and the gist of the joke, is that Grant is buried there, but who is Grant is a question I would love to ask these actors when all of the scripts are put down for the day. Is it Foster Grant, Cary Grant, or Hugh Grant? My guess is that most actors, when taken off script, would guess Cary Grant, because Hugh’s not dead, and they would probably guess that a sunglass designer wouldn’t merit a tomb of monumental mention. My guess is that they would know that Cary (Archibald Alexander Leach) Grant starred in some war film in his career, because they all did back then, and that his tomb was created to memorialize that movie. My guess is that they’ve probably seen a fifty dollar bill, and they’ve probably heard of the Civil War, and they know that there were presidents that existed between Washington and the first president they heard of when they were six years old, but they don’t know any of them. I’m guessing that they’ve also never had the time (see intellectual curiosity) to learn anything about them either.

Actors are not given intelligence equivalency tests before they’re hired. They’re hired on looks first, how they look on camera second, and if they can present information in a convincing enough fashion that the audience believes that they know something about the material they are memorizing, then presenting. I know that actors are not all equivalent to second graders in their knowledge base, but I’m guessing that my third grade nephew could tell them some things about U.S. History that would raise their eyebrows. I may pick on actors a lot in this blog, but I’m being led to believe that I’m the only one that gets upset about this mass delusion we have that they’re smarter than they actually are, because they can memorize the lines written for them.

Women are smarter than men, we got it already. Another thing that bothers me is that whenever one actor wins an argument over another on a television show, that some people find validation in those victories. The winners of arguments in scripted television shows have been predetermined by the screenwriters, the pressure the producers place on the screenwriters, and the pressure the broadcast networks place on the producers. In the days of the Lucy Show, a married couple was required to keep one foot on the ground if they got into bed together. Perhaps there should be such a requirement of the audience, so that we can keep in touch with reality. Watching these “arguments” is like watching Tom and Jerry, or Roadrunner cartoons. You always know who is going to win, but you’re supposed to enjoy the chase. I’ve always been one that enjoys the unexpected more than the chase.

You like to dance, we got it already. How many times do I need to hear someone tell me they love to dance? How many people have told me that they danced the night away? You danced for six hours? Really? You maintained a peak of intensity throughout all those songs? For six hours? How many breaks did you take? All right, so you happened to be at a place that involved some dancing, and you did dance. When you were on the dance floor, however, you just stood there and did robotic moves that had no passion for most of the night. Then you took numerous breaks throughout. You didn’t dance for six straight hours peaked in passion. Don’t ever tell me you danced the night away again.

You hate God, we got it already. Atheists hate the fact that some people believe in God. Every atheist I’ve ever read, or spoken to, is more obsessed with God than any believer I’ve ever met or read. They usually introduce you to their beliefs about two paragraphs in, and once they’ve revealed this nihilistic, rebellious aspect of their philosophy, they can’t let it go. They pound you over the head with their belief that religion pounds you over the head to accept its beliefs.

The Earth is being destroyed, we got it already. Judging by the periodicals in my local Books a Million store, science writers are obsessed with man’s destruction of the Earth, global warming, climate change, vegetation control, weather reassignment surgery, or whatever political name we’re supposed to call it now. One has to imagine, unfortunately, that the editors of these magazines have tried everything else, and to avoid the end of their publication or general obscurity, they weed out consequential material for front page exclamation points that deal with man’s destruction of the Earth. It does make for a glaring, eye popping headline, but is it always true? Was it true in the 70’s that we were going through a cooling cycle that would lead to an ice age? Was it true in the 80’s that we were on a path to make the Earth utterly uninhabitable in ten years? Was it true in the 90’s that we were on a path to make the Earth utterly uninhabitable in ten years? Who cares, it moves magazines.

Categorized in Humor, politics, Simple Truths, Social Issues and The Thoughts of Neighbors
Tags: atheists, dancing, global destruction, global warming, Hollywood actors, Hollywood actors are idiots

May

Did Senate Democrats prompt the IRS into investigating conservative groups?

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Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Over the last three years, Democrat senators repeatedly and publicly pressured the IRS to engage in the very activities that they are only now condemning today. At the same time, Republicans repeatedly and publicly warned against this abuse of government power and pointed to a series of red flags that strongly suggested conservative political organizations were being targeted by the IRS. Those warnings were deliberately ignored by the Obama administration and Democratic leaders in Congress.

As the New York Times reported back in 2010 :

With growing scrutiny of the role of tax-exempt groups in political campaigns, Congressional Republicans are pushing back against Democrats by warning about the possible misuse of the Internal Revenue Service to audit conservative groups….And the Republicans are also upset about an I.R.S. review requested by Senator Max Baucus, the Montana Democrat who leads the Finance Committee, into the political activities of tax-exempt groups. Such a review threatens to “chill the legitimate exercise of First Amendment rights,” wrote two Republican senators, Orrin G. Hatch of Utah and Jon Kyl of Arizona, in a letter sent to the I.R.S. on Wednesday. … Democrats dismissed the Republicans’ complaints as groundless.

You read that correctly.

The same Democratic chairman of the Senate Finance Committee who this week is calling for hearings into IRS activities, specifically called on the IRS to engage in that very conduct back in 2010. And he wasn’t the only one. Just last year, a group of seven Senate Democrats sent another letter to the IRS urging them to similarly investigate these outside political organizations.

As the New York Times also reported just one week before they sent this letter:

The Internal Revenue Service is caught in an election-year struggle between Democratic lawmakers pressing for a crackdown on nonprofit political groups and conservative organizations accusing the tax agency of conducting a politically charged witch hunt.

Voters in New Hampshire may be interested to learn that Jeanne Shaheen was among the signatories of that letter urging action by the IRS.

So lost amid the hubbub surrounding the news that the IRS engaged in McCarthyite tactics to target specific political groups, and their subsequent apology for those tactics, has been the fact that the lobbying campaign from Senate Democrats actually worked.

From Max Baucus to Chuck Schumer to Jeanne Shaheen, key Senate Democrats publicly pressured the IRS to target groups that held differing political views and who, in their view, had the temerity to engage in the political process. The IRS listened to them and acted. And other Democrat senators like Kay Hagan and Mark Pryor said and did nothing about it.

Perhaps their strategy of distraction may work in the short-term with a Washington press corps pulled in a multitude of different directions, but Senate Democrats have a serious political problem that will haunt them as they head into an already-difficult election cycle. When these Senate Finance Committee hearings come to pass it would be a remarkable act of bravery and candor for one of these IRS bureaucrats to appropriately ask Max Baucus and others why they’re not sitting at the witness tables next to them, instead of continuing in their charade of faux outrage.{1}

The citizen outrage that has followed these IRS admissions, prompted by the Inspector General Report, can be summarized in one succinct quote from Representative Bill Flores from Texas:

“This administration seems to have a culture of politics above all else. A lot of the actions they take have a political side first, and put government second.”

Those groups with “Tea Party,” “Patriots,” “9/12,” and other conservatives that have been harassed by Democrats believe this quote could be attributed to most of the Democrats that now sit in our seats in Washington. It could be attributed, in this case, to those Democrats in the administration that chose to ignore Republican complaints, and it could be attributed to those that wrote the letter that allegedly coerced the IRS into investigating “these outside political organizations.”

It was politics that prompted these Senators to call for greater scrutiny of “political” groups, it is politics that they’re playing right now when they scream for the heads of those that engaged in these nefarious acts that these Senators allegedly coerced them into, and it will be politics that gets them out of this. But will all the band aids that are applied to these incidents to “prevent them from ever happening again” result in better government, and is that the primary concern of those we currently have representing our views in Washington?

If it’s true that this scandal is limited to “low level officials in Cincinnati” it’s hard to get too angry at them for placing illegal scrutiny on conservatives. They worked in a climate in which conservatives, and Republicans, aren’t just wrong, they’re evil. These low level workers apparently thought it was their duty to do whatever it takes to defeat this evil that plagues our land. Some of them are probably quite shocked at the reaction their getting from Baucus, Schumer, Obama, and Holder. They probably thought they would be applauded for putting average citizens that had the audacity to think they should have a role in this government for the people and by the people. These weren’t government approved groups, they had “Tea Party,” “Patriots,” and “9/12” in their name. Of course they should face the kind of scrutiny that exhausts them out of the political process.

There were some liberal groups that experienced some delays, such as the Action for a Progressive Future. The co-founder of this liberal group, Jeff Cohen, said tax-exempt status is a privilege, so he didn’t mind answering the intrusive questions that delayed his group’s tax-exempt status for 18 months, as long as those questions were consistent and fair.

“From my perspective,” Cohen said, “If the IRS can hold up legitimate Tea Party applications today and get away with it, then who knows if progressive groups will be held up and specially scrutinized in a few years. It’s utterly unacceptable, if that’s what happened.” {2}

The key question from this issue, and the Benghazi issue, and the AP issue, is will this notion that Democrats are “just better at running government” survive? Can all three of these issues be scapegoated to low level employees so that the momentum Democrats used to win the presidency, and the Senate, continue without impediment, and will this eventually blow over in thirty days if they play their politics right? At this point, even some Democrat loyalists on TV are cringing at the idea that high-level Democrats, at the very least, allowed a climate to exist in Washington that gives credence to the warnings that the skeptics of Obama have been warning about for years. These same Democrat commentators are saying that these incidents take weight away from Obama’s warning sent to Ohio graduates that they need to reject skeptics.

President Obama and Attorney General Holder will likely escape damage, or if they don’t they won’t care because they can’t be re-elected. But will Democrats, in general, face a scandal weary post-Watergate style climate in America that could lead to a Republican Senate in 2014, and an “outsider”, Republican version of a Jimmy Carter in the oval office in 2016? Or will politics spare them from a the anti-government sentiment that Democrat commentator Kirtsten Powers said was growing even before these incidents broke out, or will this all eventually blow over and politics will eventually win the day regardless what happens to the government?

Some say neither. Some say that most people pay so little attention to politics, or that they have such short attention spans, that this won’t affect any election. To those people I offer one addendum, and that is that Americans enjoy hearing a high-profile person torn down as much, if not more, than they love a success story.

{1}http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/brian-walsh/2013/05/14/senate-democrats-pushed-for-irs-tea-party-snooping-before-criticizing-it

{2} http://m.usatoday.com/article/news/2158831

Categorized in politics
Tags: investigation, IRS, IRS Admits To Targeting Conservatives, scandal, staus, tax-exempt, tea party

May

Did President Barack Obama use the word terror to describe the Benghazi attack

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Photo by Molly Riley-Pool/Getty Images

The Democrat’s most recent response to the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attack on the embassy in Benghazi, voiced by Fox News paid contributor Allen Colmes and Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson, is that the Republican-led House cut spending for State Department security.{1} The question that should be asked, in follow-up, is how much money does it cost make the decision to send some troops, any troops, from one locale to another? The answer that other Democrats have given, to follow up that follow up, is that even if the administration and State Department sent some troops, they wouldn’t have arrived in time? The follow-up to that, as recently put forth by Charles Krauthammer, is: “How did they know how long the attack would last?” The Democrat follow up to that follow is that the decision not to send troops was a decision made by the military chain of command. So, what we’re now saying is that a military commander can move troops and act without civilian authority to do so…in a peace time, and on an American embassy? There has been no follow up to that follow up as far as I know.

As for the idea that this was a terrorist attack versus a spontaneous uprising, Robinson says: “The problem is that there were, in fact, tumultuous anti-American demonstrations taking place in cities throughout the Muslim world because of the video. President Obama labeled the Benghazi assault an act of terror almost immediately—as Mitt Romney learned in the second presidential debate—but it was hard to imagine that the attack was completely unrelated to what was happening in Cairo, Tunis, Khartoum and Jakarta.”

The first “error” Robinson makes is in stating that there were any other protests taking place as a result of the video before this particular attack on Benghazi. No one, to my knowledge, had produced any such evidence. The second, and thoroughly debunked, assertion Robinson makes is to draw the correlation that the attack on the Benghazi embassy was in reaction to the video. I double checked, just to make sure, and his column was written on May 10, 2013, long after that idea had been thoroughly debunked. The initial draft of the C.I.A.’s talking points revealed by ABC’s Jonathon Karl mentions that there were“at least five other attacks against foreign interests in Benghazi” before the one in which four Americans were killed. This information is not in the White House or the State Department’s final version.{2} This initial draft does not mention whether or not any of these attacks that preceded the attack on Sept. 11, 2012 had five separate videos to fuel these attacks, but apparently Robinson thinks that’s implied.

The second provably false statement Robinson makes is that “President Obama labeled the Benghazi assault an act of terror almost immediately—as Mitt Romney learned in the second presidential debate.” Mitt Romney did learn that for the first time in that debate, as did the rest of the world, even those of us paying attention, because it didn’t happen.

One look through the president’s Sept. 11, 2012 Rose Garden press conference shows that he uses the words “outrageous and shocking attack” and “senseless violence” to describe the attack, but that he never used the politically charged “terrorist attack” words to specifically describe this Benghazi attack. He called those that killed four ambassadors “killers who attacked our people”. He says “The world must stand together to unequivocally reject these brutal acts.” Then, to presumably satisfy keyword searchers, the president uses the word terror:

“No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for. Today we mourn four more Americans who represent the very best of the United States of America. We will not waver in our commitment to see that justice is done for this terrible act. And make no mistake, justice will be done.”{3}

So, he does use the word terror, but he only used it in a general manner to describe the fact that acts of terror will not shake our nation’s resolve. He used it in a manner that gave him an out if he was ever called out on it, in say a presidential debate. He used it, presumably, so that someone like Candy Crowley could back him up and say that he did use the word terror. When he redirects his paragraph back to specifically mentioning the attack on the Benghazi embassy, however he calls it a “terrible attack”.

This may be seen as splitting hairs by some, but it is germane that he switched from general to specific, and that he changed the terms he used. To suggest that Republicans are the ones splitting hairs is to suggest that the administration doesn’t carefully comb through their words (twelve edits of the C.I.A. talking points) to arrive at a desired response to an attack that killed Americans. To paraphrase the words Alex Koppelman used to describe Jay Carney’s stubborn refusal to recognize that there were elemental and numerous changes to the C.I.A.’s talking points by the administration, Obama’s use of general and specific terms to describe the terrorists that attacked Benghazi, is “not quite re-defining the word “is,” or the phrase “sexual relations,” but it’s not all that far off, either.”

{1} http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/05/10/looks_like_a_witch_hunt_118349.html {2]http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/05/benghazi-cia-talking-point-edits-white-house.html {3}http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/09/12/remarks-president-deaths-us-embassy-staff-libya

Categorized in politics
Tags: attack, Benghazi, democrat, designation, obama, politics, republican, terror

May

Food Glorious Food

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Have you ever heard the term foodist or foodie? Foodist.ca defines these terms as a collective of like-minded food worshipers that breathe and sleep in order to eat and drink. We can all appreciate this classification, because we all love food, but at what point in history did those that have an unabashed love of food become so unusual that it was necessary to separate them out with a specific designation. It could be said that everyone was a foodie, or a foodist, for most of human history, in that they would eat whatever they could get their hands on. It has been said, as a matter of fact, that for most of human history food has been so rare that we have evolved a need to gorge ourselves to prepare for the coming dry spells when food may not have been as available. Due to the fact that there are no such dry spells for most of us anymore, this need to gorge should’ve evolved out of the species, but it hasn’t. We still gorge, we still engage in binges, and most of us still love food in a manner considered unhealthy by some. The difference is we feel a lot more guilty about it now. We feel so guilty, en masse, that those that don’t feel the need to qualify their love for food are given a special designation.

It should be noted that most foodists and foodies don’t necessarily eat more than the average person, but when they do eat they’re very selective about what they put in their body. Some would say that the foodies that they know are snobs that don’t recognize the privileges they have been afforded in their chosen lifestyle. Some have said that foodies use their “healthier” lifestyle choices as a hammer of superiority against anyone that doesn’t follow their dietary codes. Some have said that these foodies approach you with a “you live your life, and I’ll live mine” motto, but that their actions suggest that this is anything but the case with them.

For the rest of the non-foodies population, love of food is a guilty conceit that we conceal for fear of being viewed as gluttonous slobs. Most people don’t love food so much that they will close their eyes when they eat to savor the initial act of digestion as it sends those succulent, savory messages to their brain. Most people won’t take the time to let a piece of food lay on all of the quarters of their mouth for the ultimate sensory excitation. Most people won’t inhale and exhale the flavor of their food for just a moment before allowing it into the second stage of digestion. Most people won’t nix the first seven choices of a restaurant, based on the fact that when you reach a certain age you’re only permitted one meal a day, and that meal has to be special, different, or at least somewhat memorable one. It’s not considered unseemly to feel this way about food, most of the times, it’s just considered odd. Most non-foodies, if you speak with them on this level, will tell you that eating is just an activity one must endure to sustain life.

It makes normal people feel more normal to say they don’t share your love of food. It makes them feel skinny to say that you’re a bit of a freak for loving food so much. It makes them feel rational to say it’s just another bodily function. Whether they thoroughly believe this or not, we do know that if a fat person dares to mention how much they love food in general, they become our punch line. “That’s obvious,” we say with a laugh. We know that we can become that punch line if we say that we love a relatively innocuous pieces of food on a level that approaches spiritual appreciation, especially if that food is fried and considered generally unhealthy. We know that we are entering the lion’s den if we suggest that one great meal is something we can point to in a day where we’ve accomplished nothing else.

It’s a quandary we enter into whenever the subject of food comes up, because we can’t wait to talk about it, but we don’t want to get too excited about it either. That would make us sound gluttonous. Yet, food is the event in life that we all share, or that we want to share, and that which we do when we’re bored, and that which gives us comfort when times are bad, and that we would rather die than give up. Life is not as important as food to most of us, and we see that when overeating threatens to damage our quality of life, and we can’t stop, or when someone threatens to take our joy of eating away from us.

“By threatening to feed me intravenously, you are threatening to deprive me of the one joy I have left in life,” my Uncle wrote, through a lawyer, in a letter that threatened to sue his health care facility if they went ahead with their plans to begin feeding him intravenously. I didn’t understand this at first. It’s hard to identify with someone threatening to sue another if they are informed they can’t eat orally, because most of us have never been in that place in life. Most of us, when told that our life is on the line, will acquiesce to the wishes of our doctors with a sense of fear. For this reason, and others, it was hard for me to identify with my Uncle in this particular situation. My first thought was that I had eaten his health care facility’s food, and it was average at best, and if anyone decided to debate me on the merits of that food, I know I could eventually have them concede that, at the very least, it wasn’t worth risking your life over, but they may have added the addendum: “But what food is?” It’s just food, they may say, and no food I’ve had is so good that I’d rather die than not eat it. We may joke that some food is so good, it’s to die for, but when push comes to shove we think we could live without eating orally if it meant our life was on the line. That’s because, my Uncle would challenge, no one’s ever threatened to take it away from you…for the rest of your life.

Imagine, for a moment, that you were my Uncle, and everything in life was taken away from you by your muscular degeneration. Imagine all the places you couldn’t go, imagine that every place you did go had people staring at you, had kids looking at you like a freak, and imagine just for a second that you had coughing fits that made people so uncomfortable that they didn’t want to sit near you, and then imagine that no “normal” person would want to enter into a romantic relationship with you, because of your ailment. Imagine that eating food was “one joy you had left in life,” and someone threatened to take that away from you. It’s hard for any healthy person to identify with that.

It’s easy to think about giving up oral eating, in the short-term, and at a health care facility that serves average food at best, but when you add some perspective to it, you realize how much my Uncle would’ve been giving up if he acquiesced to their wishes. He would be giving up the “event status” that is normally associated with food. It’s an event to cherish food with family, an event to complain about it, and it supplements just about every event we attend in life.

Do you cherish the popcorn you eat while watching a movie? Most people don’t. Most people just normally associate popcorn with movies, and they buy it and eat it without really thinking about it. Now imagine that someone threatened to take popcorn away from you? “I don’t need popcorn to enjoy a movie,” you say. Now try to imagine the idea that you are being ordered not to eat it…for the rest of your life. That popcorn, that you’ve eaten your whole life without really thinking about it, would take on qualities you can’t imagine in your current status in life. We’ve all decided to reject certain frivolities in life, while on a short-term diet, but most of us have never been forced to abstain from all oral eating for the rest of our lives.

How miserable would it be to attend a baseball game with a friend, when that friend turns to you and offers to buy you one of those average to poor stadium dogs, and you have to tell him that not only would you prefer not to eat such an average to poor hotdog, but that you can’t eat anything orally based on doctor’s orders. How awful would it then be to tell that concerned friend that you are forbidden from ever eating orally again, if you want to live, when he asks, “How long is this doctor saying that you have to be fed intravenously?” You may not want to live if such parameters were laid out for you in such a manner. In the short-term it’s easy, as I said, but when your life is on the line, and you start to realize all of ramifications of this, you may not want to live that life. You may want that friend to bravely say “Screw it!” and buy you that dog and feed it to you anyway. And if that happened that average to poor stadium dog would likely taste so good that you might accidentally cry a little right in front of that macho, manly friend that you’ve never been anything less than macho and manly around. You may want to die that night with that smile on your face as the health care workers lower you onto the pillow, because you’ve had one last, solid, and comprehensive event in your life.

Eating food orally made my Uncle feel a little more human in a manner that only a man stuck in a wheelchair for most of his life can appreciate. It gave him an event in life that was otherwise lacking in event. It gave him something to look forward to, something to appreciate or complain about, and something that made feel like he was a cog in the machine of humanity.

It never dawned on me what a central staple food is, or eating is, until my Uncle went through all that. It never dawned on me how a person on an enforced diet could feel left out of humanity, until my Uncle directed his lawyer to protect his health care facility from any responsibility for anything that happens as a result of oral feedings, until he fought so hard to maintain this for himself. “Don’t you see what this is doing to you?” I asked him after a particularly grueling coughing fit that resulted from oral feeding. He shrugged. He had obviously weighed the consequences, and he deemed them acceptable in lieu of the alternative.

How much of life, involvement, and the events of food would my Uncle have missed out on? To start the answer, we need only look at the conversations we have. How often do we tell others about the incredible rotini salad we had at one specific locale, and how much pride do we take from that person trying it and agreeing with us? What kind of intricate detail do they give us in their appreciation of the rotini salad? How much status do they gain by not liking it, because “it’s not as good as the rotini salad” at their restaurant of choice? How many conversations do we have regarding our overall diet? What’s in certain foods, and what is not in other, more healthier foods? How often do we brag that we have the latest and greatest cooking utensils that some other, poor slob has never even heard of? How often do we notice that something like a ham sandwich just tastes better in a park, at a picnic, with friends and family around us, and kids playing in the park, and dogs running around. Is it the smell of the outdoors that enhances the flavor of the meat, or is it the fact that we’re outdoors, involved in the event at which eating occurs? “Where’d you get this ham?” we innocently ask. “At the supermarket,” they reply. We may go home with the realization that we forgot how much we love ham, until we eat it, and we realize it’s just ham. I’ve never seen statistical analysis on our conversations, but I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to say that it’s about ten percent. Then we move to TV. How many TV shows are now inundated with menu items, food preparation, and the warnings of unhealthy food? We used to have a food preparation break in morning news shows once a week. They proved so popular, that they then became a staple of these morning broadcasts, then we had entire shows devoted exclusively to food preparation, and now we have entire networks. We’re a nation obsessed with food in ways we won’t admit in polite company, until someone threatens to take it away from us, and it’s then that we realize that we can’t comprehensively enjoy our lives without being a part of the group that’s orally eating food.

Categorized in psychology, Simple Truths, Social Issues and The Thoughts of Neighbors
Tags: binging, eating, food foodist, foodie, gluttony, gorging, healthy, unhealthy

May

Did Barack Obama attempt diminish healthy skepticism?

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“Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems. Some of these same voices also do their best to gum up the works. They’ll warn that tyranny always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave, and creative, and unique experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham with which we can’t be trusted.

Photo by Matt Sullivan/Getty Images

“We have never been a people who place all our faith in government to solve our problems. We shouldn’t want to. But we don’t think the government is the source of all our problems, either. Because we understand that this democracy is ours. And as citizens, we understand that it’s not about what America can do for us, it’s about what can be done by us, together, through the hard and frustrating but absolutely necessary work of self-government. And class of 2013, you have to be involved in that process.”{1}

Was President Barack Obama telling the graduating students of Ohio State University that they should be skeptical of the skeptics, because those voices are wrong, or was he telling them to reject skepticism in general? If you’ve listened to any of the president’s speeches then you know that he was telling these students to reject skeptical voices not because they’re wrong, but because they’re extremely wrong. Obama has a habit of not dealing with opposing views as simple opposition, he labels them extreme. Obama does not differentiate between those of extreme ideological positions and those of a simple philosophical difference on the way to run the federal government. He views all opposition, all skepticism, as extreme, and he wants you to lump them together too.

If you listen to liberal voices, they will tell you that Obama answered the question of rejecting skeptics in the next paragraph when he said: “We have never been a people that looked to solve our problems, but we shouldn’t look to it as the source of our problems.” Conservatives would tell you that his “government on steroids” programs have, in fact, caused more to see government as the solution, and more to see government as the problem. Conservatives would tell you that their efforts to “gum up the works” was an attempt to prevent that from ever happening.

As Roger Pilon writes: “The irony here should not go unnoticed: The opponents that the president disparages are the same folks who tried to save the country from one of the biggest pieces of gum now in the works: Mr. Obama’s own health-care insurance program, which today is filling many of its backers with dread as it moves toward full implementation in a matter of months.” {2}

Another irony here that should not go unnoticed is how skeptical Obama, and all liberals, were of Obama’s predecessor President George W. Bush. Were liberals “Warning that tyranny is lurking just around the corner?” during the Bush administration? If you say no, you didn’t speak to a liberal during the Bush administration, you did not read the newspaper, and you did not watch MSNBC. Is Obama saying that that same skepticism he and all his acolytes showed Bush should not be shown to him? Is he saying that he and his fellow Democrats, and the skeptical voices in the media that tried to drum up as much skepticism as possible, never tried to “gum up the works” for George W. Bush?

Another irony is that president declared, “We have never been a people who place all our faith in government to solve our problems,” and in the same speech he said, “Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security free us to take the risks that make this country great.” So, if we have never looked to government to solve our problems, what are these government programs supposed to free us from?

It is almost inarguable that conservatives (not necessarily Republicans) have the most healthy, and consistent, track record of skepticism. This may be based on the fact that all of the presidents in the last three decades have progressed the size of government to historic proportions. A look at both philosophies shows us that skepticism is almost endemic in the conservative philosophy, as conservatives have been consistently skeptical of Republicans and Democrats presidents, Senators, Congressman, and government in general. Conservatives have a history of skepticism that matches, and takes influence from, the skepticism of the Founding Fathers. If you asked any true conservative what they thought of George W. Bush, during his era, they would’ve told you, “I like the fact that Bush freed up the individual from the burdensome federal taxes, but…” That but would’ve been followed by a litany of skepticism regarding all that Bush did during his era to increase the size of government. It is the conservative that has been consistently for limits on government, founding father principles, and strict Constitutionality regardless who is president.

Another irony is that Obama lauded America’s “unique experiment in self-rule” yet most of the students he was speaking to “will be spending the next 10-15 years struggling to pay off Federal Government backed student loans, paying higher taxes to Federal and State coffers, and paying for Obamacare.” We are told that these skeptics we should reject, regard self-rule as somehow just a sham with which we can’t be trusted. Yet, “We are told where and what to smoke, how much soda we can have, what vaccines we must pump into our bodies, that we have no choice in knowing what’s in our GMO laden food, who we can marry, what kinds of toilets we can purchase, whether we can collect rainwater, and on and on and on…”{3} All of this is not Obama’s doing, granted, but it has led us all to be a lot more skeptical of government in general.

Skepticism is almost solely an American institution. Throughout our history we have been skeptical of England, Federalists, Democrat-Republicans, Republicans, Democrats, Independents, Whigs, the Green Party, and any other faction that has attempted to lead us. The very basis of our country, our Constitution, is based on this distrust, this skepticism, in the collective capacity of what we, as citizens, can do through government. Why have we always been skeptical? Is it because we know that tyranny was “always lurking around the corner” for those that got complacent in the comforts that their government could offer those that desire a freedom from problems? We know “we shouldn’t want to be this way”, but we have seen the world, and we’ve studied history, and we know that it is just laden with precedents.

Is America exceptional in this regard? The president, himself, has said, “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.” In other words, believing in your own exceptionalism is exceptional, but relative to you and where you are. It’s sort of like believing your favorite sports team is exceptional in their abilities, if you listen to Obama describe his view of American exceptionalism. So, if we’re not historically exceptional regarding our ability, or our stature in the world, why should we believe that our freedom is so exceptional that we shouldn’t be skeptical of anyone that might be able to take it away from us? And why should we reject those voices that try to inform us of this?

{1}http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2013/05/05/obama_to_ohio_state_grads_reject_voices_that_warn_about_government_tyranny.html

{2} http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323372504578468772717864406.html

{3}http://www.theglobaldispatch.com/dont-listen-to-obama-gum-up-the-works-and-listen-to-me-76801/

Categorized in politics
Tags: American Exceptionalism, American skepticism, federal government power, obama, skeptics

May

Are Senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul a couple of wacko birds?

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The first thing conservatives should look at when they attempt to define the freshman Senator from Texas, Ted Cruz, are his enemies. Harry Reid appears to despise him, recently calling him a “schoolyard bully”. John McCain further enhances Cruz’s conservative bona fides by calling him a “wacko bird”. Status quo Republicans whisper that Cruz is “too confrontational, extreme and almost boorish.” Who said that? Republicans? Which Republicans? Those that voted for much of the legislation that has led us to the point of having a near $17 trillion dollar debt. The Republicans that Cruz calls “squishes” are the ones whispering these things about him.

“This idea that a Senator cannot tell his constituents what his colleagues are doing behind closed doors in Washington is ridiculous. If they don’t want anyone to know they are squishes, then they should stop being squishes,” said Matt Hoskins, executive director of the Senate Conservatives Fund, in response to the flak Cruz took after the gun-control debate.

Kentucky’s Senator Rand Paul, the other wacko bird according to John McCain, and Cruz have shaken the Republican party up in a relatively short period of time. Paul has taken to the floor to engage in an old fashioned filibuster that embarrasses and angers status quo, establishment Republicans like Lindsey Graham and John McCain, and Paul and Cruz have lived up to their campaign promises to fight the Democrats with everything they have, they’re taking on their own (when their own act like squishes), and they’re causing those that have earned their comfortable seats in the Senate to be more than a little uncomfortable when they take those seats.

“Here (in Washington) people don’t like you to break the status quo, but out across the country people know that our country is in trouble and they want some people who will stand up against the status quo,” former Senator Jim DeMint (SC-R) said.

“I’ve been in about 25 cities in the last few months. All I have to do is bring up Ted Cruz’s name and people stand up and applaud,” DeMint furthered. “What people want outside of Washington is totally different of what you hear on the inside of Washington.{1}

Chip Saltsman, who managed former Gov. Mike Huckabee’s 2008 presidential campaign, said of Cruz:

“As a conservative messenger, he certainly knows exactly what he believes. He obviously won a pretty tough primary on that message. He has certainly got a following around the country.”

Some have said that Cruz’s extreme positions could “McGovern” the Republican party, a term that is used to describe a candidate, George McGovern (SD-D), that takes his party too far in one direction. In the 1972 presidential election, McGovern took the Democrat party to a liberal influence that some say cost the Democrats four of the next five presidential elections.

“If you look back at political history we’re on the same glide path as the Democrats in the late ’60s and the ’70s,” said the GOP strategist. “We could have a McGovern-type candidate we need to get out of our system. Ted Cruz would be at the top of that list. He can win the nomination and that’s alarming.”

Democrats say that they would love for Cruz to take the 2016 plunge:

“I’m all for it,” said Joe Trippi, who managed former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign. “If he can get the nomination, it would help Democratic prospects for winning. If that side emerges in the GOP primary, it will be a long, tough rebranding mission for the party.”

Most conservative Republicans had a lot of hope invested in New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Florida Senator Marc Rubio, but both of them have done things that have disappointed them in recent years, as the two of them appear to have moderated their stances to get along with Democrats to “get things done”. The general question most conservatives have for those that are moderating their election positions to get things done is: “What are you getting done? We’re on the cusp of a $17 trillion dollar debt? We’re on the cusp of total amnesty? We’re on the cusp of a financial disaster that could make The Depression look like an economic downturn? What’s the point of going along to get along if these are the results of it?”

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul and Cruz have not moderated their positions to get things done, and they’re stubbornly insisting that we return to our country’s first principles and adhere to a stricter interpretation of the Constitution, and as DeMint suggests, conservatives are leaping to their feet in applause because of it.

Even opponents are starting to tip their cap to Cruz’s unflinching conservatism:

“I think he is the most talented and fearless Republican politician I’ve seen in the last 30 years,” James Carville said. “I further think that he’s going to run for president and he is going to create something. I’m not sitting here saying he’s going to win, and I think Senator DeMint is right. I’ve listened to excerpts of his speech in South Carolina. He touches every button, and this guy has no fear. He just keeps plowing ahead. And he is going to be something to watch.”

“And a lot of Republicans feel this way, George, and you hear this a lot,” Carville said to moderator George Stephanopoulos, himself a former Clinton adviser. “’If we only got someone who was articulate and was for what we were for, we would win elections. And we get these John McCains and these Mitt Romneys and these squishy guys that can’t do anything.’ Well, there’s one thing (Ted Cruz) is not – he ain’t squishy, not in the least.”

Carville continued, predicting a very rough battle ahead for possible 2016 candidates Sens. Marco Rubio and Rand Paul.

“Ted Cruz is going to eat their lunch,” Carville said. “That guy, I’m telling you, he will out debate. I am just saying, he is a talent. I’m not rooting. I’m really sincere here. We watch him, he does things, I mean when he started talking about William Travis in South Carolina and the Alamo, this is a guy, and you go, “This guy is something.”

“Now I don’t agree with him. I think he’s out there. But I’m telling you, he’s more talented than all of these other guys.”{2}

Republicans can’t help but listen to Democrats (other than the more honest Carville) when we line ourselves up for an election. When Democrats tell us that they only want to help Republicans get elected, and that’s the reason we should not consider a couple of “wacko birds” like Cruz and Paul, some Republicans actually listen. They listen when Democrats tell them that these two are too extreme and outside the thinking of mainstream Americans. Democrats tell Republicans that they only want to help them win elections when they tell us to moderate our positions on gun control and immigration reform, and if Republicans would only listen to their leadership we could beat them more often. They also warned us against nominating Ronald Reagan, for his positions were too extreme, and out there, and outside the mainstream, and I’m sure they were as delighted as Joe Trippi will be if we make the mistake of nominating a “wacko bird” like Ted Cruz, or Rand Paul, in 2016. Some of us aren’t listening, and we’re switching our loyalties to the “wacko birds”, because we’re not looking as far into the future as these political analysts. We just love what these “wacko birds” are doing to the Republican establishment, and the establishment in general, right now.

{1}http://thehill.com/homenews/house/297839-gop-on-cruz-control#ixzz2SYy6BUVR

{2}http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/carville-ted-cruz-rubio/2013/05/05/id/502869?s=al&promo_code=13650-1#ixzz2SZ68wxkN

Categorized in politics
Tags: 2013 politics, DeMint, Democrats, Harry Reid, partisanship, politics, Rand Paul, republicans, senators, squishes, Ted Cruz

May

Mechanical Animals

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Hire an expert if you need to have something major, fixed. Recent experience has taught me that it’s cheaper, less time-consuming, and less frustrating to just call in an expert that does this every day, truly knows what they’re doing, and will guarantee their work. If you are currently debating whether or not to bring in your cousin’s cousin to come in and fix your light fixture, take it from me that you’ll save a lot of money, frustration and time by just calling in that “unnecessarily” over-priced expert.

A mechanical animal will not tell you this. They will tell you the exact opposite. Mechanical animals will tell you that you can fix this yourself, and they’ll make you feel foolish for not being male enough, or industrious enough, to fix it yourself. If you remain stubbornly realistic about your abilities, they’ll say those words: “Hell, I can fix it for you.” If they reach this point with you, my advice is to just smile, placate their ego, and walk away.

If you want to further endear yourself to them, let them get their jones off in the field of mechanics. Let them tell you all of their three-to-five-to-seven-to-nine point plans and smile, and nod, and say “Holy Crackers!” and “Man, you know what you’re talking about!” Do this, and dazzle them with your lack of knowledge, and keep your puppy head in a non-confrontational and subservient position, and you’ll have a friend for life, but I warn you now: do not take this guy home with you.

He may seduce you with talk concerning the love and care he will show your nuts and bolts, but once the lubrication is applied he’ll be wrecking everything you hold dear. Then, when they’re “done” they won’t mind that you’re left incomplete, because your satisfaction wasn’t the reason they injected their ideas into your conversation in the first place. The conversation was the purpose of the conversation. They’re mechanical animals.

In the conversation, mechanical animals are experts in the field of saving you money, time, and frustration by simply following their simple three-to-five-to-seven-to-nine point plans, and these plans are usually right on the mark. Mechanical animals usually know the plans. The plans have been programmed into their heads in a manner similar to the manner Rachmaninoff can be programmed into a mechanical piano. Like any song, a problem can be fixed in programmed steps, but where they differ is in the variables that arise. Mechanical animals are usually great at duplicating their programmed knowledge on a lawn with a beer in their hand, but they usually fall short when variables arise. They’re mechanical animals.

Mechanical animals are also great at telling you that the guys you’re planning on hiring are not as qualified as you might think they are, because they had a friend of a friend of a friend that hired them once, fourteen years ago, and he wasn’t satisfied with what they did. This all makes for great “male, on the lawn, with a beer in your hand” conversation, but it’s been my experience that this is when you should finish your beer, go back in the house, and talk to the ladies about the drapes and the finest upholstery known to man. Do not ask for another beer, or listen to further conversations regarding the mechanical animal’s expertise with a twinkle in your eye, or you will be left with a half assed fix and an inoperable dullness in your eye that will last you the rest of your adult life.

We all know them. They’re our brother, our neighbor, the guy that stops to chat with us at our local Home Depot, our Uncle, and just about every male that we know beyond the smiling nod. They’re mechanical animals—usually named Morty—that have encountered just about every obstacle in life, and they can diagnose any problem you’re having in T-Minus two minutes, but if you make the mistake of turning a dime on them, you’ll be screaming: “Houston, we have a problem!” in T-Minus two months.

Morty type mechanical animals usually have an archetype male perpetually affixed in their memory that genuinely knew how to fix things, because he had a need to know, and he likely didn’t have the money necessary to hire a fix-it guy. If this archetype male didn’t learn how to fix the plumbing in his house, in other words, it didn’t get fixed. A Morty type will usually have one great story regarding this archetype male going to a hardware store, picking up a pamphlet, and wiring his home for electricity. “It’s not that hard,” these Morty types will tell your open mouthed awe, “All you have to do is…”

That archetype male was incredibly industrious, self-serving, patient with the trial and error variables involved in fixing things, and undaunted by matters that leave the rest of us breathless, but, again, their knowledge was borne out of necessity. Our generation, Morty’s generation, does not face such all-encompassing need, so we usually don’t have such knowledge, but Morty types spend their whole lives trying to replicate them. At some point in their lives, most Morty types will realize that they have fallen short of this idyllic image. They know how to wire their cable to their TV…barely. They know how to change oil, spot a car and relay some unknown facts about that car, they can mow and fertilize a lawn, and perform some perfunctory plumbing chores, but they pale in comparisons to those archetype males of their lives, usually their Dad, because they don’t have a need to be as industrious. And this is where you, the listener, come in. This is where you play the role of circuitous conduit to their goal of appearing to be as industrious, and mechanically inclined, as their archetype male.

You are their idiot, and they love you for it, “A decently trained chimpanzee could fix that,” a Morty type will tell you, “If they were willing to put forth a little effort. What kind of man are you that you can’t?” At that point, you would love to have your own idiot on the totem pole, but if you’re anything like me there aren’t any out there.

“All you need is a napalm rake and a Descartes hammer,” is the way Morty types begin such conversations. “If you wanna call a fix-it guy, that’s fine,” they say in tones that provoke compulsory responses. “If you want to go into debt, and listen to a guy demean you for not being able fix your own home that’s fine, but if you stick with me we can fix this thing in a couple hours for less than a hundred dollars.” They dazzle their listener with the hypothetical fixes that they have accumulated over the years, and they leave their listener feeling guilty for being male and not knowing all this.

To be fair to Morty, there are Morty types and there are Morty types. Some Morty types will confess, in typical Morty type humor, that they know “just enough to keep out of trouble”, or “just enough to be dangerous”. They are fun-loving beasts that will usually only rear their ugly heads after they’ve had a few, and you’re with a bunch of fellas, looking out on my dilapidated lawn. It is not the goal of these Morty types to make you feel stupid, inept, or less than male however. “Hey, you know your stuff and I know mine,” they will say to reveal how congenial, patient, and humble they truly are. If, however, you don’t continually lower your puppy head, they feel a need to lead you deeper into the weeds.

There are other Morty types, and everyone knows one, that will cause you to dive into a row of insulation at Home Depot before they spot you. These Morty types will lock onto your overwhelmed, vacant eyes and giggle: “Hey Martha, writer dude here doesn’t know what a Descartes hammer is.” To which a more cultured Martha type will reply, “Be nice Morty!” And he will, usually, if there are no other fellas around looking at a dilapidated lawn with beer in their hands. He will, if you successfully respond to all of his quick-fix theoreticals with careful responses that provide him the illusion that you know something about what he’s talking about. He will, if you add something that alludes to the idea that you have some knowledge of the napalm rake and the intricately designed web of knowledge he invited you into.

The thing is Morty types do know things. They know just enough to secure a crowned position on the conversational mountain of knowledge, but once you join them up there you see that they have the same brown patches in their yard, a board to cover their garage’s broken window, a bed that collapses when a sub 200 lb. man climbs aboard, and fancy, impressive doors that won’t close properly. Once you get there, you are forced into the shocking revelation that all of your prior conversations with them were baked in a foundation of half-truths, aggrandizements, and makeshift intrinsics. It’s not that they have no idea what they’re talking about. They do know the logistics of the fix, and they know how to go about getting things fixed, but they just don’t do them very well. They’re mechanical animals.

Those of us that have made the mistake of turning a dime on these conversations have realized our mistake shortly after saying, “Well, crap, if you can fix this for half the cost, then you are my man!” in an altruistic and platonic manner. It was never your intention to call them out, you just wanted your something something fixed. You didn’t know that there were shocking revelations to be found in the man’s home, in his car, or on the outskirts of his lawn. If you’ve made this mistake, you’ve realized that there are mechanical animals, and there are mechanical animal conversations. You’ve realized that there are those that do, and those that thoroughly enjoy the talk of doing, and that the entire conversation was about feeding into their ravenous need to appear archetypal.

If you are an inexperienced observer—with no precedent—currently debating whether or not to bring in your cousin’s cousin to come in and fix your light fixture, you should also know that you’ll be making a HUGE mistake by leaving them alone in the room that needs fixing. The best diagnosis we experienced folk have for you is to affix vacant and overwhelmed eyes on you face, and say “Wow!” and “Holy Crackers, you’re smart!” and a “Here, let me hold that for you!” to assist them in completing the task. Let them talk, give them their crowned position on the mountain, and let them dazzle you with their expertise. Nine times out of ten, these Morty types don’t need the money, and they usually don’t like you so much that they’re willing to fix something for you just cuz’. Chances are you are filling a vital need they have just by standing there with your “Wow!” and “Holy crackers, you’re smart!” face on. Chances are if you are an inexperienced observer—with no precedent—you will find these “Holy Crackers” expressions to be tedious after a time, or you may believe that these mechanical animals will work harder, better, or faster if you leave the room to get them to stop talking about what they’re doing and just do it. You’ll realize your HUGE mistake soon after they climb down the ladder, say they need a part that they need get from home, and you’re calling that “unnecessarily”, over-priced expert three months later, paying far more than you would have if you had just called him in the first place.

Categorized in psychology, Social Issues and The Thoughts of Neighbors
Tags: fake fix-it guys, fix-it, fix-it guys, mechanical animals

Apr

Is our lust for violence leading us to Hunger Games?

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The “Hunger Games” story is based on a theme similar to those in the “Escape from New York” and “Running Man” stories that suggest that man will eventually regress back to our primal state where we will once again enjoy the pinnacle of violence in gladiator-style games. Those that make such claims state that our insatiable lust for violence is exhibited by the fact that we don’t so much enjoy the hockey of the NHL anymore, as much as we enjoy the fights that occasionally break out; the crashes in NASCAR, as opposed to the race; and the hits in the NFL and boxing, as opposed to their strategies. Some have claimed that the popularity of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) occurred as a result of the fact that there was too much strategy in boxing and not enough violence. They state that those traditionally popular sporting events no longer feed our insatiable lust for violence, and that we have progressed to the point where we only enjoy the violent incidents that occur in these sports, and that this is one of the reasons that ESPN has succeeded on such a large scale. If it’s true that our insatiable lust for violence is progressing is our society on a trajectory to gladiator-style “Hunger Games”?

An indicator of this progression, they say, was the short-lived, Sunday Night Football pre-game segment called “Jacked Up!” “Jacked Up!” was an ESPN segment that focused on the most powerful, bone crushing NFL hits of the week, that had the commentators punctuating each hit with the words “Jacked Up!”

Sports Illustrated’s Paul Zimmerman once commented on the “Jacked Up!” segment, writing that ESPN commentators were “Equivalent to citizens of 17th or 18th Century England enjoying a nice outing at a public hanging. And when the trap is released and the poor guy is hung, they’d all yell, “Jacked Up!”{2}

Some would say that it’s vital to correct the course we’re on by canceling segments like “Jacked Up!” that celebrate brutal hits, that we start placing rules on all hits in football, and that a school district in the “Live Free or Die” state New Hampshire legislates against dodge ball, “because of bullying concerns.”{1} It’s vital that we do these things, they say, so that we can correct the current course we’re on and make moves towards making our society a kinder and gentler one.

The theme of the “Hunger Games” story is that to prevent war, we must provide society some degree of violence. The theme is that we (the society in the movie) need to satiate the need for violence, so that we may prevent the ultimate form of violence: war. It’s an apt theme to some degree:

“Young people, especially young men, need an outlet for their violent tendencies,” a former teacher of mine once said. “And football is the best outlet I’ve ever seen…Better than wrestling, boxing, or any other contact sport available to young men.”

As legislation and rules attempt to move us to a kinder, gentler society, are we “progressing” away from primal activities such as football? Are “images of major, bone crunching NFL hits going the way of smoking in airplanes?” as one Rolling Stone writer suggested. Are the measures we use to ban events that seed bullying, like Dodge ball, going to successfully change the trajectory of our culture so that we stave off an “Escape from New York”, “Hunger Games” style future, or are we incidentally creating one?

Anyone that has been bullied knows that there are some unfortunate supplements it offers a person. Will some bullying result in the lowered self-esteem of the victim, yes it will. Will it cause some to harm themselves in ways that our society should not condone, yes it will. Will it introduce some kids to the idea that the world can be an awful, mean place at times, yes it will. But will it prepare them for the awful, mean things adults will do to them in life when they become adults, yes it will. The unfortunate supplement to being bullied is that it usually doesn’t have the same devastating emotional impact the second time around. If Tom Jones picks on you in second grade, and you survive his mental torture intact, chances are when Pat Thomas bullies you in the third grade the emotional devastation won’t be as severe as that of Tom Jones’, and when you enter the workplace and your boss tells you that you aren’t worth a hill of beans, you’ll have the temerity to bite back on that and become a better employee in the aftermath. When your spouse tells you you’re worthless, or your fellow employees single you out for their torture, you can defeat them with the notion that they’re not as bad as that which Tom Jones inflicted upon you in the second grade. That was humiliating and devastating, but it made you stronger emotionally. It gave you precedent.

There are always going to be some, however, that don’t survive, or become better and stronger, and social commentators always single these people out with the idea that these attempts to change the trajectory of our culture will all be worth it if we can prevent one child from ever having to learn what a frown is. If you disagree, to any extent, you are called a social Darwinist. Others, social Darwinists if you will, claim that school, and childhood in general, is preparation for adulthood. You gain a shell in childhood that can serve you throughout your life, you gain an exoskeleton, and a cerebral toughness in this process of socialization. Some incidentally mix these issues when they proclaim that home schooling deprives its subjects of the socialization that traditionally schooled children experience. Yet, some of these same people will go to unusual lengths to rid schools of any activities “that could seed” bullying.

“You can’t criticize young people,” a friend of mine told me when talking about the current lot of employees working under him. “They’re so soft and tender that they fall apart at the slightest criticism. They’re shocked that anyone would dare call them out on their performance. It’s like they’ve never been criticized before. It doesn’t matter how venial the criticism is. They fall apart emotionally. We got criticized as young employees, and we mentally told our boss to go jump in the lake and became stronger in the aftermath to prove that we he said about us wasn’t true. I have to be very careful to surround any criticisms I have of these kids with compliments, so I don’t lose them. Is this a recent phenomenon, or am I glamorizing my own toughness as a young person?”

The current course we’re on, that which bans helmet to helmet hits, bans dodge ball, makes all contact sports illegal, and instructs every teacher to avoid any kind of criticism has created a society of young people that currently leads the world in self-esteem, yet ends up scoring very low in Math and Science testing. Believing that you can accomplish anything you set your mind to is, of course, vital, but what happens to a person that progresses through life with an unmatched belief in their ability with no one telling them that they’re doing it wrong? Why would they alter their course? How would they learn from their mistakes, if no one tells them they’re making mistakes? Are they going to sit around and wait for the world to come to them, and when no one recognizes their genius in the real world what do they do with that anger?

It may never happen that lawyers, legislators, and do gooders make football out and out illegal, but it will almost assuredly be a game we don’t recognize in ten years. The hits that currently occur in the game may go the way of “smoking in airplanes” but is that a good thing? Is it good to make illegal those aspects of life that plant the seeds of bullying, or are we only taking away the outlets for male aggression, and what are the unintended consequences to having all that young, male aggression bottled up and frustrated? Are we progressing toward that primal, “Hunger Game”, gladiator society that worships violence, or a listless, lost generation that sits around and waits for things to happen to them, because they don’t know how to make it happen for themselves, because they’ve never been told that they’re doing it wrong? Are we making a less violent society by taking away those events that generate aggression, or are we only causing more violence by taking away outlets?

A UFC fighter once said, “Some people look at what I do as violent, but I look at it in a different way. You can call this twisted logic if you want, but I think that I’m teaching my opponent that getting hit is not as bad as he might have thought. He may lose a few teeth when I hit him, and he may even get knocked out, but something happens to a person when they survive that hit. They get rejuvenated by surviving that which they feared most. It gives them a new lease on life.”

It is a twisted sort of logic, as the UFC fighter suggested, to say that getting hit, bullied, and criticized can provide a person benefits, but it can’t be denied that most will get tougher in the aftermath. Some will sink further into the corner, but most will feel rejuvenated by the idea that if they survived that they can survive anything. Do gooders seek to take all these negative reinforcements away to protect children from experiencing the same pain and disappointments they experienced in life.

Do gooders don’t get their name by purposely setting out to damage children however. When they do what they do to end bullying in all schools, it’s an admirable thing that will elicit rounds of applause for nobody is pro-bullying, but it’s what they end up doing to achieve this goal that ends up garnering them a reputation for doing “good things” with no eye to the future or the unintended consequences of their actions.

For a couple generations now movie makers have been predicting a societal trajectory to gladiator games, based upon our current lust for violence, but if we successfully 180 that trajectory will the subjects of all of these anti-bullying measures eventually land in a utopian land of peace and harmony, or will they live in a state of perpetual fear of getting hit, criticized, or bullied where they don’t gain the unfortunate supplements of knowledge that those acts of negative reinforcement can teach us?

{1} http://guyspeed.com/new-hampshire-bans-dodgeball-because-of-bullying-concerns/ {2}http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2004/writers/dr_z/10/08/drz.mailbag/index.html

Categorized in psychology, Social Issues and The Thoughts of Neighbors
Tags: football, Hunger Games, jacked up, NFL, societal trends, society, sport, UFC, unintended consequences of social movements, violence

Apr

Fox News tops all cable ratings

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The idea that Fox News would top all of cable news networks is no longer news, as Fox News has had “11 consecutive years of dominance as the #1-rated cable news network.” {1} The idea that it would top the non-news, USA Network for the number one position in all of cable for one week, is a milestone the Fox News channel hasn’t hit since 2005.

As is usually the case, most viewers do not go to news networks unless they are prompted to do so by a major event, or a presidential election. In 2005, that event was Hurricane Katrina. In 2013, it was the bombing at the Boston Marathon, and the pursuit of the alleged bombers. In both cases, it was Fox News that more viewers turned to for their news.

“FNC garnered 2.874 million viewers on average over the week compared to number two USA’s 2.621 million CNN also climbed up the cable ladder to hit the number three spot with 1.985 million viewers overall on average over the week.”{2} CNN did, however, win the key 25-54 demographic on the April 19, 2013 night of the pursuit 2,362,000 to 1,574,00 during the 7 p.m. hour when news broke of suspect’s capture.

Friday, the 19th, was a day of milestones for FNC, as they had their highest total day of viewership since the 2003 Iraq War. Neilsen ratings detail the fact that each show on FNC had either its highest, or its second highest, rating in that show’s history. These shows include the O’Reilly Factor, Hannity, America’s Newsroom, America Live, Fox and Friends, the Fox Report, Happening Now, and the Studio B show. {3}

Even the most ardent Fox News Channel (FNC) hater has to admit that if FNC didn’t exist, there would be a need to create it. Just from a business standpoint. Just by studying the numbers, and seeing all those that claimed that they were disaffected viewers in 1986, all but those blinded by ideology could see that there was a niche in the marketplace for such a network. If there wasn’t a need for a news organization to present an alternative viewpoint, and if there weren’t so many disaffected fans of news, FNC would’ve fallen on their face. They haven’t, for eleven straight years they haven’t.

But, say those that may recognize the need for it, FNC abuses this privilege by engaging in bias and misinformation. The misinformation charge is a false premise that FNC haters bring up as a generality without specifics, and it’s impossible to disprove a charge such as this. As for bias, FNC haters bring up Sean Hannity. Sean Hannity is a self-proclaimed conservative, and his broadcasts are admittedly biased, but if any viewers believe Megan Kelly, Bill O’Reilly, Bret Baier, Shepard Smith, or Greta van Susteren are all biased, they’re just not watching. If you believe that these broadcasters exhibit a personal bias that is more biased to traditional America, and its social mores and values, there may be an argument to be had there, but there are far too many Democrats and liberals on FNC broadcasts for anyone to claim that they are biased toward conservatives or Republicans.

Another charge that FNC haters make is that it provides confirmation bias to viewers. That, in essence, FNC only reports on news that confirms a certain belief system, and that it confirms for viewers that which they already believe in. If that were true, and numerous independent studies have reported that it isn’t, could the same charge be made of CNN, ABC, CBS, and NBC? The one thing that the confirmation bias charge doesn’t do is ask the one making the charge what station they get their news from, and if that organization does nothing more than confirm their biases? This wouldn’t be asked, of course, because the response would be that their news source is a trusted news source. This could be said to be the very nature of confirmation bias.

Anyone that has heard former “trusted news source” reporters such as Walter Cronkite, Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, and Ted Koppel go on shockingly liberal rants in their retirement years know that these men are stridently liberal now, and that it’s reasonable to conclude that they were at least a little liberal throughout their careers. The knee jerk response to this accusation is that these men are free to have views in America, and that as regular citizens now they should be free to comment on whatever issue they choose. Very true, but if they’re this liberal now, how liberal were they when they were employed to report the news to us? Did their political beliefs ever influence their reporting? Did they ever spike a story that could’ve damaged a cause they believed in? It’s impossible to know to what degree, of course, but we do know that what these men, and others, did resulted in a niche in the market that Fox News capitalized on to a point of utter domination in cable news ratings war.

{1}http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2013/01/29/fox-news-channel-is-again-top-rated-cable-news-network-for-the-month-of-january/167281/

{2} http://www.deadline.com/tag/tv-ratings/

{3}http://www.mediaite.com/tv/fox-news-tops-cable-news-in-total-viewers-with-fridays-boston-coverage/

Categorized in politics
Tags: bias, cable news, Cable Ratings, consistency, fox news, networks

Apr

Are they celebrating the legacy, or the death, of Margaret Thatcher?

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Many conservatives wonder why intellectuals from the left would attack the recently departed, former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher with such blood lust. Non-political types wonder how anyone could take to the streets to celebrate the death of a leader that didn’t commit mass genocide, incarcerate her enemies, or commit any attrocities. There’s nothing wrong with disagreeing with the politics of a leader, those that don’t follow politics say, but why would anyone riot, loot, and injure other people to celebrate their death?

Thatcher and Reagan

As for the revelers that took to the streets to celebrate the former Prime Minister’s death, IB Times UK reporter Ewan Palmer stated that: “There was the notion that this morbid celebration has been planned in thousands of people’s heads for more than 30 years.”{1} Dominic Gover’s IBT World article continued, saying, “Many revelers appeared younger than the 23 years which have passed since Thatcher left office.”

Josef Stalin had a term for these people. He called them “useful idiots”. It was a term he reserved for those people he perceived to be uninformed propagandists that cynical leaders could use to promote a cause. Most useful idiots will “support” any cause that allows for public drinking, violence, theft, looting, and violence against police under the guise of a “noble” cause they know little to nothing about.

The answer regarding why a more academic theoretician, like Paul Krugman, would join the dance upon Thatcher’s grave is simple: Politics. If “The Iron Lady’s” legacy were allowed to flourish, unchallenged, it would not speak well of Krugman’s Keynesian goals for worldwide acceptance of government controlled economies, and the thrust of President Barack Obama’s beliefs that he can turn the U.S. economy around through government infusions of cash. Margaret Thatcher may not have provided the world the antithesis of Obama’s policies—she was for socialized medicine, increased taxes, some gun control legislation, and she believed in global warming—but the changes in taxes she passed, and the limits on the regulations of business she called for, could undoubtedly be called different from those policies Obama and Krugman favor. It’s vital to their continued progress, therefore, that Krugman, and all leftist intellectuals, take any opportunity to diminish any conservative’s historical record…Even if that opportunity arises before the dirt is on their coffin.

“Did Thatcher turn Britain around,” Paul Krugman asks in his most recent column. The thrust of Krugman’s argument that she didn’t necessarily do so, is based on two points. The first that Krugman never explicitly states is that Britain’s turnaround was coincidental to Thatcher’s tenure as Prime Minister, and that Thatcher happened to be in the right place at the right time. He elucidates this point with a graph that compares Britain’s per capita GDP, and unemployment rates, with those of France’s during Thatcher’s tenure. The title of the chart is UK GDP per capita relative to France, but this author doesn’t see where the France line appears on the chart. Perhaps it was done in total comparison, but that’s difficult to discern. Regardless, Krugman notes: “A long decline ended and turned into a revival.” The second graph shows that France’s unemployment rate was lower for much of her tenure, until around 1994 when Britain’s rate of unemployment figures went below France’s and has stayed there to the present day. This leads to Krugman’s second argument: If Thatcher did, in fact, turn Britain’s economy around, “why did it take so long?”

“Thatcher came to power in 1979, and imposed a radical change in policy almost immediately. But the big improvement in British performance doesn’t really show in the data until the mid-1990s. Does she get credit for a reward so long delayed?

This is, by the way, somewhat like a similar issue in America: right-wingers were eager to give Ronald Reagan credit for the productivity boom of the Clinton years, which also didn’t start until around 1995; if Reagan could get credit for events that were 14 years or more after his 1981 tax cut, shouldn’t Richard Nixon be given credit for anything good that happened in the Reagan years?”{3}

The latter argument can be diffused with one name James Earl Carter. If Nixon did anything to turn the economy around in the manner that Reagan or Thatcher did, with the same degree of lag before it could take full effect, that would’ve been thrashed by the inept policies of the Carter administration. Reagan was followed by George H.W. Bush, and Bush continued, for the most part, the policies of Ronald Reagan, so the analogy doesn’t hold up on that front. On the administrative front, Nixon was not the conservative that Reagan was. He enacted wage and price controls, expanded social security, and he continued LBJ’s Great Society programs. Reagan’s policies were almost in direct contrast to many of Nixon’s, even though many historians now say that Nixon was a secret advisor of Reagan’s.

As for the question regarding why Thatcher’s policies, and Reagan’s, had such a lag in terms of results—that Krugman admits coincidentally “didn’t start until around 1995″—Krugman was involved in a CNBC debate with Fox News host Bill O’Reilly where Krugman rhetorically posed this question. Bill O’Reilly responded:

“Call any corporation — any high-tech corporation in Silicon Valley and just ask them when their R&D ramped up and when their machinery that has led the world, the United States and the world, when it started getting — they will all tell you it happened during the Reagan administration when corporate taxes were cut. There was more income to devote to that.”{4}

The point O’Reilly was making was that a company’s R&D (Research and Development) departments allow that company to create better products, and that it may take some time to create these products, get them to market, and eventually show a profit on them. One could say that Microsoft became Microsoft during this period, and that the many companies that would make up the tech bubble—that fueled the soaring stock market of the mid-‘90’s—were made during this period. But it’s tough to definitively say that the Reagan tax cuts on corporations definitively led to the corporate profits, that funded greater R&D, and eventually fueled the mid-‘90’s tech bubble. We do know that the time it takes a pharmaceutical company to research and develop a product, test that product, and eventually show a profit on that product can be around twelve years, but that could be disregarded based on the impediments put into that process by the FDA. We can assume, however, that putting out something as complicated as a computer’s operating system can involve a great deal of the same trial and error measures of those involved in the pharmaceutical industry, at least when it comes to the time it takes to perfect it, make it market ready, and then profitable. We also know that any projections Krugman puts forth on this topic are at least as informed, if not less so, than ours, for he has never spent any time in private sector, and that the basis for his initial interest in economics are the novels of science fiction writer Isaac Asimov. {5}

Due to the fact that it took more than a decade for all the changes that Thatcher and Reagan enacted on their respected economies, it is difficult to definitively say that their policies coincidentally turned their country’s economies at the same time. It’s difficult to definitively say that economic cycles being what they are, that an upswing was not inevitable regardless who was in office, but with all of these coincidental circumstances lining up perfectly, leftist economists, like Krugman, feel it incumbent upon them to insert as many question marks as possible into their recounts of the historical record.

{1}http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/455054/20130409/thatcher-death-party.htm

{2}http://www.examiner.com/article/progressive-reaction-to-thatcher-death-shows-no-amount-of-appeasement-enough

{3}http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/did-thatcher-turn-britain-around/

{4}http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/oreilly/2004/08/10/nbcs-russert-refs-debate-between-bill-and-krugman?page=4#ixzz2PzRbcM6r

{5}http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Krugman

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