The Last Post

Lost another friend due to politics today.  Not that I was wrong....or that he was right.  I was right...and he was wrong.  Including about being able to admit I was wrong.

I was especially wrong to even try.  The exploration of truth and ideas? Most people aren't interested in them.  Not really.  And if so, what's the point?  The wayback machine can find old posts....that's fine.  I said what I said for public record.

That doesn't mean I have to make it easy for folks to find. 

There are other ways to make the world a better place than yelling at them to stop stabbing themselves in teh face.  Especially when they really really want to.

The Constitution is a piece of trash

Because of conservative courts and power grabs by conservative presidents (perpetuated by corporate presidents like Obama) and gridlock from conservative lawmakers, the U.S. constituion has the value of toilet paper at this point.

My apologies to toilet paper.
 http://www.chicagotribune.com/sns-wp-blm-news-bc-hunt30-20141130-story.html

[Phil] 3 Hard Truths you Absolutely Must Accept to Effect Change.

1) All of the Truth Telling in the world by minds far more brilliant than your own have not been enough to do anything more than slow down the Koch agenda.  Truth does not reverse it.

2) Politics is now a religion for many and discussing politics with those who are infected with it is pointless as discussing interpretations of bible verses.  This is ALL infected; conservatives, libertarians, moderates who give equal credence to both sides, and even progressives or liberals or democrats more concerned about party identity than solving the problem.

3) It will take a trifecta of power sharing, third parties and independent ideological institutions to counter the Koch agenda.  Two out of three is not enough.

Details

1) John Stewart, Colbert, Carlin to name a few of those who have been warning us.  For those in the know, the Koch plan has been in the works for decades.  The thing is, that they have been telling the truth in brilliant ways over and over again in the belief that that alone would be enough to change things.  And it can, for a short period of time.

A great example of this is the attempts to tax or take over the internet.  They have many times attempted to pass ridiculous laws that would take over consumer freedom of the internet.  And they have been beaten back many times.  That is because the Koch agenda as well as the corporate agenda understand what you don't....politics is a forever battle, not just a few phone calls to your congressman.  And if you 'frame' the debate in the right way, you can get people to forget what it was they were fighting for in the first place.   A well placed bribe to the Republican party, and suddenly, Cable companies, one of the most hated groups in America, are ardently defended by legions of followers demanding that the government not enforce Net Neutrality.

Another example is Bill Maher's attempt to set up a fund to fund the opponents of the craziest members of congress.  HUGE amounts of money were spent on the fund's target and they still lost.  It sure looks like Maher's fund is gone, but you know who is still there? The NRA.  The CATO institute.  The Heritage Foundation.  Americans for Progress.

2) There is a study that shows an imagined experience is as real as those actually experienced.  Or in other words, it is emotional truth that affects the vast majority of people.  Now that might be loyalty to your God that motivates you to find reasons to support conservative policies, or anger at the government for "stealing" some of your hard earned money, or anger at the democrats because Clinton signed NAFTA or other things like it.  You need to admit to yourself that no matter how rationally you approach your beliefs, you attach significance to them because of emotional truth, not just because it 'makes sense.'  Conservatives and libertarians love to crow about how 'rational' their beliefs are, but their reason is often based on magical thinking at its best.

The thing about magical thinking is that it involves imposing your own view on top of reality, which means that their faith, which makes life more magical and meaningful for them comes at the price of accepting reality for what it is.  And while this gives liberals a tremendous advantage, as 2014 showed us, this cannot last forever.   This is not to say that liberals and others do not sometimes have irrational or false beliefs, but that the heroes of the party and the party ideology is much less inclined to NEED to lie.



So in practical terms what does this mean?  It means...STOP trying to convince people who disagree with you politically of anything.  I'm not writing this for infected conservatives.  Almost everyone who isn't a conservative knows what the problem with them is?  But Moderates who enable conservatives by pretending their views are just as legitimate are just as indirectly politically religious as conservatives.  Most moderates don't put their emotional truth in things like "the government is evil" but rather "both sides are bad."

The 'both sides are bad' or 'I am above both sides' people are just as wedded to their political religion as conservatives are.  There are some identity democrats that are as well.  Loyalty to the president or the democratic party is a problem.  So what does that mean?  It means that don't waste your time arguing with moderates,  much less conservatives...it means spend your time trying to fix the left.

3) There is a difference between a warrior and a soldier.  Warriors prize their individual skill but soldiers are part of a unit and are a cog in a much larger machine.  In the last days of the old west, native warriors were no less skilled than their Calvary opponents.  But the thing is, picking up a stolen (or purchased) rifle does not grant one sufficient resources to win a war against the government of the United States of America.  The Calvary had logistics, weapons manufacturers, corporations, banks, universities, town councils and many many other institutions helping to make the American war machine work.  You can leap forward in technology in seconds by learning how to pull a trigger.  You cannot create cultural institutions or paradigm shifts over night.  You just can't.

But metaphorically speaking, that is what liberals are trying to do against the Koch brothers.

Belief that people will just do the right thing if they know the truth won't make them do it.   Moral indignation against the tactics of the Koch brothers won't stop them from using them.  Nostalgia for the old days when the news really was the liberal media won't make them suddenly stop being 'he said, she said' shills.  The Republican Noise machine has been a known factor for some time.   But what has knowledge done?  Well, some very impressive counter forces have sprung up like MoveOn.org, or Daily Kos have sprung up to counter the message.  Asymmetric warfare is possible since sometimes there is only having a counter message not controlled by the Kochs is enough.

But the problem is that by and large many of these organizations are loyal to the democratic party and progressivism, but loyal to the democrats first, and progressive second.  These organizations are not the equivalent to the Heritage Foundation or other ideological organizations, primarily because they do not provide consistent bribe money to politicians each cycle but spend it ad hoc.  Furthermore, they are easily co-opted by the Party Apparatus who justifiably say, "You Must Vote For Us or Doom!"

Third parties are needed to have a viable replacement in case the democrats implode.  Purely progressive think tanks and funded advocacy organizations that are in this for the long haul need to operate independent of democrats.  And at the same time, pressure needs to be brought to bear in the democratic party to demand certain kinds of behavior in the democratic leadership.  There are ways to do this, and I will attempt to explain them in the next day or two, but the short version is that progressives need to hold their votes contingent, especially in off year and down ticket elections, contingent in getting a certain number of cabinet and committee positions in the executive and legislative branches.

[Phil] Evolution Doesn't Care if You Believe In It

Really.  It doesn't. From the perspective of evolution, all that matters is...don't die until you reproduce.  If you reproduce lots, great.  If you reproduce, you're still in the game. 

It doesn't matter if you're strong or smart or fast or rich or poor.  From the great game that is evolution in the chain of life from the amobea to whatever levitating martian looking things our descendants will be a billion years for now.

So when I read crap like this about the "reddening" of America, where they say essentially, "poll numbers show you're not as swell as you think you are Republicans...be good or BAD things will happen to you!"

BULLSHIT!

When it comes to power, if the election is actually free, if no one is burning a cross on your front lawn or making you do calculus to vote, its whether or not you vote and who you vote for.

That's it.  So by staying home and not voting, you can say you are against the system, or are standing for your principals or whatever you want, but ultimately, the fact is, you're voting for the Republicans unless you're voting for the democrats.  And is that a crappy crappy system? Absolutely.  But that's the way our crappy system is designed.

Are you working to change it, or are you waiting for superman to come down and fix it?

After the last election, I'm done with the democrats. They're total cowards, and the last week utterly proves it.  All the democrats are fighting amongst themselves in the senate right now about whether they should be nice to the Republicans and be 'bipartisian' or whether or not they should fight them tooth and nail.  

These are the REPUBLICANS.  HELLO MCFLY?! ANYONE IN THERE!?

Even moderate republicans still vote with Republicans because Abortion. Because Taxes.  ALL Republicans that vote Republican are still responsible for the behavior of the Republican party no matter how much they say they don't like The Crazy.

You know how many closet conservatives there are? LOTS.

But it doesn't help that the democrats had a pathetic weak milktoast strategy.

Think 2016 is a given/lock in? So did Al Gore.  So did Kerry.  THEY LOST.  Big Time.

America doesn't CARE about the Crazy.  Get. Over. It.  Until Democrats STOP trying to play nice, until Democrats STOP BEING COWARDS.  So you can tell me that the dog ate the voters homework or we should be nice to stupid people, or that you should set a positive example...Obama set a positive example...look at what the monsters are doing to him.

You can be positive and fight.  But you have to FIGHT or you will die.  And I, for one, am more interested in working with minor parties like the greens who can take over when the democrats eventually implode, because they WILL implode unless they get a spine.  If we get a REAL leader who is willing to fight, like Warren who is in charge, then fine. 

I'm not holding my breath.

[Cons] Article III - Section 1 (5 of 10) Prosecutors

The former prosecutor who went berserk against the Duke Lacross team is one of the few examples of a prosecutor actually being punished for misconduct.  The truth is, as flawed as our system of justice may be against Law Enforcement, it is infinitely better than it is against Prosecutors.  Prosecutors wield tremendous power. 

I've mentioned these in numerous examples, but here are just a few examples.

Here, Here, Here, Here, Here, Here, Here, Here, Here, Here, Here and Here.

And who publishes them? Basically no one.  Judges who arrogant snobs are a problem.  You can fix that with an empowered jury but a prosecutor who uses outrageous plea bargaining is able to wield psychotic levels of power.  The problem is, an institution is going to function how it was designed.  When you have prosecutors as an elected or indirectly appointed office, those officers want to get promoted and will work to show off how awesome they are with high numbers of convictions, not caring whether or not those prosecutions make sense.  We're not talking good or evil here; though there are good prosecutors who help people out when they need it, and evil prosecutors who sell children up the river with corrupt judges; we're just talking human nature.  When a prosecutor is in office, he wants to look good.  By making prosecution a political matter, rather than a matter of justice, at a local level you create problems.  At a federal level, the imperial nature of the US government causes the government to want to wield its power with majesty and awe.  This attitude started with J. Edgar Hoover and it has never really stopped since.

So let's itemize some of these problems, shall we? Specifically at the Federal level.

1) The US Attorney is appointed by and works at the pleasure of the President of the United States.  Furthermore, a federal court will not take a case unless someone has standing, and unless someone can prove specific harm, you can't take the government to court for violating the constitution.  That means unconstitutional acts (like violating a senate ratified Treaty on Torture) are completely and utterly ignored by the courts, because there is no one to prosecute them.

2)  The US Attorney is a cabinet level position, so he's peers with and buddy buddy with the very people he is supposed to able to prosecute if they violate the constitution.  The courts can't act as a check for what the prosecutor won't prosecute.

3) The US Attorney is ALSO in charge of the Justice Department, which includes several premier US Law Enforcement Agencies, including the FBI.  Which means when the FBI goes rogue, there aint no one to prosecute them except in the worst situations because the US Attornies work for the same guy as the FBI.

HOWEVER, as I said, as bad as cops are, internal affairs in this country works well enough that SOME things are not tolerated.  Publicly demanding bribes like they do in Mexico? Uh uh.  That's jail time buddy. 

So how to fix this?

Lots of countries make the justice department separate entirely from the rest of the government? This causes problems in Italy where the prosecutors go after the prime minister all the time.  I might see this is a problem, except that the Italian Prime Minister is the Itallian Rupurt Murdoch, aka fascist Burlosconi.  Maybe having someone file suit against Obama and Bush on a regular basis might make them respect the constitution a bit more.

How would they be appointed?  Lots of ways, but I think it should be a separate branch of the executive, so I'll talk about it more in Article II, but I will say that I think that prosecutors in general should be merged with law enforcement, and that the actual prosecution should be done as a part of law enforcement agencies.

If you just have a prosecutor sitting around 'protecting justice' they choose which laws they enforce, but also have to justify their existence by looking flashy.  Now, this won't be solved if its in law enforcement, but existing internal affairs departments could go after prosecutors rather than a non existent thing like what we have now.  I've been able to find all kinds of abstract reasons why they're supposed to be separate, but the real reason is that modern law enforcement is a modern invention while the King's prosecutor in court is an old feudal position.  When we became a democracy, the idea was to elect or appoint them, but like so much about Article III, so much of our courts was so poorly planned, it was just tacked on as an afterthought and just assumed it would work 'like the English courts.'

More importantly, the US attorney is not a constitutionally protected/defined role.  That means a simple act of congress could merge all US attorney positions into law enforcement agencies by a simple law without having to wait to reboot the constitution or amend the awful current one.

[Rant] Civility, Racism and Bigotry

So I got into an argument with someone on the internet today.  I thought about reposting here, but really, why bother? I try to post at least semi coherant stuff here, not just recycled logic.

The thing is,this person really obviously believed their own internal logic.  I think today was even more proof that the two cultures simply CANNOT be reconciled, and I'll tell you why.

Here's a video from the conservative side here you might watch if you can tolerate it:




I mean it all sounds pretty reasonable right?  Who doesn't like the individual vs the big evil government? And God knows I've ranted enough about the problems with institutions as well.  But the thing is...if you have noticed a single theme I have more than any other it is that of TRUTH.  I lived a lie my whole life until the age of 35.  I swallowed it hook line and sinker, only to discover that the leaders of that lie care only about their own power, profit and personal glory.

I digress. 

The meat of this conversation with the individual in question is that he called me a bigot for putting down people who have a different opinion than them.  This is a branch of the same stupid argument they make about tolerating intolerance, which I addressed here.



The link he posted was right here:

Now I mean, that might be the technical thinking...but is that really what most people think of when they think of the definition...here's the wikipedia entry:

Well that sounds like normal English.  So when you expand the google version, you see its based on a 17th century definition, whereas the one in wikipedia is sourced to a modern Meriam Webster dictionary.  So we see that the person here who is from a movement everyone else but them associates with misogynist assholes, he insists that their movement represents the interest of ALL blighted XYZ.  And to prove that, much like the GOP that trots out women who say, "There is no war on women!"  These collaborators say, "Nuh uh! #NotUsingMeAsAnExcuse!" And then idiot and many like him can point to him and pretend that they're not hanging out with mysogonist assholes.

He demands proof.  Then he says I'm being uncivil.

So what is this CIVIL thing they keep bringing up?

We'll use the google definition, since apparently that's what contards like.

"formal politeness and courtesy in behavior or speech."

Where have I heard that before?  Oh yes....



Is the incredibly racist slave owning psychopath CIVIL? Can we not at least be CIVIL to each other?

Of course, God FORBID you take offense at anything THEY might say, because you see, to a contard, it is not about what YOU find civil or what society finds civil but what THEY find civil.  If they feel civil toward you, if their gloves are still on then they are being civil.

Thus, it isn't YOUR definition of bigotry that matters, its THEIR definition.  Where have we heard this before? Oh yeah...













So...let's see here...you have to believe you're racially superior to others or that your race is better than others...and as long as you don't do that, you're not racist!  Cause...

You know...by that definition as long as there is ONE PERSON who you like and get along with in that race, who is tame and have the same beliefs as you do politically or socially and you believe that 99.9% of the people of that race aren't like that, then its AOK.  You can tell that off color joke because you're  NOT BEING RACIST.

Now, never mind that the vast majority of the population finds something like this incredibly racist...

"1 in 10000 negros is actually capable of acting like a white man...." but so long as you don't believe ALL of them are that way, YOU'RE NOT RACIST.

It all makes sense when you think about it.  If you define your own words and you don't have to care what 'the collective' thinks, then you can do whatever you want.

Get that? 

Where else have we seen it? The Austrian School of Economics which believes that ITS ideas matter more than science.  Science is merely part of the "collectivist" paradigm otherwise known as reality.  I've already established that by definition conservatives lie more and have a reason for society to tolerate their lies.  Libertarians ARE conservatives for purposes of truth.

And thus we see that even the words we use, the conversations we have can't hold them accountable unless society makes LYING a crime if isn't for fiction or parody.  Our very dialog, the very words we use, markets (which require truthful information to function) or government simply cannot work if we cannot talk to one another and until the individualists stop using 17th century definitions of words or care that while the REST of us call Racism "Someone else being offended about your stereotype about race" rather than your hypertechnical obscure definition (that happens to be an outdated dictionary definition) then we're all going nowhere.

[Humor] Republicans are People too...despite all evidence to the contrary.

Hilarious video and commentary here.

A Republican cult leader defines a relationship as "toxic" as one that might dare reflect too much of reality vs quietly pursing your lips or smiling painfully while listening to more crazy lies about Glenn Beck. :D