Transparency?

The Right seems to take a great amount of glee by sarcastically pointing out that President Obama has the "most transparent administration ever." I realize that it takes a great deal of effort to put down their copy of Atlas Shrugged, unbuckled their bathrobe and spend a few minutes away from right wing blogs to conjure up an attack like this.

As is invariably the case, however, I have to wonder if these denizens of classical liberalism are as familiar and knowledgeable with US History as they bloviate to be. Would it surprise them to learn this?

In early 1787, Congress called for a special convention of all the states to revise the Articles of Confederation. On September 17, 1787, after four months of secret meetings, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention emerged from their Philadelphia meetingroom with an entirely new plan of government–the U.S. Constitution–that they hoped would ensure the survival of the experiment they had launched in 1776.

WTF??!!?? It can't possibly be that our founding fathers, whom they claim to have a direct connection to in the afterlife, were not at all transparent about the formation of the document they claim to make love to on a nightly basis (missionary position, of course). Why on earth would they be so secretive? Could it be that they wanted to speak their minds without public pressure?

The delegates also agreed that the deliberations would be kept secret. The case in favor of secrecy was that the issues at hand were so important that honest discourse needed to be encouraged and delegates ought to feel free to speak their mind, and change their mind, as they saw fit. Thus, despite the hot summer weather in Philadelphia, and delegates who, on the whole, were rather overweight and hardly “dressed down” for the occasion, the windows were closed and heavy drapes drawn. The merits and demerits of the secrecy rule have been a subject of considerable debate throughout American history.

Feel free to speak their mind and CHANGE their mind as they saw fit? Oh. My. GOSH!!!

Cue the boiling pit of sewage...:)

Aligning Interests

Could our next ally in the Middle East be Iran? This latest piece in the Times posits that it may end up being true.

While the two governments quietly continue to pursue their often conflicting interests, they are being drawn together by their mutual opposition to an international movement of young Sunni fighters, who with their pickup trucks and Kalashnikovs are raising the black flag of Al Qaeda along sectarian fault lines in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen.

Given the new moderate government in Iran, I think it's more than possible. When I read this article, I was instantly reminded of CSM's cover story from a few weeks ago that offers incredible insight into the real Iran as opposed to what we see in our media. Editor in Chief of CSM, John Yemma, had this to say as an introduction to Scott Peterson's piece.

Iran is not just any nation. It is a pillar of civilization. In its 2,700-year history, Persian culture has contributed richly to human knowledge in math, medicine, chemistry, religion, philosophy, poetry, agriculture, and architecture. Modern Iranians prize education, intellect, science, and the arts. However divided Iranians may be about the course their nation should take, however drawn to Western ideas and values many are, there is no doubt within Iran about Iran’s worth and dignity.

We do indeed have a great deal in common with the Iranian people. This is not a backwards culture but a pillar of human civilization dating back to our dawn as a people. As CSM points out as well, they may indeed be our new best friend.

A Whole Lot of Phony Bullshit.

Check out this revelation about the Duck Dynasty clan.

Wow.

I realize reality shows are fake but this can't even be classified as "reality." Why didn't they just say it was a mockumentary a la Spinal Tap from the get go? At least they would have been more respected.

The Bible and Homosexuality

I found this site on religious tolerance a while back and recently rediscovered it when I had to go to a backup of my bookmarks (beware of the "search conduit" malware---grrrr). Check out what they have to say about the Bible and homosexuality.

Seven or eight main biblical passages that may deal with same-gender sexual behavior are described below. They are often referred to as "clobber" passages, because they are often used to attack persons with a homosexual or bisexual orientation. They have been interpreted very differently by various religious denominations, para-church groups, and traditions. All groups recognize that these biblical passages condemn some types of sexual behavior but there is no consensus within a given religion whether they refer to consensual sexual behavior by persons with a homosexual or bisexual orientation, and whether it refers to all people or only to persons with a heterosexual orientation.

Clobber passages...love it...

Here's an interesting comparison...

Among the full spectrum of faith groups, from the most conservative to the most liberal:

• Most conservative faith groups tend to interpret all of the clobber passages as condemning all forms of same-gender sexual behavior, whether by men or women. They do this, even though only one of the seven or eight passages actually refers to women, and that sole passage refers only to women with a heterosexual orientation. 
• Most liberal and progressive faith groups tend to interpret the same passages -- in their original languages of Hebrew and Greek -- as referring to: temple prostitution, how it is unacceptable for two men to have sex if they do it on a woman's bed, kidnapping slaves, adults sexually abusing children, engaging in sexual behavior that is against one's sexual orientation and basic nature, and/or engaging in bestiality -- sexual activity with a non-human species. 
• Most mainline denominations and faith groups are split on these passages' interpretation with part of the membership taking the conservative position, and another part taking the liberal/progressive interpretation. 
• We have never found a faith group that accepts same-gender sexual behavior by lesbians while condemning such behavior by males, even though that could be a logical interpretation of Romans 1.

That pretty much sums it up. Check out all the sub links as well, especially this one:)

Brainiacs

Stunning piece in the Times about the human brain and an NIH study that will help to answer the following questions: How do differences between you and me, and how our brains are wired up, relate to differences in our behaviors, our thoughts, our emotions, our feelings, our experiences? Does that help us understand how disorders of connectivity, or disorders of wiring, contribute to or cause neurological problems and psychiatric problems?

With the exponential growth of technology, I say that within the next two decades we are going to know far more about the human brain than has been thought possible up to this point in human history. Honestly, I think what we discover is going to be very frightening some people as I think we will discover how we were made.

And why.

What Are They Talking About?

One would think it was Christmas in January for conservatives with their reaction to the forthcoming book by former defense secretary Robert Gates. My conservative friends on Facebook are falling all over themselves as is the rest of Bubble Land over Gates' criticism of the president and, in particular, Vice President Biden. As is usually the case, they are only telling part of the story if even that at all.

In a new memoir, Mr. Gates, a Republican holdover from the Bush administration who served for two years under Mr. Obama, praises the president as a rigorous thinker who frequently made decisions “opposed by his political advisers or that would be unpopular with his fellow Democrats.”

That doesn't really sound like criticism. Neither does this.

Mr. Gates acknowledges that he initially opposed sending Special Operations forces to attack a housing compound in Pakistan where Osama bin Laden was believed to be hiding. Mr. Gates writes that Mr. Obama’s approval for the Navy SEAL mission, despite strong doubts that Bin Laden was even there, was “one of the most courageous decisions I had ever witnessed in the White House.”

Yes, it was.

What does he say about the president in the last chapter?

In his final chapter, Mr. Gates makes clear his verdict on the president’s overall Afghan strategy: “I believe Obama was right in each of these decisions.”

Huh. So wtf are they talking about?

Dirty Tricks in New Jersey

As has long been alleged, recently released emails prove that New Jersey governor Chris Christie shut down lanes of the George Washington to retaliate against the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee.

Christie had demanded Mayor Mark Sokolich endorse him for governor. When Sokolich refused, Christie's deputy chief of staff, Bridgett Anne Kelly, sent an email to David Wildstein, an official appointed by Christie to the New Jersey Port authority, who happens to be a high-school pal of the governor.

The email read simply, "Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee." Wildstein replied, "Got it." The New Jersey Port Authority then shut down three lanes on the bridge, creating a terrible traffic mess for the town of Fort Lee.

As the traffic piled up Kelly and Wildstein had the following exchange:

“Is it wrong that I am smiling?” Mr. Wildstein texted Ms. Kelly.

“No,” she texted back.

“I feel badly about the kids,” he texted.

“They are the children of Buono voters,” she said, referring to Mr. Christie’s Democratic opponent, Barbara Buono, who was trailing consistently in the polls and lost by a wide margin.

You can just imagine this same conversation replaying every time Republicans pull their dirty tricks: pulling funding from underperforming inner-city schools with No Child Left Behind, cutting food stamps from the farm bill, enacting voter ID laws that make it hard for old ladies and college students to vote.

The incident shows that Christie is petty little man (figuratively speaking, obviously). He's an egocentric conceited liar who will inflict misery on innocent people in order to strong-arm erstwhile "allies" to get what he wants. This demonstrates why the man should never be president: he cannot be trusted to wield any kind of power fairly.

Christie's integrity has long been questionable. When New Jersey senator Frank Lautenberg died, Christie called for a special election to be held on October 16, 2013, three weeks before the general election.

Why didn't Christie wait till November and roll the Senate election into the general election, saving New Jersey taxpayers a few million dollars? Christie wanted to increase his chances of reelection: Cory Booker, the popular mayor of Newark, was running for Lautenberg's seat. Christie was afraid that if Booker ran at the same time that he was, Booker's presence on the Democratic ticket would increase Democratic turnout and help Christie's opponent win.

I'm sure the Tea Party is crowing about Christie's comeupance. They hate the man more than Democrats do, because despite all his flaws, Christie does occasionally put the people of New Jersey ahead of conservative ideology (especially when it makes him look good).

But Christie's dirty tricks are straight out of the Republican playbook: sabotage your enemies, blackmail potential allies. It's the same Nixonian script Republicans have been following for the entirety of the Obama presidency.

Most Republicans have the good sense to plot in smoke-filled rooms behind closed doors, though sometimes the truth spills out. Like when they claimed voter ID laws weren't created to prevent minorities from voting in Texas, they were created to prevent Democrats from voting.

Christie's flunkies made the mistake of having extended email and texting exchanges about their dirty tricks, using non-work email accounts to hatch their plot. They apparently thought this would avoid the embarrassing "lost emails" scandal that sank the plot by Karl Rove, Alberto Gonzalez and the gang who were torpedoing US attorneys who wouldn't play ball with their voter suppression efforts.

As far as dirty tricks go, Christie's lane closures might not seem very dangerous. That would be incorrect. Traffic jams cause car accidents, which can cause deaths and injuries. Ambulances caught in traffic jams may be carrying patients who may die because they failed to reach the hospital in time. Everyone stuck in the traffic jam is wasting time and money, reducing productivity.

Whether any great harm came of Christie's dirty trick is really beside the point. Anyone who would use these sorts of tactics to blackmail public officials into supporting them lacks the judgment to be governor. Who could trust this man in the Oval Office not to abuse the presidency for personal gain? Christie would be another Nixon, bringing shame upon this nation, not to mention the Republican Party.

I think that flushing sound coming from New Jersey is Christie's presidential campaign going down the toilet.

Still Slow

A recent report by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services shows that health care spending is down for the fourth year in a row. Patients have greatly benefited from this considering past increases in medical and premium costs. The Affordable Care Act has had minimal impact on this slowed growth even though the White House has taken credit for it in terms of lowering Medicare spending by penalizing hospitals with high readmission rates, for example.

Regardless of why it is happening, we are heading in the right direction. Reducing the growth of health care is vital to the overall integrity of our economy. People can't live their lives being one crisis away from losing everything they own.

We ♥ The Aristocracy!

The season premiere of the fourth season of Downton Abbey brought with it all the usual overblown publicity and hysterical Facebook posts about all of the latest doings in the Yorkshire county estate in the early part of the 20th century. I enjoy the show a great deal from an historical perspective but see it for what it is: Melrose Place with Brits.

As I was watching the premiere on Sunday night, I thought about this Fox News Clip in which all the conservatives hilariously championed... the benefits of an aristocracy! Don't they realize that they can't both support our founding fathers AND champion the generosity of rich folk who help out the poor folk? Especially British folk? They probably don't and that's when I had an epiphany.

Most conservatives today are from the south and pine for those lost days of antebellum. In particular, they miss the hierarchy of the aristocracy that was present in that region during that time. The top of that hierarchy is available only to those individuals born of a certain stature and ideology. In short, that means, NO FUCKING LIBERALS. And only those who are pure in all the ways the Right sees fit.

So, the real reason why conservatives hate Bill Clinton and Barack Obama as much as they do is because the office of the president is a close to "king" as we get in this country. The very idea that someone who is not pure gets to be "king" as a major affront to those inner dreams of aristocratic fantasy. People like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama simply don't belong up there. No Democrat does. Throw in the fact that President Obama is black and it's even more of an insult.

Go deeper and one can really see the problem. Conservatives both pine for the aristocracy (whining about tradition and the ways things used to be juxtaposed with screams of class warfare anytime anyone mentions inequality)  and then turn around in the same breath and bitch about the political class and how individual rights are being trampled. Can't they see their hypocrisy? No wonder they act like children all the time. They are fucking bipolar and being driven crazy by their inner struggle.

Considering that they define themselves as the "haves and soon to haves", it makes even more sense that they are as nuts as they are. Someday (see: very likely never) they will be at the top of the heap and they don't want any of those peasants creeping on their dough (see: hard earned money pilfered by lazy non whites). Yet how can they get there without freedom or liberty?

What a puzzler!

Not Banned On These Premises

Looks like City Council Member Leslie LeCuyer just learned a lesson about how FUBAR gun laws are in this country.

Even though she’s a self-described gun enthusiast, LeCuyer later suggested the city put up a sign forbidding guns from the premises like those found near the doors of so many businesses around the state. She was shocked to learn that, legally, the city couldn’t. People sometimes come to City Hall angry, she pointed out.

“Our decisions can impact people: Whether or not they can build onto their home, whether they can put up a building on their property,” she said. “That’s what we put our name on the line to do. But we don’t put our name on the line to be killed … People have to do these jobs. We don’t want it to be so unsafe that no one will do it anymore.”

Well, it's not like someone is going to charge into a city hall and shoot up the place. Especially when there are good guys with guns who always save the day, right?

Ah well, Leslie can rest comfortable knowing that there are armed civilians there to protect her from bad guys.

Bringing In The Big Guns

These days, politicians in DC can't seem to get their message across. Americans seem to not want to listen if you are a politician and it certainly shows in the polls with Congress's rating at continued lows. So, what do you do? Enter Bernie Sanders.

When the majority leader, Harry Reid, exhorted colleagues to “deal with the issue of income inequality,” the talk took a spiritual turn. “You know,” declared Senator Bernard Sanders, the Vermont independent, who caucuses with Democrats, “we have a strong ally on our side in this issue — and that is the pope.” That Mr. Sanders, who is Jewish, would invoke the pope to Mr. Reid, a Mormon, delighted Roman Catholics in the room. (“Bernie! You’re quoting my pope; this is good!” Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois recalled thinking.) Beyond interfaith banter, the comment underscored a larger truth: From 4,500 miles away at the Vatican, Pope Francis, who has captivated the world with a message of economic justice and tolerance, has become a presence in Washington’s policy debate.

Currently, there are around 2 billion Catholics in the world and they all look to the pope as their leader. Pope Francis is not only changing the face of Christianity today but he is clearly affecting politics. He has made inequality his core issue and I think that's going to change economic policy of the United States for the better.

How this all plays out remains to be seen but it's definitely the right direction!

It's the Day After Tomorrow Today!

Oh, no! The Polar Vortex is everywhere! Just like the movie The Day After Tomorrow. This proves climate change isn't happening!

Well, not exactly everywhere. The temperature in Moscow, for example, was 34 degrees when I checked earlier today. In Sochi, where the Winter Olympics are going to be held, it's going to be in the 50s this week (30s in the mountains where the skiing takes place). While we've been getting socked by cold and snow, it was 36 and raining in Lillehammer, Norway, where the 1994 Winter Olympics were held. Australia's recent spring was the hottest on record and the country has been hit this year by searing heat (more than 100 degrees in the agricultural areas) and more bushfires. In December Alaska was setting record high temperatures while the rest of the United States was cold. This last November was the hottest on record world-wide.

But, the deniers say, global warming isn't happening because it's the coldest it's been in 20 years!

Exactly. Average temperatures have been rising so steadily that what used to be a typical cold snap for places like Minnesota is now the exception rather than the rule. When I was a kid most every year we'd get a week or two of -20 degree temperatures. Now we freak out when it gets that cold and cancel school.

Checking current temps on weather.com around the world is interesting. The high for the North Pole today is going to be 27 above zero! The high in Duluth, Minnesota is going to be -15. Yes, the North Pole is going to be 42 degrees warmer than Duluth.

Why is the weather so weird? Well, when the North Pole is so warm, it pushes the jet stream south, which pushes cold arctic air south into the United States. A warmer North Pole was one of the reasons Hurricane Sandy was so much bigger and veered west instead of east.

If temperatures rise a few degrees worldwide, they will increase 10 or 20 degrees at the poles, causing more melting and more weird changes to the jet stream.

A lot of people have been citing stories like this (More Record Lows than Highs in USA in 2013) as "proof" that climate change isn't happening. But they neglect to read the actual story:

Through Dec. 28, there have been 11,852 daily record lows in 2013, compared with 10,073 daily record highs, according to Walton.

A "daily" record occurs when a specific location sets a record high or low temperature for a particular day; other types of records include monthly and all-time.

Walton said that an unusually cold spring was the main factor in the "cool" 2013.

The year 2013 was a stunning turnaround from the USA's amazingly warm year of 2012, when more than 34,000 record highs were measured across the country, as compared with only about 6,600 record lows.

In 2013 there were slightly more record highs than record lows, while in 2012 there were five times as many record highs than record lows. And then there's this:

Through November, the most recent month for which national and global climate statistics are available, the world was having its 4th-warmest year on record, while the USA was seeing its 35th-warmest on record, the NCDC reports.

The upshot: global warming is global. We can expect fluctuations from one region to another, from one year to another, but the overall trend is increased temperatures, which causes more forest fires, heat waves, and paradoxically, cold snaps as the warming North Pole pushes the jet stream south.

Pretty Much Sums Most of the Conservatives I Know These Days

A Frightening Commitment to Purity Fueled by Adolescent Belligerence

You really have to hand it to those 2nd Amendment folks in terms of fascist like purity. There is no one in our country right now that can top them. All Dick Metcalf did was state the obvious:  “all constitutional rights are regulated, always have been, and need to be.” That's exactly what Antonin Scalia said in DC v Heller and that wasn't a problem for the Gun Cult.

So why did Metcalf get banished? Let's look to one of those "voices in my head."

“We are locked in a struggle with powerful forces in this country who will do anything to destroy the Second Amendment,” said Richard Venola, a former editor of Guns & Ammo. “The time for ceding some rational points is gone.”

After I posted this link, an FB friend of mine wondered "I guess they really think they are at war. I've yet to figure out who they think is coming for all of their guns" I think that perhaps Mr Venola should up his tranquilizer dosage and invest in a tin foil hat. Or maybe not have arguments with his neighbor and shoot them.  Ah well, he's obviously setting an example in terms of what happened with Mr. Metcalf.

The backlash was swift, and fierce. Readers threatened to cancel their subscriptions. Death threats poured in by email. His television program was pulled from the air.

He vas disobeying their vill! Seig Heil!! As I have always asserted, every so called "rugged individualist is a closet fascist. Some other points in the piece worthy of note...

His experience sheds light on the close-knit world of gun journalism, where editors and reporters say there is little room for nuance in the debate over gun laws. Moderate voices that might broaden the discussion from within are silenced. When writers stray from the party line promoting an absolutist view of an unfettered right to bear arms, their publications — often under pressure from advertisers — excommunicate them.

I suddenly feel kinda bad for Kevin Baker. Ironic that for all his talk about freedom, there is absolutely none in his little community of gun bloggers.

“Compromise is a bad word these days,” he said. “People think it means giving up your principles.”

The part he forgot add in was "only if you are a FUCKING PSYCHO!"

I have to say I feel pretty bad for Mr. Metcalf. He seems like a genuinely great guy, just like Jim Zumbo and Jerry Tsai before him. He rightly believes that gun owners are completely out of touch with constitutional reality. Every right is regulated and requiring someone to submit to a background check or training if they want to have a conceal and carry license is no infringement.

Of course this is exactly where the adolescent belligerence comes into the mix. Just because you want to do something or own something, doesn't mean you automatically get to do so. The fact that we have to explain this to these immature assholes again makes me wonder if they ever matured past the age of 16.

Anti Gay Uprising!

Remind me again how other people's sex lives affect these people. Or how the people that are bitching about gay marriage want government out of people's lives. What a bunch of hypocrites. Perhaps they should just mind their own fucking business.

Whither the Old Testament

Are we, as Christians, bound by Old Testament law? Conservative Christians sure like to think we are. This is largely because they enjoy the whole "sinners in the hands of an angry god" meme as it frightens them into abstaining from doing "naughty" things. But most Christians say that we aren't completely bound by them anymore and I am one of them. Of course, the Bible says two different things so it's up to each one of us to take the time to study the material and context of what is being said. This article breaks it down quite nicely.

Many traditional Christians have the view that only parts are applicable, many Protestants have the view that none is applicable, dual-covenant theologians have the view that only Noahide Laws apply to Gentiles, and a minority have the view that all are still applicable to believers in Jesus and the New Covenant.

The entire link identifies and describes the various views and has sublinks with well sourced material on the study of the meaning of the passages listed above. Take some time to read through all of it. It becomes clear rather quickly that the people who believe that all of the OT is still applicable are very much in the minority.

I fall into the category of only parts of the Old Covenant are applicable although it's interesting to note that there are many who believe none are. So, the Abrahamic Covenant, the Land Covenant, and the Davidic Covenant are out. An eye for an eye is now gone, as Christ directs in Matthew 5. All of the ceremonial laws are no longer applicable either.

But what about sin? The Old Testament clearly states that God punishes sinners. But with the New Covenant of Jesus, that is longer true. Take note of the verses used in this link. Look familiar?:)

Indeed, the father of Protestantism understood this very well. Martin Luther explained this as Justification by Faith. He wrote “Faith alone is the saving and efficacious use of the word of God.” He then looked to Romans Chapter 10, verse 9 as being absolutely fundamental for believers in Christianity. The passage states, “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” This was his justification of faith. One did not need to pay a penance for sins, whether through confession or indulgences, to get into heaven (recall that indulgences, or the paying of money or service to the church, was one of his major gripes with Catholicism). One simply needed to believe that Christ was God and that he was resurrected and then they would be saved. Luther explained justification this way in his Smalcald Articles:

The first and chief article is this: Jesus Christ, our God and Lord, died for our sins and was raised again for our justification (Romans 3:24-25). He alone is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world (John 1:29), and God has laid on Him the iniquity of us all (Isaiah 53:6). All have sinned and are justified freely, without their own works and merits, by His grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, in His blood (Romans 3:23-25). This is necessary to believe. This cannot be otherwise acquired or grasped by any work, law, or merit. Therefore, it is clear and certain that this faith alone justifies us...Nothing of this article can be yielded or surrendered, even though heaven and earth and everything else falls (Mark 13:31).

I bolded the parts that Christian conservatives seem to have trouble understanding in terms of sin, faith and confession. In framing the argument regarding indulgences in this way, Luther was able to remove the people that had inserted themselves between the common man and the Lord: the papacy. Interestingly, Christian conservatives have assumed the role of Pope these days, saying that they and only they are interpreting the Bible correctly. Luther had something to say about them as well.

…Every baptized Christian is a priest already, not by appointment or ordination from the Pope or any other man, but because Christ Himself has begotten him as a priest…in baptism.

What this means is that every man who is baptized and accepts Christ is no less a valid interpreter of the Bible than anyone else. All that is needed are the Five Solas. This launched a larger critique on the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church. In On Papal Power, Luther wrote “when the attempt is made to reprove them with the Scriptures, they raise the objection that only the pope may interpret the scriptures”  In the early 16th century, the pope had the final say on exactly what was meant by the scriptures, not Luther and certainly not the common man. Luther saw this, along with the authority to issue decrees and convening councils as theft, writing, “they have cunningly stolen our three rods from us, that they may go unpunished”

Further, Luther abhorred the decadence of the church, stating that they were hiding behind self created authority “so that they can practice all the knavery and wickedness which we see today” Luther’s teachings were a direct threat to Rome. If people simply looked to the Bible and got their faith “free” from God, with no intermediaries, how long would it take for the power of the papacy to erode? The flow of financial rewards to the church would ebb as well. Luther also challenged church authorities by asserting that there was no hierarchy leading up to God. All men were priests and equal in the eyes of God.

Thus, members of the clergy should not have special accommodations or privileges. Luther again...

Every baptized Christian is a priest already, not by appointment or ordination from the Pope or any other man, but because Christ Himself has begotten him as a priest…in baptism. (But) the preaching office is no more than a public service which happens to be conferred on someone by the entire congregation all the members of which are priests. 

The office of the priest is one that is democratically elected by all of the people, not by papal order. He is no more closer to God than anyone else. This is how Luther’s argument became a much broader threat to church leaders and led to deep erosion with them as well as the clergy. He laid the foundation for Protestantism which, at its core, rejects intermediaries or interpreters of what the Bible "really means."

If, at this point, Luther sounds very New Testament heavy, it's because he is. Recall the New Covenant. 

The Christian view of the New Covenant is a new relationship between God and humans mediated by Jesus which necessarily includes all people,both Jews and Gentiles, upon sincere declaration that one believes in Jesus Christ as Lord and God. The New Covenant also breaks the generational curse of the original sin on all children of Adam if they believe in Jesus Christ, after people are judged for their own sins, which is expected to happen with the second arrival of Jesus Christ. Thus as the Apostle Paul advises that the Mosaic Covenant of Sinai does not in itself prevent Jews from sinning and dying and is not given to Gentiles at all (only the Noahic covenant is unique in applying to all humanity), Christians believe the New Covenant ends the original sin and death for everyone who becomes a Christian and cannot simply be a renewal of the Mosaic Covenant since it seemingly accomplishes new things. 

New things indeed. This would be where the grace part comes into play. There was no grace in the OT but now there is with the sacrifice of Jesus.

So, we aren't really bound by parts of the Old Testament any longer. There are no sinners in the hands of an angry god. Since this is the case, it puts into question many OT ideas (see: homosexuality, noun, not mentioned in the Ten Commandments or by Jesus at all) and, thus, it follows logically that some of it is just wrong. As a people, we evolved culturally over the time period between the OT and the NT and grew spiritually.

Recall that Jesus said, "If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments. He saith unto him, Which? Jesus said, Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." This last one is His New Commandment, detailed in John 13: 33-35.

Little children, yet a little while I am with you. Ye shall seek me: and as I said unto the Jews, Whither I go, ye cannot come; so now I say to you. A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.

Seems pretty straight forward to me.

Local Power Generation: the Truly Conservative Energy Solution

Roscoe Bartlett is the prototype of the quirky conservative. An article in Politico profiles the Maryland Republican, who served in Congress for 20 years before his seat was gerrymandered out of existence.

He has typical views for many in his party: limited government, pro-shutdown, hates Obamacare, etc. The article paints him as a survivalist living out in the boondocks, waiting for the day when the Russians detonate a nuclear weapon high above the United States, destroying our power and communications networks with EMP. He's got a composting toilet and a wood-fired stove.

The thing that caught my eye in the article was the picture of his cabin and the numerous solar panels surrounding it.

When you think about rugged individuals like Bartlett, you you conjure up images of farmers breaking the soil of the great prairie with horse-drawn plows, wind-swept plains, lone farmhouses with a windmill.

One of big arguments among conservatives is that our national debt is terrible. They infer this because they personal debt is terrible, and they equate the two. Another big argument is that big centralized control is bad, local control and personal responsibility are good.

Yet when it comes to energy, self-sufficiency and efficiency, conservatives suddenly flip-flop: they believe that we need a massive, centralized, top-down, multinational energy distribution network. One where we depend on oil sheiks in Saudi Arabia, oligarchs in Russia, and rich American heirs to massive oil fortunes.

But because oil and gas are fungible commodities, their prices will always suffer from potentially catastrophic fluctuations. Even though we are producing more oil and gas in this country, if the world suddenly needs more oil, the price will go up everywhere, and our supply could be drained away to countries like China and India. That's due to the magic of the free market, which dictates that whoever has the money calls the shots. Just because your country produces gas and oil doesn't mean your citizens will get to keep it (just ask the Nigerians). The Keystone XL pipeline won't deliver oil to the United States, it'll deliver oil to shipping terminals in Louisiana, so that foreign countries can buy it up at prevailing world prices.

Conservatives have been sold a bill of goods on energy. The Kochs and other CEOs have conned them into believing that we need massive coal mines, thousands of oil and gas wells, coal-fired power plants that poison our forests and lakes with mercury and sulfuric acid, gigantic nuclear power plants that will store tons of toxic nuclear waste on site for the rest of eternity, all run by monstrous multinational corporations that have proved time and again that they need an equally large federal government watching closely over them (think BP oil spill in the Gulf, Massey Energy coal mine explosion, Exxon Valdez, etc., etc., etc.).

Solar and wind power can create a more localized, independent, efficient, stable and reliable power grid, both from an economic and energy standpoint. Transmitting power thousands of miles across power lines leads to massive losses due to resistance. Having solar panels and windmills dotted around the landscape, provides greater efficiency and reliability, more local power generation and control.

When the only sources of electricity were coal-fired power plants that belched filthy smoke it made sense to stick out in the middle of nowhere. But now that we have clean alternatives that can be installed pretty much anywhere, it makes sense to generate power locally.

As Roscoe Bartlett points out, our power grid is fragile. It needs to be redesigned to better handle local grass-roots power generation. It needs to be robust enough to withstand hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, heat waves and cold snaps. As new forms of localized energy generation are developed (perhaps fuel cell stacks fueled hydrogen or natural gas) they can be plugged into the new grid to provide greater stability and local control. The grid still needs to be national, because we'll always need to balance power generation and consumption, as well as sending power to areas that have been hit by catastrophe.

The weird thing is that conservatives and liberals have a lot of core principles in common. But they've just have been talked into thinking that everything they believe in is diametrically opposed by people who stand to profit. We need to cut through the BS and work together to accomplish things that all of us agree are in our national interest, and not stand in the way of the common good simply because the other guy proposed it first.

Louis CK on Racism

Just after the one minute mark, Louis CK pretty much torpedoes the whole "racism is over" meme.

 

The Atheist and The Conservative Christian

In the space of about a week, I had an atheist and a conservative Christian tell me that in order to be a "true" Christian, I had to either believe all of the Bible or none of it. At first, this struck me as hilarious considering what polar opposites both of these individuals are. But then it made perfect sense because both of them are conservative which means the world is BLACK or WHITE and NEVER ANYTHING IN BETWEEN! Essentially, this means that they buy in to the myth that you have to believe in Republican Jesus to be a Christian.

The atheist is a buddy of mine with whom I have had many fantastic and sometimes contentious discussions about politics and religion. He is a dyed in the wool libertarian who wants the federal government out of every aspect of people's lives, save for the small, necessary things. He is very anti tax but pro choice, pro legalization of all drugs, doesn't give a shit about gay marriage or people's sex lives and wants the US military (of which he was a member for a few years) out of foreign countries.

The conservative Christian is Reverend Jim's wife, the first great love of my life. I've known her for nearly 30 years and, as she has gotten older, she has become more angry, afraid, and hateful of far too many things that go on in the world. In the course of commenting on my FB wall about the Phil Robertson flap, she said that believes every single thing in the Bible and told me that I have to believe all of it or none of it. When I posited that she does not believe every single thing in the Bible by asking her if she was subservient to her husband, she told me that the Bible told her to be submissive, not subservient, and then she went on to explain (to the horror of many of female friends) how she was just that. I politely informed her that being submissive and being subservient was the same thing and then went on to ask her she thought it was OK to sell her children into slavery. Or stone sinners. She stomped off the thread of the thread after that saying I was being silly so I guess she doesn't believe everything in the Bible.

A few days later, my atheist buddy said the same thing to me as did Reverend Jim's wife. "You aren't a Christian unless you believe all of the Bible," he declared.

"But there are parts that completely contradict each other so that's impossible," I replied.

"Exactly!" he declared. "So why bother believing in any of it?"

My buddy is clearly a baby and bathwater sort of fellow! So, I spend a few days lamenting both of their attitudes. All or nothing...what a crappy way to live your life.

But then I thought about the thirty verses of the Bible which state that women should be submissive to their husbands. These are great examples of how our society has moved past this male dominated view of sexual roles. It simply does not apply to today. Reverend Jim's wife represents a very small part of the Christian community in terms of this belief. Even the most hard core conservative Christians don't treat women the way the Bible allows. Are these millions of women "fake" Christians? Obviously not. Even by her own standards, she is as well.

Homosexuality, mentioned far less than wives being submissive to their husbands, is another example of how our culture has changed. The people of that time viewed it as taboo and learned behavior. Today, we can see that people are born that way and the question we need to ask ourselves is this: if God is so against homosexuals, why does S/He keep making them?

Getting back to my atheist buddy, it's ironic that he is an atheist because he generally lives by Christian principles. He does unto others, is generally peaceful, follows many of Christ's teachings, and actually looks like the westernized image of Jesus, complete with long flowing locks of hair! On a whim, he got ordained as a minister after answering an ad in the back of Rolling Stone. So, there is some spiritual hope for him. Whether he wants to admit it or not, Christianity has had a profound effect on his life. The basis for it is still the bedrock of our society with the New Commandment being something we all try still try to achieve. Why would you want to throw out the notion of loving one another just because of the logical contradictions that occur when cultures evolve?

Now I see the true irony of each of their statements. Neither one of them live up to their self imposed rigidity. She is less of a Christian then she believes and he is more of one. Perhaps they are pissed at themselves for compromising their ideals. After all, the Bible says we shouldn't believe everything.

Proverbs 14:15 The simple believeth every word: but the prudent man looketh well to his going.

Proverbs 26:25 When he speaketh fair, believe him not: for there are seven abominations in his heart. 

1 Thessalonians 5:21 Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. 

1 John 4:1 Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.

Amen

For my conservative Christian friends...

“It is not a good strategy to be at the center of a sphere,” the Pope stated. “To understand we ought to move around, to see reality from various viewpoints. We ought to get used to thinking.”

“This is really very important to me: the need to become acquainted with reality by experience, to spend time walking on the periphery in order really to become acquainted with the reality and life – experiences of people,” Pope Francis continued. “If this does not happen we then run the risk of being abstract ideologists or fundamentalists, which is not healthy.”

Why Did Humans Invent Music?

I've been meaning to note this piece from NatGeo for a while. What a great question!

Other theorists believe music was an attempt at social glue, a way to bring early humans together into a close-knit community."This hypothesis centers on music's unique ability to influence the mood and behavior of many people at once," they write, "helping to mold individual beings into a coordinated group." They cite the power of military music, music played at sports games, and "ritualized drumming" as examples.

I think if I had a choice between giving up music or sex, I'd give up sex. That's saying a lot for those of you who know me. Music has a power over me like nothing else. I listen to it constantly and in a wide variety of moods. Listening to sad music when I am sad somehow makes me happy. That says a lot about its power. Of course, in reality it's not an either or choice with music and sex so the two together are quite wonderful and why life is so amazing!

Beheadings?

"Obamacare Medical Codes Confirm: Execution by Beheading To Be Implemented in America."

I think it's safe to say at this point that the Right is going to get far worse than I imagined as they get older...

Are You Smarter Than A Fox News Viewer?

Take this quiz and find out!

It's Hard Being Red

Ted Cruz says he’s hired lawyers to renounce Canadian citizenship

No xenophobia here. Nope. Please move along...

Why is the Affordable Care Act Unpopular?

Michael Moore explains why. 

What we now call Obamacare was conceived at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, and birthed in Massachusetts by Mitt Romney, then the governor. The president took Romneycare, a program designed to keep the private insurance industry intact, and just improved some of its provisions. In effect, the president was simply trying to put lipstick on the dog in the carrier on top of Mitt Romney’s car. And we knew it.

Even still...

And yet — I would be remiss if I didn’t say this — Obamacare is a godsend. My friend Donna Smith, who was forced to move into her daughter’s spare room at age 52 because health problems bankrupted her and her husband, Larry, now has cancer again. As she undergoes treatment, at least she won’t be in terror of losing coverage and becoming uninsurable. Under Obamacare, her premium has been cut in half, to $456 per month.

And people wonder why it's tough to be a liberal...

Stunning...

I Was An NFL Player Until I Was Fired By Two Cowards And A Bigot

Near the end of November, several teammates and I were walking into a specialist meeting with Coach Priefer. We were laughing over one of the recent articles I had written supporting same-sex marriage rights, and one of my teammates made a joking remark about me leading the Pride parade. As we sat down in our chairs, Mike Priefer, in one of the meanest voices I can ever recall hearing, said: "We should round up all the gays, send them to an island, and then nuke it until it glows." The room grew intensely quiet, and none of the players said a word for the rest of the meeting.

What to do with people like Mike Priefer? I try to be tolerant but there is so much anger, fear and hatred with people like him. "We should round up all the gays, send them to an island, and then nuke it until it glows." ? This would be why I chuckle (and not because it's funny) when people like this bloviate about liberals being like Nazis. People like Priefer are the ones that really want to round up people and inter or execute them.

Honestly, there is no reasoning with the Priefers of the world. Interestingly, he's a great example of why I don't want to have guns banned in this country. If he decides to act on his beliefs, he'll need to be put down.

What Will 2014 Bring?

It's always fun at the beginning of a new year to predict what may happen. I've enjoyed reading all the partisan predictions for 2014 over the last few days that have ranged from the likely to the absurd so I figured I should throw out a few of my own.

Barring some outlying incident, the economy will continue to improve and unemployment will drop to below 6 percent. GDP will be steady at 3-4 percent for each of the four quarters. This will be the number one factor in the 2014 elections. For those of you inside the right wing bubble, our country is facing imminent economic collapse because of the liberals so nothing really new here.

The Affordable Care Act will be a 2014 campaign issue but not in the way the GOP would like it to be. The hundreds of thousands of Americans who will be benefiting from this law will dwarf those who are complaining about it and turn out to vote. The nervous and hyperventilating Democrats will suddenly become calm and happily stamp the ACA to their foreheads:)

After primary season is over in the Spring, GOP House members will pass comprehensive immigration reform. The new law will largely be the same one that was authored by Marco Rubio, Republican Senator from Florida. Political reality will become quite stark for Republicans this year in terms of the Latino vote and they will have no choice.

Failing to extend unemployment insurance for the long term unemployed will erase the political capital gained from the poor rollout of the Affordable Care Act. The Right's failure to address the issue of inequality with anything other than failed economic ideas and bloviating platitudes will take larger chunks out of the electorate for them.

There will be another school shooting and the Gun Cult will scream about Hitler coming to take their guns away, stomp down the hallway to their rooms, and act like belligerent adolescents.

The settled science of climate change will continue to be on display throughout the year. The Right will scream about Stalin coming to take their freedoms away, stomp down the hallway to their rooms, and act like belligerent adolescents.

President Obama's approval ratings will come back up again (they are already) and his 89th political death will quickly be forgotten.

For the 2014 election, the House will largely remain unchanged with either party picking up or losing a few seats. In the Senate, we can say goodbye to Mitch McConnell, Mary Landrieu, the Democratic seats in Montana, South Dakota, and West Virginia. That's a net loss of three seats which would put the Dems at 50 + Bernie Sanders and Angus King who caucus with them. Of course, that's how it looks now without the possible surprise retirement of Susan Collins or the GOP deciding to run far right candidates in the states they should easily pick up. Throw in some more Todd Akins and Richard Murdocks into the mix and nothing in the Senate really changes with the Democrats still holding the majority.

The most interesting races of the 2014 will be the governor's races. Governors Brewer, Heineman and Perry are all retiring. Rick Scott, Tom Corbett, Rick Snyder, and Scott Walker are going to have tough reelection fights. I see the Democrats taking most of these seats and holding on to the very blue states where they are running for reelection. The only one I really see holding on is Scott Walker in Wisconsin. I could be wrong because the state where I grew up really hasn't improved since he took office but I just don't see Kathy Burke beating him. He has moderated his language and criticized the crazies in his own party just enough to win the middle and set himself up for a presidential run.

Well, those are my predictions. What are yours?

Real And Not Real

The following are REAL bowl games (in order of awesomeness)...The Rose Bowl, The Orange Bowl, The Cotton Bowl, The Sugar Bowl, The Gator Bowl, The Sun Bowl, The Tangerine/Citrus Bowl (the original, now Capital One), The Liberty Bowl, The Peach Bowl (now Chick-fil-A), The Fiesta Bowl, The Independence Bowl (now Advocare V100 Bowl), Holiday Bowl, Outback Bowl, and the Copper Bowl (now Buffalo Wild Wings).

So basically, any bowl game 1989 and before.

The following are not real bowl games (in order of possibly real someday to not likely real ever): Russell Athletic Bowl (formerly new Tangerine/Champs/etc), Las Vegas Bowl, Alamo Bowl, Little Caesars Pizza Bowl (formerly Motor City Bowl), Famous Idaho Potato Bowl (former Humanitarian Bowl), Music City Bowl, GoDaddy Bowl, New Orleans Bowl, Fight Hunger Bowl, Hawaii Bowl, Belk Bowl, Armed Forces Bowl, Poinsettia Bowl, Texas Bowl, BBVA Compass Bowl, New Mexico Bowl, Military Bowl, Beef 'O' Brady's Bowl, Pinstripe Bowl, and the Heart of Dallas Bowl.

The BCS National Championship Game is an anomaly in and of itself. It's not a real bowl game but it is the national championship so it has to be in its own category.

Of all the defunct bowl games, the only one I truly miss is the College All-Star Game, played from 1934-1976, in which the Super Bowl champion from the previous year played an all star team of college seniors.

Happy New Year!

U2 - New Year's Day from Kurt Damon on Vimeo.

Best Movie -- Maybe, Scientifically Realistic -- No Way in Hell

Mark declared Gravity to be 2013's best movie, and I liked it. But I couldn't just let the idea that it was scientifically accurate stand unchallenged. But Gravity is not the only Hollywood movie to fall into that trap.

Warning: spoilers ahead.

While Gravity was visually impressive, it was not scientifically realistic. There are a zillion things wrong with it that others have pointed out (like, why the hell is a medical doctor swapping circuit boards out of a space telescope?), but I'll just mention the ones that struck me.

First, all the shuttles have been decommissioned, which means that the whole movie takes place in an alternate reality. There are no plans for future shuttles and Hubble will deorbit by 2021.

Second, the Hubble Space Telescope, which Bullock and Clooney were working on, is not in the same orbit as the International Space Station. Hubble's orbit is nearly circular at 559 km (inclination 28 degrees), while the ISS's perigee and apogee are 413km x 420km (inclination 51 degrees). (Even in an alternate reality the Hubble and the ISS would be in separate orbits because you don't want them to collide or the ISS to interfere with the Hubble's sight lines.)

That means it would take many hours if not days to travel from Hubble to ISS, even with the space shuttle. It would be impossible for Clooney's backpack to move two people from Hubble's orbit to the ISS's orbit in the time allotted, because the delta-V (change in velocity) required would use far more reaction mass than could be stored in the small backpack (assuming typical gas jets and not some super-powered plasma rocket pack).

Exactly how far apart are we talking about?

The circumference of the Hubble orbit is about 25,000 miles, while the circumference of the ISS's orbit is a few hundred miles less. Hubble and the ISS are basically randomly located along those orbits, as far as 12,000 miles away. They're not orbiting at the same speed (ISS is going about 17,100 mph, while Hubble is going maybe 50 mph slower). Also, they're not orbiting in the same plane: the ISS's orbit takes it as far north as London and almost as far south as Tierra del Fuego, Argentina. The Hubble's orbit takes it as far north as Orlando, Florida, and as far south as Johannesburg, South Africa.

That means Hubble and ISS will almost never be anywhere near each other. On extremely rare occasions they might pass within a few hundred miles, whizzing by at a relative speed of hundreds of miles an hour. But even if Clooney and Bullock lucked out, they still wouldn't have enough fuel to change orbits in time, since they had only minutes of oxygen.

Clooney's jetting from Hubble to the ISS is equivalent to jumping out of an airplane flying from London to Tierra del Fuego and parachuting over to a plane flying from Orlando to Johannesburg. Their paths might intersect, but the odds they'd be anywhere near each other at any random moment is nil.

The same thing is true for a future Chinese space station: it cannot be in the same orbit as the ISS because they would eventually collide. They would be nowhere near each other by design. For all the same reasons of orbital mechanics it's impossible for Bullock to go from the damaged ISS to a Chinese station in the time allotted.

It's reasonable that Bullock would be trained to read Russian and land a Soyuz spacecraft, but she simply wouldn't know enough to deorbit a Chinese lander -- it's a completely different design, and she obviously didn't read Chinese, and you can't just make wild guesses when landing spacecraft.

When Clooney and Bullock get to the ISS she gets hung up in the parachute cords from the Soyuz lander. Clooney is still hanging on to her. At this point Clooney detaches himself to "save" her and sacrifices his own life.

This is the absolutely stupidest thing about this movie. This sacrifice is totally unnecessary. They tried to make it seem that Clooney was somehow weighing Bullock down, and letting go would allow her to get back "up."

But this is space. When the chute cords became taut the two of them would stop. They might even be jerked back towards the station from the elasticity, and they would at least have been able to get themselves back to the station by yanking on the chute cords to get themselves moving back towards the station (they're weightless -- it would take almost no force to get going). Even if they were rotating around the station like a lasso around a cowboy's head (which they weren't -- they were just "dangling" from the station looking down at earth) they'd be able to climb up the cords.

The people who wrote this script either have no understanding of the conditions in space, or they thought they had to dumb reality down for the audience. But there's no reason for this: what matters in the movie are the visuals and the human emotions. All the picky details are irrelevant to the human drama -- you can simply arrange those details to stay true to the realities of space travel, without damaging the story line.

For example: there's no need for Hubble or the shuttle. Clooney and Bullock could be on a spacewalk on the ISS to deploy a medical experiment, like, say, one she developed to help kids who suffer from whatever killed her daughter. While she's wrapping things up, Clooney is farting around with his jet pack. Quoting one of Newton's laws (for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction), he shows all the kids on earth how throwing a wrench (on a long tether) propels him in the opposite direction.

Then catastrophe hits: space junk from a blown-up satellite hits the station, it starts rotating like crazy, casting Bullock away. The American Orion spacecraft is clobbered by debris, and the old Russian Soyuz breaks free, spinning away from the station. Debris hits Bullock's O2 tank, leaving her with a small emergency supply of only a few minutes. Clooney goes after her. He catches up to her and slows her down, stopping her nauseating spinning. The rocket pack is exhausted. Now they're just hanging there, a mile away from the dying station, with no way to get back.

They're both dead, right?

But no, Clooney is a brilliant astronaut: for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction, remember? He lines her up perfectly between him and the station, plants his feet squarely on her back and gives her a big kick toward the station -- sending himself out into the void. This is a sacrifice based on a basic principle of physics that everyone has heard of, which he just demonstrated.

Bullock barely makes it back to the station, gets in, sees weightless doodads spinning around, explosions, deadly perils and fancy special effects. She makes it to the Orion and finds out that debris has cracked the window: the lander is no longer airtight, and it can't possibly reenter the earth's atmosphere.

She's dead, right?

But no. Looking out the cracked window she sees a glinting -- the old Russian Soyuz lander is slowly spinning as it gets further and further from the station. Now she's got to figure out how jury-rig the damaged Orion to reach the Soyuz that she desperately hopes is still functional, before the ISS passes through the debris field on the next orbit, less than 60 minutes from now. She can even use the fire extinguisher gimmick to get from the damaged Orion to the (hopefully) undamaged Soyuz because it's too risky to let the two spacecraft get too close to each other. When she finally makes it to the Soyuz she can barely remember enough Russian to let her press the right buttons (does "старт" mean what she thinks it means?).

Pretty much all the same things can happen, credulity need not be strained, characters are developed, and to top it all off it's a cheaper movie to produce because you only have to generate effects for trashing one space station instead of two.

A real space accident happened with Apollo 13, and Hollywood even made a pretty good movie out of it. That movie hewed closely to the facts and didn't lose any emotional punch because of it.

So, why does any of this matter? Fiction is about character. Details matter because pointless sacrifice is simple suicide. It's out of character for a brilliant and tough astronaut like the one Clooney portrays to give his life up for nothing, not the least because after he's dead he can do nothing to protect Bullock: dead heroes help no one.

Hollywood so often falls into the trap of taking a harrowing situation and turning the excitement level up to 11, when 10 will do just fine. There's no need for movies to force-feed us stupid stuff, when the right stuff is just as easy to make.

Best of 2013: Film

The Best Film of 2013 was Gravity. A stunning film on a number of levels but the one that sticks with me is how scientifically real it was. No sound in space so they compensated with music. Bullock was magnificent in what will hopefully be the beginning of more strong roles like this for women.

This was the first trailer I saw. I nearly shat myself...

 

Best of 2013: Television

The best television series of 2013 was Boardwalk Empire. This show just keeps getting better and better. The writing is fantastic but it's really the cast that sends this show into the stratosphere. Michael Stuhlbarg as Arnold Rothstein is my fave but I like him in everything. Michael Shannon plays the most disturbed character I have ever seen on TV. Michael Kenneth Williams is simply a national treasure. And Buscemi is a master! Every episode is so intense that my palms sweat with each new chapter.

Here is the trailer for the latest season.

 

Best of 2013: Music

The best album of 2013 belongs to Fremantle, Western Australia’s San Cisco. Much of their music was released late last year but they didn’t secure a record deal here until early this year. I have played this disc so much that it is nearly worn out. My 14 year old daughter loves it and can’t get enough of all the catchy pop hooks and down under bliss. Parts of it remind me of the 80s but yet it still sounds very fresh. I’d urge you to check out all their EPs as they have many tracks not on the album.

 Here is the track that helped them get a US record deal.

Oh, I See

Sarah Palin: MSNBC ‘despicable’

When the Left is outraged about something like Phil Robertson, they are infringing free speech and hampering freedom. But when the Right is outraged about something, well, then it's OK, I guess.

Amazingly, There's a Disease that Bloodletting Cures!

My brother-in-law recently came home for a family gathering and stayed at our house. He was sick as a dog with the flu, and during the gathering he dropped a bombshell: he has hemochromatosis, and urged his brothers and sisters to get tested for it.

Hemochromatosis is a genetic disease, more common in northern Europeans, especially among the Irish, affecting as much as 0.5% of the white population in the United States (with a 1 in 8 or 10 chance for carriers of the genetic mutation). Sometimes called the Irish Disease or the Celtic Curse, hemochromatosis causes iron to concentrate in the joints, liver, endocrine system, heart and pancreas. This can cause arthritis, diabetes, cirrhosis, testicular failure and heart problems.

It affects men more than women, at least until menopause. That means there's actually a good thing about having periods if you have this disease.

Hemochromatosis can also cause your skin to turn a bronze color, which may mean that John Boehner has a medical problem, instead of a fixation on tanning beds.

The interesting thing about the disease is the treatment: bloodletting! Bloodletting is usually scorned as an egregious example of foolish medical treatments: George Washington's doctors killed him by bleeding him of almost a gallon of blood in 10 hours. Of course, he had a throat infection, so his doctors were idiots.

Phlebotomy (as it's now called) is still the best treatment for hemochromatosis. Even better, that blood isn't simply wasted nowadays: it can be donated to others.

Bloodletting might have also had a few other positive effects. It can lower blood pressure by reducing volume, and it can reduce fluid overload in heart failure. For the most part, however, it was no better than a placebo, and probably hurt many more people than it helped, not least of all because of the terrible infections you can get from opening a vein with unsterilized instruments.

The lesson to be learned is that all of us are different: a treatment that works wonders for one person can be deadly for another. That goes for bloodletting, as well as chemotherapy, blood pressure and other medications, as well as diets and even vitamins.

In medicine one size does not fit all.

Is Looking into the Genetic Crystal Ball Worth It?

Last month the FDA ordered 23andMe to stop selling their genetic testing kit, saying that the company had not proved the effectiveness of their tests.

Before that order went into effect, Kara Peikoff, decided to check out how reliable these tests were. She had her DNA tested by three different companies, and reported on the results in The New York Times. It turns out these tests are basically worthless. They provided contradictory results for some diseases they tested for, and textual interpretations of the results differed markedly: one company said her risk for type 2 diabetes was "medium" at 10.3%, while another company company said it was "decreased" at 15.7%.

These tests claim they check for hundreds of diseases, but:

There are only 23 diseases that start in adulthood, can be treated, and for which highly predictive tests exist. All are rare, with hereditary breast cancer the most common. “A small percentage of people who get tested will get useful information,” Dr. Klitzman said. “But for most people, the results are not clinically useful, and they may be misleading or confusing.”

That makes these tests worse than worthless, and actually harmful. Which means they're just ripping their customers off.

What makes more sense, if you're worried about a genetic predisposition to a particular disease that runs in your family, is to get tested for that disease. That's what Angelina Jolie did: she decided to have a preventive mastectomy after genetic testing showed she was likely to develop breast cancer.

And if there's a disease that you may get that has no effective cure or for which there are no preventive measures (such as Parkinson's), you may not wish to be tested at all. It really depends on what kind of personality you have. If you would feel less stressed by knowing what your chances are, even if you knew it was likely, you should consider testing. But if you'd feel that the angel of death was standing over you for the rest of your life, you may well be happier not knowing.

At this point, these tests are woefully inaccurate because they examine only an extremely small number of SNPs (segments of DNA). Until the cost of whole-genome sequencing drops to an affordable level, these tests are a total waste of money.

As one of the doctors for The Times article said:

[The tests] may be interesting as a kind of entertainment, but do not take them seriously yet in driving your health care or your lifestyle. If you want to spend money wisely to protect your health and you have a few hundred dollars, buy a scale, stand on it, and act accordingly.

Make A Man Out of Him-Buy Him A Gun!

The Connecticut state police have released everything they have on the Sandy Hook shooting and it's not just disturbing. It's shovel to the head stunning how many fucking morons there were in his life that they didn't notice he was going to do this. This includes the media who keep wondering what his motive was. How about he was a fucking psycho and his mom was a complete idiot in allowing him access to guns?

Check out some of the information that was released.

In a section of the book labeled "Granny's Clubhouse of Happy Children," typed as dialogue from an imaginary television show, Granny and her son, "Bobolicious," terrorize a group of children. In one episode, Bobolicious tells the children they're going to play a game of "Hide and go die." Granny uses her "rifle cane" to kill people at a bank, hockey game and Marine boot camp. She also goes back in time and murders the four Beatles, according to a police synopsis.

Hey, someone get this kid a gun so he can straighten himself out. He needs to understand that his 2nd amendment right shall not be infringed! Time to make a man out of him!! Better hurry, the gubmint is a comin' to take those guns away...

The book also contains several chapters with the adventures of "Dora the Beserker" and her monkey, "Shoes" — a clear knockoff of the popular children's show "Dora the Explorer." When Granny asks Dora to assassinate a soldier, she replies: "I like hurting people ... Especially children." In the same episode, Dora sends "Swiper the Raccoon" into a day care center to distract the children, then enters and says, "Let's hurt children."

Even after this, his mother thought it would be just fine to get him a gun for Christmas. So, I have to wonder, how many of these morons are helping out the next school shooter? Maybe they'll have to learn their lesson the way Nancy Lanza did.

The fact that we have to put up with these Neanderthals given that it's the 21st century is beyond frustrating. All I can say after reading all of this is they better start praying over their arsenal today that no one I love is hurt because of their fucking cult. Even the slightest whiff of an issue in my circle of life and they will be living in hell for their rest of their floppy titted days.

If they think they have problems now, wait until this thousand ton force of nature takes their fucked up and quite literally death causing ideology and shoves it straight up their paranoid and psychotic fat asses.

Now What?

Issa on defense over Benghazi statements

On Sunday, “Meet the Press” host David Gregory asked Issa to respond to The Times story, which was published online Saturday. The story also said the Benghazi attacks were “fueled in large part by anger at an American-made video denigrating Islam.”

Here is the full story from the New York Times. I wonder if there will be any retractions and mea culpas from the right wing blogsphere (I'm waiting, Kevin). After all, their investigative abilities and infrastructure is ever bit as extensive as the Times, right? Once again, never buy into right wing hysteria and witch hunts. Invariably, they are just fucking wrong.

And the bubble continues to contract..

Riiiiight

I love how every photo of the president these days is some variation of this one.

Liberal media my ass!

Quite Popular

Pope Francis is quite popular, as in, sky high approval ratings. A whopping 88 percent of American Catholics highly approve of Pope Francis. Among the American people as a whole, his approval rating stands at an incredible 75 percent.

So even though conservatives have made the pontiff the newest target of their hatred, Americans overwhelmingly side with him. This suggests that even many conservatives love the Pope despite what right-wing leaders think. After all, it’s unlikely that these numbers are composed only of those who lean liberal.

Man, that's a whole lot of "fake" Christians!

Simple Math

Check out this piece on how Utah is set to end homelessness. The answer?

Government spending.

Utah has reduced its rate of chronic homelessness by 78 percent over the past eight years, moving 2000 people off the street and putting the state on track to eradicate homelessness altogether by 2015. How’d they do it? The state is giving away apartments, no strings attached. In 2005, Utah calculated the annual cost of E.R. visits and jail stays for an average homeless person was $16,670, while the cost of providing an apartment and social worker would be $11,000. Each participant works with a caseworker to become self-sufficient, but if they fail, they still get to keep their apartment.

Huh. Whouda thunk it? Simple math...

Uh Oh

Tom Steyer may be liberals' answer to the Koch brothers

For years, liberals have fretted about the power of ultrawealthy people determined to use their billions to advance their political views. Charles and David Koch, in particular, have ranked high in the demonology of the American left. But in Steyer, liberals have a billionaire on their side. Like the Kochs, he is building a vast political network and seizing opportunities provided by loose campaign finance rules to insert himself into elections nationwide. In direct contrast to them, he has made opposition to fossil fuels and the campaign against global warming the center of his activism.

And he's much younger than the Kochs, now in their 80s.

Can't Private Industry Get Anything Right?

A couple of weeks ago Target's point of sale terminals were attacked by hackers, who stole the credit card and PIN numbers of as many as 40 million customers. Target isn't the only company to have this problem; earlier this month JPMorgan Chase admitted half a million card users' data were stolen. That was more than two months after they found out, and that was two months after it happened. The same thing happened to Sony in 2011.

People who ordered gifts weeks before Christmas were disappointed when both UPS and FedEx failed to deliver on the promised dates:

Mr. Yslas said that he ordered the gift from Chef Uniforms early in the month, and that it was shipped on Dec. 14, with an estimated delivery of Dec. 19. But on Dec. 19, U.P.S. changed the estimated delivery date to Dec. 23. The package arrived in Fort Worth on Dec. 22, and U.P.S. changed the estimated arrival to Dec. 24. On Dec. 23, U.P.S. pushed that to Dec. 26. Mr. Yslas said he had complained to U.P.S.

(Meanwhile, the US Post Office began making Sunday deliveries for Amazon.com.)

Yesterday Delta Airlines' website was so screwed up that thousands of people were getting round-trip tickets to Hawaii for eighty-six bucks.

Curiously, the folks who have been complaining about how the healthcare.gov website problems prove that government can't get anything right are silent about these private industry screwups.

They also forget that a private company, CGI group of Montreal, is behind the healthcare.gov website. The company's mistakes have not been limited to the federal website; they also did the work on the Massachusetts and Vermont health care websites. Those states are withholding payment from CGI Group because of numerous problems.

There's nothing intrinsically different between government and corporate bureaucracies. They're all run by human beings who make the same kinds of mistakes for the same reasons. The main difference is that we control government through the power of the ballot, while private industry can keep their dirty little secrets behind closed doors as long as they can buy off or threaten people into silence with lawsuits. So while it may seem government is less competent than private industry, the fact is that private industry is simply better at keeping secrets: just ask the NSA.

Some people seem to think that the healthcare foul-up is due to rank government incompetence, while data breaches are concentrated attacks committed by brilliant hackers. Target isn't saying how that credit card data was stolen, but most data breaches are due to rank incompetence: someone puts an unencrypted file on a web server and forgets it there, or loses a laptop with thousands of medical records, or doesn't upgrade to the latest version of the operating system, or visits a porn site and gets infected with malware that steals their password, and so on.

Ultimately, the health care website is just a front-end that allows consumers to make apples-to-apples comparisons between equivalent health insurance plans offered by private industry. That's all it is.

To sell it the president just needs to (using a word that's so popular with Republicans these days) "rebrand" it with buzzwords conservatives like: the new health care system is a public-private partnership that sets up a marketplace where standards-based insurance plans engage in healthy competition, allowing consumer choice. As with charter schools, some consumers get vouchers to help pay for private industry health plans. The system encourages personal responsibility and prevents freeloaders and takers from dragging the whole system down.

Oh, and if he cussed out some teachers, called a few women sluts, slammed the work ethic of blacks, and insulted the intelligence of Latinos that would seal the deal.