Whale Song

The sea is burning.
Family is lost in din.
Your voice is a distant echo
Even as I brush your skin.

Day bake betrays the primal allure of night.

But when the stink of oil and death
   And the rumble of steel fills the world;
When there is nothing...

When there are no calves and you are alone
Remember then.

We tried to go back.

Democrats Are Determined to Keep Losing to the GOP

Democrats are stubbornly refusing to understand the message they are being sent by the American electorate. Having lost a presidential election to the least popular presidential candidate in history they are eagerly chugging down their own Kool-Aide. They are blaming the Russians, the FBI, Jill Stein, third party voters, and anyone else they can find without the resources or political cache to publicly defend themselves.

The corporate media, willing to say anything to hide it's collusion in the rise of Trump, is pandering to their every word.

While I personally find these excuses laughable, let's assume for one second that it's all true. All any of this does is explain how Clinton lost the presidential election and conveniently ignores that the Democrats have lost more than a thousand house seats in eight years.

It is clear that the American electorate is fed up with the Democratic party, yet the democrats, with their typical apathy and self righteous certainty in their own wisdom, are refusing to make any changes that might indicate that they are hearing the cries of anger coming even from within their own party ranks. They have chosen, instead, to hold the course and ride out the next four years. They have kept all their party old bosses enthroned certain that the independent voters that swung to trump were somehow fooled by his con. They are certain that after four years of Trump's iconic brand of sheer incompetence these lost sheep will flock back to their corrupt "lesser evil" campaign strategy.

The Democrats are even making noises about running Hillary Clinton again.

As always, the Democrats are underestimating the American voter, and in so doing they are virtually guaranteeing an eight year Trump regime.

The Democrat's current strategy makes two presumptions.

The first is that Donald Trump has no intention of keeping any of his campaign promises and has every intention of selling out the middle class to enrich himself and his entourage. This is a fair and reasonable assumption which, for all practical purposes, rather falls into the category of, "No shit, Sherlock."

Their second assumption is that when his voters see this they will be disillusioned making the 2020 race an easy win. They couldn't be more wrong.

The fundamental assumption, that Trump voters are a bunch of idiots who bought into Trumps con is both typical of the neoliberal intellectual superiority complex, and JUST PLAIN WRONG.

The VAST majority of Trumps voters know EXACTLY what Trump is.

They will be neither surprised nor disappointed with the Trump administrations constant blunders and failures. They are counting on it. To most trump voters this election is a thumb in the eye of a political establishment that has failed them, again and again and again and again...

And it seems fairly certain that the same conditions that allowed a jaded and abandoned electorate to troll the entire nation with a Trump administration will still be alive and well in 2020.

Hunker Down. It's going to be a LONG eight years.

Dems Destroyed in 2016 Election STILL Struggling to Take Responsibilty

Non-voters did NOT cost Hillary this election. It wasn't third parties or Wikileaks or Comey, either. These dialogs, coming out of the Democratic establishment in order to avoid responsibility for their epic failure to make any meaningful headway at all this election cycle, are complete and utter bullshit. In political commentary we call that "punching down": Blaming the powerless for the failures of the powerful.
HILLARY cost Hillary this election.  
What cost Hillary this election was that almost 1 in 10 DEMOCRATS voted for Donald Trump.
That's right. Hillary was such a badly chosen candidate that not only was she completely unable to attract the center, she wasn't even able to unify her own party.
Let's be crystal clear about what just happened. Hillary didn't just fail to inspire Democrats to "get out the vote", although that was certainly a factor. Hillary Clinton actually drove voters across the aisle.It would seem a no-brainer that Hillary was just a bad nominee.
But no. Instead of taking responsibility for the fact that they rigged the primary process over threats of a #DemExit and nominated a candidate with a trending #NeverHillary hashtag, the Democratic establishment is trying to blame people who didn't vote, or voted outside the two party duopoly.
Blaming Jill Stein is stupid. If EVERY Stein voter had voted for Hillary she still would have lost. Gary Johnson is a CONSERVATIVE. If he took votes from anyone it was Donald Trump. Rachel Maddow is in the throws of cognitive dissonance when she suggests half of Gary Johnsons voters would ever vote for Hillary Clinton.

People who don't vote are not the problem. If a person can't be bothered to stay informed, they shouldn't vote. Uninformed voters don't help the Democratic Process.  
Besides, in Michigan (where Hillary lost by only 11,000 votes) 90,000 voters filled out their downticket ballot and left the ballot bubbles for President empty. Non-voters were just not the problem.
While the Democratic establishment and their bleating herd of loyalists are struggling with this concept, one undeniable truth is clear as day. They have nobody to blame but themselves.
Most of you have seen the Jonathan Pie video floating around, and SOME few liberals have shown at least a few glimmers of understanding, but most of them STILL haven't taken the real message to heart. They are creating a narrative that the reason they lost is that they didn't try hard enough to persuade.
WRONG.
Yes their unwillingness to communicate with dissenters... driven by an arrogant presumption of their innate moral superiority... was certainly a problem for them. Calling people sexist, or racist, or privileged was, indeed, an outrageously STUPID strategy for persuading people, but that was just the tip of the iceberg.
Their REAL problem was their shitty, war-criminal, corporatist candidate. Trying to "persuade" people wouldn't have changed that.
Listening might have.
If they had listened when #BernieOrBust started to trend... If they had been willing to compromise rather than "persuade"... They would ALL be celebrating today and Donald Trump would be back to his old day job of driving business ventures into the ground.
In the end the Media is going to hide their collusion with what has been, perhaps, one of the most colossal and incompetent failures in US politics since the Civil War by turning this into another variation of their "Bernie Bro" narrative. And they'll succeed. They'll blame Jill Stein or Bernie Sanders the same way they blamed Ralph Nader for 2000. That was a lie then, and it's a lie now, but it will play because they're the mass media and there's nobody around to say otherwise.
But those of us few who are informed and paying attention know better.
The Dems didn't lose this election because people didn't vote. They didn't lose because people voted for Jill Stein. They didn't lose because Bernie was mean to her before the primary.
They didn't lose this election because they didn't persuade.
The Dems lost this election because they refused to BE persuaded and that's 100% their own fault.

Steel Rainfall

Ain't no "why" once flak and bone fly.
The fog of war. The blinded crowd.
Brassy anthems play out, proud.
Drums beat out the same old call:
"Embrace with us the steel rainfall".

Stars and spangles fade to gray.
Were they colored yesterday?
Once again the wheel comes 'round.
The blood of good men feeds the ground
While with ingenious sleight of hand
Kings and generals make their stand
And with a patriarchal frown
They lock the whole damn kingdom down.

The innocents that we would free
Sleep beneath a symphony
Of missiles and artillery
While an arrogant cacophony
Of procedural propriety
Hides our culpability.

The Laws of Social Dynamics

1. Never get a stiffy for your boss.
2. The ability to alter the facts to fit their views is the one thing stupid people have in common with powerful ones.
3. The reason you hate your parents is that most of the time, they're right.
4. The reason you hate your kids is that most of the time, they're right.
5. Waitresses don't flirt with you. They get paid to look you in the eye and smile.
6. Everybody loves an honest man who knows how to keep his mouth shut.
7. The more reason you have to be lonely, the less anyone cares how you feel.
8. Listen by watching. Talk is composed of flapping lips and hot air.
9. Thoughtlessness is deadlier than malice.
10. If you're bored, it's because you're boring.
11. Most people will thank you for your patience by blowing you off.
12. Cheaters prosper.
13. No matter how much they smile, everybody hates the last asshole in the bar.
14. Nine lies out of ten are told at you, not to you.
15. Beauty and character are an exceedingly rare combination.
16. The likelihood of any given group making an intelligent decision is inversely proportional to the number of people in the group.

 

#OurRevolution is Dead. Progressives Killed It.

#OurRevolution has doomed itself. By deciding that promoting progressivism is more important than putting a stop to government corruption they have permanently marginalized themselves.


Bernie had a wide range of independents supporting him including libertarians like myself and other disenfranchised conservatives. He even had the support of a number of Republicans. But be clear...
We supported Bernie despite his progressive world view, NOT because of it.


With the appointment of Jeff Weaver as the unelected "President" of the organization #OurRevolution is clearly positioning itself to put itself into debt to big donors, become a part of the corruption that it's pretending to champion against. It has decided to accept systemic corruption in order to promote a progressive agenda.


That is not a movement I have any wish to join.


The Greens are no alternative either. Bernie was a reformer who happened to be a progressive. We could live with that. Jill Stein is a progressive who happens to be a reformer. That's a pretty big difference.


We need put an end to the oligarchy FIRST. We need to agree to disagree on everything else. We can work out the rest of our differences later.


No... this "revolution" is over. Progressives killed it. I'm going back to the Libertarians for now.


You "revolutionaries" let us know when you're ready to start a revolution we can ALL get behind. Let us know when you're ready to focus on getting the legalized corruption out of the political process.


In the meantime enjoy getting nothing done.

Monkey Tale

I climbed to the top of the highest tree in the forest
Just so I could see the view

But there was a dead monkey up there
And that made me sad

So...
I decided to enjoy my success from halfway down.



It was still very grand
And it didn't smell so much like dead monkey.

An Open Letter to the Democratic Party

Maybe this is our fault. Maybe we weren't clear. Maybe we shouldn't have made it so personal. It doesn't really matter any more, but I feel the need to try to explain it one last time.

When we told you we were #BernieOrBust we meant it, but maybe we shouldn't have made it about Bernie. When we told you we were #NeverHillary we meant it, but maybe we shouldn't have made it about Hillary.

This isn't about them. It never was.

This is about a system of government we no longer believe in.

No... I'm not talking about the Republic. I'm talking about what it has become as a direct result of the so-called "two party system", which has really become more of a single "pro-business" party with two squabbling factions.

We like to pretend this process is Democratic, but it's not. The same tiny handful of super wealthy corporations owns and funds the whole pageant. The same moneyed interests fund both parties and own the media that props it up.

Bernie tried to challenge this system from the inside, and he chose the Democratic party to do it. We supported him because we supported what he was trying to do, and by extension we supported you. 
 
Maybe we should have used the hashtag #DemocracyOrBust. Maybe we should have used the hashtag #NeverOligarchy. Maybe if we had depersonalized it you would have understood our message more clearly. By personalizing it we invited recriminations and bruised egos to obfuscate what we were trying to say.
  
But that's not how hashtags work. Hashtags are reflections of our flawed, beautiful selves in all our glory. They reflect the passion of the moment and as people we can't help ourselves but to write our plays replete with heroes and villains.

And let's be honest, when confronted by an opposing point of view we'd all rather be offended than try to see clearly into a deeper underlying meaning.

The problem with Hillary Clinton isn't that Hillary Clinton is a bad politician.

Quite the opposite. She's an extraordinarily skilled and accomplished politician. The problem is the system she is a part of, which literally legalizes bribery. Being a masterful operator in a system which leverages campaign financing into legislative power and incentivizes corruption by allowing politicians to amass vast personal fortunes by peddling influence is not something to be proud of.

Now it's over.

We're sorry you've chosen not to embrace our campaign to restore Democracy to the Republic, but we will not be unifying with you in support of the Oligarchy.

You're going to have to pull this one off without our help.

Please don't take this as an invitation to debate or persuade. Don't waste your time and ours trying to convince us that your Oligarch is better than their Oligarch or trying to scare us with Donald Trump. We know all about the supreme court. We've heard it all before.

Trump and Clinton are just two sides of the same coin. This isn't an election any more. It's a dog and pony show and when it's over Hillary and Donald will still be going to the same cocktail parties together, with all the same wealthy donors whispering in their ears, smiling for the cameras and laughing at each others jokes.

In four more years, when nothing has changed, we can try again.

A Simple Free Market Equation

In the end
Math don't bend.

You gave it away yesterday.
Ain't nobody gonna give it back.
You're out of the black.

Ain't no exchange,
   no price range,
      no market,
         no store,
            no commodities floor

Sells the shit you really need.
And everybody
   Everybody
      EVERYBODY needs a thneed.

Like a wallet we clutch at some broken old crutch:
   Thinking to much?
   Afraid of the pain?

You can't have a headache if you don't have a brain.
Don't pump blood if you're afraid of the stain.

The Democratic Party is Wasting it's Breath

Why I'll Never "Unify" Behind Hillary

It's not because I'm a conservative. It's because she's a "conservative", or more accurately, she's a Republican.

The Republicans like to brand themselves as conservatives, but they're not. Most people who self-identify as "conservative" believe in all kinds of oppressive politically liberal policies. Likewise many self described "liberals" actually support a lot of Conservative values.

If you accept the most basic definition of political conservatism as a function of smaller, government, lower taxes, and less intrusion on the lives of citizens, the Republican brand of conservatism becomes laughable.

The drug war does NOTHING to advance the cause of political conservatism.

Creating government bureaucracies and law enforcement agencies to regulate who can get married or use which bathroom does NOTHING to advance political conservatism.

A large military, constant war, the Patriot Act, Domestic Surveillance; All of these Republican "conservative values" are viscerally offensive to real political conservatism.  ANYTHING that does not protect the welfare of people, their rights to life, and liberty (their rights under the Constitution) is just none of the Governments damn business.

The term "Social Conservatism" was coined specifically to deflect criticism that modern neoconservatives no longer reflect real politically conservative values. The real meaning of "Social Conservatism" is; "Big government liberal positions held by people who like to pretend they hate big government and liberals".

I don't agree with a LOT of Bernie's policy's, but on the core issue of government corruption and corporate influence I agree with him completely. Until we break the stranglehold of the Oligarchy on the political process it will never be possible to make, or even honestly address, any kind of meaningful change (including a shift toward real political conservatism, many planks of which are better represented by the progressive movement than they are by the Republican party).

In the meantime, if the government is going to steal a third of my income anyway? I'd just as soon they spend it on education and health care than on bombs and bank bail-outs.

Legalized corruption is not an issue that Hillary will EVER address. Quite the opposite, government corruption is the source of ALL her wealth and power. She not only won't address them, she has shown that she will fight to protect that system time and time again.

I will NEVER support Hillary Clinton for president. If that means we have to trust God to see us through 4 years with a racist buffoon in the Oval Office, so be it.

I remain, and will remain, #BernieOrBust.

News that's Not on the News

California poll workers are being lied to by the California DNC.

They are being told in training that independent voters, who are allowed to vote in CA primaries, are to be given "provisional" ballots.

This is a lie. Provisional ballots are almost never counted.

Registered Independent voters (or as they are called in Cali, "No Party Preference" voters) are supposed to be given something called a "crossover" ballot. These are included in the initial vote counts.

The DNC Thinks You are Stupid

They would have you believe that this is an honest mistake. They assure us that his has nothing to do with propping Hillary Clinton up against Bernie Sanders' tendency to win outstanding, even overwhelming, upsets when independent voters participate.

No steps are being taken to retrain their poll workers.

You can count on four things:

• Hillary Clinton is going to win the California Primary.
• There are going to be an unusually large number of provisional ballots submitted, and ignored, this year.
• We are going to see the same voter purges, double digit exit poll discrepancies, poll closures, ballot shortages, and polling machine "malfunctions" that we saw in NY.
• The mainstream media and Hillary's supporters will gleefully ignore the overt disintegration of our democracy and once again turn the outrage of Bernie's supporters into another variation of their "Bernie-Bro" dialog.

What rank and file Dems don't get is that the DNC is throwing them under the bus.

It's very likely that Bernie's supporters have already been driven away from Hillary for good but, if not, a shady California primary will be the last straw for hordes of Bernie's supporters both inside the Democratic party and out.

The Clinton campaign, unable to attack Sanders' for anything other than being ridiculously poor for a US Senator, and having a disorganized wife who lost their tax returns, has instead leveled a merciless barrage of attacks against Sanders' supporters. We have been portrayed as sexist, racist, stupid, naive, privileged, and even violent.

Having thus alienated pretty much every progressive independent in the country, and almost half of their own party faithful, Hillary's attempt to unify voters will be a disaster. Bernie supporters are already flocking to Green Party candidate Dr. Jill Stein or vowing to write Sanders in.

The Democrats are poising themselves to loose the white house to Donald Trump, and the Democratic Party bosses know it.

They would like to keep the White House, of course, but their need to protect the corrupt system that allows both them and their campaign contributors to profit by bartering votes for tax breaks, subsidies, and bail-outs is far more important than the results of a single election.

In simple terms...

The DNC would rather lose with Hillary Clinton than win with Bernie Sanders. 

Nevada's Unlearned Lesson for Hillary Dems

Barney Frank recently implied Bernie Sanders' supporters were responsible for Washington gridlock because they are low information voters. He suggested that the real problem in Washington is that Sanders' people don't understand how the system works and aren't participating in it.

Recent events would seem to pretty much prove he has everything ass-backwards.

It's certainly true that certain Democrats' unwillingness to participate in mid-term elections is central to the odious political failures that pretty much defines their party these days. Laying that on Bernie Supporters, though, is absurd.

Never mind that so many of Sanders' supporters are independents whom one ought not reasonably expect to support Democrats, mid-term election or otherwise. The real absurdity of this assertion lies in the establishment candidate's recent upset in Nevada.

In the Nevada Caucus popular votes are calculated to assign delegates who are tasked to cast their actual votes at a state convention. In 1776, when news traveled at the speed of a trotting horse, this was a reasonable and necessary process. In an age of instant communications, it is an absurdity. Still, both parties cling to this "tradition".

There are a number of excuses for this offered by party bosses, but there is only one real reason.

Both parties work hard to rig their elections in favor of candidates preferred by the party bosses. State conventions help serve this purpose.

For this election the favored Democratic candidate is Hillary Clinton, while the preferred Republican candidate was Paul Ryan (although even if they can force the GOP primary result to a  national convention they may need to settle for Ted Cruz).

The parties assume that many grassroots "upstart" candidates will elect "low information" delegates who don't understand the importance of attending the state conventions. The assumption is that low-information delegates will think of the convention as an unnecessary formality and not show up, and this will give establishment candidates (who will presumably field delegates who understand and participate in the party process) an edge.

That's exactly what happened in Nevada, but it didn't work out the way the Dem party bosses had hoped.

Hillary won the primary in Nevada by 5 points. Based on these results both camps selected delegates to be dispatched to the state convention to cast their votes for a final tally, and this is when things went all wonky for the DNC.

Hundreds of Clinton delegates didn't show up to the convention.

When the delegate votes were tallied, Bernie Sanders had won the state.

I'm not even going to talk about the shady things the DNC did to try to keep the state when they realized what was happening. That's a discussion for another time.

What REALLY matters here is what it says about the DNC and their "presumptive" nominee. It's a bitter pill that the DNC has so far been unable to swallow. The events in Nevada are indisputable, though.

The low-information voters that Barney Frank is complaining about... The Democrats who don't follow through and fail to participate in the process when it really matters, are NOT Sanders supporters. The low information voters, the ones who stay home when it's time to vote, are the ones flocking to Hillary Clinton.

How I Broke America

I've had it up to my eyeballs with Neocons whining about the liberal media.

The bulk of the American media is not liberal. It's not conservative.

American media is corporate.

Hell, what we call "news" isn't even really news. It's entertainment disguised as news and it couldn't care less about politics. All it cares about is keeping you glued to the TV so they can sell advertising, and keeping advertisers happy by getting people to consume as much as possible as fast as possible without asking, "why?"

There IS ideologically driven media on both "sides" of the aisle but this still isn't news, it still isn't liberal, and it still isn't conservative. It's party propaganda. It's not meant to inform, it's meant to prop up the "one party system" by keeping true believers in one party afraid of the soulless heathens in the other party. People who trust these sources (Fox News and MSNBC, for example) are wildly misinformed even compared to people who ignore the news completely.

Media, and politics for that matter, isn't about liberals and conservatives. It's about keeping power consolidated in the existing "bipartisan" political structure.

The One Party Ideology
The ideological differences between the parties are largely cosmetic.

You don't think so? Let's look at a few things they have in common.

Both endorse big government. Both support the IRS and the federal income tax. Both endorse the war on drugs. Both endorse inflated military spending, adventurism, the Patriot Act, NSA domestic mass surveillance, and the so-called "war on terror". Both endorse the "central banking system". Both pay lip service to immigration reform but support policies that criminalize and deport as many immigrants as possible. Both are complicit in deficit spending and trillion dollar tax giveaways to big business.

Both are actively advancing secretly negotiated global trade agreements like the TPP. This is a "Free trade" treaty we can't even honestly criticize because legislators are trying to ram it though without even letting the public see what's in it. What we can be certain of, though, is that it's central to the ambitions of multinational corporate interests. These are the very same corporate interests, by the way, that fund the two party system and own the media.

In the light of day we don't really have a two party system at all. There is really only one party with an iron lock on power. It controls the "bipartisan" federal election commission and the "bipartisan" debate commission. While this party insists that "they" are private entities with no connection to government party registrations are consistently administered by the state and officially sanctioned on the actual ballots.

Maintaining an Illusion of Choice
The media doesn't talk about what the parties AGREE on, which is really pretty much everything, so there's no discussion of these important issues at all. The false dichotomy of the two party system keeps these issues out of sight and out of mind unless public outcry FORCES the system to address them by passing referendums to legalize marijuana or by bombarding administrative procedures with public comments in favor of net neutrality, and even then politicians in both parties scheme to defy the will of the voters they purport to serve in favor of paying back the corporate special interests that fund their campaigns.

The differences the "parties" pretend to argue about are a few percentage points on tax rates and programs worth a few hundred million dollars here or there. Arguing over programs like PBS and food stamps represents a pittance in the Federal budget. The stink over Obamacare is a joke. If McCain had been elected instead of Obama the Republicans would have put the exact same system in place, called it Romneycare, and they'd be heralding it today as a resounding success.

Other differences that might seem important, like abortion and gun control, are smoke and mirrors intended to keep people divided and afraid. They aren't even REALLY legislative issues at all but are instead firmly under the thumb of the supreme court.

When you get right down to it the two party system is a dog and pony show. Neither party is particularly liberal compared to the other and neither is really conservative AT ALL.

Both parties are corporate.

Following the Money
Both major parties are owned by pretty much the same special interests, and these are the same special interests that own the media.

The result isn't hard to figure out. All you need to do is step back and look, yet somehow the "party faithful" continue to stymie the sensible majority of independents who might, given half a chance, actually be able to clean up the mess left behind by a century of rampant corruption and mismanagement.

A Culture of Stupidity
It's ironic, and very telling, that so many people are constantly whining about the "intellectual elite". Smart, well educated people aren't the ones screwing up the country. The country is being screwed up by the rich, the powerful, and the stupid.

The culture of mediocrity is a thing of the past. We now live in a culture that holds intellect in abject contempt. Intellect and education are treated as character flaws, arrogance and pomposity, while the stupid and the ignorant flaunt their simple-minded provincialism with pride.

My Profession Broke America
The reason for this is quite simple, and as a marketer I must admit to a degree of complicity. The corporate media is about advertising, and any marketer will tell you there's no point in advertising to smart people. Smart people are not influenced by advertising. Smart people buy the best product for the best price. They don't buy based on what they see and hear on ads. They make purchasing decisions based on referrals and independent research. An advertisement is a paid self-promotion. Only an idiot would buy a product because the guy selling it tells you it's the best product for the best price.

Fortunately for the advertising industry there are a lot of idiots out here.

Unfortunately, media being ad driven pretty much means that pretty much everything you see on TV is oriented to stupid people. I don't want to run ads on Masterpiece Theater. The kind of people that watch that show won't buy my products. I want to run my ads on Real Housewives so the money keeps rolling in.The idiots that watch that crap will buy anything. You can move 10,000 units of any product you want just by putting it on the tank of Kim Kardashian's toilet.

Furthermore, it's in my best interests to keep people stupid so I can continue advertise to them. I don't want the media educating and informing my customers. I want the media to tell people that they're OK "just the way they are" and at the same time turn words like "intellectual", "thoughtful", and "educated" into pejoratives.

And because I'm the one giving them money to run my ads that's exactly what they give me.

Stupidity and Democracy
Being smarter than average doesn't make you smart. It just makes you a little less stupid. Hell... my IQ is more than a little on the high side and I know I can be a complete idiot. Stupid is a chronic condition we all suffer from occasionally. 

Just because we are all prone to stupidity, however, does not mean we should aspire to it. This is where media culture has failed us. You're not OK just the way you are. It doesn't matter how smart or how stupid you are, you should aspire to be more. It's never OK to be content with what you know.

Stupidity and democracy are a bad mix and when the people who shape the media deliberately cultivate a culture of stupidity it can't help but influence our politics. Uninformed voters might be great for the established power structure, but it doesn't do much for the quality of an election. People who don't really understand an issue can't reasonably be expected to cast an intelligent vote in regards to it.

The Tragic Genius of the One Party System
This culture of stupidity has allowed idiots, cynics, and cowards to pretty much form the dedicated "party faithful" of both major parties, with idiots by far being the best represented.

If you are content to be a part of "Muhrican" culture than you haven't gotten this far into this post, and thank God for people like you because there is an underlying America that's still worth being proud of. Thanks to you there is hope.

Waking Up
Third party voters call major party voters "sleepwalkers". There's a simple litmus test to find out what kind of sleepwalker you are. This is the key to waking up.

Becoming an informed voter is about identifying what kind of voter you are now, and a bi part of that is accepting the painful truth that if you are voting for major party candidates you are not currently informed. This will require some brutally honest self-reflection but you need to understand what aspect of the system has co-opted you. Once you've done that you at least have a chance to stand up to it.

Cowardly
If you are worried about the governments ability to keep you safe, you're a coward. And probably something of an idiot also if you really believe the government CAN keep you safe.

Cynical
If you are simply siding with the lesser of two evils you are a cynic... but cynicism alone doesn't excuse party loyalty. Again, you're probably also a bit of an idiot. The existence of only "two evils" is, after all, a false dichotomy.

Jaded
Maybe you're jaded (cynical with a streak of cowardice) and realize there are other options but refuse to explore them because "they won't win".

Hopeless Follower
Jaded or not cynics actually represent another pretty important voting block that I call the "two party faithful". These are voters who consider themselves "independent" but remain slaves to the choices of the "party faithful" on both "sides". They are constantly switching allegiances between the two parties trying to support the "lesser evil" suffering under the delusion that which evil you vote for could possibly even make a difference. They see that something is broken, but they just can't wrap their head around the idea that the politicians aren't the problem, they're just a symptom. The problem is the system. 

Idiotic
And this brings us to the core constituency of both parties. People being just plain stupid.

• If you sincerely believe that the rank and file voters who support the other party are "evil", that they are trying to "destroy the country", or that they "hate America" you're being just plain stupid.
• If you believe it is the proper function of a legislator to "hold the line" or if you think "compromise" is a dirty word in a parliamentary setting you're being just plain stupid.
• If you believe this is a democracy, that most Americans really want free market medicine, or that we even have free market capitalism in this country you're being just plain stupid.
• If you believe that US Currency is backed, the Federal Reserve Bank is part of the government, printing money stabilizes the economy, or that there is gold in Fort Knox you're being just plain stupid.
• If you sincerely believe there is still any real scientific doubt or debate about cigarettes being carcinogenic, global climate change being influenced by human activity, or vaccination posing a greater health risk to your kids than polio or measles epidemics you're being just plain stupid.
• If you believe EITHER party is any more or less responsible than the other for our national debt or deficit spending, you're being just plain stupid.
• If you voted for a major party candidate thinking he or she could change the system from the inside; if you sincerely believed anyone who's part of that system would even try; you were likewise being just plain stupid.

Oh... wait... That last one was me, wasn't it?

When Obama came around talking about ending wars, condemning NSA surveilance, putting an end to drone strikes on overwhelmingly civilian targets, shutting down Gitmo, and just generally demilitarizing the country I swallowed his bullshit hook, line, and sinker.

Yeah. I being stupid.

And that brings us to our happy ending... we don't have to be stupid. We can learn from our mistakes. We can walk away from the one party system, and when enough of us have turned our backs on them they will either change and become more responsive to the will of the voters, or they'll lose their power.

Win-Win.

Sick Mother F***ers
One last thing... I almost forgot...

There is one other option.

If you are a dedicated believer in either of the two major parties but none of the sleepwalker archetypes really applies to you you need to consider the possibility that you are a sociopath. Sociopaths see exactly what's going on and don't care. They would rather exploit the system as a means for personal power than do anything to fix it... but if that's the case you're probably already in (or invested in) politics so you already know that. 

What Would Martin Luther King Jr. Say?

Ron Paul recently posted a video in a post titled "Violence in Baltimore: What Would Would MLK Say?"

It was kinda lukewarm to say the least. A couple of old white guys with axes to grind. Smart white guys, yes... but they came off as a little clueless even if they made some very astute observations.

It got me thinking, though. What would MLK say?

I think he would say something like this.

"The media is calling this a riot.

"They do not understand.

"The politicians are blaming you for destroying your own homes and what few economic opportunities your communities offer.

"They do not understand.

"The village elders are dismissing you as thugs. 

"They do not understand. 

"I understand.

"I understand what it is to be so filled with rage that I cannot see past my desire to lash out. I understand what it's like to be told I must make my own way in a community where there ARE NO economic opportunities. I understand what it is to be stopped... to be searched... to be beaten... to be murdered for the color of my skin. 

"I understand that days melt into months, months melt into years, years melt into decades and nothing ever seems to change.

"I understand that a police officer, bound as he is to serve and protect, cannot serve and protect you because all he sees is the color of your skin and that alone is enough to make you a suspect. 

"I understand. 

"I understand that they have taken your power. They have left you feeling hopeless and without a future. 

"I understand what the media, and the politicians and the village elders do not. I understand that this is not a riot. 

"I understand that the economic opportunities the politicians are accusing you of destroying are like the lotteries they let you play and the liquor they let you buy and the cigarettes they let you slowly kill yourselves with; they are all lies. 

"I understand that you are not thugs. You are young men and women; you are American boys and girls, just like them, but driven to the edge of hopelessness and despair. 

"I understand that all you want to do is take your power back. 

"I understand.

"But I also understand that the power you think you are claiming for yourselves is ALSO a lie. 

"Burning police cars does not give you power. It gives THEM power. Killing and maiming police officers does not give you power. It gives them power. Burning down or robbing shops does not give you power. It gives THEM power. 

"You are not challenging their lies, you are feeding them. And when this is over they will continue to gun down and pack their prisons with your children, and they will blame you. Then they will turn off their TV's and they will sleep soundly.

"But there is another way. 

"I will not tell you to go home. I will not tell you to trust the system that we ALL know we cannot trust. I will not tell you to submit... or to surrender... or to give the liars another chance to soothe your rage with more empty promises. 

"We have already tried that. Too many times." 

"If you truly have the courage to stand up to these liars... to these thieves of life... to the dogs and the guns and the body armor and the gas... then put down your rocks RIGHT now. Look to your brothers and sisters around you. Take each others hands and sit right where you are. Wherever you are. Do not be moved but by force and when they come for you... and they will come for you... accept their cruelty and do not break. 

"That is real courage. 

"And when the liars turn on their TVs tonight they will not see the police waging a noble stand against thugs. They won't see lawless savages being meted out justice. They will see children being herded into squad cars and police wagons. They will see mothers and sons, and fathers and daughters... they will see tears. They will what we really are and through us they will see what they really are. 

"And they will not sleep so soundly."

Of course, I am just an old white guy with an ax to grind.

Flat Earth Believers Live On

The shape of the earth was one of the first theories verified using the modern scientific process. Europeans screwed the math up pretty badly and grossly underestimated the size of the planet, but Greek and eastern mathematicians pretty much nailed it. 

No scholar of any real note or relevance believed that the earth was flat as far back as 500 BC. 

But everyone else did. 

Like climate change deniers of today the resistance to the concept of a spherical earth was not led by scholars. It was led by interests invested in the concept of a flat earth in very much the same way climate change denial is being promoted by special interests now. The "round earth" theory was denied mostly by religious leaders invested in discrediting the scientific process, and climate change theory is being denied mostly by oil and gas companies who stand to lose a great deal of money if it gains popular acceptance. In both cases denier factions used very similar strategies to hold up the advance of these theories. 

The concept of a round earth was mathematically proven more than two and a half thousand years ago using Pythagorean mathematics, but until a couple centuries ago very few common folk could even add, much less understand what at the time was considered advanced mathematics. Round earth deniers were able to play on that lack of understanding in exactly the same way climate change deniers are playing the complexity of climatology against the general public now. After all... how could the earth POSSIBLY be anything but flat? It just stands to reason all the oceans would drain off the edge. 

Round earth deniers used "common sense" to debunk the mathematics that most people didn't understand. The contrast in messages between scholars and layman was profound. While scholars were insisting that the universe was something complex and outside most people's understanding, deniers were able to mock that contention as pompous and arrogant. 

Given the choice between...

"I know you don't understand it, but you must believe me the world is round," a message which made people feel small and ignorant...

OR...

"Bah... those guys are jerks who think you're stupid, OF COURSE the world is flat," a message which allowed them to keep their sense of understanding and control...

...Most people quite naturally chose to believe the latter. Flat earth believers formed the overwhelming majority of the public, in open contempt of scholarly understanding, pretty much right up until Magellan proved the earth was round by circumnavigating it in the early 16th century, about two millennia after mathematicians had first proven the theory. 

The problem, of course, being that we don't have two thousand years to realize that maybe the scientific process works this time, and if it's going to take a practical demonstration to prove it the way Magellan did we're completely fucked because we don't have a spare earth lying around to destroy.

On #Gamergate and Social Justice Warriors

For those few of you gentle friends who are not gamers allow me offer a little backstory. In short #Gamergate is a hashtag on twitter that has become a haven of 4chan misogynists and the morons who follow them. Between the beer belches and bleating they have evolved into what basically amounts to a hate group determined to keep girl gamers "in their place" and resist the changes to games and gaming that are occurring as a result of the rapidly increasing numbers of young women and minorities joining nerd culture at large and more specifically, gaming. They have resorted to extensive campaigns of doxxing (publically posting personal information) and threats of rape and murder to silence voices in the industry that might resist their sick agenda and make extensive use of sockpuppets to create an illusion of acceptance and consensus.

Borrowing effective dirty tricks from the same playbooks that the worst mainstream politicians have followed for decades they have been very effective at hiding their real agenda behind a cloud of loosely similar but completely unrelated issues. They whine constantly about "corruption in game journalism" but the specifics they offer inevitably ignore real issues in favor of slandering political enemies, mostly female, with irrelevant or unsubstantiated personal attacks.

For days the mainstream media has been duped into believing these troglodytes somehow represent the larger nerd subculture when they are, in fact, nothing more than a loudmouth minority.

Any major party politician will tell you that winning a publicity war is about shaping the dialog to support your position, and #Gamergate has excelled at this. They have even effectively created new words and phrases that have been adopted into general use in nerd culture.

My personal favorite is "SJW". SJW is an abbreviation of the phrase "social justice warrior" and it's use speaks volumes about #Gamergate.

You might expect that a "social justice warrior" would be someone to look up to, but according to the twisted world-view of #Gamergate the term is entirely derogatory. The term is used to dehumanize critics and dismiss criticism without debate. A social justice warrior is someone who loudly and frequently defends inclusiveness and diversity as one might expect, but the context of the term presumes an ulterior motive for doing so. A social justice warrior doesn't promote diversity because he believes in diversity. A social justice warrior promotes diversity because "it makes him look good". Widespread use of this term allows #Gamergate to brush off criticism without having to engage it, and successful injection of the concept into the dialog has created a presumption that NOBODY could SINCERELY want to make nerd culture more inclusive.

It's a clever strategy, and it has worked for quite a while, but it's not going to last because it doesn't bear up under close examination. In the end it only compounds of the absurdity of treating social justice as a pejorative by highlighting the juvenile mindset that drives the entire #Gamergate campaign. 

As children we believe motives matter. What we think, or what we feel, or what we mean when we say or do something is relevant. Sure, we made a mistake, but our motives were pure and that makes it okay. We didn't MEAN to make someone cry. We didn't MEAN to hurt someone. We didn't MEAN to break something.

As adults we learn that motives don't really matter.

One of the hardest epiphanies every adult must face is the fact that nobody really cares what you feel. It's not that people are cruel or that empathy does not exist, but in the end everyone views your feelings through their own life-lens. Nobody can entirely understand or know what you feel because they can't climb into your head and feel it with you.

Nobody will ever know with any real certainty you love them.

From this epiphany springs a score of important truths, but among them is one that applies specifically to the SJW construct.

Motives don't matter. A person can't be defined by their feelings, or their thoughts, or their motives because we can't KNOW those things with any real certainty. What defines a person is what they do; the footprints they leave behind. Everything else is bullshit. People using the term have pretty much invalidated the entire SJW concept by imposing a motive on Social Justice Warriors, dubious or otherwise.

The entire SJW concept is, like #Gamergate itself, the product of a juvenile mindset.

For the record. I am a gamer, and #Gamergate does NOT speak for me.

I've Been Away Too Long

I know... nobody reads this blog. And I've kinda left it untended for a long time.

But I need to vent, and in the end that's all this has ever been. A place to vent. A place where one tiny cog of the huge machine with billions of moving parts can cry out in his tiny little voice in a way that will at least leave a mark.

It's a scribble on a middle school bathroom wall. I know that. But it's my middle school and at least a few of my fellow students, family, friends and followers, will be forced to know that there indeed once was a man from Nantucket.

And just now I need to vent.

I stumbled across a New Yorker magazine article today about some new disease. Spores are being stirred up by dust storms out west causing fatal lung infections, and I have not been able to shake a sense of shame and melancholy.

I can't say why this has affected me so much. You see stuff like this all the time. The extinction of whole species. TV commercials of doomed polar bears struggling to find a place to survive and so on are rampant. The slow increase in global temperatures and CO2 levels. Whales and dolphins beaching themselves in a futile attempt to flee the din and stench of the sea. The horrific storms that seem to be finding whole new courses across the globe.

The droughts.

With a storm of the century occurring every two years or so it just seems odd to me that I should be so profoundly affected by a fungal infection that's killing so few people every year that the medical research community hasn't even noticed it yet. I guess because my father and wife both have lung conditions and the idea of suffocating to death is just particularly horrifying to me.

I know... I know... what the hell does any of this have to do with global climate change. I guess I should elaborate.

Most people don't know this but the Great Plains wasn't always a dust bowl. Back in the day, before the civil war, it was a lush grassland. They were literally the great plains. The ground didn't suck up every drop of rain that touched it. There were streams and rivers. And there was life. Everywhere.

And then white people showed up. We slaughtered the buffalo that cropped the grasslands and converted it to fresh topsoil for the coming years. The people that had survived there for millenia dwindled and died in an act of second hand genocide that even Joseph Stalin would have to grudgingly respect.

The grasses died. The ground dried up. And here we are. Some hundred and fifty of us last year, gasping out our last dying breaths. We are paying the price for our grandparents greed, shortsightedness, and ignorance.

I shudder to think what price my grandchild will pay for mine. 

Why I'm Enjoying A Hot, Tasty, Chick-fil-A Sandwich Tonight

A lot of people who think they know me are going to be surprised by this, but I got my dinner at Chick-fil-A tonight. God help me, I never thought I'd side with Michelle Bachman on anything. But just this once, despite the company it puts me in, I don't have a choice.

Dan Cathy's position on gay marriage is certainly politically incorrect but it's founded in his Christian beliefs and it's consistent with biblical doctrine. The Bible makes it clear that homosexuality is a sin and that marriage is a sacred covenant made between a man and a woman. His statement was consistent with and representative of mainstream Christian beliefs on the subject. Furthermore, Chick-fil-A is privately held company that clearly identifies itself in it's mission as a Christian business. They are not open on Sundays, at enormous expense to their bottom line, and they maintain Christian ideals in their treatment of employees and customers alike.

One of those Christian ideals is "love the sinner but hate the sin". There are NO service or employment policies that discriminate against gays in place at Chick-fil-A.

All the man did was give an honest answer to a straight question but since that statement has been made public no less than half a dozen city officials, including the mayors of Boston and Chicago, have threatened to block  the franchise from opening stores and the PC thought-police have chosen to boycott the entire chain.

Now look, I'm not quite as bent out-of-shape about the gay marriage issue as most Christians.

For one thing, as sins go, I doubt homosexuality is a really that big a deal. The bible says it's a sin, so I accept that, but it's not like gays are robbing people or killing people or breaking up families by engaging in adultery. It certainly didn't make the top 10 list. I suspect I am a much more egregious sinner in the eyes of god than a homosexual simply because I so often fail to honor the sabbath. Keeping the sabbath holy DID make the top 10, after all.

Also... I don't consider the licenses doled out by government bureaucrats to be representative of real marriage. Marriage is a sacred religious institution with strictly defined rules and parameters. You can't take God out the equation and still call it marriage. What the government calls "marriage" is really just a secular contract. The ceremony might as well be performed by a pair of lawyers. An "open marriage" isn't a
real marriage any more than a "gay marriage" would be.

More pointedly, I am not inclined to blame anyone for this debacle more than I blame ourselves... the Christian community. It is we who have allowed the government usurp our institution because, in our hubris, we want our faith somehow ensconced in or endorsed by the state.

Well, behold the result of trusting a secular authority with a sacred tradition.

I don't respect the governments right to dictate who can and can't get married any more than I trust them to tell me who can be baptized or permitted to take communion. It's an overt and even shameless violation of the Constitutionally guaranteed separation of church and state. Moral authority over marriage lies with individual churches, mosques, and temples, NOT the government.

This belief further dulls my outrage because with this libertarian model in place gay marriage would still be inevitable. There's always going to be some minister willing to overlook scripture in order to line his pockets.

But I DO feel very strongly about free speech.

I spend a lot of time harping on Republican supporters for their divisive rhetoric and refusal to compromise. Well those ideals need to cut BOTH ways. What's going on with this public outcry over Chick-fil-A is nothing less than a self-entitled political interest group trying to bully dissenters into silence. It represents a much more outrageous attack on tolerance and diversity than anything Dan Cathy said. They, and the PC thought-police who are supporting them, should be ashamed of themselves.

So I'm eating Chicky tonight, and I'm going back on Friday to cross the picket lines.

Just Another Photoshop Moment

Why Americans SHOULD Hate the Fed, and Why They Don't

The really insidious effect of the fed isn't so much that we're borrowing our own money from them. That's just kind of ridiculous. What's insidious is the way it redistributes wealth.

Because we have a floating economy the value of the dollar is not set by the value of silver or gold. It has a set value based on the supply of dollar bills. Beyond the intrinsic absurdity of that, there is a profound effect on a floating economy when a new dollar is printed.

Now... keep in mind that the fed is NOT a part of the government. It's a private cartel of bankers. This is important because when money is printed it is distributed to banks.

The act of printing money does not in itself create any wealth. Back in the old days this was compensated for by the storage of gold and silver into "reserve". This gave every dollar printed an intrinsic value. This is no longer the case, and because the gold reserve is not longer used, and because the printing of new money doesn't add any real wealth to the economy, each time a dollar is printed it DEVALUES every other dollar in circulation.

Let's take a closer look at the process of printing money in a floating economy.  Economics of scale is a great way to obfuscate this issue, so we're going to scale it back to make the numbers more manageable.

Say there are 5 people in the country, and each has one dollar. There is also a bank, and the bank has $5 in it. This means there is a total of $10 in the entire country.

In a floating economy each dollar is worth 1/10, or 10%, of the value of the country.

Now, say the bankers print another dollar. This dollar is not backed by gold or silver, and there has been no ensuing increase in the value of the country, so the only real effect is that the value of a dollar has dropped. Where it used to be worth 10% of the country, now each dollar is only worth 9% of the country.

What the fed does when it prints money is distribute wealth to themselves.

Look at the example above. Before the extra dollar was printed the banks had $5 out of 10, exactly 50% of the value of the economy. After the new dollar was printed they had $6 out of 11, or 54% of the economy. They have STOLEN 4% of the economies total value.

The fleecing doesn't stop there, of course. The fed then LOANS us this dollar, collecting INTEREST on it and moving even more of the economies value into it's own coffers.

So why do Americans tolerate this?

Not to put too fine a point on it... because we're lazy. We just don't know any better, and we don't care enough to find out.

Most Americans have no idea what the Federal Reserve Bank is. The real genius of this deception though, is that the vast majority of us think we do.

We all know that the Fed sets interest rates and prints money, but we think the Fed is a government agency. Many of us think our currency is still backed by a gold standard. We have no idea that the value of a dollar is no longer tied to a reserve at all, or that the economy is being controlled by unelected, unappointed bankers with no accountability. And even if we did know, most of us are afraid of the numbers. It's not that we lack the basic mathematical skills to understand what they're doing, it's that the numbers involved are so huge we tell ourselves we can't possibly comprehend them. Once we do get it we often decide it can't possibly be that simple. This is an illusion, though, and our "leaders" take full advantage of it. Most of them don't understand the Fed much better than we do, and the ones that do are more than happy to have us believe it's because they are somehow smarter and wiser than the rest of us.

It's all lies.

You don't need any fancy math skills to understand the way the fed works. It really is that simple.