Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Cue the Supremes
I really only have one response to this ridiculous Supreme Court decision regarding "indecent" language on TV.
Go fuck yourselves.
End of discussion.
(0) comments
Go fuck yourselves.
End of discussion.
(0) comments
Clinton's Penis Flies Again
So... Air Force One flies over New York and Mayor Bloomberg gets his panties in a twist and this is news... why? While a possibly ill-advised move by Director of the White House Military office Louis Caldera, what Mayor Pissy Pants fails to mention is that the NYPD and an un-named City official were informed of the photo op before the fact. The failure to pass that information along to the Mayor, therefore, is the fault of his own people, and not of the Obama White House. indeed, President Obama was not privvy to the mission and was royally pissed himself when he heard about it.
But, short version -- the failed Neocons are playing the clutching at straws game here. Ooh -- a well marked and very recognizable aircraft flew around New York City. Booga booga.
Anyone want to address the more important question -- as in, human beings were tortured under the aegis of the Bush-Cheney administration, in violation of international law? If Mayor Bloomberg were anything but a partisan hack, he'd have his tampon in a twist over that, and be howling for the blood of the War Criminals who recently occupied the White House. His feigned offense over this incident just paints him as another NeoCon asshole, and this insincere Obama-bashing is just a repeat of the Mantra of the 90s -- "B-b-b-ut... Clinton's Penis!"
Stop your obsession with the Presidential cock, you morans. If you were real patriots, you would be helping this new Administration fix all the shit that happened to this country from January 2001 to January 2009. But, hey -- that would require you to act like grown-ups.
Ooh -- scary plane. Pardon me while I shit myself.
Get the fuck over it already. If New York City's own officials had done their job, they would have spared Mayor DoomAndGloomberg the opportunity to take a big dump and then gloat about it. If anyone needs to be spanked over this incident, it's the Chief of the NYPD.
After all, Obama's plane didn't take out any buildings. That's a lot more than can be said of the Bush/Cheney express of 2001.
(0) comments
But, short version -- the failed Neocons are playing the clutching at straws game here. Ooh -- a well marked and very recognizable aircraft flew around New York City. Booga booga.
Anyone want to address the more important question -- as in, human beings were tortured under the aegis of the Bush-Cheney administration, in violation of international law? If Mayor Bloomberg were anything but a partisan hack, he'd have his tampon in a twist over that, and be howling for the blood of the War Criminals who recently occupied the White House. His feigned offense over this incident just paints him as another NeoCon asshole, and this insincere Obama-bashing is just a repeat of the Mantra of the 90s -- "B-b-b-ut... Clinton's Penis!"
Stop your obsession with the Presidential cock, you morans. If you were real patriots, you would be helping this new Administration fix all the shit that happened to this country from January 2001 to January 2009. But, hey -- that would require you to act like grown-ups.
Ooh -- scary plane. Pardon me while I shit myself.
Get the fuck over it already. If New York City's own officials had done their job, they would have spared Mayor DoomAndGloomberg the opportunity to take a big dump and then gloat about it. If anyone needs to be spanked over this incident, it's the Chief of the NYPD.
After all, Obama's plane didn't take out any buildings. That's a lot more than can be said of the Bush/Cheney express of 2001.
(0) comments
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Hope for Humanity...
I am no big fan of reality shows, but Susan Boyle is the right person at the right time... not attractive by conventional means, laughed at initially by her audience, but the second she opened her mouth, she showed us the true beauty of humanity. With pure passion and raw talent, she is a living example of the true potential, and the true inner beauty, of our species. By the shallow counts of mass media humanity, she's a loser. Over 40, a virgin, not attractive... a reject in most shallow estimations. And yet -- not one note out of her mouth, and she won over the audience and judges of Britain's Got Talent. And she's no fluke. Witness her a capella performance on Larry King Live: Wow.
Susan Boyle will live on in history. This woman has talent, guts and no fear, and should be an inspiration to us all. She is truly a Secular Saint -- someone who, by refusing to adhere to society's standards in pursuit of her dream, has achieved her dream already.
Normally, I would dismiss realty show stars. In this case I can't. Susan Boyle will have as big an effect on history as Gandhi or Mother Teresa. She is a living example of the little people grabbing power by the nose and saying, "Hey, guess what? We are the ones you should pay attention to." And how appropriate that her debut to the world would be a song from a musical based on the French Revolution. It's just about French Revolution time again, and Susan Boyle has unintentionally fired the opening shot over the bow of the mainstream media.
She has touched us all, and those of us with hearts will follow. Our hearts will go on. This decade has found its muse in an unlikely place -- in a commoner with heart, talent and passion.
Susan Boyle -- you are a winner. Period. Our hats are off to you.
(0) comments
Susan Boyle will live on in history. This woman has talent, guts and no fear, and should be an inspiration to us all. She is truly a Secular Saint -- someone who, by refusing to adhere to society's standards in pursuit of her dream, has achieved her dream already.
Normally, I would dismiss realty show stars. In this case I can't. Susan Boyle will have as big an effect on history as Gandhi or Mother Teresa. She is a living example of the little people grabbing power by the nose and saying, "Hey, guess what? We are the ones you should pay attention to." And how appropriate that her debut to the world would be a song from a musical based on the French Revolution. It's just about French Revolution time again, and Susan Boyle has unintentionally fired the opening shot over the bow of the mainstream media.
She has touched us all, and those of us with hearts will follow. Our hearts will go on. This decade has found its muse in an unlikely place -- in a commoner with heart, talent and passion.
Susan Boyle -- you are a winner. Period. Our hats are off to you.
(0) comments
Friday, April 10, 2009
Bad Science Alert
While I find some of Mike Rivero's political reporting at whatreallyhappened.com useful, he does often twirl off into tinfoil hat land, and I won't forgive him for turning against President Obama on January 21, 2009. However, there's one subject he seems to be dogmatic on -- and wrong -- and that is the origin of the universe. He's definitely in crackpot science land on all of his arguments as to why the Big Bang never happened, but he pulled a particularly heinous bad science error in a recent posting.
The bad bit of science he relies on in this posting follows:
The problem is, he's dead wrong when he claims that super novae create the heavy elements. In fact, super novae occur because a star has finished synthesizing the heavy elements. The physics are complicated, but the short version is this: the first stars were pure hydrogen. Along with helium, those were the heaviest elements created in the primordial universe. The helium didn't do much by way of forming stars, but the hydrogen did, collapsing from clouds into incredibly massive, hot and fast-burning stars that immediately began to fuse hydrogen into helium. This fusion created heat and energy, which counteracted the tendency of the star to collapse under the force of gravity, keeping the thing alive. Eventually, when enough helium was created, the force of gravity began to fuse the helium into carbon, then the carbon into neon, the neon into oxygen, then finally the oxygen into silicon. Each step of the way, the fusion process released energy and counteracted gravity.
However, after silicon, the star would begin to create iron by fusion, and this is critical because the creation of iron by fusion does not release energy. At this point, gravity begins to take over because the pressure of the fusion reaction is not enough to push against it. The outside of the star collapses rapidly, in effect behaving like one gigantic fusion (or "hydrogen") bomb. In the resulting explosion, the outer layers are blown off. This creates a nebula of gas and heavy elements, but the heavy elements have taken a few million years to be created within the star.
Ooh. Real science. If Rivero had really done his homework, he would understand why a Big Bang, which is an outward explosion from nothing, is not the same as a super nova, which is the sudden explosion and implosion of an element factory. When you understand how stars work, his argument blows apart like Eta Carinae.
Political bloggers should not dabble in science, unless they know science. This is ironic, because Rivero has alluded to working for NASA in the past -- but he was obviously not an astrophysicist. It's also a shame because, while he preaches against people blindly drinking the KoolAid and accepting dogma, on this particular issue he is blind to his to his own prejudices.
All evidence points to a singularity that exploded to create this universe. We don't know the causes or conditions much earlier than about first 10^-43 seconds after it happened, but what we know after that time pretty much indicates that, yeah -- Big Bang.
(0) comments
The bad bit of science he relies on in this posting follows:
Our Solar System and planets have heavy elements (without which you would not be here) because at some time prior to the creation of our Solar System another star in the immediate vicinity exploded, creating the heavy elements and scattering them into the universe.He then uses this to claim that the Big Bang could not have happened because all heavy elements are created by super nova, the Big Bang was just a giant super nova, but the early universe lacked heavy elements -- ergo, the Big Bang never happened.
The problem is, he's dead wrong when he claims that super novae create the heavy elements. In fact, super novae occur because a star has finished synthesizing the heavy elements. The physics are complicated, but the short version is this: the first stars were pure hydrogen. Along with helium, those were the heaviest elements created in the primordial universe. The helium didn't do much by way of forming stars, but the hydrogen did, collapsing from clouds into incredibly massive, hot and fast-burning stars that immediately began to fuse hydrogen into helium. This fusion created heat and energy, which counteracted the tendency of the star to collapse under the force of gravity, keeping the thing alive. Eventually, when enough helium was created, the force of gravity began to fuse the helium into carbon, then the carbon into neon, the neon into oxygen, then finally the oxygen into silicon. Each step of the way, the fusion process released energy and counteracted gravity.
However, after silicon, the star would begin to create iron by fusion, and this is critical because the creation of iron by fusion does not release energy. At this point, gravity begins to take over because the pressure of the fusion reaction is not enough to push against it. The outside of the star collapses rapidly, in effect behaving like one gigantic fusion (or "hydrogen") bomb. In the resulting explosion, the outer layers are blown off. This creates a nebula of gas and heavy elements, but the heavy elements have taken a few million years to be created within the star.
Ooh. Real science. If Rivero had really done his homework, he would understand why a Big Bang, which is an outward explosion from nothing, is not the same as a super nova, which is the sudden explosion and implosion of an element factory. When you understand how stars work, his argument blows apart like Eta Carinae.
Political bloggers should not dabble in science, unless they know science. This is ironic, because Rivero has alluded to working for NASA in the past -- but he was obviously not an astrophysicist. It's also a shame because, while he preaches against people blindly drinking the KoolAid and accepting dogma, on this particular issue he is blind to his to his own prejudices.
All evidence points to a singularity that exploded to create this universe. We don't know the causes or conditions much earlier than about first 10^-43 seconds after it happened, but what we know after that time pretty much indicates that, yeah -- Big Bang.
(0) comments
Thursday, April 09, 2009
Vive la Nation
Two hundred and twenty years ago this July, the people of France decided that they had had enough. In response to a fiscal crisis, they began to seize power, eventually deposing the King, Nobility and the Clergy. Many heads rolled, social structures changed, Sure, a generation later they gave birth to Napoleon -- although he may not have been as bad a guy as history paints him.
The summer of 1789 changed the face of Europe for decades. Perhaps the summer of 2009 will change the face of the world for centuries. Perhaps it's time that the Third Estate, the People of the United States, pick up the pitchforks and the torches and get rid of the Nobility -- all elected officials -- and the Clergy -- the Bankers and Investors and other parasites. Perhaps it's time to bring back the guillotine. While they're at it, it's probably a good time to behead the Fourth Estate, the turncoat press, who has been kissing the asses of the first two Estates for years.
July 14, 1789 -- Bastille Day, the French 4th of July. Maybe July 14, 2009 should see the same. Two hundred and twenty years ago, the people of France stormed the equivalent of the Pentagon, took all its weapons and liberated its prisoners, and so reigned supreme for several years as they took names, kicked ass and lopped off heads. France today? Their people are willing to revolt at a moment's notice, their government listens, and that's a good thing. All of that, plus government funding of social services is at a ridiculous extreme. More than any other EU Country, France gets it. The politicians rule at the pleasure of the People and not the other way around.
No wonder the NeoCons love to make so much fun of France. They're one of the few countries that actually gets the idea that the People run the place. As well they should. A few guillotines and some show trials might manage to turn America into the same -- a government truly by and for the People.
And isn't that what those terrorists we call the Founding Fathers wanted in the first place? No taxation without representation. No compensation without solutions. Death to the true leeches, freedom to the People. Let's make this one a long, hot summer, and hold the feet of the ruling class to the fire. Obey your masters -- us -- or perish.
It's that simple.
(0) comments
The summer of 1789 changed the face of Europe for decades. Perhaps the summer of 2009 will change the face of the world for centuries. Perhaps it's time that the Third Estate, the People of the United States, pick up the pitchforks and the torches and get rid of the Nobility -- all elected officials -- and the Clergy -- the Bankers and Investors and other parasites. Perhaps it's time to bring back the guillotine. While they're at it, it's probably a good time to behead the Fourth Estate, the turncoat press, who has been kissing the asses of the first two Estates for years.
July 14, 1789 -- Bastille Day, the French 4th of July. Maybe July 14, 2009 should see the same. Two hundred and twenty years ago, the people of France stormed the equivalent of the Pentagon, took all its weapons and liberated its prisoners, and so reigned supreme for several years as they took names, kicked ass and lopped off heads. France today? Their people are willing to revolt at a moment's notice, their government listens, and that's a good thing. All of that, plus government funding of social services is at a ridiculous extreme. More than any other EU Country, France gets it. The politicians rule at the pleasure of the People and not the other way around.
No wonder the NeoCons love to make so much fun of France. They're one of the few countries that actually gets the idea that the People run the place. As well they should. A few guillotines and some show trials might manage to turn America into the same -- a government truly by and for the People.
And isn't that what those terrorists we call the Founding Fathers wanted in the first place? No taxation without representation. No compensation without solutions. Death to the true leeches, freedom to the People. Let's make this one a long, hot summer, and hold the feet of the ruling class to the fire. Obey your masters -- us -- or perish.
It's that simple.
(0) comments
Wednesday, April 08, 2009
Zero Tolerance... for the Stupid
Parents, when are you going to say "Enough"? You pay the property taxes that fund the schools, you vote for the board members, you control the horizontal and the vertical. How many more times do we have to read stupid stories like this one, in which an otherwise outstanding student is expelled because some administrator has their head far up their ass and can't think outside the box?
It is far past time for a parent revolt, and there's a very simple way to make your concerns felt -- deeply -- in the schools. Some student gets expelled for pretending that a Tic Tac is a Xanax? Well... keep your kids home for the day or the rest of the week, then letter bomb the asshat who made the decision. Let them know that your child is not going to school today because the morons in charge have no sense of perspective. Thrill in the fact that the school loses money for every day that your student is not there, to be indoctrinated as a mindless drone.
Lather, rinse, repeat, as often as necessary.
The thing is that we have to remind the asshat school administrators who their employers are. They do not work for the government. They work for the parents, and all of the residents of their district, who pay their salaries. Parents of school age kids, you are not the servants of the administrators. It's the other way around. The sooner you realize that the better.
It's hard enough to raise a child nowadays. Why should it be made harder because "A" students can have their future success severely impaired for bringing an aspirin or nail clippers or a Tylenol or a plastic butter knife or any one of a million innocuous things to school? Why should we allow our children to be judged by people who were so incapable of success at real life that they had to resort to jobs as school administrators?
Remember how we all thought the Vice Principals and Deans and Principals of our schools were complete losers who couldn't get laid with a fistful of fifties in a whorehouse in Nevada? Well, we were right then, and we're right now. These people have no business judging our children, who are in the schools to learn. The sooner we hand them their asses on a silver platter and take back control of our schools, the better.
But that means that you, the parents, must get involved. When you encounter a dillhole decision like the one in the story above, do something. Protest, write letters, call representatives, keep your kids out of school. Fight for the right to make your own decisions about your child's upbringing. If the schools won't listen, march their leaders to the symbolic guillotine.
The point is, Zero Tolerance is bullshit. Time to raise hell against it. Time to take back the school systems, and your children's futures. Time to be good parents. Fight for your kids, and don't roll over. You owe nothing less to the future.
(0) comments
It is far past time for a parent revolt, and there's a very simple way to make your concerns felt -- deeply -- in the schools. Some student gets expelled for pretending that a Tic Tac is a Xanax? Well... keep your kids home for the day or the rest of the week, then letter bomb the asshat who made the decision. Let them know that your child is not going to school today because the morons in charge have no sense of perspective. Thrill in the fact that the school loses money for every day that your student is not there, to be indoctrinated as a mindless drone.
Lather, rinse, repeat, as often as necessary.
The thing is that we have to remind the asshat school administrators who their employers are. They do not work for the government. They work for the parents, and all of the residents of their district, who pay their salaries. Parents of school age kids, you are not the servants of the administrators. It's the other way around. The sooner you realize that the better.
It's hard enough to raise a child nowadays. Why should it be made harder because "A" students can have their future success severely impaired for bringing an aspirin or nail clippers or a Tylenol or a plastic butter knife or any one of a million innocuous things to school? Why should we allow our children to be judged by people who were so incapable of success at real life that they had to resort to jobs as school administrators?
Remember how we all thought the Vice Principals and Deans and Principals of our schools were complete losers who couldn't get laid with a fistful of fifties in a whorehouse in Nevada? Well, we were right then, and we're right now. These people have no business judging our children, who are in the schools to learn. The sooner we hand them their asses on a silver platter and take back control of our schools, the better.
But that means that you, the parents, must get involved. When you encounter a dillhole decision like the one in the story above, do something. Protest, write letters, call representatives, keep your kids out of school. Fight for the right to make your own decisions about your child's upbringing. If the schools won't listen, march their leaders to the symbolic guillotine.
The point is, Zero Tolerance is bullshit. Time to raise hell against it. Time to take back the school systems, and your children's futures. Time to be good parents. Fight for your kids, and don't roll over. You owe nothing less to the future.
(0) comments
Monday, April 06, 2009
Too Big to Fail? No. Too Big to Bail
If I walked into a bank with a note and a gun, and took a few thousand dollars from a teller, the FBI would hunt me down and throw me in a Federal Prison for a long time.
If a banker walks into a bank, makes some absolutely stupid gambles with other people's money and loses it to the tune of billions, he is rewarded for his failure and saved when the Fed cranks up the printing presses.
Look at the lack of logic in that second paragraph again. It's as if you're walking down the street and get mugged. The mugger takes your wallet with, say, eighty dollars in it. The police catch him and their response is -- they give him a hundred and sixty dollars to compensate him for your loss, then send him back on his way to be a mugger.
You seeing anything wrong with this picture?
It is time to stop rewarding failure. Conservatives bitch and whine about the mythical welfare mother who leeches off of the taxpayers but, honestly, how much could such a person really take? Fifteen, twenty grand in a year? The investment bankers and Ponzi scheme runners and other financial wizards who have run their institutions into the hole for billions could burn through twenty grand in someone else's money in seventeen minutes.
And yet, they walk the streets.
Well, enough. There is no corporation too big to fail. Or, perhaps, no corporation should be allowed to become "too big" to fail. We need to return to an era of the true free market with heavy regulation. If a company makes bad business decisions, they go out of business. No single company can become too big, vertically or horizontally, so that their implosion would have any great effect.
In recent decades, the idea of "corporate personhood" has been pushed by these same CEOs who fail upward, the idea being that they can protect themselves by applying human rights to corporations. Well, if they want to continue to do so, they have to accept one natural extension of that warped view of human rights. Corporations that go bad should be subject to the death penalty. Trample the rights of others by stealing their money, losing their investments, by screwing up royally? Off with your corporate heads, the body dumped to your competitors.
The only way to escape the current financial crisis is to execute the companies seeking bailouts, then turn over the assets -- including all those executive bonuses and jets and cars, and corporate assets and capital and machinery and real estate and etc. -- to the employees. They get to sell what they're given at government auctions, keeping the profits, tax-free. Talk about a true economic stimulus? This is it.
The Bernie Madoffs and CEOs and VPs can go beg for money in the streets. And they can be thankful that this isn't France in 1789, in which case they would have met a much more permanent form of public censure, in which more than just their companies would be publicly executed.
(0) comments
If a banker walks into a bank, makes some absolutely stupid gambles with other people's money and loses it to the tune of billions, he is rewarded for his failure and saved when the Fed cranks up the printing presses.
Look at the lack of logic in that second paragraph again. It's as if you're walking down the street and get mugged. The mugger takes your wallet with, say, eighty dollars in it. The police catch him and their response is -- they give him a hundred and sixty dollars to compensate him for your loss, then send him back on his way to be a mugger.
You seeing anything wrong with this picture?
It is time to stop rewarding failure. Conservatives bitch and whine about the mythical welfare mother who leeches off of the taxpayers but, honestly, how much could such a person really take? Fifteen, twenty grand in a year? The investment bankers and Ponzi scheme runners and other financial wizards who have run their institutions into the hole for billions could burn through twenty grand in someone else's money in seventeen minutes.
And yet, they walk the streets.
Well, enough. There is no corporation too big to fail. Or, perhaps, no corporation should be allowed to become "too big" to fail. We need to return to an era of the true free market with heavy regulation. If a company makes bad business decisions, they go out of business. No single company can become too big, vertically or horizontally, so that their implosion would have any great effect.
In recent decades, the idea of "corporate personhood" has been pushed by these same CEOs who fail upward, the idea being that they can protect themselves by applying human rights to corporations. Well, if they want to continue to do so, they have to accept one natural extension of that warped view of human rights. Corporations that go bad should be subject to the death penalty. Trample the rights of others by stealing their money, losing their investments, by screwing up royally? Off with your corporate heads, the body dumped to your competitors.
The only way to escape the current financial crisis is to execute the companies seeking bailouts, then turn over the assets -- including all those executive bonuses and jets and cars, and corporate assets and capital and machinery and real estate and etc. -- to the employees. They get to sell what they're given at government auctions, keeping the profits, tax-free. Talk about a true economic stimulus? This is it.
The Bernie Madoffs and CEOs and VPs can go beg for money in the streets. And they can be thankful that this isn't France in 1789, in which case they would have met a much more permanent form of public censure, in which more than just their companies would be publicly executed.
(0) comments
