There Is No Truth In Advertising

In this time of political rhetoric, let us pause for a moment to consider that most abused form of advertising: The Campaign Ad.

It shouldn't have to be said that they are ALL dishonest. They are all likely true (well, recent polls indicate that not only do people expect Democrat ads to be less than the truth, but they expect Republican ads to lie more.), but none of them are honest.

What's the difference?

The best way of describing it is a complete lack of integrity on the part of the candidates. As one person with whom I was talking said, a person with integrity is always honest, but a person who only tells the "truth" can be a liar.

The simple fact is that truth is relative. Having no absolute "truths" in the world, it's easy to say things that aren't true, and believe it. When it comes to political ideology, this is especially plain to see. No one's "truth" aligns with the "truth" another person sees (unless they happen to agree on all particulars). The sad fact is that the "truth" isn't fact. It's a collection of perceptions all colored by an individual's beliefs. And because individuals all vary, so do the truths in which they believe.

In short, there is no truth. Especially in advertising.

But there CAN be something which relies on the individual just as much as their perception that can better relate their belief in what's "truth" than speaking the "truth" as they know it: Integrity.

Integrity means "wholeness", and when speaking the "truth", it means the WHOLE truth and not just a little part of it. Integrity leads to honesty. Honesty is giving someone the relevant facts (as to who decides what's relevant, that's up to the individual). When in doubt, relay all the KNOWN facts.

But it's more than just fact-giving. It's keeping up on the facts. After all, facts change. Yes, yes they do. Facts are things that people know to be "true". We're not born with the knowledge of ALL THINGS, so we discover as we go. Being human, we can get things wrong - very often a lot of the time. Given that half of all humans are below average, it's likely that we get things wrong more often than we get them right.

So "facts" can change, otherwise the earth would be flat, the sun, stars and moon would revolve around the earth and everyone would be dying of infections because no one would think that a common, lowly mold could do anything about it.

As to the difference between a truth teller and a liar, there are none. Especially in terms of politicians. After all, they often DO tell the truth. But the truth they tell is only PART of the truth. The truth isn't the whole truth. It lacks wholeness, therefore lacks integrity. This is why a truth-teller is usually quite dishonest.

There are reasons they don't tell the whole truth or relate all of the relevant facts. It's always deliberate in this lack of information, by the way. Politicians don't get elected by being blunt and honest with people, after all. Honest requires them to disclose too much.

Take fossil fuel subsidies, for example. The politicians would have you believe it's to offset the high costs of finding new reserves or upgrading old equipment and saves jobs.

Let's examine these truths:

Finding new reserves is indeed expensive.

If equipment isn't replaced, jobs will likely be lost when it breaks down.

Both of these are quite true. But this isn't all there is to the story of why the fossil fuel industry gets billions of dollars in government subsidies.

The truth is that finding new reserves is part of the standard profit/losses in the industry. The costs of looking are a hell of a lot less than the costs of acquiring - which are not part of the looking costs. In short, it's a normal business expense and they have a 35% success rate on average. That is to say, of three test wells drilled, one will produce a financially viable return. "Financially viable" means profitable, which means it will pay for the costs of the other two dry wells, plus the cost of the acquisition of the oil, plus more which goes to profit.

The truth here is that this reason means the oil companies are being paid profits on top of their profits.

As for "saving jobs" rationale about equipment expenses, again, replacing or upgrading old equipment can be expensive, but it, too, is part of the normal operating costs of doing business. It was mentioned before that drilling on a financially viable well means they're making a profit. Profits mean they've already paid for the upgrades and replacements WITHOUT the subsidies.

As for the saving jobs part, the fact is OLD equipment generates jobs more than new equipment does. It requires more maintenance, more people to take care of it or even run it. Replacing it means fewer people are needed to run it or take care of it. That means fewer jobs. So while upgrading and replacing old equipment does save some of the jobs that would be lost if that equipment couldn't be repaired or replaced, it doesn't save the same number as before.

Care to check the figures? Between 2003 and 2010, the oil industry (globally) made $1.7 trillion dollars in profit. ($900 billion of it was from the top five oil companies alone). During the same time, the government handed them $500 billion dollars in subsidies. That means the oil companies made $1.2 trillion dollars in profits WITHOUT THE SUBSIDIES. (Note: "Subsidies" include tax breaks and allowances that would have otherwise been taken from them. Therefore, the above numbers for the amount they would have made without the subsidies are correct, but could be misleading if someone thinks that it was all money GIVEN to the oil companies. The amount of tax dollars given to them was much smaller - approximately $75-$100 billion dollars. But they could have been taxed $400-$425 billion dollars on the $1.7 trillion dollars they made.)

So what truth is there when the two parts of it - both true - mislead people into thinking the oil industry needed ANY subsidies at all? The bottom line is that even without the subsidies, they were making a profit and regardless of the numbers involved (to which there is always dispute), the profitability of the oil companies is without question. They made hundreds of billions of dollars in profits at the least. The need for subsidies is absolutely a question because those subsidies didn't come close to what the oil companies made in profits. But they don't tell you this part.

An HONEST politician would have pointed out these little truths above, but they don't. Why not? Because there's one more truth that's part of the whole they fail to mention: They get money from the oil companies to stay in power and do their bidding.

Harsh? Perhaps.

But let's examine the assertion.

The oil companies give money to candidates to get elected. The candidates with the most money usually get elected. Once in office they initiate, or continue, subsidies to the oil companies that are utterly unnecessary.

Tell me the difference between doing this out of the goodness of their hearts or doing it as a straight out quid-pro-quo. I fail to see any. Because with soaring deficits, I don't see that they're doing it to help the country. Taxes only happen on profits. You can't tax a company if it's not making a profit, after all, and you can’t take all of their profits in taxes. So the only reason to give them subsidies when they're already making far more in profits, that I can see, is to pay them back for helping get the candidate elected in the first place.

Back to truth in advertising...

The lack of integrity in advertising - not telling the whole truth - is endemic in the world. Everyone has a spin that makes their product or service seem much better than "the competition". Most of the time, there's no discernable difference. In some cases, there are distinct, occasionally glaring, differences which makes mosts rational people ask, "How the HELL could they say that???"

It's called deliberate misperception. Take Apple, for example. They don't sell hardware. They market an "experience" which they claim is clearly superior to anyone else's. They then control that experience in such a way that no one inside of their "walled garden" has a CHANCE to encounter another kind of experience. They're told that the Apple experience is better, but they have no way to find out for themselves without using a non-Apple product.

(Disclaimer: I an am unabashed Apple basher because of the deliberate misperceptions that Apple perpetuates upon its victims (among other reasons). For the sake of "honesty" and disclosing the whole truth, I thought you should know.)

This fallacy about a better "experience" came to the fore recently with the distribution of iOS 6, which removed Google Maps entirely and put in Apple Maps. The reasons for this are fodder for someone else's blog, but the bottom line is that people complained. Loudly. Often. In every place. On every continent except one, and Google Maps isn't available there mostly because there are no roads.

The "experience" was not living up to its billing. Apple's Maps application (I HATE the lazy-ass word "app") was clearly NOT better than Google Maps. Not only not better, but potentially deadly. But here's my prediction for what will happen. Apple expects its followers (like a cult, and the right-wing, Apple has followers, not customers or supporters) to be soothed by their reassurances that the Apple Maps program will get better and become better than Google's Map program. After all, it's Apple and the Apple "experience" is clearly better than anyone else's, right?

And people will believe it.

Another thing Apple did - and still encourages the belief in - is the notion that Apple computers are somehow magically immune to malware, viruses and other security threats. They had the Apple Guy (a pretentious, pissant slacker I really hated) and the PC Guy (A bumbling nerd) arguing about the PC's need for security software and how Apple computer users don't need to worry about it.

That little fantasy has been repeatedly shot down over the years, most recently by the Flashback virus and others. The fact is NO operating system is virus-proof. But Apple still insinuates that their products are safer despite the relative ease in which they can be hacked.

Apple is not honest. It lacks integrity.

Now, not everyone is privy to ALL of the facts. People make mistakes (Even me, though it's because I thought I was wrong once, but it turned out I wasn't). I'm not talking about dishonesty through ignorance that is curable. I'm talking about willful ignorance - the refusal to entertain the notion that you MIGHT be wrong. The refusal to check the KNOWN facts to make sure you're right. The refusal to look beyond your own biases and only see what you already believe are facts.

For example, I hate tablets. I see tablets as wasteful toys intended for the drooling masses to sit and consume without actually producing. They have niche market uses, but for computer productivity, they're pathetically devoid of utility when compared to laptops, desktops and even netbooks. So I concluded that they would be a fad and people would abandon them in droves once the "new tablet smell" wears off because I believed that people would prefer to be productive instead of drooling consumers.

I still believe all of this to a large degree, but am beginning to wonder about the fad part. People are still buying them to the point that major manufacturers are moving toward tablets and away from traditional laptops and desktops. The variety and selection in the latter two are way down compared to even a year ago, and pricing on them has increased a lot. A variety of market conditions would account for that (especially if they're trying to put their recoures into tablets instead of the others), but it may be that tablets aren't a fad after all. It may be that all most people want to do is sit and look and drool and not be productive.

Stranger things have been known to happen.

That means tablets will NOT be a fad. I've accepted that as a possibility. And given the fact that a tablet is basically disposable (you can't really fix them without the resources of the company that made them to begin with), the worst thing it's going to do is make my job of fixing computers harder to get by on with fewer computers to fix out there and, of course, cost the end-user a hell of a lot more money than a standard computer over its lifetime because it's much more profitable to make tablets than laptops (part of the market reasons they make, and promote, them).

The point, though, is that the facts have changed my reality rather than my insistence in maintaining my reality coloring the facts. I am not willfully ignorant. I accept the facts, even if I don't like them or what they may portend for my livelihood.

Integrity means wholeness. A person with integrity is an honest person. A person with integrity must be honest with themselves first before they can be honest with anyone else. In the end, candidates who are not honest with others aren't even honest with themselves. And if you can't be honest with yourself, a person of integrity, a whole person, then what HONEST claim can you make in support of your qualifications to be the leader of others?

In the end, all we ever elect are a hell of a lot of dishonest people. So it makes me wonder how any sane, rational, intelligent person can possibly believe what a politician tells them, let alone believe in that politician in the first place.

It goes back to the old adage about how you can tell when a politician is lying: Their lips are moving.

The paradox is that we NEED honest politicians but no one honest ever runs for office.

The Decline and Fall of the Right-wing: Redux

Not too long ago, I wrote about how the right-wing was self-destructing - basically imploding from within due to overexposure to the rhetoric of the right-wing. But while this appears to be true, it's not the sole cause of the issue (I won't call it a problem mostly because I don't see the decline and fall of the Republican party as a problem). My previous post failed to address these other causes, which was remiss on my part.

Given that the right-wing is primarily composed of (let's be generous here) basically mentally incapable people who willingly give up their capacity of independent thought for the simple-minded comfort of religion, the inevitable fall of the right-wing isn't surprising. Of course, religion is just another made up way to separate people and a large share of the right-wing use it mostly as a way of clustering together by race.

NOTE: This applies to the liberal side as well, though not to the same degree mostly because racists Blacks are usually Baptist while racist Hispanics are usually Catholics and in the United States as a whole, both are minorities. It's not a pass for them because they do the same mindless things for the liberal side although they don't do what the right-wing is doing (which is to say what I will be talking about next).

So what you have is a bunch of people who believe in discredited myths using their religious and political associations to isolate themselves from the rest of society because they hate people who don't look like them or believe what they believe. All of this was explained in my book, so I won't rehash it again.

But in stating the case for my book, I was overlooking one obvious thing: Those who exclude others are doomed in a democracy. And that's one of the reasons why the right-wing will fall - it will exclude itself into political irrelevance.

Consider several of the core right-wing policies:

- They want to make abortion illegal.

- They want to make Gay marriage illegal.

- They want to restrict the voting rights of minorities with "voter ID" laws.

Now, taken one at a time, you're not seeing the full picture. I missed it myself when I first considered these issues. But when you step back and thingk about it, what is really happening here?

The right-wing is trying to restrict, deny, erode or scale back the civil and/or constitutional rights of well over half of the citizens of the United States.

"Okay," you say, "So what? The right-wing is doing that all the time."

This observation becomes a hell of a lot more relevant to the future of the right wing (or any political movement) when you consider what happens to a political ideology that can't get a majority vote in a democracy because it's alienated more than half of the people in the nation by trying to tell them they can't do things that are perfectly legal.

Read back about how the right-wing is beginning to believe its own propaganda. They actually think doing these things is the good and right thing to do.

Todd Akin, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate who is against all abortion, even from rape or incest, honestly thinks women can naturally mitigate their risk of getting pregnant from a rape. Despite the fact they can't, and that not all rape is forceable, he stood by his remarks. After multiple calls to drop out after the "rape" allegation (including Mitt Romney - the current GOP Presidential candidate) - he is now being supported by Republicans, many of whom called on him to drop out, because no GOP contender can be selected now. And the first thing he does is criticized his female opponent as not acting "lady like".

To say that this damaged the GOP is like saying the iceberg had an impact on the Titanic. Women the world over - and especially in the U.S. (Except, of course, the brain-addled few who still cling to self-defeating views of the GOP) - were pretty much ready to perform a Lorenna Bobbit on him.

But then, in the Freudian slip of the decade (which wasn't so much a slip but an expose' that let those who weren't GOP loyalists find out about it), in a secretly taped video, Mitt Romney dissed 47% of all Americans as people who relied on the the government who would never vote for the GOP and that his job as President wasn't to "worry about them".

Here's the quote:

"There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it -- that that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what. ... These are people who pay no income tax. ... [M]y job is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

Now, the fact is that 46.4% of all Americans do not pay federal income tax. Among them, 25,000 people who make more than $2,000,000.00 a year. About 18% don't make enough to have paid income taxes regardless of their exemptions. But this is only FEDERAL income taxes. It doesn't include the state income taxes that almost everyone pays, or the sales taxes that every one pays. No matter how much "on welfare" someone is, they still pay taxes one way or another.

So in essence, Romney just slammed everyone who takes tax deductions or, through no fault of their own in an economy the GOP has done everything to prevent being made better, has no job to begin with. And this coming from someone who only paid an effective tax rate of 14.1% on $13,696,961.00 of income.

His popularity subsequently dropped by several points in several so-called "battleground" states (called such because the distribution of righties and lefties is relatively even with a varying number of independents tossed in to fight over), although overall the race still remains close.

So let's sum up.

- We have a political party that tosses away 47% of all Americans as people who never "take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

- They want to restrict the civil rights of 50.8% of all Americans by making abortion illegal although the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that it's a civil right.

- They want to keep about 30% of all Americans from voting.

- They want to prevent gays and lesbians from getting the same civil rights and civil entitlements that any "married" couple have. Depending on your sources, this number is between 2% and as much as 10% (there are no reliable figures for the actual number of homosexuals as opposed to those who have participated in homosexual acts, who were counted as homosexual when they may not have been).

Let's break it down.

The minorities are both men and women of course, so let's say half are women and the other half men. That adds another 15% or so in the form of men to the women who the right-wing want to restrict the civil rights they have. That brings our total to 65.8% of all Americans. Add in half of two more percent (minimum) of homosexuals they want to keep from getting the same civil rights as heterosexuals and you are at 66.8% of all Americans. Splitting up who is or isn't in the 47% that the GOP doesn't "worry about" is problematic as to how to fit them into the overall total, but we're already at a point where a supermajority (more than two thirds) of Americans are being systematically targeted for restricting some right they enjoy today by the GOP. Even if you put in only 9% more of that 47% who didn't fall into the women/minority/gay group we already have, you're looking at over 75% of all Americans who have been dissed by the GOP or who are actively being targeted to keep them from exercising civil rights enjoyed by everyone else.

This leaves you with less than 25% of Americans trying to decide what to do about the other 75%.

This is the 15 trillion ton elephant in the room I failed to notice. In looking at the trees, I didn't see the forest.

And it's not JUST that they're seeking to do this to the overwhelming majority of Americans in the U.S. It's that they're being "purists" in their ideology, kicking out people who don't meet their standards or toe their political line. Romney is seen as a "Mormon" first and a "Christian" second (despite the fact that the Constitution says that having religion shall not be a requirement of the President).

(I've made the point before, but it should be noted here that the GOP seems only interested in selected parts of the First and Second Amendments - the right to freedom of religion and the right to keep and bear arms - without regard for the rest of those amendments OR any of the other amendments. This seemed like a good place to point this out again.)

The most telling part of all this is that the Republicans SHOULD BE IN THE LEAD in the polls by now. The President is overseeing a shitty economy. Tensions in the Middle East are on the rise after the Libyan embassy attack - an event Romney utterly screwed up in capitalizing on. In short, people don't see the GOP as a viable option to lead the country.

So it comes down to diminishing returns. Rather than expanding, seeking to find others to join their merry band of terrorists, the GOP is imploding, losing moderates by the truckload daily and further isolating themselves because their core followers actually believe their propaganda.

In my previous posts, I made mention of how the right-wing will start the second civil war - almost certainly shortly after Obama is re-elected. It won't be the GOP which does it. It will be the hardest-core right-wingers who can't stand the thought of a "muslim nigger in the White House" (which is a direct quote from several posters I've seen in the last year). They don't care about democracy. They only care about religion and guns.

But they are DESTINED to fail by their core policies - at least as long as they're in a democracy. They spend all of their time trying to kick people out while at the same time trying to convince people to vote for them.

This is another reason why I think a second civil war is coming. There are enough hard-core rightists out there who are willing to murder their fellow Americans over their politics or religion to make it a definite, long-recognized possibility. When democracy fails to give them what they want through peaceful means, they'll resort to their guns to settle the matter.

It's the only way they'll stay politically relevant in what was left of a former democracy. One way or another domestic terrorism will increase with all of it coming from the right-wing. This is one prediction in which I hope I'm wrong, but I honestly can't see how I am. Unless we get a "moderate party" going (which the wealthy DO NOT want since it doesn't lend itself as well to the control of the political process as extremism does), it's going to happen.

Well, I put my life on the line for my country once. I can do it again.

How To Rebuild The United States After The Second Civil War

The United States is currently gearing up for the second civil war. It's been coming since the 1980's when the right-wing started systematically funneling money to the wealthy and away from the poor. Fundamentally, the gap between the haves and the have nots is at the root of the problem. And since no one has the smarts to stop electing the enablers of the wealthy to congress, it ain't gonna be fixed before the balloon goes up (which means the start of the war, for those of you who don't understand that expression).

Another reason it will happen is the polarization of our politics. During the Bush administration, politics became an us versus them affair, turning American against American. When Obama was elected, the right-wing (which has a long and storied history of racism) went into spasms of hate. They created the Tea Party to rally the equivalent of white supremacists and terrorists in a call for smaller government while at the same time calling for more guns, less gun control, and targeting members of congress who didn't agree with their dogma. One was severely wounded and nine people killed at the height of this rhetoric. I have noticed that it's ratcheting up again lately.

But at the heart of it is racism, hatred, religious bigotry and intolerance - all things the U.S. has had a long history of, but which aren't playing well with the rest of us Americans who actually have a brain with functioning reasoning abilities.

So in the end, we'll be fighting one another with arms once again because these radicals can't accept the idea of equality for all, and the other side is getting mighty tired of all the threats.

So howsoever it all turns out, the simple fact is that by the end of the year (sometime after the elections, I imagine) the U.S. will engage in another civil war. It will start off ideologically by the right-wing, but it will end financially by moderates who will attack the source of the problem - the excessive accumulation of wealth and manipulating the system to keep everyone but those with wealth down. After all, if you're going to have a war, cutting off the flow of money to the sides that are fighting is the best way to stop the fighting. No money for bullets, the fighting stops.

I went into the causes of the war before, and so far I see it's still on track. Enough about cause. This is about what needs to change once the fighting is done.

1. Two years of non-compulsory national service to earn the right to vote.

National service is simply the giving of yourself in time and effort to others. It can be done in nursing homes, hospitals, military, homeless shelters - any place a need can be fulfilled without a direct quid-pro-quo compensation as is done in a normal "work" environment. You interact with other people on a new and fundamentally different level. It would involved being housed, clothed and fed on the government's dime while you did your work. You would be paid a small amount, but not a lot - not enough to live on your own - and would be required to live "on base" as it were or where ever the designated housing would be. It would be a regulated, regimented life requiring training, discipline and service.

Too many Americans have only ever served themselves. They think of national service as a "job". They don't understand the commitment involved, nor the level of effort it takes to do it right. They don't know what it's like to put their own tender skin in harms way for their fellow Americans. They don't know what it's like to work for a cause greater than themselves. National service would be the only way to give them a taste of it.

If they understand something bigger than themselves, have worked toward that and spend years of their life in that endeavor to EARN the right to vote, they'll more likely give their vote some more thought than they do today. If they don't want to vote (and too many don't), then great, they can sit and be the egocentric, selfish assholes they've always been. At least they no longer have the right to choose who will lead us.

2. Only those who have served in the military for SIX years or more, or who have been in combat if not serving for six years, or who have made national non-military service a career (20 years or more) can run for, or be appointed to, any federal office.

National service isn't necessarily MILITARY service. National service is a general category for serving one's country. Military service is one of the ways one can do that. But it's a very important distinction between serving one's country civilly and doing it militarily. The former is merely going through the motions to get the right to vote. The latter is what people do when they believe in their country to the point they are at least willing to die for it.

THAT earns respect.

As a vet, I don't always agree with what other vets say. John McCain is a good example of this. I disagree with his politics more often than not. But as a fellow vet (not to mention combat vet), he has earned my respect and a place at the table. I will hear him out because I know he has at least been willing to (and has) put his life on the line for our country. It's not because he's a Senator or an elected official. It's ONLY because he's a vet and we share that common bond.

Another thing about vets that civilians don't get is the level of cooperation needed to get things done in a military organization is the same needed to get things done in a government. We can argue, but we don't usually get nearly as personal as civilians do with one another. We have at least some level of respect for each other civilians utterly lack.

But above all, each has shown by their service that they have put country FIRST. Ideologies are secondary to the good of the country. And by cooperation, the country can prosper. We understand the term "United States" as well as the name and know on a fundamental level civilians can't understand that through unity, we have strength.

Those who have demonstrated their selflessness through long-term national service in the civilian sector, foregoing wealth for service, deserve the same opportunity. It's one thing to slide by doing two years without really caring (but getting the discipline and understanding of what service means). It's quite another to serve for the equivalent of a career. That, too, earns my respect.

3. No one in the military shall receive a commission to officer level without first having served two years (or one year in combat) at an enlisted rank.

This one is odd, but necessary. Officers in the military today (except Marines and Mavericks or prior enlisted) tend to be college jerks who had some "leadership training" without much practice. Most do fairly well, but too many of them are elitist pricks who don't know what the hell they're doing. They've never seen the world through the eyes of those they command, rarely respect the opinions of those they command and have never served under someone who has a good command style that motivates and energizes.

I know this from personal experience.

Giving them a compulsory taste of the enlisted, plebian life helps build a perspective that will make them better leaders. And after the next civil war, we will need good leaders because we sure as hell don't have any now.

4. Wealth will be capped.

I've already written about how capitalism is flawed due to human greed. I've already advocated for moderation. I've pointed out that excessive consumption of limited resources is only going to make things worse.

Of course, I'm not in the position to make any of this happen, but in the aftermath of the next civil war, we will need to plug the single problem with capitalism - excess accumulation of wealth - by capping net worth.

This makes sense economically. By limiting how much a person can be worth in total, it keeps money flowing in an economy. People with excess wealth are those with the majority of their "wealth" tied up in investments. Investments don't create jobs unless an economy is very strong and thriving. Our boom-bust cycles of economic stability are due to the money not flowing consistently.

It also makes sense socially. After all, if the gap between the poor and the rich is smaller, there's less animosity. Further, it makes it easier for the average person to get ahead and achieve the top tier because the bar has been lowered. If net worth is the measure, and someone is already topped out, they have less available funds to support legislation that limits the ability of other people to get ahead, less incentive to do it (after all, if it's easier to reach the top tier, and the wealthy has less worth and disposable income than they do now, it's less of an incentive to help a relative or friend do it) and more likelihood of learning to live less lavishly.

Excess wealth - that achieved above the cap - would be routed into schools, roads, infrastructure and the funding needed to maintain the national service corp. Chances are good that any taxes levied would be very small if at all.

Were I to put on a ballpark cap on wealth, I'd top it out at $100 million per individual (subject to change depending on fiscal realities). That's a hell of a lot of money, but considerably less than the cost of an F-22. When looked at a net worth chart, averaged out over the entire U.S., that puts the available funds for other more vital projects than a person's next yacht at about 60 trillion dollars or so. I object to six people in the United States (the Walton clan of Wal-mart fame) having more net worth between them than the poorest 90 MILLION Americans combined.

Net worth isn't income, either. It's the total accumulation of your wealth after depreciation (or with appreciation). But in that vein, I'd cap incomes as well. Otherwise the corporations would simply pay CEO's more to make up for the differences so that the wealthy could continue to exploit the poor. Incomes would be capped at $20 million per household.

Corporate gifting and leaving it in the name of the corporation would be outlawed. If someone has defacto exclusive use, regardless of who "owns" it on paper, it is net worth for that someone. So drivers, cars, houses, planes, yachts, etc.... The use of corporate assets must be charged at a fair market value or for cost, whichever is lower. Corporations can't give them to execs for their own use as a perk of employment. If the exec want "exclusive use", they have to pay for it out of their own pocket at a fair market rate. So that executive plane trip to Haiti has to be paid for by the executive even if he uses the corporate jet. He pays for fuel, wages and any other incidental expenses that it cost to make the trip. For a house, he pays the market rate for rent for the house and its contents (if it's furnished), plus the cost of the staff. If there is no one occupying the house, the corporation pays for the staff and upkeep.

This isn't detailed, of course, but the bottom line is that corporate perks would be a thing of the past and accumulating wealth would be simpler for people, but there would be a limit as to how much you can get. This would keep the divisions to a smaller degree, let those who aspire to greatness become great, reduce or eliminate the incentives to fix the game so only other wealthy people could win it and stop the flow of the money of the wealthy into the coffers of politicians. (Of course, in this world, the politicians would have a lot less incentive to be the lapdogs of the rich in the first place, having already demonstrated a willingness to put one's life on the line for the sake of the whole country as opposed to the privileged few.)

Education should be made more affordable and EFFECTIVE. I think free education is kind of stupid, actually. It's not appreciated by those who don't want one. It's taken for granted and/or squandered by those who are given it free.

This explains George W. Bush, Dan Quayle and Mitt Romney. All exposed to an education at top universities, paid for by their parents, and all dumb as a brick.

But it can't be made unaffordable as is happening now so that only the rich can afford pay for it without indenturing one's self to the wealthy by taking out student loans or by working one's self into the ground to pay for it.

So I'd do a tiered system. All of it subsidized by the new tax structure to meet costs, with limits on the incomes.

First of all, no one may be a school administrator without having first taught in a classroom for five years. School board members must also be working teachers (expanding the number of school board members will help spread out the workload). Being a member of the school board will result in a 10% increase in pay and workload. Alternates will be elected in case someone doesn't pull their load after being elected.

This means every school board member and every school administrator has taught in the classroom and knows what it's like from the bottom up. The same perspectives as is needed for all military officers is what the idea is here. I'd make doctors work for a year as an orderly (which can be done as a national service) before they're allowed to become doctors, too.

As for schools, I'd go with a three tiered system.

Free primary education, but you MUST GRADUATE. No dropping out allowed. If you don't graduate, you aren't an adult in the eyes of society (more on that stupid age thing in a bit) and will be sent back to school or put to work for society at an occupation not of your choice. Those are your options: Graduate from primary school with the rest of society or work for the rest of your life at poverty level or worse.

This, by the way, simply formalizes what usually happens to people who don't graduate.

Another thought that may or may not fly is graduation level. Some graduate with much higher GPA's than others. In this case, there would be a system in place for the costs for your next step. If you graduate with a high GPA in the relevant subjects (total GPA is BS. If you have a 4.0 in advanced math, physics and chemistry, you're going to be a more appropriate student for engineering than if you got a 4.0 in English, Philosophy and Art), your costs for the next track will be lower in the relevant subjects.

In an aside, sports would be minimized as an activity while academic achievement would be pushed. Sports does no one any good after they graduate (save for the extremely rare individuals who go on to have a career) and takes up a disproportionate amount of school resources. With national service as the way to get the right to vote, there's no need to teach those people how to cooperate or play by the rules and those who don't will be kept out of the game entirely.

I WOULD encourage physical activity and education, but sporting teams and such would be mostly an out-of-pocket expense for those who participated. (Remember, getting ahead would be easier, and spending money on intangibles would be encouraged, so this isn't as awful as it sounds assuming the economy reacts as it probably will.) They can join Little League or some such similar activity if they're so inclined.

Next would be vocational school, having two tracks. The first track would be job vocation - teaching the mechanics how to be mechanics, the yard workers how to be yard workers and so on and so forth. There are people who aren't suited to higher education or don't necessarily want or need one, but it's a good idea to train them for a job they like and can handle. The costs for vocational training would be low and heavily subsidized so that getting training for a job would be relatively painless. GPA's won't affect the costs of vocational training.

The other track would be to train for higher education - mostly getting all of the common prerequisites for a four year degree out of the way. This track would cost a lot more, but it would depend on your grades in primary school as to the actual cost. A generally high GPA means less cost. A C average would be the base cost. A lower than C average would cost a lot more.

Military veterans who qualify for running for national office would receive a free college education.

Sounds unfair? Yep, and deliberately so. Idiots need not apply, and if they do, they had damn sure better work at it to make it. Another thing is that this acknowledges the fact that of all the freshmen who start college, only a third graduate. Weed them out early by making it harder to get the prerequisites that don't suit their demonstrated abilities or make them work that much harder to get what they think they want. Harder, but not impossible. Getting training for a job is easy - and that's what will satisfy most people. Getting a higher education is hardest and only those committed to it - those 1/3 who actually graduate - will be able to do it.

You can't get into either of these unless you've graduated from primary school or gotten your GED.

The third track is higher education. This one you can't get unless you've done the previous prep track. It costs LESS because the effort to learn this stuff is higher and you’ve already proven your resolve to get here through effort or ability (or both).

Now, someone keeping track here may wonder how long all this will take and more importantly WHY.

People need it. To grow up, to mature, to be able to zoom ahead, to find their level. All of those things aren't being addressed by our current system, which was based on the need to put soldiers on the battle field or in the farmer's field to bring in the crops. School should be year-round, making the days progressively longer as one goes up in grade. Schools should teach and prepare children how to be productive, thinking members of society. The country needs to teach them how to be good citizens.

So it will be a longer track for most people. If one assumes we graduate people from primary school as a symbol of their adulthood, then we have a different yardstick for what constitutes an adult. I trust the reasoning of a 10 year old MIT graduate far more than an idiot of 60 whose IQ could be a measure by his hat size. Yet the latter can vote today and the former can't.

So we base adulthood on accomplishment and value to society before we do age. Age isn't an accurate guide and is pretty arbitrary. Faking an academic record (at least in the new world) will be harder than faking an ID card. If you aren't bright enough to graduate, or are too lazy to do it, you will be given a menial task to do that will let you barely squeak by for the rest of your life and be subjected to all the curfews and restrictions we place on children today. That will motivate the lazy to get a GED and take care of those who aren't able to. It's not NICE, but it is a better acknowledgement of reality than we have today.

But looking at the time-line here, you'll notice something kind of odd: For most of those growing up in my brave, new world, it seems it will take a lot longer to get there than it does now.

Not so.

Consider that primary school today usually ends at 18. Well, it won't. Primary school will END at grade 10. Most people can be taught the usual stuff - history, political science, math, reading, writing, science, etc. - in 10 years - especially when one considers schools will be year round then. More studying (if one adds in the extra 10 quarters gained over that 10 years, it's an extra 2 quarters) in less time.

This opens up the opportunity for that national service time. This is the time when kids need to learn to be disciplined, giving, responsible, etc. National service will do that. Yes, having kids in the military at 16 seems harsh, but when you consider that kids as young as 12 have been going off to war for thousands of years (England had a law requiring every male between the ages of 12 and 60 to practice daily with the longbow to be called up for national defense, for example - which is the tradition that led to the second amendment), it's not as bad as you might think. I know a few 16 year olds that could REALLY use that kind of regimentation and discipline today.

After that, it takes on the same track as before. Vocational school then higher education. National Service does NOT give you vocational training like it kind of does today. Making a career out of it entitles you to it, but your perks (voting) don't begin until you retire. In short, you will have no say in what happens to the country WHILE you serve. If you think about it, it makes sense. You can't tell your boss what to do.

But career national service grants you immediate qualification as a federal level candidate (I'm not sure if we can impose the national service to state candidates, but we can for national ones like senators and representatives since that's outlined in the Constitution.) as well as the right to vote. The only reason military vets can run for national office after their national service is that they've demonstrated a considerably higher level of commitment to country in a shorter amount of time by putting their lives on the line for it.

In the end, we have a new society. Adulthood is based on competence. Those who can't be competent are taken care of. Those who won't be competent are as well, but they'll hate life and with a free education (remember getting the education to graduate or the GED is always FREE, so even if they make poverty wages or less, they can always better themselves) there's no impediment to them getting out of their rut.

The end result of all of this is a much fairer society that is in keeping the the spirit of the United States. A place where someone can get ahead through dint of hard work. A place of equality and fairness. A place where those who choose to make the effort to serve their country in whatever capacity they can are the ones who earn the right to decide through democratic means how that country will be run. A place where excess can be achieved, but is frowned upon. A place where moderation, rules, where effort is rewarded, where sloth is punished and where the welfare of the people is attended to.

It probably needs quite a bit of tweaking, but we need to rediscover the unity that made our country great after the war is over.

Because we sure as hell don't have the sense to discover it now.

Why Faith Is Bad For Ya

"You gotta have faith" as the George Michaels song goes.

To me, not so damn much.

Here's the reason: Faith is bad for ya.

Actually, faith is bad for everyone, if one stipulates several extremely obvious facts.

Fact 1: People are stupid. Half of the population is below average in IQ. If this isn't self-evident to you, then please stop reading right now and get sterilized, then shoot any kids you have in the head because you are too fucking stupid to be allowed to breed.

Fact 2: MOST people think they're above average. Since this is statistically impossible, there are a large number of seriously deluded people who are out there fucking with the rest of us.

Fact 3: Faith requires the rejection of rationality in order to maintain. If you think being irrational is a great way to live, please re-read Fact 1 and follow the advice there.

Fact 4: People are unwilling to admit when they're wrong to the point of violence.

For the purposes of clarification, faith is the unfounded and unquestioning belief in something. That something can be anything from your spouse's faithfulness to the deity du jour you happen to believe in today. You have no proof. You have no direct knowledge. You just have faith.

And very often, you're wrong about these things.

I'm not requiring or demanding perfection here. People are wrong about a lot of things. People make mistakes. That's okay. It's part of living and life. But it's when you're always wrong, yet not only insist you're right, you demand others join you in your mistake that gets my panties in a bunch.

"I'm not wrong about my faith!" you scream at the top of your lungs.

Yes, in fact, you are and here's why.

Historically, mankind has had many different religious faiths. Today, there are basically three: Judaism, Islam and Christianity. Atheism isn't a faith because they don't believe in anything. It's not a disbelief of your idea of whatever your faith happens to be. It not believing in it in the first place. If you equate disbelief with belief, then you see the first example of Fact 3 about those who have faith. Those who have faith believe in "something". That is what faith is all about. Those who don't believe in that something, but a different something, have a different faith. Those who don't believe in any "somethings" have no faith. A lack of faith in somethings means no faith in a something. Since only those who have faith in a something can have faith, those who don't do not have a faith.

One might argue that not believing in something is a faith. One would be wrong. It takes faith to believe in something in the first place. A faithless person doesn't believe in what a person of faith believes in. A person who believes in something is the one saying there is the something to believe in in the first place. The difference between this form of psychosis and a nut on the street is the number of people sharing the same irrational delusion that the something in which they believe, for which they have no proof, no evidence, no way to legitimately and objectively substantiate their illusions, actually exists.

But is this why you're wrong about your faith? Yes, in part. This is because NO ONE IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND HAS BEEN RIGHT.

Let's look at the whole of mankind's existence.

We started out with Unk, or Og, or Ub or some other such monosyllabic name for some imagined "god" who controlled something we didn't then understand. Little things like the weather, the earth, the sun, the stars and, well, pretty much everything else we encounter in our lives even today. We wondered where we came from. We wondered why we were here. So we mixed in a lot of guess work, a touch of philosophy and started a little thing called Religion. What religions asked for you was faith to take what these explanations for these things were (like gods and evils causing good andevil things to happen) at face value. To NOT QUESTION THEM.

Bad, bad move.

Then someone came along and came up with a "better" explanation. Of course, it was another god, or another rationalization with some philosophic overtone. Then some slightly brighter than normal people realized that other people sucked this stuff up like water to a thirsty person and decided to invest in it, reaping both secular power and wealth in the process.

You don't HONESTLY think the Catholic church is one of the wealthiest organizations on the face of the planet because they're saving souls, do you? Ever heard of their vow of poverty? If they believed it, the Pope would live no better than some street urchin in Cambodia. Please don't insult the rest of us who can think with your rationalizations justifying this.

Speaking of rationalizations, along comes another rationalization, and the faiths changed yet again. "Gosh, my faith didn't sound as good as this one does," people say to themselves and switch. More often, they switched thinking, "Hey, it doesn't matter who I give lip service to as long as I'm taken care of in the afterlife and I really don't want this driveling idiot fucktard to kill me for sticking with what I've believed all my life."

At the point of a sword, gun or by better rationalizations, faiths have been changed time and time and time again over the course of human history.

So why do you fucking think you've got it right THIS time?

"We've been believing this shit for thousands of years," you say.

Yeah, well, so did the Egyptians, the Norse, the Sumerians and the Greeks and Romans. Do you think we're worshiping the Sun God Apollo? Monotheism is just another rationalization foisted upon us by those seeking secular power and wealth over us.

It's all the same bullshit, served up with different garnishes.

So you are WRONG in your faith if you are one of the big three. In fact, you're probably wrong even if you're not one of the big three. If it relies on a rationalization instead of logic, it's certain to be wrong.

By the way, for the rationally challenged out there, this is an example of a little thing we who can think clearly and rationally call "logic". That's another thing you're functionally unequipped to deal with.

So, aside from a shared delusion, what's the harm? After all, Will Farrell is considered a good actor by a large number of people. A similar number of people thought "The Hangover" was high comedy.

Please see Fact 1 for the reason this happens. Please follow the advice for Fact 1 if you happen to be among those who don't think otherwise.

To be honest, it's not the irrationality or stupidity that is the major problem with faith. It isn't even the fact that people can't think rationally. Those factors are merely the predisposition held by those individuals who are afflicted by the phenomenon of faith. While I personally feel that the stupid shouldn't breed as a major favor to the future of humanity (mostly because they'll always remain susceptible to manipulation by those smarter than they are), it's not their lack of brain power that is the problem. Faith is the problem.

So why is faith the problem?

Faith is a problem because people believe in it and talk about it.

Really, that's the bottom line in this. It doesn't much matter if ONE person is irrational. It matters greatly when more than one person shares the same delusion. This is because they do NOT share the SAME ONE.

This concept is a touch difficult to follow, but bear with me for a while.

First of all, people are individuals. They have individual thoughts. They see the world from different perspectives. They sense the world in slightly different ways. Some hear better, some see better, things like that. And we all have things in our lives that impact the way we think from hormones to what we ate (or didn't eat). So although we may think we believe and have faith in the same things, we do not see them, experience them, or even think about them in the same way.

This is born out by the number of religions we have today. Look at the Protestant religion. A thousand faiths and growing almost hourly. People who can't agree with the dogma make up their own. (This also plays into the fact that your faith is wrong. What part of it don't you like? Why haven't you changed it? Others have.) They don't think about it the same way. They don't experience it the same way. It's different for everyone in some way.

Diminishing returns makes faith INHERENTLY an individualistic thing. Since you can't possibly know what someone else is thinking or EXACTLY how they experience it, you can only guess and chances are great your guess will be wrong. Faith is based entirely on guesswork and is founded by the notion that it's not okay to not know. Since when did "I don't know" become a "sin"? People aren't born with knowledge. They learn it as they go. Taking short-cuts by blindly accepting rationalizations only subverts the learning process and undermines knowledge.

So people don't see things the same way, and still think they're all following the same idea. Talk about demented.

Groups of people are dangerous in and of themselves. Why? See Fact 1.

More to the point, groups identify among themselves. Their ersatz commonalities based on these rationalizations give them a cohesion that would otherwise be absent. I mean, let's face it, if you didn't meet them in your church, or think they shared your faith, would you even bother knowing most of them? Would you even give two shits about them? You probably say, of course. Now, turn that around, WHY DON'T YOU GIVE THE SAME TWO SHITS ABOUT EVERY OTHER STRANGER? See what I mean about how a group dynamic is a bad thing? You're part of one group. That other stranger is part of another group who doesn't believe the same nonsense as you believe in. That creates an artificial difference between you and "everyone else". Your faith in that rationalization separating you from other strangers who don't believe the same myth as you is what turns you against them, and them against you.

(That inherent trust and group cohesion, by the way, is why con artists are most often church-goers fleecing the flock. You trust them because they share your faith. What a fucking moron you are to do that and you deserve to lose every penny you do (or did). Blame the group dynamic and your misplaced trust in your faith for it.)

So, toss in a bunch of rationalizations that inflict what others believe to be indignities on people who don't think the same way with that group dynamic, and you have a recipe for disaster.

We get repression of women, repression of men, repression of sex, repression of... Well, pretty much everything, if you were to follow every faith in the world. You wouldn't be able to eat meat, harm anyone (except, of course, non-believers), unless those anyones were committing some "sin" in which case you are allowed to stone them to death or beat them with a rod no thicker than your thumb. Oh, and don't forget it's not nice to own slaves who are countrymen, so be sure to own slaves from out of the country, but be sure they are properly documented or you could be jailed for abetting illegals.

I mean, seriously, people, what kind of twisted, fucked in the head thinking do you have to have to think you're RIGHT about ANYTHING involving blind faith? Others have exactly the same amount of faith in their twisted, fucked in the head rationalizations as YOU do. No single rationalization can possibly be correct. The alternatives are that all of them are correct or none of them are. Based on the fact none of them have been correct so far, it's pretty safe to conclude that none of them are.

Between a group dynamic that demonizes others who are not part of the group, the misconception of the faith by, literally, everyone IN that faith, and the fact that people are stupid (plus the other facts previously stipulated), we end up with a world that is fucked in the head and will likely stay that way until we abolish faith and start working on fact.

We're always going to have stupid people, until that average comes up, then we'll have smart people and really smart people. But because stupid people think they're above average, them not breeding isn't going to happen soon enough to save the species. So we need to get rid of faith. If it has to be explained in paranormal terms, using superstition and mythology, forget it. If you don't have a strong and overt element of doubt, and don't remain willing to entertain such doubts, you need to be "fixed" like Spot and Fluffy.

So all this begs the question: Do I have faith.

Not a blind one - which is what we're talking about here. I'm open to suggestion. I'm willing to say I may be wrong should someone be able to show me a more rational, reasonable, fact-based means of exploring that which we humans call the "spiritual". But I don't believe in afterlives - consciousness after death. I'm not entirely convinced we have a "soul", either. There's no evidence for it, but it's impossible to prove the non-existence of something. One has to prove it exists before proof exists one way or another.

Part of why I'm so against blind faith is this little fact: No proof of nonexistence. Someone asserts they believe in something - like a god - then says I have to prove it doesn't exist. Wrong order. They must prove it exists since they're the ones making the claim it does. Then they say they have to have faith that it exists, because if they don't have faith it exists, but KNOW it exists, then there would be no faith, so it wouldn't exist. The trouble is that the utter lack of rationality in this circular argument is lost on them. If it exists in the first place, why muck around with "faith"? To "accept it"? Hey, people don't accept the President of the United States and he certainly exists. So proof of existence isn't even remotely a hindrance to willful rejection.

And if some deity was actually all powerful and such, why would it allow all of the shit and strife we have in the world today over whether it even exists in the first place?

The places for gods to hide, where we can look at something, see what it's all about and understand it's not supernatural, it's not "god", but it's just the way the world is are growing smaller and smaller. We aren't here because gods created us and created this "perfect" world for us to fuck with. We're here because of a long line of improbable accidents. Then someone will say, "Well, God was behind those accidents." I say no, because last week, before we discovered we could prove we're here because of these accidents, you were saying we're here because God made us and our Perfect world for us and didn't say shit about these accidents.

If you know so fucking much, why didn't you mention that before?

It's a rationalization and you will NOT accept that you're wrong because of Fact 4: People are unwilling to admit when they're wrong to the point of violence.

But I digress...

Okay, back to faith.

Having faith and sharing it is a bad thing. Politicians and religious leaders rely on it to get their power on earth over you. Have no faith in people. Have no faith in rationalizations. Have faith in things that are real, or at least be open do doubt in those gray areas where the "we don't know's" lurk instead of trying to fill them with the deity that, before that place was understood, used to be lord of lords and king of kings and almighty in the universe. The domain of blind faith in a coming age of reason will not go away quietly or peacefully because people of blind faith are actively working - and fighting - against reason to avoid the inevitable time when all is understood and there's no reason to have faith in the first place.

The arrogance these people display that they're right and everyone else is wrong is what pisses me off.

I'm just one person, who believes in being reasonable and rational. We have enough problems in the world without inventing bullshit reasons to make things worse. If you can't handle the way life is arranged, that's YOUR issue. Don't expect me, or anyone else to buy into your lack of adult perspective. Grow the fuck up, get a back-bone and stop wishing upon a star for shit that you can never be as sure about as you think you are.

And for all that YOU hold holy, don't breed. The faster we get rid of the genes of people who can have blind faith, the more likely the human race will actually survive.

How To Fix Higher Education

As the budgets of schools grow tighter and tighter, especially in higher education, there comes a breaking point whereby the cost of education is higher than the students can afford. If one looks at it as a basis of space, there is only so many spaces that go around.

But if one looks at it from an efficiency point of view, the waste in higher education is utterly appalling. It's not so much the reform of the administrative costs (which admittedly is in serious need of reform), but reform of the entire structure of higher education.

College drop-out rates, from Freshman to Senior are 66% on average. That is, of the freshmen starting college, only one in three will graduate. The rest fall to the wayside by virtue of a lack of funds, a lack of time, a lack of motivations and other reasons. When looking at it from an efficiency point of view, we have a gigantic disparity between cost and efficiency.

Consider this: A community college - or vocational school - is a proving ground for most students. Those who can "hack it" in a community college can move on with minimum of fuss, bother and expense. But as with the four year colleges, the drop-out rate is high. The difference is that the vocational schools don't cost as much to attend as four year schools. If one were to revamp education so that one MUST attend a community college FIRST and acquire all of the piddling little subjects one must have in order to achieve a four year degree before moving on to the four year college, money can be saved by both the student and the college.

Consider this...

Make higher education two-tiered. The lower tier is for the vocational students - the ones who will get Associates degrees if they graduate. They don't pay as much as a four year college student for their two year study program. They can also learn a vocation (it's not called a vocational school for nothing) in that two years with which they can be satisfied. If times are hard and they can't finish that degree in the normal two years, they can take some time off and work on a better approach.

That first two years of schooling is crucial. One must learn in that time what they will do with the rest of their education, then mold their education to those desires or decide to change direction. A community college allows major changes in direction without major costs. Additionally, it is geared toward the lower levels of higher education, able to teach a student a vocation, or prepare them for transfer to a college of higher learning. It's cost-efficient and effective. It's the BEST way of dealing with a shortage of space in a four year college because instead of competing with tens of thousands of other Freshmen, you're competing with just thousands of other Juniors.

And here's where the genius lies: Eliminate the lower levels of education at four year colleges. Make them two year colleges strictly for those who have already done two (or more) years at the vocational level who are ready to move on with their educations.

What this will do is open up literally tens of thousands of extra seats in the upper levels, while filtering all the educational money spend in the higher college toward actually graduating more people. By the time someone hits a four year college after spending two (or more) years at the vocational level trying to decide what they want to do with their lives, the drop-outs are mostly weeded out. People are more directed, more goal oriented, more mature and more apt to make efficient use of the educational dollars that are currently blown on those who can't make up their minds, or who for whatever reason must interrupt, or end, their educational goals.

Make college a two step process - with the first step being vocational school. Make that step relatively inexpensive (compared to the second level) so that the natural inclination to explore and settle on a life goal can be more economically accommodated. Once graduation from the first step is done, they automatically get to go to the second step, because that second stage isn't accommodating some folks who may or may not have decided what to do, or who are grimly sticking with a choice (inevitably to drop it at some point) because they have spend so much money already on it.

The first two years of a four year education should be cheap (relatively speaking) and allow students to explore their future options. Those motivated by desire to achieve a wanted future are far more apt to get it than those who are just going through the motions, and the higher-educational goals for them should be accommodated by what we think of today as a four year college degree.

I mean, let's face it, we have Associates degrees, Bachelor’s degrees, Master's degrees and PhD's. Why have one school do all that when the current method sees so many who won't finish the process in the first place? Make college Level 1 and 2 a vocational level, cheap, easy to change and to attend. Make the next levels more expensive, harder to change and more structured. But separate them physically so that there are enough Level 1 and 2 campuses to handle those who want to explore their higher educational needs and desires with enough Level 3 and above campuses to accommodate those who have graduated from the lower level schools.

It's a far more efficient allocation of educational resources we have today and allows those who want a degree a better chance of getting one than the current system we have.

Why I Don't Put My REAL Name On My Blog Or Books

The first thing that people most often do when they comment on my stuff (whose few who actually DO comment) is to wonder why I don't put my real name on my works.

There are actually quite a number of reasons - all of them valid (at least to me) and all of them still in effect. I have no illusions that my real name will eventually be tied to what I write, and have no problem with that, provided it's eventually.

So what compels a loud-mouth, opinionated son of a bitch like me to keep my name out of it?

First of all, why put it in? They're MY opinions and I simply share them. If you like them, great! If you hate them, great! I'm at least invoking SOME reaction and that's what most people who write their opinions for public consumption want. They may even be relevant enough one day to make it worth doing professionally - you know, getting paid for my trouble in posting things that may trouble you. I make my living the conventional way - working for it at a job of my own (which is not political punditry).

And that's the thing. I'm NOT a political pundit. I'm just a person with a strong interest in the ways and means of the world - social, political, religious and anything else that tickles my fancy or invokes my rage. Things that I'm passionate about or feel should be shared. If my opinions are insightful, it's because they're well considered, usually very well researched (especially my opinion about chocolate, about which I spend a great deal of time researching), and reached after due deliberation and diligence. So while my opinions are important to me, and, hopefully, those with whom I share them (you know, YOU!), until the “yous” out there are far more numerous, there's really no reason to tell the whole casually inquiring world who the hell I really am.

For reasons of privacy, I wish to shelter my family from any potential backlash any potentially mentally unstable reader might inflict on them (or me) if they knew my real name. There are a lot of fucking crazy people out there on both the left and the right, and while I expect the left-wing-nuts will simply protest outside my home, the right-wing-nuts are far more likely to invade it to kill me or my family - or just blow up the house. They're not terribly civilized, based on their past acts against people they don't like. I don't call the right-wing evil for nothing.

Paranoid? Of course. But in a somewhat healthy way. I don't sit in my house with an Uzi in my lap waiting for the cold-cruel world to crash through the door. Until I have a certain protection through celebrity (assuming I ever do), I simply don't tell people my name. That's pretty much the extent of my preparations in catering to my paranoia. Mostly, I'm just like any other American, trying to get by.

I just tend to put my bitching about the issues I have along the way toward that lofty goal online so that others can share them, too.

The last, and probably most important, one is that in most cases of political punditry, the people spewing their opinions are often seen as more important than what the opinion is. Rush, Bill, Glen, Ann and the whole rightist mafia. Will, John, and Steve “occupy” the left (pun intended).

And it's always “Rush said”, or “Ann said”, or “John said”, but aside from the latest rightist or leftist bullshit, do any of you remember what they said BEFORE? Unless you listened closely, you won't.

The messages they put out become less about what they said than who said them. The focus becomes the person, not what they're saying. The attacks become personal, delving into their private lives in ad hominem attacks which seek to undermine what they said. These attacks are much more effective when the speculation is kept to a minimum. Wild guesses are seen as wild guesses, and undermine the critic's credibility while bolstering the credibility of the message. After all, if the message stirred that kind of passion for someone to make up stuff to attack the person who wrote it, the message must be important.

To me, it's the message, not the messenger, that's important.

Dewey Sayenoff is simply a gag name meaning “Do He Say Enough?”. I'm sure there are those who got it, get it or simply say, “Shit, the stupid fucker says too much.” (As you might surmise, I live for my first bonafide, genuine detractor - just to have my own, personal chew-toy to play with! Opinions are so much better when you have examples of other people's opinions in real time to deconstruct their thinking - or pat them on the back for cogently presenting their argument, even if you each disagree with one another.)

But he's a construct upon which to hang nothing. You don't know his personal habits, his location, his up-bringing, his education. You don't know his friends, family associates or place of business. You may guess at his religion (as if that makes anyone's opinion right or wrong if it's cogent), and certainly understand his politics. Those are part of the message.

But you definitely know his points of view about things. Yes, they can change as time goes on and perspectives change. That's the thing about the message. It changes as people change. It HAS to simply because the message is ABOUT the people and if the people don't change, they don't thrive and soon die.

Personally, I'd rather not see that happen - even though I have my moments and wonder why it shouldn't.

So forgive me if I don't provide formal introductions. I have my reasons. And, perhaps one day, the time will come when I drop pretense and live in the light of public scrutiny. It's up to the number of readers I get whether that ever happens. So keep reading, spread the word and one day, maybe you'll hear me say, “Hi there, folks. You asked for it, and now, I think it's time for you to know. My REAL name is....”

The "Rush" To Judgement

(Disclosures: I loathe the Catholic Church. I loathe Rush Limbaugh. I don't especially like Obama and leftist policies. And I HATE the right-wing. In short, nothing new.)

Normally, I write about things of either personal importance, or what I like to think of as national importance. This one is and isn’t about national importance. It's a single incident in the course of a national “debate” which exemplifies all that is wrong with the right-wing extremists who seem hell-bent on turning this country into a dictatorial theocracy.

The debate:

President Obama has decided that all insurance companies should be mandated to, as part of their benefit packages, supply free coverage for oral contraceptives. Employers pay for insurance for their employees as part of the benefits of working for that employer. Often times, employees have to pay a co-pay or other addition to get the benefit. Basically, it's mandating coverage of a particular kind of drug. I don't approve that it should necessarily be “free”, but I believe that it should be part of the coverage provided as a routine for prescription drugs. If an insurance company doesn't cover ANY prescription drugs, so be it.

Another aspect of this debate is the Roman Catholic Church. Through many public agencies they run, such as hospitals, care centers and other such public services, they employ people of all religions. A recent decision by the Catholics was to not provide contraceptive coverage from insurance for their employees because it violates their moral code against birth control.

Several important things have been lost on people in this debate:

1. Contraceptives do more than prevent pregnancy. There are a myriad of reproductive system disorders in women which contraceptives treat that are vital to their health and well being. Eliminating that benefit puts a financial strain on them simply due to their employer's religious mandates, not because of the employee's religion.

2. The right-wing isn't attacking the “free” part as much as they're attacking the mandated part.

3. Religion is a personal choice, not one imposed from on high upon everyone. A “good” Catholic will not take contraceptives because it's against their religion regardless of whether it's free to them or not.

4. Freedom of religion is a constitutional right, which also means no other religion can impose its tenants upon one who is unwilling to be part of that religion.

The Controversy:

The final part of this little trip down Relevance Lane is that there was a congressional hearing lead by (who else?) the right-wing to review relevant information about this debate. Democrats wanted to have a female law student at Georgetown University - a Jesuit run center of education - named Sandra Fluke testify before this committee as to the impact the Catholic policy would have on her and people she knows. The right-wing, led by Darrel Issa (R-Calif - San Diego County, 49th Congressional District and a long-standing, major league, first class prick) refused to let her testify. Apparently, having women testify before the official Congressional inquiry into the impact of a religious organization with a tiny minority of followers in the United States imposing it's idea of faith on women not of that faith was too much relevant information for them. The Democrats pointed this out (by walking out), and scheduled an INFORMAL hearing, inviting this law student to testify so that at least it would be on record somewhere.

On February 26th, Ms. Fluke testified before this informal Democratic congressional committee.

The shit proceeded to hit the fan on the right-wing side.

On February 27th, the first of the personal attacks begins from the right-wing blogsphere when Craig Brannister published this on CNCSNews.com: Sex-Crazed Co-Eds Going Broke Buying Birth Control, Student Tells Pelosi Hearing Touting Freebie Mandate By Craig Bannister

On February 28th, HotAir posted this: Georgetown co-ed: Please pay for us to have sex … We’re going broke buying birth control by Tina Korbe.

Neither of these people called her names, even if they "quoted" things she didn't actually ever say or even imply. Both of them showed remarkably narrow-minded attitudes (I was reminded of 17th century puritans, myself, and wondered why obviously frightened-by-the-concept, highly religious virgins were so against sex, but I digress..), but don't necessarily attack her personally.

But on February 29th, the biggest HotAirBag in the world, Rush Limbaugh, attacked Fluke personally, calling her both a "slut" and a "prostitute".

"What does it say about the college co-ed Susan Fluke [sic] who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex -- what does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She's having so much sex she can't afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex."

He then said, "ok, so she's not a slut. She's round-heeled."

"Round-heeled", by the way, is an old-fashioned term for someone who is promiscuous. You know, today they're called “sluts”.

So he actually did it twice.

Now, aside from the fact that no tax money is involved in this at all, that taxpayers aren't paying shit for this (it's the employers who have to pay for the insurance, and usually all employees have to pay for that, too, but in this case it was student insurance offered through the university to paying students - so in all cases, SOMEONE HAS ALREADY PAID FOR THE BENEFIT), and that he didn't walk back the slander of calling her a prostitute, Limbaugh went several steps further than the previous micro-brained, sexually frustrated, dogmatic morons in what Limbaugh said and did the next day.

"So Ms. Fluke and the rest of you femi-Nazis, here's the deal. If we are going to pay for your contraceptives and, thus, pay for you to have sex, we want something for it. And I'll tell you what it is. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch."

So apparently, Limbaugh is a sex fiend and a 'john', too, wanting to get something for his “tax dollars” which to him is to pay someone for sex - and in this case a video of it - and wants to do this for every woman opposed to his policies. Can you say “voyeur”? How about “pervert”? Misogynist? Take your pick. All of them fit.

To this egregious personal attack on a nobody by a nationally recognized political pundit, the right-wing yawned and seemed to be underwhelmed by the magnitude of the attack.

Speaker of the House John Boehner: Limbaugh's comments were “inappropriate”. Ya THINK???

Rick Santorum brushed it off as the words of an entertainer in a manner that's barely coherent:

“Well, he's taking - you know, he's being absurd. But that's, you know, an entertainer can be absurd. And - and he's taking the absurd, you know, the asurd - absurd, you know, sort of, you know, point of view here as to how - how far do you go?

And, look, I'm - he's - he's in a very different business than I am.

I'm - I'm - I'm concerned about the public policy of this president imposing his values on the people - on - on - on - on people of faith who morally object to - to the government telling them they have to do something which they believe is a grave moral wrong. And government should not be in the business of telling - you know, when you talk about the separation of church and state, you hear it all the time.”

(...and this moron wants to be our PRESIDENT???)

Mitt Romney said, “I'll just say this, which is, it's not the language I would have used." Apparently, to Mr. Romney, it's the thought that counts, with which he apparently agrees.

Newt Gingrich took a completely hands-off approach to the comments: “I am astonished at the desperation of the elite media to avoid rising gas prices, to avoid the President’s apology to religious fanatics in Afghanistan, to avoid a trillion dollar deficit, to avoid the longest period of unemployment since the Great Depression, and to suddenly decide that Rush Limbaugh is the great national crisis of this week.” Mr. Gingrich, where in that is a condemnation of Mr. Limbaugh's personal, public attack on an American citizen for voicing their political concerns? Way to take a stand there, dude. Spoken like a true slimeball.

While Paul also seems less than offended by the remarks: “I had said he used very crude language, and I think he gets over the top at times. But it’s in his best interest. That’s why he did it. I don’t think he’s very apologetic. He’s doing it because some people were taking advertisements off his program. It was the bottom line that he was concerned about.” Wow... Casper Milquetoast couldn't have undersaid it better...

Anyone notice that each and every one of these people are wealthy, white males over 50?

Let me be clear about something: Sandra Fluke was pretty much a nobody. She had been invited by the Democrats to speak on a relevant topic before Congress at an official Congressional hearing. She was in a unique position to provide a counterpoint to some other comments (like Santorum's sugar daddy suggesting that women use an aspirin as contraception - by holding it between their knees).

She was not on the national radar before then. She merely accepted an invitation, was not allowed to testify by the right-wing majority (which caused the Democrat minority on the hearing panel to walk out in protest) and testified before an informal Democrat-led panel a week later.

Before then, she was just another student on a university campus. No “people”, no “handlers”, no political agenda that could shape the future of our country. No legions of mindless drones who hung on her every word. Her biggest worry was probably the upcoming midterms. Like every American who cares about their country, she has a voice in the shaping of it - by voting in our democratic process and communicating with her elected representatives.

She was Jane Q. Public, anonymous, tending to her own business. But she was going to a religiously influenced university whose insurance for students (who, as I pointed out PAY to go to the university in the first place and who are also not necessarily of the same religion) does not include the same coverage as other public university in that contraceptives are not even offered as a covered drug.

Every other drug, apparently, is.

She was merely informally testifying as to the impact that omission of an often vital drug as part of a benefit package for which she does, in fact pay has on her and other women.

If she were Nancy Pelosi testifying, one wonders if Limbaugh would have called Pelosi a slut and a prostitute. Pelosi is a powerful political figure, a female, opposed to the new Catholic policy and supports Obama's mandate that contraceptives be offered for free as part of all insurance benefits regardless of who the employer is. In short, Pelosi is a power equal (if not superior) to Limbaugh. Fluke was a nobody.

And Limbaugh publicly and proudly attacked her, slandered her and insulted her - after which the right-wing basically yawned and acted basically as if someone had justifiably uttered a dirty word under their breath.

I'll add one more word to the list of pervert, voyeur, and sex fiend to describe Limbaugh's character: Bully.

But it's not JUST Limbaugh's character on trial in this little diatribe of mine. It's the character of the entire right-wing.

Limbaugh started to lose sponsors once the outcry began against him. His words assaulted EVERY woman who takes contraception for any reason, and for some strange reason - call it decency, call it moral outrage, call it looking out for the bottom line - sponsors of his show started bailing out on him.

He mocked them by making his listeners feel bad: “…I’m sorry to see them go. They have profited handsomely from you. These advertisers who have split the scene have done very well due to their access to you, my audience, from this program. … Now they’ve chosen to deny themselves that access, and that’s a business decision and it’s theirs alone to make. They’ve decided they don’t want you or their business anymore.”

It seems to me that if anyone has profited handsomly from his listeners, it's Limbaugh himself. (It's just a guess, but based on past information it's probably pretty close to the truth.)

Then he lost more sponsors - nine of them before he issued an “apology”. Here it is in its entirety:

“For over 20 years, I have illustrated the absurd with absurdity, three hours a day, five days a week. In this instance, I chose the wrong words in my analogy of the situation. I did not mean a personal attack on Ms. Fluke.

I think it is absolutely absurd that during these very serious political times, we are discussing personal sexual recreational activities before members of Congress. I personally do not agree that American citizens should pay for these social activities. What happened to personal responsibility and accountability? Where do we draw the line? If this is accepted as the norm, what will follow? Will we be debating if taxpayers should pay for new sneakers for all students that are interested in running to keep fit?In my monologue, I posited that it is not our business whatsoever to know what is going on in anyone's bedroom nor do I think it is a topic that should reach a Presidential level.

My choice of words was not the best, and in the attempt to be humorous, I created a national stir. I sincerely apologize to Ms. Fluke for the insulting word choices.”

Wow... A multi-sentenced diatribe against the left and middle that preambles a brief three sentence apology that doesn't really apologize for being a bully and an ass.

Premiere Networks, a subsidiary of Clear Channel Communications which runs pretty much all of the country's radio stations, stood by Mr. Limbaugh, in saying it was, “committed to providing its listeners with access to a broad range of opinion and commentary without condoning or agreeing with the opinions."

Very high-minded of them. To me, that's like a city letting a bus driver of theirs mow down pedestrians because the driver didn't like the way they sat on the bus.

Fortunately, almost no one (with three functioning, independently thinking brain cells) believes that Mr. Limbaugh was sincere in apologizing to Ms. Fluke. He was obviously pandering to his listeners while trying to stop the exodus of advertisers from his show.

It didn't work. The public furor didn't (and still hasn't) died down.

So Rush issued another “apology” to explain the first “apology”. This time, it was on-air.

“I don’t expect, and I know you don’t either, morality, intellectual honesty from the left. They’ve demonstrated, over and over, a willingness to say or do anything to advance their agenda; it’s what they do. It’s what we fight against here every day. But this is the mistake I made: in fighting them on this issue last week, I became like them.”

“That was my error, I became like them. And I feel very badly about that.”

What the FUCK does he mean “I became like them”??? HE MADE THE MOLD FOR IT! He's been calling people on the left bad names for 20 years!

And this, as you may (or may not) expect, did nothing to mollify his sponsors whose trickle for the door became a flood. The current total of sponsors which have fled - most of which merely had service agreements with Premier Networks and weren't specific sponsors of Mr. Limbaugh's show - is now up to 34, and rising almost hourly.

In speaking with my father about this, he pointed out that the sponsors are only doing this to protect themselves until the controversy dies down, then they'll be back. This is likely true, however there is now talk that Mr. Limbaugh's show may not be able to survive the controversy. After all, former long-time radio host and DJ Don Imus, who famously called the Women's Rutgers Basketball team “Nappy-headed hoes”, was forced out of his position by CBS, who apparently unlike Premier Networks, thinks it's better to fire someone for being a bully and an ass. (Imus himself decried Limbaugh's “apology” as “lame”). If the radio stations lose sponsors, they lose money and kicking Limbaugh out may be the only way to resume their revenue stream.

But the possibility that the sponsors might quietly slip in the back door, should be guarded against, so here is a list of who were sponsors of the radio network. Keep in mind that many of them only had blanket contracts to have their ads aired by the station (as opposed to those which supported the show) and many had no control over which shows aired them.

AccuQuote,
AOL
Bethesda Sedation Dentistry
Bonobos
Capitol One
Carbonite
Cascades Dental
Citrix
Downeast Energy
Geico,
Goodwill Industries
Hadeed Carpet
Heart & Body Extract
JCPenney
John Deere
LegalZoom
Matrix Direct
Netflix
Philadelphia Orchestra
Polycom,
ProFlowers
Sears
Service Magic
St. Vincent's Medical Center
Stamps.com

Please note, this is just a partial list. For a complete list of sponsors - current and former - (including contact information), both nationally and by state, along with the radio stations which still carry his show, you can get them here. Another list that is a touch easier to read is here. A petition is being circulated to these sponsors requesting them to pull their advertising.

Now, being “fair minded” and because Limbaugh's supporters are calling this a “witch hunt”, I have to admit that this is the first time Limbaugh has been put under this kind of public pressure compared to some of his other over-the-top bullshit. Apparently, they've never heard of the term “the straw that broke the camel's back”. But while the other comments were certainly egregious, they were generalized. A person can have a viewpoint about something and generalize about a group of anonymous faces without instigating an atmosphere suitable for a lynching. But in this case, the person has a face, it was public, it was personal, it was bullying and in today's world, with today's communications and social networking, it was fundamentally STUPID.

And is it a double-standard for me to call someone what I've called political figures and rail against them doing the same? it depends. I do it here, on a blog. I don't do it on national television. I don't do it on national radio. I don't do it to nobodies. I do it to the bullies, liars, hypocrites and the evil people who take the national stage not because they want to help, but because they want the power and wealth that often accompanies it. The bottom line is that it is most definitely not a double standard.

It's called holding those in power accountable for their abuses of power.

Rush Limbaugh is just a stupid man, whose radio program should be removed from the air. He has lived on the edge for so long, he has finally crossed the line the public will not tolerate being crossed. Don Imus publicly called a specific group of young women “nappy headed hoes” in jest. He issued an apology to them both publicly and face to face and was still fired.

Rush Limbaugh publicly called a single individual a slut (TWICE!) and a prostitute, has never apologized face to face, his apologies always included an attack on her ideals or those she espoused, he has repeatedly proven himself to be about the worst possible example of an American as anyone still in the public eye, is an embarrassment to our nation, our people, our constitution and our way of life.

So, yeah, lynch the bastard - figuratively speaking of course. Banish his extremist, hate-filled, American-bashing voice from the airwaves. Let him spew his vomit on the Internet like the hell-spawned drug-addicted demon he is in obscurity (kind of like me here, minus the hell-spawned, drug-addicted part. I'm sure I'm a demon in someone's eyes.).

Silencing his show over what he said would be a fitting public end to a man who has spread so many lies, so much hatred and so much divisiveness in our country. He deserves obscurity as a pathetic and shameful footnote in American history. Starting now.

America is becoming more and more intolerant of these extremists, and, maybe, with any luck, will start to FINALLY do something about kicking them out of mainstream politics for good.