Saturday, October 27, 2012

March Of The Penguins


There is a style of dress popularized by the Black culture and picked up by wanna-be Blacks called "saggy pants". It originated in prisons mostly due to the fact prisoners were issued pants a size or two too large and prisoners, for obvious reasons, can't have belts. It was picked up by the hip-hop crowd and of course anything some moronic celebrity wears is automatically copied by the brainless among us.

But WHY do they wear this style?

All I can figure is that the people who wear these things are gay. Not to say they're fashion-morons, but actually homosexual. Here's my reasoning.

Virtually every time you see one of these saggy pants wearers, they're with someone of the same gender who is ALSO wearing saggy pants. Usually in medium-sized groups. Now, I don't know any woman who finds this kind of dress sexually attractive. I mean MOST women usually go for guys who don't need help dressing themselves. I can't count the number of women I've seen who laugh behind these guy's backs. So this style of dress is obviously NOT to attract women. Not being gay, I had to then ponder why they'd do it.

Style? No, men's styles are used to attract women, not make them point, laugh and walk in the other direction.

Gang "style"? No, saggy pants make you trip and fall over when you run, so they're not exactly great attire for evading the police.

Imitation of a "celebrity"? Possibly, but that would NORMALLY end when said imitator consistently found themselves without a sexual partner. As mentioned, women think this style is pretty damn stupid. A celebrity can get away with it because they're rich and don't give a shit about what other people do to imitate them.

An unusual homage to penguins? Granted, when guys dressing like this run, they look much like a penguin, but they're also holding onto their crotch, which kind of ruins the illusion. So they look sort of like a one-winged penguin trotting along.

Then it occurred to me that the only reason left is that it's an invitation for guys to look at their butts. I mean, they're usually in a group of guys. Girls sure as hell aren't looking. Styles are used to attract sexual partners (usually women) and women don't go for that style. Granted, it's POSSIBLE that this style is worn to attract penguins, I suppose, but given that there aren't that many penguins out there in the streets where this style is usually seen, and there hasn't really been that much of an up-tick in guys wearing this style exclusively at zoos or aquariums, I have serious doubts about the penguin attraction theory.

Now, it must be pointed out that this style is popularly THOUGHT to have been started by a homosexual in prison who wore his pants low to indicate he was ready for a sexual encounter with anyone. While that's not really the case, this is the most prevailing myth surrounding the origins of the style. This is what the guys who wear that style likely think.

So it must be to tell people they're ready for a sexual encounter from anyone. Since they almost always hang out in gangs and women aren't usually around them, the "anyone" has to be one of their posse. Their posse is a bunch of guys. So they're saying they're ready for a sexual encounter from one of the guys around them.

So the guys who wear this style are gay. QED

Now, there is a lot of hate toward this style. Many communities have moved to ban it. Many have said it's their constitutional right to offend people. Inasmuch as it's not my thing, I have to say I think it should NOT be outlawed. After all, we should know who the sheep in the world are - even the gay ones. Besides, they provide an opportunity to find humor as one laughs at them as they run across the street, or gets brought down by an arthritic cop because their style kept them from running fast enough to get away. Women, too, find the style amusing since they howl with laughter after one of these "bad boys" walks by.

After all, every generation has some moronic style they will be terribly embarrassed by later on in life. My generation had Hippie/Disco. The next one had "Goth" and clothes from a blender (the style that had rips and tears). This generation has styles that make them walk funny and be unattractive to the opposite sex. It's their constitutional right to be horribly embarrassed twenty years from now. And they will be.

I think that's punishment enough, but I'm sure their kids will come up with something that's just as repugnant to THEM as what they did to their folks.

Thursday, October 25, 2012

Checking "The Donald's" Compass


Back in the early part of the 2012 Presidential campaign season, The Donald (aka Donald Trump) announced his intention to think about running for president. Most people with functional frontal lobes considered this little more than a publicity stunt. After all, Trump's ego is only slightly smaller than a major European country. His wealth, of course, is likely larger. But be that as it may, he got a lot of support. And it wasn't the first time he dabbled in politics. In 1999, he was largely thought to be behind the "Draft Trump" movent on the Reform Party ticket. He filed paperwork to establish an exploratory presidential election committee. He eventually dropped the idea when Jesse Ventura quit the race. Twelve years later, he was back.

This time he came back spouting the most idiotic nonsense out there: That Obama wasn't born in the United States. The premise is that his father was a Kenyan and that Obama was born in Kenya and therefore is ineligible to become President because he was not born in the United States. He was the first half-black president (no one calls him half-white. As comedian Steve Byrne, an Asian/Irish American who's never been called "Irish" in his life, says, whatever muddies up the white is what you're called in America) and the first to ever have his citizenship called into question by ANYONE. It was demanded that he show his birth certificate to "prove" he was born in America. This, despite the fact he's done it - twice. First with the short form which is what anyone would get as proof of birth. Then the long form which is what is always kept in vaults to protect the individual's privacy.

Now, all this focus on birth certificates overlooks one little, but critically important, thing about Americans and citizenship. Being born in the United States is only ONE way of becoming a citizen. The other way is to be born to an American - who can be ANYWHERE in the world. It's not part of the Constitution - which confuses people - but it's universally recognized in the United States by the Immigration folks that offspring of an American citizen, regardless of where they are born, are American citizens themselves. They are "natural born" citizens. The 14th Amendment says that people who are naturalized are citizens, but, according to Article 2 of the Constitution, only "natural born" citizens can hold presidential office. Unfortunately, "Natural born" isn't constitutionally defined. This means a first generation immigrant, which Obama would otherwise be had he not had an American citizen for a mother, could not run for office because he was not born to an American IF he had been born outside of the country.

It's somewhat confusing, but naturalized citizens like first generation immigrants go through the legal process to become a citizen. Natural born citizens have it by birthright - whether through being born in the United States, or by being born outside of it as long as at least one of the parents are American. In this case, Obama was covered either way and anyone with enough sense to not stand on train tracks while a train is coming would know that.

But "The Donald" brought it all up again in 2011 - as it had been brought up by the right wing in yet another way to distract and enrage their followers back in 2008. The lack of a definition in the Constitution for "natural born" led to the erroneous rationalization that if you weren't born in the United States, you couldn't be President.

The Donald was supposed to speak at the GOP's convention in Ft. Lauderdale Florida but Tropical Storm Issac cut things a bit short and his appearance was canceled. He was supposed to have "big news about President Obama". And he waited until two weeks before the election to actually make the announcement.

The "Big News" was a $5 million dollar donation to the charity of his choice if Obama would release his college records and passport. To say that it was met with howls of derisive laughter would be a major understatement. Of course, it appealed to the nutjobs on the right who are more inclined to vote for a birther than against him, but the right-wing propaganda machines are virtually silent on this "big news" from Trump.

This is, after all, a bad time to prove the right-wing has more nuts than a Jimmy Carter family farm. Romney is trying to appeal to the middle who will decide the election while a GOP senatorial candidate came out a few days ago during a debate and said that pregnancies from rape are a gift from god, compounding the asinine assertion on the part of another senatorial candidate who, during an interview, said that women couldn't get pregnant during a "legitimate rape".

So throw in The Donald with a moronic "big news" announcement that was neither big or news at a critical time with polls evenly split proving that the right-wing is full of kindergarten dropouts.

Personally, I find it all very amusing - as, I'm sure, Trump does. Here's a guy who has the money and the ego to prove to the American people that if you say ANYTHING that appeals to the prejudices, hatreds, superstition and ignorance of the average right-winger, you can get yourself a large following of equally ignorant, superstitious, racist bigots to follow you.

It's how the right-wing works. It's what right-wing politicians have been doing to their followers for years to get elected. Trump did it in an egregiously over-the-top scenario, probably on a bet that people wouldn't be that stupid or a dare from someone that he couldn't pull it off. I suppose it COULD be because he hates liberals, but given his background and past, I'd find that suspiciously unlikely. People do change, but it seems his changes seem somewhat more contrived than most.

And yet, he was the right-wing's leading shining star for quite some time at the start of this sorry excuse for a political campaign season - and he was never an actual candidate to begin with. He garnered as much, if not more, support - 26% - than any other candidate until just before Romney became the de facto candidate a few months before the GOP convention.

Assuming, for the moment, Trump is the kind of man who would do this (and given his past nods to his ego, he is certainly a very likely candidate), and assuming Obama wins in a very tight election, it wouldn't surprise me at all to see Trump addressing the crowd at Obama's victory speech with a "Man, did I prove a point" speech.

Should that happen, I'll be laughing for an hour...

On the other hand, if he's serious, and I were an investor in his endeavors, I'd be short-selling my entire Trump portfolio immediately because this particular Capitan of Industry is mentally on the Good Ship Lollipop heading off to Candyland.

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

How To Close A Gun Loophole


A recent incident in Wisconsin highlights one problem with gun ownership. That problem is private sales of guns.

The details are as typical of how a mass shooting happens in American as any other story. A man with a history of domestic violence, Radcliffe Haughton, was ordered to surrender all of his guns to the police when his estranged wife obtained a restraining order against him. Whether or not he did so is actually moot in this case. What is known is that Haughton went out and bought a .40 cal pistol from a private citizen - something that was not illegal for the private owner to do despite the fact it was illegal for Haughton to possess it. There is no requirement for private citizens to do background checks on their gun sales.

The end result was that Haughton's estranged wife was shot and killed, as were two other women, with three wounded and Haughton then killed himself.

One wonders if the person who sold him the gun gives a damn.

But that's not really the point here. The point is that in the story linked above, a state representative is calling for gun laws, but not for anything that would have actually addressed this situation.

From the article:
Tony Gibart, policy coordinator for the Wisconsin Coalition against Domestic Violence, supports Taylor's bill but admits it may not have done anything to stop Haughton.
"We don't know what would have prevented this situation," he said.

All I can say is they sure as hell didn't give it much thought. I know exactly what would have prevented this situation and it's a simple fix.

Make all direct, private sales of firearms illegal.

This means that if you have a gun and want to sell it, you have to do it through a registered gun dealer. This ensures that the rules about waiting periods and background checks - the kind of thing that is supposed to prevent situations like the one that happened in Wisconsin from happening in the first place - are done and done right, without placing an onerous impediment to being able to divest oneself of their firearms.

The seller sets a price, the store owner adds on a consignment fee and each potential buyer pays for the background check up front. Everyone gets what they want: The gun seller gets his price and the conscience-clearing knowledge that he didn't just sell his weapon to some murderous thug who should have been aborted before birth. The gun shop gets a small sum for their trouble on top of the seller's asking price. The gun buyer is checked out and if he passes, gets his gun, likely at less than what one new would have been.

In the interests of fairness, this would apply to any firearm even if it's widely considered a collectable or antique. The only exceptions to this would be firearms that can not be made to actually fire a bullet such as weaponry with attached parts that can't be swapped out with OTC parts to be put back into a fireable condition.

Now, since the NRA fights even the 48 hour background checks that, when they work, prevent guns from getting into the hands of criminals, insane people, people with restraining orders and such, I can definitely see them getting their little panties in a bunch and screaming like the ball-less little girls they are over this one. (I equate someone who needs a gun for personal protection as a spineless, skill-less coward unless they lack the physical ability to do it in a less potentially disastrous method.)

But it directly addresses how this situation could have been prevented if private, direct gun sales were illegal. And it would penalize those who failed to perform a background check during the 48 hour waiting period (that Wisconsin has - your state may vary). It's not rocket science here. And although in a gun-happy place like Wisconsin, it has no chance of being implemented.

So I guess you're going to die because in cases like this, even if you're armed, chances all they'll do is toss on some body armor and blow your ass away anyhow.

And that's the other fallacy about arming a whole population with guns to stop crime. Anyone bright enough to pound sand with a hammer would start wearing body armor in that kind of society. If you don't trust strangers, why the HELL would you trust ARMED strangers? Even if YOU are armed, you don't have eyes on the back of your head. So you'll go out and buy the most stylish kind of body armor that will stop handgun bullets.


That means the NRA's arguments about gun ownership, conceal carry and such are just so much bullshit. If a criminal wants you dead, they'll do it the old-fashioned way - with a knife or sword.

After all, body armor does not - repeat not - stop sharp-pointed objects like knives and swords. (Note: Some body armors will be "resistant" to stabbing or say that they'll stop a knife, but nothing works all the time against every kind of knife and none work against swords at all because none protect the vulnerable areas that are most effective against a knife or sword attack.) The reason for this is that while a knife in the chest is certainly distracting, it's not necessarily a fatal wound. Cutting the carotids, cutting off the arm, hand, leg or hitting one of their major arteries will certainly kill you. So will stabbing down from the top of the body armor into the chest (Lots of major arteries near the neck). And almost no body armor that you'd ever want to wear will stop someone from cutting upward into your heart from the abdomen (assuming the knife is long enough).

So while you're thinking you're armed, armored and protected, some boy scout with a swiss army knife can still take you down before you can draw your gun, let alone get a shot off. And they can do it quieter than some thug with a gun.

So all in all it would be an escalation. People can carry guns, the criminals will wear body armor if they're going to use a gun until everyone ELSE is wearing body armor. Then the criminal will dispense with guns and body armor and use knives or swords. In a knife fight, agility is key. If you're loaded down with guns and armor, you're going to be too slow to stop someone who ISN'T wearing armor, assuming you even see them coming in the first place. Wearing body armor would negate any supposed protection carrying firearms would provide.

"But wait!" you cry. "There are bullets that can go through body armor!"

As if we want bullets being fired by ANYONE with or without an IQ above 100 that can go through a body wearing body armor two steel drums, three bystanders (also wearing armor) and bury itself a foot into concrete. Yeah, let me know how that "don't kill innocent bystanders" thing goes for you when bullets aren't stopped by anything except something they can't go through and when people aren't on that list of things they can't go through. Putting those kinds of "cop killer" bullets in the hands of ordinary citizens would be amusing if the only people killed were the low-IQ types who'd actually be out on the streets.

The smart people would stay home and have things delivered to them, meeting the delivery folks with razor-sharp short swords until all the imbeciles killed each other off.

In any case, the point here is that the people who didn't think of what to do about the situation in the main story didn't think hard enough. There is a way to regulate private sales of firearms. Buy nobody has the testicles to make that suggestion law.

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Nothing In Moderation


In a country with the polarized politics that has been the hallmark of the United States since the dawn of the 20th century, one would think that eventually there would be another major party forming that encompasses the centrist viewpoint. After all, the Republican party has been hemorrhaging voters ever since Bush and the Democratic party has a lot more unhappy people since Obama was elected. While the differences between the ones leaving their respective parties are striking, the fact is there are a hell of a lot of people who no longer embrace all or even most of the platforms of either party.

In the case of the disaffected Republicans, they, like me, have seen their party steer so far off to the right, they're in an off-the-charts territory cartographers marked with "here be dragons". They don't especially want to be labeled as the terrorists extremists are, and don't exactly know where to go. These are the fiscally conservative socially progressive people like me who understand that both sides have good points, but they're increasingly being smothered by the bad points. They haven't moved to the center so much as the right has moved so far to the right, they're left in what remains of the political spectrum - in the center.

In the case of the Democrats disaffected by their selection of President, it's the opposite thing. Democrats are generally more progressive than I am, but what's happened is that too many of the far-left who oppose anyone who doesn't agree with them (just like the far right) are moving further to the left and outside of mainstream Democrats. The mainstream Democrats - the majority of them - remain behind close to where the disaffected Republicans have been left behind by their party. In the center.

While these might seem to be identical cases, the differences are stark. The right-wing platform - the official GOP party platform - mostly encompasses ideologies that the disaffected Republicans can not embrace any longer. These consist primarily of the religiously-based social agenda. They think it has nothing to do with governing and they're right. The left-wing platform does NOT mostly include the ideologies of the far left (which are those over-the-top positions the far right accuses the far left of trying to do).

So the bottom line is that the Democratic party is becoming more moderate with a lot of disaffected leftist extremists yelling loudly about it while the Republican party is becoming more extremist with a lot of disaffected centrists griping rather quietly about it.

But the former Republicans won't join a moderate party called the "Democrats" while the Democrats probably don't want their name party's associated with a bunch of leftist radicals like the GOP's name has been. While this could be the whole explanation for the lack of rise of a moderate party, it's likely not the actual reason.

In the first place, while the Democrats as a whole have moved to the center, they haven't moved THAT much. Rather than taxing EVERYONE and spending the money, they want to tas the RICH and spend the money. I get the idea, but it's the wrong implementation. They need to cut taxes, too, in order to redistribute the wealth from the top down (which is the only way top-down or "trickle-down" economics works).

I've explained my economic theories before and will refine the economic model in a future blog. Suffice it to say that the Democrats still don't have the idea of how to manage money, even though tax and spend is a fiscally more prudent policy than the spending without taxing that the right-wing did for two wars to the tune of $4 to $6 trillion dollars (added to the price tag) when all the shouting is done. And that was two years ago. Today, reliable estimates for projected costs are anywhere from $4 trillion to over $10 trillion dollars (for Iraq ALONE) .

But all this flies in the face of the fact that more and more Americans are identifying themselves as not belonging to either of the major parties. There SHOULD be enough to create Moderate candidates proportional to the number of Democrat and Republican candidates. But there aren't. Currently, Gallup puts the number of voters identifying themselves as "Independent" at 41%. This doesn't mean they're registered that way.

The problem here lies less with the title of the individuals than it does with their politics.

Independents aren't necessarily Moderates.

If you leave your party because it's become more moderate, you're an extremist. And the Democratic party has lost more members than the Republicans which means more independents from the left are extremists (though not all who leave it are because they think the Democratic party is too moderate. Some think it's not moderate enough).

The Republican party has seen fewer people leave it than the Democrats, but their losses are almost entirely moderates. So if you split the Democrats out by whatever percentage you want and you have a lot of people who are more center, left of center and far left. With Republicans you have those who have left it being center or right of center with the rest being far right.

Of course, you will always have party members who will vote howsoever they feel (more moderately in this case) because they don't necessarily want to leave the party. This is less advocacy than it is a failure to get off one's ass and declare where they stand.

But the point here is that while we have, obviously, millions of moderates in the United States - and most likely far more than the poll numbers would indicate - we don't have a Moderate party. Moderates would be anyone with a "center-something" designation. Be them a center-right, a center or a center-left. This describes those of us "in the middle" where our differences aren't so great that we can't work them out. We have overlap. We have ideas and ideals in common. We can work together.

You know, like civilized people and completely unlike our current Congress. Coincidentally, it's also from where every workable idea that ever came out of congress has come.

So why isn't there a Moderate Party to vie for the attention of disaffected Republicans and disaffected Democrats and the rest of us in the middle? The country wasn't always one of extremes, even if it seems like it.

Well, when asking why these days, the answer is almost always, "Money."

If one assumes for the moment that our democracy is entirely controlled by those who have money and under almost no control by those who don't, then it becomes easy to see why there is no money in moderation. (A substantial argument in favor of this is who decides who runs for office in America these days. It's almost always someone rich and always decided by the wealthy - either the millionaires on the left or the billionaires on the right. Their organizations, the RNC and DNC decide who will be their next choice and they fight it out in the election, both sides knowing that no matter who wins, it will be business as usual because that's how they've rigged the game.)

The "middle" isn't a political force because they're not composed of millionaires (who are mostly on the left) and billionaires (who are mostly on the right). The millionaires want to get richer, so they do things like tell their supporters that "things should be better for them" and sound all altruistic and then go off and try to take from the wealthy and give to the millionaires who are entrenched in philanthropic organizations that pay them way too much money.

Ever notice how charities that have 2 cents on the dollar going to the work and the other 98 cents going to the "overhead" are almost all "liberals"? Much of the reason I call the left incompetent is that almost none of their core policies are ever enacted in such a way that it actually helps their supporters. Usually, it just makes their lives more complicated and doesn't give them a hand-up.

Least ye righties salivate too much over this, you guys have the billionaires at the top who want to get richter. They have orders of magnitude more money and resources at their disposal. They can pay their way into religious groups (like the Catholic Church), buy and sell people's loyalties and get people to think their political ideology is a "religion" that is not to be questioned and to kick people out if they don't toe the ideological line.

To be honest, I don't see any procedural differences between the GOP and the Catholic Church. In BOTH cases, the job is to rob from the poor and give to the rich and quell dissent. This has been done a myriad of different times and way. Read my book if you want to know more about that. The point here is that there is no money behind a push toward sanity and away from extremism.

Or to put it more bluntly, there's no financial incentive THAT THEY CAN SEE to financing a moderate party.

Financing extremism is also a great way to motivate people on the edges. They simply expect everyone else withing range of that edge to go along because the people on the edges make the most noise. (See the campaign of Ron Paul - a way the hell out there libertarian - for an example of a minuscule axel with a very loud squeak). Extremism is motivating. Moderation, by its very nature, is not. It's common sense. It's work (mostly because there are differences even among moderates and it's harder on the brain to work through these differences than it is to stubbornly and thoughtlessly cling to a party platform or talking point).

Despite the so-called American Work Ethic, it obviously doesn't apply to thinking.

In short, it's easier to be an extremist by saying "Fuck Obumtart and the libturds!" and get people to go along with you than it is to say, "Hey, we need to figure out how to deal with this." and hope people go along with you.

Moderation isn't exciting.

Another problem is that moderation doesn't pay very well. At least, not the way politics in America has been paying the millionaires and the billionaires over the last 30-35 years.

As I've mentioned in my book, the fiscal policies of the right-wing have done nothing but enrich the wealthy. The fiscal policies of the left have done nothing but enrich the not quite as wealthy. The problem is, of course, greed (and a large dose of a complete lack of foresight). Moderate policies would put money into actually improving the economy for everyone and not just a select few. Taxes would be based on economic needs and realities rather than for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many as it mostly is today.

The money wouldn't be flowing through the government to the wealthy or through tax breaks for the wealthy. That will directly impact their cash flow into their pockets because that's the way it works today.

But the short-sightedness involved here comes from what happens not during the good times, but when the bad times hit. When the economy isn't working, people aren't working.

That seems self evident, of course, but it has some rather indirect impacts on the wealthy that they are NOT thinking about. The most direct of them is revolution. In good times and bad, the overall health of the wealthy - that is their ability to afford to live a chosen lifestyle - is unaffected. In every case, they recover whatever losses they may have incurred because that's how the game is stacked in their favor. The people get poorer but the wealthy get richer.

So the wealthy opt for a more immediate return on their political purchases (you know, buying a candidate) rather than looking to the long term and seeing what would happen when you keep the people down too long and/or fail to plan for a longer term future which would create benefits for all, albeit in moderation. Their life-styles wouldn't be changed at all. Their balance sheets may reflect some differences.

If they wait for the revolt, their balance sheets may be the kindling for their estates.

Seems to me a little of something is better than ending up with a lot of nothing.

So there's no money in moderation.

But I have an idea about how to at least get some excitement into the moderation issue. It's part of the title of this blog.

Moderates have to become militant.

Keep in mind that "militant moderate" is an oxymoron - a thing that fits in well with the demented psychology being used by the left and the right to promote their ideologies. As long as everyone declaring that they're moderates get in on the joke, it's fine. But to be a militant moderate, one merely defends their point of view - one in the middle - from both the left and the right. They also assail the left and the right on the worst of their policies.

In order to be a POLITICAL moderate, one can't be a PERSONAL moderate. One has to be an extremist at being moderate. Praising right and left wing policies that actually DO work or have some actual benefit for the majority of the country while excoriating those that don't. I mostly excoriate those that don't because they're the things that are making our country crazy.

And that drives me nuts.

Q.E.D.

So we need to create the sexy Militant Moderates who march in favor of moderate policies and a return to sanity in our politics (or at least something MORE sane than the self-destructive bullshit we have today). We need outspoken political moderates. People willing to open up two fronts in a one front war. People willing to leverage their vote in exchange for good behavior from the extremists and workable solutions to our country's problems. We are the silent power brokers today, deciding between two extremes. As power brokers, we should be the ones dictating terms in the first place. That none of us are a majority isn't a problem. The extremists (the 15% on the right and the 10% on the left) both want to dictate to the rest of us. The 75% of us somewhere between the two mostly just want a government that does the job of governing. At least we have that much in common. It's debatable whether the current congress has that much going for it.

If results are what determines motivation, then it's apparent it doesn't want the government to work.

Let the march of the Militant Moderates begin. Let us stand foursquare for reason, sanity and policies that ignore ideologies and face realities. To stop catering to special interests and cater to the common interests. To do extreme things when faced with extreme situations as long as the imposition of those extreme things only inconveniences a few and the eventual outcome is beneficial for all. (We're moderates after all).

All we need now is a way to finance it. Maybe 2012 is too late for the Moderate Party. But the House is up for election in 2014 and the Presidency will be up for grabs in 2016. If we pooled the money we have hiding in our sofas, we might be able to do it.