OMG It's Gangnam Style

I first heard this song watching a parody video by a group of lifeguards in El Monte California who got canned for making it on city property, but aside from that iunfortunate incodent I have to admit I am kinda hooked on the catchy melody and Korean Rap.

PSY, a South Korean rapper with a baby face apparently millions of Koreans love just seems to have so much fun with it, it's hard not to like.

So go Gangnam Style!  Enjoy!

Star Trek's 46 Year Mission - Happy Birthday!

I remember watching this show when it premiered, and from the first episode I was hooked.  Not a "Trekie" as such, I still enjoy the series in almost all of it's iterations and love the new movie.

OK, so maybe I am a Trekie.

Happy 46th Anniversary to Gene Roddenberry's creation.

By the way, we recently bought the first season of Next Generation on Blu-Ray and it's really great. 

Happy Belated Birthday - Freddie Mercury

I can't believe I missed the date, but better late than never.

Freddie Mercury, one of the great innovators in 20th Century music would have been 65 yesterday.  His life was cut short by AIDS, but his music and the work of the band Queen will live a long long time.

Enjoy!


And for Muppets fans their spot-on cover of the song!

Clinton Hits a Home Run

I rarely use baseball metaphors, but the only thing I can say about President Bill Clinton's speech last night at the Democratic National Convention was "he hit it out of the park".  Looking healthy and chipper, the former president had the crown on their feet through much of his speech, and hammered home the point that if we are going to move forward, we must reelect President Barack Obama.  His speech is below, if you missed it it's wrth a read.

We're here to nominate a President, and I've got one in mind.

I want to nominate a man whose own life has known its fair share of adversity and uncertainty. A man who ran for President to change the course of an already weak economy and then just six weeks before the election, saw it suffer the biggest collapse since the Great Depression. A man who stopped the slide into depression and put us on the long road to recovery, knowing all the while that no matter how many jobs were created and saved, there were still millions more waiting, trying to feed their children and keep their hopes alive.

 I want to nominate a man cool on the outside but burning for America on the inside. A man who believes we can build a new American Dream economy driven by innovation and creativity, education and cooperation. A man who had the good sense to marry Michelle Obama.

I want Barack Obama to be the next President of the United States and I proudly nominate him as the standard bearer of the Democratic Party.

In Tampa, we heard a lot of talk about how the President and the Democrats don't believe in free enterprise and individual initiative, how we want everyone to be dependent on the government, how bad we are for the economy.

The Republican narrative is that all of us who amount to anything are completely self-made. One of our greatest Democratic Chairmen, Bob Strauss, used to say that every politician wants you to believe he was born in a log cabin he built himself, but it ain't so.

We Democrats think the country works better with a strong middle class, real opportunities for poor people to work their way into it and a relentless focus on the future, with business and government working together to promote growth and broadly shared prosperity. We think "we're all in this together" is a better philosophy than "you're on your own."

Who's right? Well since 1961, the Republicans have held the White House 28 years, the Democrats 24. In those 52 years, our economy produced 66 million private sector jobs. What's the jobs score? Republicans 24 million, Democrats 42 million!

It turns out that advancing equal opportunity and economic empowerment is both morally right and good economics, because discrimination, poverty and ignorance restrict growth, while investments in education, infrastructure and scientific and technological research increase it, creating more good jobs and new wealth for all of us.

Though I often disagree with Republicans, I never learned to hate them the way the far right that now controls their party seems to hate President Obama and the Democrats. After all, President Eisenhower sent federal troops to my home state to integrate Little Rock Central High and built the interstate highway system. And as governor, I worked with President Reagan on welfare reform and with President George H.W. Bush on national education goals. I am grateful to President George W. Bush for PEPFAR, which is saving the lives of millions of people in poor countries and to both Presidents Bush for the work we've done together after the South Asia tsunami, Hurricane Katrina and the Haitian earthquake.

Through my foundation, in America and around the world, I work with Democrats, Republicans and Independents who are focused on solving problems and seizing opportunities, not fighting each other.
When times are tough, constant conflict may be good politics but in the real world, cooperation works better. After all, nobody's right all the time, and a broken clock is right twice a day. All of us are destined to live our lives between those two extremes. Unfortunately, the faction that now dominates the Republican Party doesn't see it that way. They think government is the enemy, and compromise is weakness.

One of the main reasons America should re-elect President Obama is that he is still committed to cooperation. He appointed Republican Secretaries of Defense, the Army and Transportation. He appointed a Vice President who ran against him in 2008, and trusted him to oversee the successful end of the war in Iraq and the implementation of the recovery act. And Joe Biden did a great job with both. He appointed Cabinet members who supported Hillary in the primaries. Heck, he even appointed Hillary! I'm so proud of her and grateful to our entire national security team for all they've done to make us safer and stronger and to build a world with more partners and fewer enemies. I'm also grateful to the young men and women who serve our country in the military and to Michelle Obama and Jill Biden for supporting military families when their loved ones are overseas and for helping our veterans, when they come home bearing the wounds of war, or needing help with education, housing, and jobs.

President Obama's record on national security is a tribute to his strength, and judgment, and to his preference for inclusion and partnership over partisanship.

He also tried to work with Congressional Republicans on Health Care, debt reduction, and jobs, but that didn't work out so well. Probably because, as the Senate Republican leader, in a remarkable moment of candor, said two years before the election, their number one priority was not to put America back to work, but to put President Obama out of work.

Senator, I hate to break it to you, but we're going to keep President Obama on the job!

In Tampa, the Republican argument against the President's re-election was pretty simple: we left him a total mess, he hasn't cleaned it up fast enough, so fire him and put us back in.

In order to look like an acceptable alternative to President Obama, they couldn't say much about the ideas they have offered over the last two years. You see they want to go back to the same old policies that got us into trouble in the first place: to cut taxes for high income Americans even more than President Bush did; to get rid of those pesky financial regulations designed to prevent another crash and prohibit future bailouts; to increase defense spending two trillion dollars more than the Pentagon has requested without saying what they'll spend the money on; to make enormous cuts in the rest of the budget, especially programs that help the middle class and poor kids. As another President once said – there they go again.

I like the argument for President Obama's re-election a lot better. He inherited a deeply damaged economy, put a floor under the crash, began the long hard road to recovery, and laid the foundation for a modern, more well-balanced economy that will produce millions of good new jobs, vibrant new businesses, and lots of new wealth for the innovators.

Are we where we want to be? No. Is the President satisfied? No. Are we better off than we were when he took office, with an economy in free fall, losing 750,000 jobs a month. The answer is YES.

I understand the challenge we face. I know many Americans are still angry and frustrated with the economy. Though employment is growing, banks are beginning to lend and even housing prices are picking up a bit, too many people don't feel it.

I experienced the same thing in 1994 and early 1995. Our policies were working and the economy was growing but most people didn't feel it yet. By 1996, the economy was roaring, halfway through the longest peacetime expansion in American history.

President Obama started with a much weaker economy than I did. No President – not me or any of my predecessors could have repaired all the damage in just four years. But conditions are improving and if you'll renew the President's contract you will feel it.

I believe that with all my heart.

President Obama's approach embodies the values, the ideas, and the direction America must take to build a 21st century version of the American Dream in a nation of shared opportunities, shared prosperity and shared responsibilities.

So back to the story. In 2010, as the President's recovery program kicked in, the job losses stopped and things began to turn around.

The Recovery Act saved and created millions of jobs and cut taxes for 95% of the American people. In the last 29 months the economy has produced about 4.5 million private sector jobs. But last year, the Republicans blocked the President's jobs plan costing the economy more than a million new jobs. So here's another jobs score: President Obama plus 4.5 million, Congressional Republicans zero.

Over that same period, more than more than 500,000 manufacturing jobs have been created under President Obama – the first time manufacturing jobs have increased since the 1990s.

The auto industry restructuring worked. It saved more than a million jobs, not just at GM, Chrysler and their dealerships, but in auto parts manufacturing all over the country. That's why even auto-makers that weren't part of the deal supported it. They needed to save the suppliers too. Like I said, we're all in this together.
Now there are 250,000 more people working in the auto industry than the day the companies were restructured. Governor Romney opposed the plan to save GM and Chrysler. So here's another jobs score: Obama two hundred and fifty thousand, Romney, zero.

The agreement the administration made with management, labor and environmental groups to double car mileage over the next few years is another good deal: it will cut your gas bill in half, make us more energy independent, cut greenhouse gas emissions, and add another 500,000 good jobs.

President Obama's "all of the above" energy plan is helping too – the boom in oil and gas production combined with greater energy efficiency has driven oil imports to a near 20 year low and natural gas production to an all time high. Renewable energy production has also doubled.

We do need more new jobs, lots of them, but there are already more than three million jobs open and unfilled in America today, mostly because the applicants don't have the required skills. We have to prepare more Americans for the new jobs that are being created in a world fueled by new technology. That's why investments in our people are more important than ever. The President has supported community colleges and employers in working together to train people for open jobs in their communities. And, after a decade in which exploding college costs have increased the drop-out rate so much that we've fallen to 16th in the world in the percentage of our young adults with college degrees, his student loan reform lowers the cost of federal student loans and even more important, gives students the right to repay the loans as a fixed percentage of their incomes for up to 20 years. That means no one will have to drop-out of college for fear they can't repay their debt, and no one will have to turn down a job, as a teacher, a police officer or a small town doctor because it doesn't pay enough to make the debt payments. This will change the future for young Americans.

I know we're better off because President Obama made these decisions.

That brings me to health care.

The Republicans call it Obamacare and say it's a government takeover of health care that they'll repeal. Are they right? Let's look at what's happened so far. Individuals and businesses have secured more than a billion dollars in refunds from their insurance premiums because the new law requires 80% to 85% of your premiums to be spent on health care, not profits or promotion. Other insurance companies have lowered their rates to meet the requirement. More than 3 million young people between 19 and 25 are insured for the first time because their parents can now carry them on family policies. Millions of seniors are receiving preventive care including breast cancer screenings and tests for heart problems. Soon the insurance companies, not the government, will have millions of new customers many of them middle class people with pre-existing conditions. And for the last two years, health care spending has grown under 4%, for the first time in 50 years.

So are we all better off because President Obama fought for it and passed it? You bet we are.
There were two other attacks on the President in Tampa that deserve an answer. Both Governor Romney and Congressman Ryan attacked the President for allegedly robbing Medicare of 716 billion dollars. Here's what really happened. There were no cuts to benefits. None. What the President did was save money by cutting unwarranted subsidies to providers and insurance companies that weren't making people any healthier. He used the saving to close the donut hole in the Medicare drug program, and to add eight years to the life of the Medicare Trust Fund. It's now solvent until 2024. So President Obama and the Democrats didn't weaken Medicare, they strengthened it.

When Congressman Ryan looked into the TV camera and attacked President Obama's "biggest coldest power play" in raiding Medicare, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. You see, that 716 billion dollars is exactly the same amount of Medicare savings Congressman Ryan had in his own budget.
At least on this one, Governor Romney's been consistent. He wants to repeal the savings and give the money back to the insurance companies, re-open the donut hole and force seniors to pay more for drugs, and reduce the life of the Medicare Trust Fund by eight years. So now if he's elected and does what he promised Medicare will go broke by 2016. If that happens, you won't have to wait until their voucher program to begins in 2023 to see the end Medicare as we know it.

But it gets worse. They also want to block grant Medicaid and cut it by a third over the coming decade. Of course, that will hurt poor kids, but that's not all. Almost two-thirds of Medicaid is spent on nursing home care for seniors and on people with disabilities, including kids from middle class families, with special needs like, Downs syndrome or Autism. I don't know how those families are going to deal with it. We can't let it happen

Now let's look at the Republican charge that President Obama wants to weaken the work requirements in the welfare reform bill I signed that moved millions of people from welfare to work.

Here's what happened. When some Republican governors asked to try new ways to put people on welfare back to work, the Obama Administration said they would only do it if they had a credible plan to increase employment by 20%. You hear that? More work. So the claim that President Obama weakened welfare reform's work requirement is just not true. But they keep running ads on it. As their campaign pollster said "we're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers." Now that is true. I couldn't have said it better myself – I just hope you remember that every time you see the ad.

Let's talk about the debt. We have to deal with it or it will deal with us. President Obama has offered a plan with 4 trillion dollars in debt reduction over a decade, with two and a half dollars of spending reductions for every one dollar of revenue increases, and tight controls on future spending. It's the kind of balanced approach proposed by the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles commission.

I think the President's plan is better than the Romney plan, because the Romney plan fails the first test of fiscal responsibility: The numbers don't add up.

It's supposed to be a debt reduction plan but it begins with five trillion dollars in tax cuts over a ten-year period. That makes the debt hole bigger before they even start to dig out. They say they'll make it up by eliminating loopholes in the tax code. When you ask "which loopholes and how much?," they say "See me after the election on that."

People ask me all the time how we delivered four surplus budgets. What new ideas did we bring? I always give a one-word answer: arithmetic. If they stay with a 5 trillion dollar tax cut in a debt reduction plan – the – arithmetic tells us that one of three things will happen: 1) they'll have to eliminate so many deductions like the ones for home mortgages and charitable giving that middle class families will see their tax bill go up two thousand dollars year while people making over 3 million dollars a year get will still get a 250,000 dollar tax cut; or 2) they'll have to cut so much spending that they'll obliterate the budget for our national parks, for ensuring clean air, clean water, safe food, safe air travel; or they'll cut way back on Pell Grants, college loans, early childhood education and other programs that help middle class families and poor children, not to mention cutting investments in roads, bridges, science, technology and medical research; or 3) they'll do what they've been doing for thirty plus years now – cut taxes more than they cut spending, explode the debt, and weaken the economy. Remember, Republican economic policies quadrupled the debt before I took office and doubled it after I left. We simply can't afford to double-down on trickle-down.

President Obama's plan cuts the debt, honors our values, and brightens the future for our children, our families and our nation.

My fellow Americans, you have to decide what kind of country you want to live in. If you want a you're on your own, winner take all society you should support the Republican ticket. If you want a country of shared opportunities and shared responsibilities – a "we're all in it together" society, you should vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden. If you want every American to vote and you think its wrong to change voting procedures just to reduce the turnout of younger, poorer, minority and disabled voters, you should support Barack Obama. If you think the President was right to open the doors of American opportunity to young immigrants brought here as children who want to go to college or serve in the military, you should vote for Barack Obama. If you want a future of shared prosperity, where the middle class is growing and poverty is declining, where the American Dream is alive and well, and where the United States remains the leading force for peace and prosperity in a highly competitive world, you should vote for Barack Obama.

I love our country – and I know we're coming back. For more than 200 years, through every crisis, we've always come out stronger than we went in. And we will again as long as we do it together. We champion the cause for which our founders pledged their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor – to form a more perfect union.

If that's what you believe, if that's what you want, we have to re-elect President Barack Obama.

God Bless You – God Bless America.

The Republican Infomercial

Now that the "event" is over I guess it's time to put some perspective on it.  The "it" of course is the Republican National Convention.  Delayed by Hurricane Isaac, the convention was compressed into 3 days instead of four, and judging from the ratings, America was grateful.  The fact that the cable television show, "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo Child" beat out the network GOP convention coverage should send a clear message.  Nobody cares!

Not that nobody cares about the election, it's just that since the candidate and his running mate were preordained and the platform was hammered out already, little more remained but a few minor votes on rules changes and a three night long infomercial for the Republicans as they tried to make Mitt Romney look like a "man of the people".

Mitt Romney is anything but a man of the people.  He is a millionaire money-shifter who understands nothing about what average American's  lives are like.  His world is one of buying and gutting companies and dressage horses.  Most folks in this country don't even know what "dressage" is, and they are too busy trying to make a living and provide for their families to care.

The Republican Infomercial was notable for it's absences rather than it's speakers.  Not surprisingly they trouped out every Republican woman they could find to try to make Mitt look appealing to the female voter.  The big hole, no pun intended, was the absence of "Mama Grizzly" Sarah Palin.  You would think the former VP candidate would rate a few minutes of podium time.  Sarah was even pulled off Fox News prior to the convention, once again proving that Fox is simply a propaganda arm of the GOP.  The Republicans don't want you remembering their folly of not vetting a candidate for VP, and their obvious tokenism of selecting a woman.  Apparently, just any woman would do as long as she looked good on TV.

The other gaping hole was the former president George W. Bush.  His name was never spoken, and his voice was conspicuously absent.  The Democrats are featuring former president Bill Clinton as their keynote speaker, but the GOP is trying to rewrite history and ignore that Bush ever existed.  And that is the real issue.

The GOP is all style over substance.  Their platform is filled with wacko right-wing ideology but their candidate is trying to look like a nice guy.  They are counting on the press being passive and the public being stupid.  They are wrong.  This election cycle the press has woken from their slumber and actually is doing their job, reporting facts, not just what people said.  CBS, CNN and amazingly even someone at Fox called Paul Ryan on his monumental lie-fest that was his acceptance speech. 

Thanks to the Occupy movement and the fresh memory of how bad the Bush years were, Americans have begun to look closely at politicians and not just their outward appearance.  I sincerely hope this trend continues right through the election and beyond.  It's time we all got serious about our government, and not just during election years.

Bring Back the Sideshow!

"Hi-ya lookie lookie lookie, I got it here and I'm going to show it to you free!.  Get right up to the edge of the stage cause we're gonna have a free show right here on the Midway. The management of the fair has asked that we try to keep the midway clear,so step right up.

Now I am going to bring out one of the amazing people from our show. People who are so strange you might not believe they are real, but let me reassure you they are all real, live and you'll see them all on the inside of the big Side Show tent."

That was one of the opening pitches by a sideshow talker.  He was building a"tip" or a crowd that later he would "turn"into ticket buyers for the sideshow. Today you rarely hear that call on the midway.  Sideshows and "freak" shows have fallen out of fashion and long been considered politically incorrect.  Some fairs even banned them, but never fear curiosity seekers, the freak show is alive and well on cable TV.

The 21st century freak show is "Reality TV" and though that used to be a metaphor, it is becoming a more accurate description day by day.

Now first of all I am not fond of the word freak, which used to refer to people born with spectacular deformities.  I prefer the more accurate term "special people", because aside from an abnormality through genetics or accident of birth, they are folks like you and me. 

At one time the only way for people such as these to earn a living was to put themselves on display for the curious who would pay to see them. Many special people made good livings as entertainers and moved from the sideshow to the vaudeville stage, even movies.  Today, special people are mainstreamed, and that is a good thing. They go to college, raise families and live relatively ordinary lives without the ballyhoo of the midway.

Enter television,with its voracious appetite for novelty and pretty soon the sideshow is back in full swing. Shows about little people, obese people, and yes even conjoined twins are now box office bonanzas for networks and cable outlets alike.

Even the sideshow acts that were once called "working acts"or "made freaks" are now stars of their own shows.  The tattooed men and women are the most obvious with shows about tattoo artists, but less obvious are shows with the strangest people of all, kiddy beauty pageant contestants and their "freak" parents.

Personally I liked the side show better.  The performers were honest about their role and as an audience member we were honest in our curiosity.  Now it's hidden behind the mask of education and documentary, but add some cotton candy and popcorn and you might as well be inside the big tent.

Hi-ya lookie lookie lookie!

Solar Powered Toilets - Shining New Light on Waste Disposal

Sorry for the pun, but it seemed appropriate.

The story is very exciting, or at least as exciting as waste disposal can be.  To date, most sewage disposal, as in waste from toilets, goes into a city system and is processed at a large waste treatment facility.  The process is costly, inefficient and wastes lots of water.  The alternative septic tank used in rural locations has a number of drawbacks as well.

Enter the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.  They offered a prize for research groups to reinvent the toilet.  The idea was to make an affordable, efficient and a model that could be used world wide in developing countries with little or no waste treatment facilities.  A tall order for a stinky problem.

Never fear, the smart folks at Caltech rose to the challenge and flushed away the competition  with their solar-powered toilet.  The unit takes waste sewage and converts it into hydrogen gas, pure water and fertilizer.  Nice trick.  The video below explains.

Is Toddlers and Tiaras Disguised Child Abuse?

I despise toddler beauty pageants.  Not just because they sexualize per-pubescent girls, but because they are grooming these kids to be walking disasters when they grow up.

This video on Young Turks shows the really weird side of this whole "reality TV" mess and especially the sad, odd and somewhat frightening example of "Honey Boo-Boo Child".  Watch it and tell me what the producers of that show and the kids parents are doing isn't child abuse?  If she lives to be 16 I will be amazed.

WWII Ended 67 Years Ago

I was surprised when I missed the date.  67 years ago in 1945 on August 15, the Japanese signed the documents of surrender and ended the conflict which saw the most horrific weapons mankind has ever produced unleashed on the world. 

Normally this date is one I like to commemorate not only for the end of the war, but to remind myself how destructive we humans can be.  The coup de grâce of the conflict was the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the only two atomic bombs ever used in a military conflict.  Once the world saw the death and destruction they caused, these weapons have remained unused in actual combat, and for that I thank God.

For more info on putting an end to nuclear weapons visit:
http://www.gensuikin.org/english/index.html

It is a sad thing the we don't mark this date anymore in our country.  Not so much with celebration, but with a somber remembrance of all who died and the sacrifices made to end the conflict.

Just in case anyone doesn't know what  a nuclear weapon can do, I added this photo of a mass grave that was hurriedly prepared in Hiroshima as the destruction was being cleaned away.  This is the real face of nuclear weapons, and it is a face that we must never forget.

Also, we must not forget the hubris and blind ambition that started the conflict as well.  Germany and Japan sought to expand their influence and conquer the continents of Europe and Asia.  Their ruthlessness appalled the world.  It is unfortunate that it took an act of equally ruthless destruction to put the final end to the war.

For all those who died, on both sides of the war, it is fitting that we remember them, applaud their bravery and morn for their losses.  Never forget.

"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity"

General Dwight D. Eisenhower

The NRA and Gun Violence

This week after the horrific shooting at the Sikh Temple in Wisconsin comes another story of crazy gun owners.  This one is in Westlake, Ohio where a man entered a movie theater playing the Dark Knight with a bag of guns and ammo.

A quick thinking policeman saw the man who was seated in the back row of the theater.  When he asked to examine the man's bag, he found he was carrying guns and ammunition, along with a first aid kit.  The man, Scott Smith was arrested and his house was searched.  There officers found a cache of guns, pistols and shotguns as well as thousands of rounds of ammo and a gas mask.

Come on folks, isn't it time we really got honest about this mess?  We have unstable people stockpiling guns and ammunition with visions of mass murder in their heads.  We have white-power fanatics using automatic and semi-automatic weapons to kill people strictly because they wear turbans.  We have idiots with orange dyed hair donning assault gear and blasting innocent people in movie theaters.

We also have the NRA.

Now, I have owned guns in the past, and I enjoyed target shooting.  I understand people like to hunt and shoot  for sport.  That's just fine with me, but what the hell do people need with semi-automatic assault weapons and body armor?  How can we interpret the second amendment to include shoulder mounted rocket launchers like some judges do? 

The NRA has far too much political clout and I suspect they are supported not by sportsmen, but by gun manufacturers.  Politicians need to do some serious push-back to the kookie arguments of the NRA and address the epidemic of gun violence in our country.  Rather than feeling safe with all these weapons out there, I feel very vulnerable.  I no longer own guns.  Mine were stolen when my house was burglarized and so more guns got in the hands of criminals.  We have to tell the NRA that we will no longer allow them to bully the country so gun manufacturers can reap the profits of selling military weaponry to every Joe Schmo who wants to be a Rambo.

Get real people!

Russian Flash Mob for Wedding Party - Puttin' on the Ritz!

Obviously staged flash mob, but really fun just the same. Might have been for a wedding reception? My Russian is rusty. Thanks to Nina Hartley for posting this on Twitter! Made me smile.

Prophecy or Dumb Luck?

Handcuffed Suspect Commits Suicide? Why I Don't Buy It!

This one goes in the WTF file for sure.  Jonesboro, Arkansas Police had a suspect in custody and they claim he committed suicide while in custody.

Now take this into consideration.  His hands were handcuffed behind his back and he was in the back seat of a police car.  He was arrested for possession of $10 worth of marijuana.  The arresting officers say the apparently missed a gun he had on him in two searches before being shut in the back of the police car.

Even the police chief has trouble answering how a suspect with hands cuffed behind himself in the backseat of a police car managed to shoot himself in the temple.  This is either an example of a contortionist at work or it's a coverup.  I would apply Occam's Razor to this one and suggest that the arresting officers shot him then concocted the incredulous story of the suicide.

How a Bill Becomes Law - ALEC Style

Lower IQ Related To Racism

To anyone growing up in the south this should come as no surprise.  We have all had run-ins with our fellow Southerner's whose racism is only eclipsed by their "kicked in the head" stupidity.  Still, it's nice to get validation of my experience.

A new study published in Psychological Science shows people who score lower on IQ tests in childhood are more likely to become bigoted as adults.  The same holds true for conservative beliefs.

Why?  Well, I had postulated that it was because conservative ideologies tend to see the world in simple. black and white terms.  That rigid structure appeals to the intellectually incuroious, and the study bears that out as well.

Dr. Brian Nosek, a University of Virginia psychologist said in an interview, "Reality is complicated and messy. Ideologies get rid of the messiness and impose a simpler solution. So, it may not be surprising that people with less cognitive capacity will be attracted to simplifying ideologies."

So next time you are arguing with a conservative, be sure to use small words and simple sentences, otherwise they will just look at you with a blank expression. 

If It Looks Racist, and Smells Racist, It's Probably Racist.

Our friends at the ACLU released a whole lot of information surrounding the Arizona immigration laws and they aren't pretty.

They are emails to and from former Arizona Senate President Russell Pearce (R) and they make a good case that the "show Me Your Papers" law SB 1070 was motivated by racial hatred.  These emails were obtained as part of potential evidence to prove to a federal judge that the law should not go into effect.

A few choice quotes:

“Last week, Denver’s illegal aliens sang our national anthem in Spanish and bastardized the words of OUR country’s most sacred song.”

"Corruption is the mechanism by which Mexico operates. Its people spawn more corruption wherever they go because it is their only known way of life.”

“We are much like the Titanic as we inbreed millions of Mexico’s poor, the world’s poor and we watch our country sink.”

More here at Think Progress if you can stomach it.

Tennessee Ordered to Stop Blocking Muslims from Worshiping in Mosque

Ah Tennessee!  The state that gave us "Don't Say Gay" legislation has finally been bitch slapped by a federal judge and told to join the 21st century.

You wee the affluent suburb of  Murfreesboro is home to a new mosque.  The congregation of that mosque had hoped to worship there starting today at sundown, the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan. The problem is the good citizens of that town have long sought to prevent the opening of the Islamic Center.  The residents filed a lawsuit alleging that Islam was "not a real religion" back in 2010.  Failing that, they convinced a local judge that the mosque’s building permits were invalid because the congregation had not provided “adequate public notice”. 

That is where the Federal Judge stepped in.  He ruled that the county judge could not hold the Murfreesboro mosque to the separate standard he had created in his May ruling.  In other words, they deserved equal protection under the law.  That is a novel idea in Tennessee apparently.

The Mosque will open for it's congregation tonight as scheduled.  However, I suspect there will be a crowd of ignorant mean-spirited "hillbilly kristshuns" on had with offensive picket signs and perhapse worse.  I pray for the safety of everyone involved.

Full disclosure:  my grandfather was from Tennessee and I'm from Texas, where we have our own industrial strength rednecks and idiots, so don't go flaming me for my opinions as some kind of "northerner".

Climate Change Story You Need to Watch

This in-depth report from Al Jazeera is the kind of news stories US networks should aspire to.  Great reporting and a story eveyone on earth needs to see.  I wish we had Al Jazeera on DirectTV in the US.  Hell, I wish we had Comedy Central on DirectTV!

Romney Lies - Again! This Time it May be a Crime

Oh it's going to be repeated over and over, but how can you avoid it when it's the truth.  Mitt Romney lies.  And I know there are those who will say, "all politicians lie", but not like this.

Romney filed government documents that show he remained CEO of Bain Capital three years after he says he did.  Why does this matter?  Well these are SEC documents showing he was the firm's "sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer, and president."  Meanwhile in a Massachusetts financial disclosure he filed in 2003 showed he was executive in control in 2001 and 2002.

That contradicts what the Romney campaign and Bain have been feeding to the press.  Like this one:

"Mitt Romney retired from Bain Capital in February 1999. He has had no involvement in the management or investment activities of Bain Capital, or with any of its portfolio companies, since that time."

Except according to legal documents filed with the SEC it isn't true.   A lie!

Why does this matter?  Well if someone saw the SEC filings and invested in Bain because they believed Romney was CEO then  it is deliberate misrepresentation by the company and Romney and that is not legal.

The intricacies of the lie are myriad, but the substance is simple.  Romney stayed around at Bain while it bankrupted companies and outsourced thousands of jobs.  He either maintained control of Bain Capital or he lied about it.  He lied to the SEC or to the Massachusetts Ballot Law Commission and either way it's serious.

Fixing Beliefs - Texas GOP Promotes Ignorance in Their Platform

I was raised to be intellectually curious.  My family encouraged me to investigate, explore and learn both with their guidance and on my own.  As some of you know, my father was a research scientist, microbiologist and hematologist, so I spent a lot of time hanging around laboratories growing up.  Asking “why” was a natural to me as breathing.

Most of my friends when I was a child also shared some of that intellectual curiosity; it was taught to us in school and at home.  Critical thinking skills were as important as learning facts and figures. It is what an education is all about, teaching children not just to recite their ABC’s but to actually reason and think on their own.

That is why this clause in the GOP platform struck me as uniquely bone headed and inconceivable.

Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.

Read that gobbledygook again and let the meaning really sink in. 

The idea that challenging students “fixed beliefs” is something bad really floors me.  I believe it was Socrates who taught his students by asking questions.  Questioning their “fixed beliefs”.  That is a technique that worked very well over 2000 years ago and seems to have been the foundation for science, philosophy and even theology for lo these many years.  That’s why when the great State of Texas GOP want to toss out the entire purpose of scholarship I get a little testy.

If we abandon critical thinking, we might as well stop innovating and doing any research and development at all.  Why question the “fixed beliefs” of anyone?  Some people believe the Earth is flat, I suppose the school system under the GOP platform would stop teaching the fact that the Earth is round, to avoid the behavior modification of having a student understand that they will not fall off the edge of the earth if they travel too far east or west.

What is this plank in the otherwise wacko platform really about?  Well it is a concession to the folks who are convinced that schools are trying to teach kids all manner of un-biblical facts like the Earth was not created in just 6 “literal” days.  Or that all humankind did not descend from Adam and Eve!

What’s worse is that the folks who wrote this tripe most likely have kids that will never attend a public school.  Their kids will go to private academies where they are protected from minorities and other undesirable rabble. And that brings me to the real reason for this plank.

For years the GOP has been actively trying to gut the public education system in our state.  Their continued call for “vouchers” points to this.  They believe in a two tiered education system, though they will never come out and say it that clearly.  One tier is private education for the privileged kids who will become the leaders and the other is the public system for the kids who will most likely grow up to be serviceable workers in society.  Now before you go calling me a socialist or worse, hear me out.

In South Africa during apartheid, they had a very well organized two tier education system.  For whites, a good public education will all the bells and whistles and for blacks and “coloreds” they had the “Bantu Education System”.  This appalling system was designed to give its students only enough education to make them useful as low paid workers and underlings.  It was one of the most reprehensible components of the apartheid system yet was very effective for its evil purpose.

Transpose that to today, and you see the same mentality being woven into the GOP platform for public education.  It is insidious and potentially devastating for our education system which used to be one of the best in the world.  Now it is but a shell of that and a large part of it is due to changes imposed by politicians in the guise of “improving accountability” and the latest ploy, preventing the education system from challenging “fixed beliefs”.

You will be hard pressed to find any politician who will admit to this systematic dismantling of public education, but if you look at the facts it is undeniable.  Of course that is unless you are already a product of a system that doesn’t challenge your “fixed beliefs”, in which case you most likely never finished this blog.